Prof. Antoinette Schoar writes for The Wall Street Journal about her research examining how credit card companies are using customer data to target specific consumers. Schoar writes that “as more and more personal data becomes available, businesses are now able to target customers in a personalized and sophisticated way.”
MIT researchers have found that immigration has been dominating election conversations on Twitter, writes John West in a Washington Post article. “Tweets on immigration soared to almost 60 percent of the election-related Twitter conversation after Donald Trump’s statements about a potential 'softening', his visit to Mexico and then his address on the topic.”
Writing for The New York Times, Katie Hafner highlights how MIT researchers have identified a region of the brain that they believe could be responsible for producing feelings of loneliness. Hafner explains that “the region, known as the dorsal raphe nucleus, or D.R.N., is best known for its link to depression.”
Tamara Dietrich writes for the Daily Press that postdoctoral fellow Or Hen has been awarded the Jefferson Science Associates Thesis Prize, which is “awarded every year for the best Ph.D. student thesis on research conducted at Jefferson Laboratory in Newport News.”
Prof. Ricardo Caballero and his colleagues have found that due to the integrated nature of the world’s financial markets, “a slump in some economies can eventually engulf all of them.” The Economist notes that the researchers found “once a few economies become stuck in the zero-rate trap, their current-account surpluses exert a pull which threatens to drag in everyone else.”
In an NPR article about the difficulty of dispelling political rumors, Danielle Kurtzleben cites a study by Prof. Adam Berinsky that shows trying to correct political myths may only entrench them further.
Edd Gent writes for LiveScience that MIT researchers “have devised a new fabrication process that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to print successive layers of polymers into 3D, Transformer-like structures that ‘remember’ their shapes.”
Graduate student Max Kaplan speaks on PRI’s Science Friday about his work recording the soundscapes of coral reefs. Kaplan explains that researchers can decipher “the health of the reef by listening over relatively long periods of time and looking at what you see in the acoustic records.”
MIT researchers have developed a method to 3-D print heat-responsive materials that can remember their original form, reports Rachel Zimmerman for WBUR. Prof. Nicholas Fang explains that this development is "critical for drug delivery — you could deliver a smaller, more tailored dose depending on the temperature change."
Melissa Lott writes for Scientific American that MIT researchers have created a device that generates steam using sunlight and does not require mirrors or lenses to concentrate the sun’s heat. The device could provide an “inexpensive option for applications ranging from the large scale (e.g. desalination and wastewater treatment) to smaller applications (e.g. residential water heating).”
In an article for Scientific American, Layla Eplett writes about Prof. Heather Paxson’s book on American artisanal cheese culture. Eplett writes that after observing the increasing number of artisanal cheese shops, Paxson was inspired to visit "artisanal cheesemakers throughout the US who revealed diverse backgrounds and motivations for learning the craft.”
MIT researchers have created a smartphone that can build itself, reports Thomas Tamblyn for The Huffington Post. The research suggests that “in the future a phone could be manufactured so that when dropped it will automatically break into deliberately separate pieces, which can then be easily re-attached afterwards,” Tamblyn explains.
Emma Grey Ellis writes for Wired that MIT researchers are aiming to get a better grasp on public health in cities around the world by analyzing the microbes in sewage systems using a robot dubbed Luigi. Wilson explains that sewage “carries drug metabolites, DNA, even biomarkers for diabetes—and all that data is available in real time.”
Salon reporter Scott Eric Kaufman writes that MIT researchers are using light to print 3-D structures that are able to remember their original shapes, and could be used in solar panel tracking and drug delivery. Kaufman writes that the structures are capable “of springing back to their original forms.”
Brian Fung writes for The Washington Post that MIT spinoff nuTonomy has launched a self-driving car service in Singapore. Following nuTonomy’s pilot program in Singapore “the company may be able to quickly transfer what it learns to other places where it's currently conducting studies, such as London and Michigan,” suggests Fung.