In the Media

"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other universities, as well as companies like Cabot Corp., the giant chemical company in Boston, are hoping Massachusetts can become a center for a burgeoning graphene industry."

"Even as the debt crisis continues to grow in Europe, the debate there has shifted."

"In October, with support from two Media Laboratory videographers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Paula Aguilera and Jonathan Williams, Dr. Hidalgo began posting online a series of video interviews with local scientists."

"Here's my list of big events happening in Boston this year. Some are home-grown, and others are major national conventions — like the annual conclaves of the biotech and cable TV industries — that are coming to town." -Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe

"Meanwhile, the Changing Places Group at MIT’s Media Lab is working on a new vision for urban driving: a car that can be folded to fit into the tightest parking spaces."

Rev. John Crocker Jr., a civil rights activist and former chaplain at Brown University and at MIT, has died at 88.

"Rev. Crocker, a civil rights activist and Vietnam War opponent while serving as a chaplain at Brown University and at MIT, died last Friday in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge."

"The central question for middle class Americans, however, is: What quality of job is being created?"

"In 'Rethinking a Lot,' a new study of parking, due out in March, Eran Ben-Joseph, a professor of urban planning at M.I.T., points out that 'in some U.S. cities, parking lots cover more than a third of the land area, becoming the single most salient landscape feature of our built environment.'"

"Two of the hottest stories on Forbes.com in the past week or so have been about SOPA (226,810 views!) and MITx (539,810 views!!)."

"It’s as if $2.5 trillion worth of stuff—the equivalent of the entire U.S. economy circa 1958—materialized out of thin air."

"It’s sometimes suggested that American car companies have quit making more efficient cars and trucks in recent decades. But that’s not strictly true, according to MIT economist Christopher Knittel."

"North Americans should breathe easy: New research confirms that the continent has eroded very little over the past 1.5 billion years and, in all likelihood, won’t shed much ground in the next billion years, either."

"The destruction part is easy to see: downturns kill businesses, leaving boarded-up windows on the high street as their gravestones. But recessions may also spur the creation of new businesses."

"All factors being equal, fuel economy increased 60 percent in that time, Knittel notes in 'Automobiles on Steroids,' published in American Economic Review. If we were driving cars that featured today’s drivetrain tech but had the weight and power of vehicles in the Reagan era, the average fuel economy of the American fleet would have climbed from 23 mpg in 1980 to roughly 37 mpg today."