A study co-authored by researchers at MIT finds that hospitalizations only cause about 4 percent of bankruptcies among nonelderly adults in the U.S., reports Tom Murphy of the Associated Press. Researchers gathered data from “more than a half million adults under 65 in California who had a hospitalization between 2003 and 2007 that wasn't tied to childbirth.”
Prof. Junot Diaz appeared on CBS This Morning to speak about his new children’s book "Islandborn," which was partly inspired by his experience as a young immigrant from the Dominican Republic. "A lot of us can't remember our origins,” said Diaz. “We're shaped by places and people that we've never, ever met. And that's something important to recognize."
A study co-authored by Prof. David Autor finds that over the past five decades, automation has helped increase total employment, but wages have not increased, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Eric Morath. According to Autor, the findings help explain “why inequality between the world’s wealthiest and everyday workers has increased.”
Research led by Prof. Shigeru Miyagawa finds that cave art may be symbolic of early human languages. “The cognitive functions needed to transfer acoustic sounds to pictures are the same cognitive functions needed in language,” senior researcher Cora Lesure tells Sarah Gibbens of National Geographic.
According to a new paper from Prof. Shigeru Miyagawa, “cave drawings may show evidence of the development of spoken human language,” writes Laney Ruckstuhl for The Boston Globe. “There’s this idea that language doesn’t fossilize,” Miyagawa said. “And it’s true, but maybe in these artifacts [cave drawings], we can see some of the beginnings of homo sapiens as symbolic beings.”
Prof. Sherry Turkle speaks with Judi Ketteler at the New York Times about how to introduce your children to social media. “Spend some time introducing your child to social media, the same way you introduce them to your neighborhood,” said Turkle. “It is simply now part of parenting.”
NBC Boston reporter Frank Holland visits MIT to discuss the Institute’s ties to slavery, which is the subject of a new undergraduate research course. “MIT and Slavery class is pushing us into a national conversation. A conversation that’s well underway in the rest of country regarding the role of slavery and institutions of higher learning,” said Dean Melissa Nobles.
Prof. Martin Marks hosted a conversation with Audra McDonald, the 2018 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient, where she spoke about her personal experience as a Tony Award-winning actress and shared advice with the gathered students, writes Sophie Cannon for The Boston Globe. “Realize you have value and you have worth and what you maybe don’t have is experience but that is what you are here to get,” McDonald said.
Prof. Craig Steven Wilder and archivist Nora Murphy speak with Heather Goldstone of Living Lab Radio on WCAI about a new undergraduate course to research MIT’s historical ties to slavery. “The story of MIT also tells us about the centrality of slavery to the United States economy and to the rise of the United States as we know it,” says Wilder.
Prof. Martin Marks hosted a conversation with Audra McDonald, the 2018 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient, where she spoke about her personal experience as a Tony Award-winning actress and shared advice with the gathered students, writes Sophie Cannon for The Boston Globe. “Realize you have value and you have worth and what you maybe don’t have is experience but that is what you are here to get,” McDonald said.
Prof. Junot Díaz spoke to students at the University of Missouri about how sexual violence and slavery is responsible for the mixing of races. “My work, among many of the things that it wrestles with, wrestles with the kind of, the often invisible and vigorously disavowed, long shadow of enslavement,” Díaz explains to Carolina Moren of Huffington Post.
After being charged by MIT’s president to investigate the Institute’s ties to slavery, Prof. Craig Wilder led a new class that “uncovered myriad connections… some blatant and others nuanced,” reports Laura Krantz for The Boston Globe. SHASS Dean Melissa Nobles says it’s important to study MIT’s role in post-Civil War Reconstruction: “At the end of day, MIT is about ideas. It’s about better understanding human knowledge and advancing it. And one way we advance it is by understanding its origins.”
Paul Solman of PBS Newshour speaks to Prof. Andrew Lo about getting investors to finance research into treatments for cancer and genetic diseases. “We now have the opportunity to treat disease in many, many different ways. We just don’t have enough money to explore all of the different pathways,” explains Prof. Lo.
TechCrunch’s “Technotopia” podcast, hosted by John Biggs, features Prof. Nick Montfort, who has authored a new book, “The Future”. Montfort’s book identifies those whose work impacts the future of culture and technology.
As Steve Rosenbush notes in the Wall Street Journal, MIT Intelligence Quest hopes to answer two questions: “How does human intelligence work, in engineering terms? And how can we use that deep grasp of human intelligence to build wiser and more useful machines?” explains President Reif.