In an article for USA Today about slouching, Julia Savacool highlights an MIT study that found “people who assumed more ‘expansive’ postures, such as sprawling out in a chair as opposed to sitting in a gentlemanly fashion, were more likely to steal money or cheat on a test.”
Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, writes for the Huffington Post about aging. Coughlin argues that, “it may not be so bad to be old after all,” citing new research showing that “older Americans, those age 55 and older, have a higher state of well-being than the younger population.”
Felicia Gans writes for The Boston Globe that the images and information gathered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has changed the way that Prof. Richard Binzel and other scientists think about Pluto. “We had expected to be surprised by what Pluto had to offer, but this is beyond anything we imagined,” says Binzel.
In an article for Forbes, Greg Satell applied Prof. Jeremy England’s theories about the meaning of life to the way new technologies are impacting humans. Satell writes that if England is right and “the purpose of life is to create order,” humans can find meaning in, “channeling our energies to adapt to that which is to come.”
Prof. Max Tegmark speaks with Tom Ashbrook, host of NPR’s On Point, about the Future of Life Institute, which is focused on addressing potential risks posed by artificial intelligence. Tegmark explains that the Institute's goal is “to figure out a way of helping AI amplify our intelligence for good.”
Suzanne Jacobs writes for Grist about Professor Jessika Trancik’s research and her focus on the scalability and efficiency of clean technologies. “It’s not a matter of can this technology scale up; it’s the question of can it scale up quickly enough to make a difference,” says Trancik.
In a speech laying out her economics plans, former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cited Prof. Zeynep Ton’s research on the benefits for businesses in improving wages and training for workers, reports Eduardo Porter for The New York Times.
Prof. Richard Binzel, a member of NASA’s New Horizon’s science team, discusses the magnitude of capturing up-close images and new information about Pluto with Boston Globe reporter Steve Annear. “It’s a milestone event in the human exploration of the solar system,’’ says Binzel.
In an article for The New York Times, Jay Pasachoff writes about what the team of scientists and students from MIT, Williams College and Lowell Observatory learned from their observation of Pluto during a recent occultation. Pasachoff explains that the information gathered from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft could help clarify some of the deductions made about Pluto.
Los Angeles Times reporter Deborah Netburn speaks with Prof. Richard Binzel about the information being gathered about Pluto by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. "We are trying to take these interpretations very slowly and carefully, especially as new and closer data are arriving,” Binzel explains.
Comedian Aziz Ansari consulted Professor Natasha Dow Schull for his new book, “Modern Romance: An Investigation,” writes Mackenzie Cummings-Grady for The Boston Globe. Ansari’s book looks at relationships in the digital age and draws on work Schull’s work on addiction.
Fortune reporter Jonathan Vanian writes that researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a new method to restore old, malfunctioning code. The system, called Helium, “discovers the most crucial lines of code that the original programmers developed to make it function, and then builds a revised version of the program.”
Rick Wartzman writes for Fortune about Prof. Zeynep Ton’s argument for paying employee’s higher wages. “What’s so evident is that it’s hard for these people to take care of their customers and do their jobs effectively when they’re thinking about whether they’re going to be able to put food on the table that night,” says Ton.
Christian Science Monitor reporter Joe Uchill writes about a new system developed by MIT researchers that can automatically detect and fix software bugs by borrowing functionality from other applications. Uchill explains that the researchers hope “automating the detection and patching processes will reduce the chance that an attacker can take advantage of the bug within a system.”
Larry Greenemeier writes for Scientific American about why government agencies want access to encrypted data, highlighting a report co-authored by MIT researchers that warns against providing special access. The researchers argue that providing access would “make software and devices much more complex, difficult to secure and expensive for tech companies to maintain."