Prof. Iván Werning speaks with NPR Planet Money hosts Amanda Aronczyk and Erika Beras about the dollarization of Argentina – an effort being made to address issues within their economy. “One of the big problems of dollarizing is you basically lose the capacity to influence the economy,” says Werning. “So we all hear about the fed in the U.S. lowering rates or raising rates to try and control to minimize recessions. When you dollarize, you give that capacity up.”
Sloan Senior Lecturer Robert (Bob) Pozen speaks with U.S. News & World Report reporter Geoff Williams about ways to create a healthy work-life balance. “Ironically, all of this technology has led, some people in some organizations, to think they have to be 'on' all the time and go from one meeting to another because it’s so easy to schedule it,” says Pozen. “You have to have ground rules.”
Michael Mehling, deputy director of the Center for Energy and Environment Policy Research, speaks with E&E News reporter Benjamin Storrow about the impact of global climate deals on climate change. “The history of the Paris Agreement suggests that global climate deals do make a dent in emissions,” Mehling says. “But the impact can be subtle and felt over time.”
Prof. Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, whose “studies on gender and science, the role of language in shaping how we see and study the world,” and analysis of key concepts in modern biology contributed to the history and philosophy of modern biology, has died at age 87, reports Marga Vicedo for Nature. Keller “proposed abandoning the idea that genes are master molecules that provide the blueprints for and direct the development of an organism,” writes Vicedo. Keller also showed how language, including people’s choice of metaphors, influences the directions of scientific research.”
Prof. Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science, speaks with Wired reporter Swapna Krishna about her work searching for gravitational waves, the importance of skepticism in scientific research and why she enjoys working with young people. Mavalvala explains, “there’s an idea that the greatest scientific discoveries are made by wiry silver-haired scientists. But it’s the work of young people that enables all of these scientific discoveries.”
Prof. Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, “scientist, feminist scholar, and author of influential publications on genetics, developmental biology and scientific language,” has died at 87, reports Angela N. H. Creager for Science. “After training in physics and working in mathematical biology, Evelyn turned her attention to understanding how societal constructs, especially gender, guide science,” writes Creager. “She brought feminist insights into the history and philosophy of biology and sparked broader interdisciplinary conversations about the role of metaphor and rhetoric in science.”
Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Professors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson examine what the recent issues at OpenAI mean for the future of artificial intelligence. “Sam Altman’s dismissal and rapid reinstatement as CEO of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, confirms that the future of AI is firmly in the hands of people focused on speed and profits, at the expense of all else,” they write. “This elite will now impose their vision for technology on the rest of humanity. Most of us will not enjoy the consequences.”
Prof. Albert Saiz speaks with Washington Post reporter Andrew Van Dam about the influence of geographical regions in politics. “High-amenity areas are more desirable and tend to attract the highly skilled,” says Saiz. “These metros tend to have harder land constraints to start with, which begets more expensive housing prices which, in turn, activate more NIMBY activism to protect that wealth.”
Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang has been named to the TIME 100 Climate list, which highlights the world’s most influential climate leaders in business. “When it comes to cleantech, if it won’t scale, it doesn’t matter,” Chiang says. “This is a team sport—companies large and small, and governments state and federal, need to work together to get these new technologies out there where they can have impact.”
Prof. Jacopo Buongiorno speaks with Danny Lewis, host of The Wall Street Journal’s “Future of Everything” podcast, about the future of nuclear power plants. “As countries, regions, businesses contemplate their future plans for reducing carbon emissions, nuclear is one technology that they have got to consider,” says Buongiorno. “It's an incredibly dense energy source, so you don't need a big supply chain that continuously feeds the power plant with fuel, the same way that you would with coal, for example. Also, the machine itself, the reactor is very, very compact.”
Prof. Adam Berinsky speaks with MSNBC’s Morning Joe about the impact of misinformation on democracy and the upcoming 2024 election. “The larger issue is that there is this climate of distrust,” says Berinsky.
Johanna Mayer and Katie Hafner from Scientific American’s “The Lost Women of Science podcast spotlight the late former Prof. Mária Telkes and her work focused on the development of solar energy. “Dr. Mária Telkes died in 1995, at age 94,” says Mayer. “But her legacy lives on. Today, the number of people installing solar panels in their homes is consistently rising – and in a recent Pew study, 39% of homeowners surveyed said they were seriously considering going solar.”
Prof. Héctor Beltrán speaks with Lily Jamali of Marketplace about his new book, “Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands,” which explores the culture of hackathons and entrepreneurship in Mexico. "Ultimately, it’s about difference, thinking about Silicon Valley from Mexico,” says Beltrán. "Also, from a Chicano/Latino perspective, because as I show throughout the book, there’s these connections, tensions, intersections between the Latino community in the U.S., the Latin American community, the Mexican community.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Anna Stansbury finds that “as the share of graduates in the UK workforce has expanded over the past 25 years, the wage premium they command relative to non-graduates has fallen,” reports John Burn-Murdoch for Financial Times. “We can thus infer that in the aggregate, Britain’s supply of skilled workers is outstripping demand in the form of skilled jobs,” writes Burn-Murdoch.