Wired reporter Eric Niiler writes that Prof. Kerry Emanuel has found that the probability of a storm like Hurricane Harvey hitting Texas has increased due to warmer waters in the Gulf of Mexico and the lack of high-level winds that normally push such storms out to sea or towards Oklahoma.
Prof. Max Tegmark speaks with Ira Flatow of PRI’s Science Friday about his new book, “Life 3.0,” which examines how AI might reshape the future. “We should try to create a great future with [technology] by winning this race between the growing power of technology, and the growing wisdom with which we manage it," says Tegmark.
Wall Street Journal reporter Frank Rose reviews Prof. Max Tegmark’s new book, “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” The book asks reader to ponder the possibility that “a computer program will become not just intelligent but wildly so—and that we humans will find ourselves unable to do anything about it.”
Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with Washington Post reporter Chris Mooney about how several factors related to climate change, such as sea levels and atmospheric moisture, can help intensify hurricanes like Harvey.
Prof. Feng Zhang has been honored as one of the recipients of this year’s Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research for his work contributing to the development of the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, according to the AP. The AP notes that CRISPR-Cas9, “has sparked a boom in research over the past five years.”
Prof. Warren Hoburg speaks with Jeffrey Mervis of Science about his decision to leave MIT to join NASA’s 2017 class of astronauts. He explains that he is working on ensuring his students can continue their research. “I think we have a bunch of ideas that are really powerful, and I want to set up my students to continue that research.”
Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering, speaks with Meera Vankipuram of The Times of India about his research, his areas of focus as dean and what sets MIT apart. Chandrakasan explains that at MIT, there is an “emphasis on translating research into solutions that have a positive impact on the world.”
In an article for Forbes, Jimmy Soni highlights some of the late MIT Prof. Claude Shannon’s most important contributions to math and technology. Soni notes that Shannon is known as the “father of the information age” thanks to his work “in the 1930s and 1940s that helped to lay the groundwork for the digital world we live in.”
Prof. Lawrence Vale writes for Slate that proposed cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s funding could worsen the public housing crisis in the U.S. Vale writes that the American public housing system, “suffers from a toxic convergence of long-deferred maintenance, squeezed budgets and cost-cutting measures.”
Prof. Jonathan Gruber writes for The Washington Post that the Senate’s health care bill could make the opioid epidemic worse by proposing a, “rollback of the Medicaid expansions that had finally slowed the rapid growth of this devastating problem.”
The Economist reviews Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s latest book, which examines how new digital technologies will impact businesses. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, “believe that the latest phase of computers and the internet have created three shifts in how work happens.”
Prof. Eran Ben-Joseph visited the intersection where the BU Bridge meets Commonwealth Avenue in Boston with Gabrielle Emanuel of WGBH to discuss how to improve the area. In order to make the intersection safer for pedestrians and cyclists, Ben-Joseph recommended taking space away from cars, changing the intersection’s surface and adding design elements to make the space feel more urban.
Nature reporter Anna Nowogrodzki spotlights Prof. Aviv Regev’s quest to map every cell in the human body. “One of the things that makes Aviv special is her enormous bandwidth. I've never met a scientist who thinks so deeply and so innovatively on so many things,” says Dana Pe'er, a computational biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Randall Stross of The Wall Street Journal examines the latest book by Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee, which explores technologies shaping the future of business. Stross writes that the, “authors present a splendid tutorial on things that are too new for most civilians to have gained a good understanding of—cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts.”
In this New York Times opinion piece, Prof. Emeritus Noam Chomsky discusses the current state of American politics with George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Emory University. Speaking about the weightiest issues facing humanity, Chomsky explained that in his view, “The most important issues to address are the truly existential threats we face: climate change and nuclear war.”