In the Media

"The director of MIT’s Center for Theoretical Physics does not usually prepare for a lecture by watching a Keanu Reeves film. Then again, he doesn’t usually speak about 'Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.'"

"But one piece of advice that's driven me the most came from a commencement speech by then-MIT president Charles Vest. He said to keep on moving. Cheesy, but it's amazing how true it is. Don't talk about stuff. Do it. When your organization is paused, and when the spirit of just seeing what happens dies, that's when you should be worried." -MIT alum Sal Khan

"As a companion to their recently released comic book, M.I.T. health care economist Jon Gruber and illustrator Nathan Schreiber teamed up with the Center for American Progress to produce an three-minute animated explanation of how the health reform law works."

"Astronomers are setting up a virtual telescope as wide as our planet to capture the first picture outlining our galaxy's monstrous black hole."

"Shale gas has transformed the U.S. energy landscape in the past several years—but it may crowd out renewable energy and other ways of cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a new study warns."

"For centuries, this is how science has operated — through research done in private, then submitted to science and medical journals to be reviewed by peers and published for the benefit of other researchers and the public at large. But to many scientists, the longevity of that process is nothing to celebrate."

"WristQue is the key to controlling 'the immersive world of interactive media that will one day surround us,' says Joe Paradiso, director of the Responsive Environments Group at MIT's Media Lab, who is working with colleagues to design it."

"All sorts of walls come tumbling down in “World of Wires,” Jay Scheib’s slap-happy, mixed-media murder mystery at the Kitchen. Divisions between reality (that old chimera) and perception — not to mention the borders that separate screen from stage and human from machine — are stomped upon with the glee of a precocious, permanently stoned, science-fiction-reading 14-year-old who has just discovered, like, philosophy, dude."

"In no other U.S. recovery since World War II have companies been simultaneously faster to boost spending on machines and software, while slower to add people to run them."

"Yet depreciation may be the only remaining hope for the euro’s survival, as long as it is carried out through swift and coherent policy support."

"Coming soon to a garage near you is a car that will download your work schedule and trigger your alarm clock. By the time you get behind the wheel, the car will have analyzed the morning’s traffic and weather and calculated the best route to get you to the office on time."

"Our brains are made to find faces. In fact, they're so good at picking out human-like mugs we sometimes see them in a jumble of rocks, a bilious cloud of volcanic ash or some craters on Moon."

"Joi Ito started last fall as the new director of the MIT Media Lab, the famed research group that explores how technology is changing communication and culture, often by building dazzling hardware and software prototypes."

"There's nothing like the visceral roar of the crowd - that hair-raising, spine-tingling moment when thousands of people all sing, or shout, in unison."

"Researchers there (at MIT) have created a nanoscale coating that can stop bleeding nearly instantaneously using a clotting agent already found naturally in blood."