Prof. Taylor Perron speaks with Boston Globe reporter Martin Finucane about the recent announcement that a lake was detected underneath the surface of Mars. “One of the exciting things about this discovery is that there could be other liquid water pockets like this one,” notes Perron.
A study by Prof. Catherine Tucker finds that marketing algorithms prevent many women from seeing STEM career ads, reports Dina Fine Maron for Scientific American. Tucker explains that the, “economics driving the phenomenon are global—female eyeballs are more expensive and a cost-minimizing algorithm will choose not to show ads to them.”
MIT alumna and visiting professor Mary Brown Parlee, who was known for publishing “groundbreaking research pushing back against the rise of the catch-all diagnosis premenstrual syndrome,” has died at age 75, reports J.M. Lawrence for The Boston Globe.
Prof. Emeritus Ernest Moniz – former US Energy Secretary and co-chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative – speaks with Jeremy Hobson on WBUR’s Here & Now about the Trump-Putin summit and what it could mean for nuclear dialogue.
New Scientist reporter Chelsea Whyte spotlights Prof. Regina Barzilay’s quest to revolutionize cancer treatment by applying AI techniques in ways that could help doctors detect cancer earlier. Barzilay explains that she is committed to, "applying the best technologies available to what we care about the most – our health.”
Researchers have developed a handheld device, inspired by spiders, to allow people to move in zero-gravity, writes Daniel Oberhaus for Motherboard. “I want to be able to move freely in 3D space,” explains Xin Liu, arts curator at the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, “so I design the technologies that allow me to do that.”
Prof. John Bush speaks with Popular Science reporter Dyani Sabin about the physics behind bending a soccer ball like a World Cup player. “The physics is rather complicated honestly, but there are simple ways to explain it,” says Bush. “The reason it looks mysterious is because you can’t see what the surrounding fluid, in this case air, is doing.”
Boston Globe reporter David Weininger highlights a recording of three new works by Prof. Peter Child. Weininger writes that the new pieces, “demonstrate the MIT composer’s remarkable stylistic diversity.”
Prof. Cynthia Breazeal helped Mattel design the latest Barbie in its “Career of the Year” line, who is a robotics engineer. In collaboration with the online platform Tynker, the company is also offering “seven free "Barbie-inspired” coding lessons that will focus on logic, problem-solving, and other skills that a potential robotics engineer will need,” writes Melissa Locker for Time.
Michael Shermer reviews Prof. Alan Lightman’s new book on science and spirituality, “Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine,” for The New York Times. Shermer calls the book an “elegant and moving paean to our spiritual quest for meaning in an age of science,” adding that it, “reminds us of the centrality of subjectivity in all human endeavors.”
In an article for Bloomberg News, Prof. Daron Acemoglu writes about how countries that democratize tend to see faster rates of economic growth. Acemoglu notes that what tends to spur economic growth is how, “democracies increase taxes and spend more on education and health, preparing the economy to achieve greater productivity in the decades to come.”
The Boston Globe reports that Prof. Emerita Joan Jonas has been awarded the 2018 Kyoto Prize. The prize honors “important figures in the fields of advanced technology, basic sciences, and arts and philosophy.”
In this CNBC article, Prof. R. Scott Kemp weighs in on the implications of the agreement signed by President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Kemp writes that, “a realistic agreement will probably take years to hash out, as there is much to learn about North Korea's program first. The Trump-Kim statement of principles is exactly what is needed to get started."
In an article for The New York Times, Prof. Vipin Narang writes that President Donald Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un of North Korea legitimized North Korea’s status as one of the world’s nuclear powers. “North Korea’s nuclear power is politically complete, thanks to the legitimacy that comes from a handshake with an American president,” argues Narang.
During her Commencement address at MIT, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg urged graduates to try to make the world a better place, reports Abigail Hess for CNBC. "We are accountable to the people who use what we build, to our colleagues, to ourselves and to our values,” said Sandberg.