Professor Sara Seager describes her favorite photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, which shows newborn stars surrounded by raw planetary materials, in an article for The New York Times. “This image is my favorite because even more astonishing than the beauty is the implication,” writes Seager.
The MIT Visual Arts List has released details about Professor Emerita Joan Jonas’ upcoming video presentation at the Venice Biennale, writes Meredith Goldstein for The Boston Globe. Jonas “will present a new video performance, ‘They Come to Us Without a Word II,’ three times from July 20 to 22, with live musical accompaniment.”
Prof. Kerri Cahoy speaks with John Hopton of redOrbit about miniature satellites or CubeSats. Cahoy explains that CubeSats are becoming increasingly popular because “they can be tucked into rockets and taken into space pretty cheaply, and we’ve been miniaturizing our electronics and our mechanical devices for spacecrafts so we can actually do something with these mini satellites.”
Michael Blanding writes for Forbes about Professor Michael Cusumano’s new book “Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs. Cusumano and his co-author examine and draw lessons from the careers of the three tech pioneers.
Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Daron Acemoğlu argues that reform rollbacks in Turkey have caused the country to lose ground on economic progress. Acemoğlu explains that, “modest improvements in economic and political institutions can trigger rapid productivity growth.”
Seung-yoon Lee interviews Professor Noam Chomsky for The Huffington Post on his views on the current media landscape. “I think it's a good general principle that almost anything that increases the variety and range of available media is beneficial,” says Chomsky.
Professor Jeff Gore speaks with CBS News about why he feels the penny should be retired. Gore explains that Canada eliminated its penny and now rounds prices up and down based on the last number of a product’s price. Gore notes that the Canadian “economy is doing fine” without the penny.
MIT’s List Visual Arts Center is displaying a collection of Prof. Emerita Joan Jonas’ video art, writes Sebastian Smee for The Boston Globe. “The selection adds up to a fascinating overview of Jonas’s achievement, which is as rich and complex as it is disarming and improvised,” Smee writes.
Lisa Cohen writes for The New York Times Style Magazine about the work of MIT Professor Emerita Joan Jonas, who has been selected to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale. “If the idiosyncratic qualities of Jonas’s work have made it inscrutable to some, its power is undeniable,” writes Cohen.
Prof. John Hansman speaks with AP reporter Rodrique Ngowi following the crash of a Germanwings flight about how it is it unlikely that a similar situation could occur on an aircraft operated by an American carrier. U.S. safety procedures require that two people to be in the airline’s cockpit “in case the remaining pilot becomes incapacitated," Hansman explains.
The ACM has awarded the A.M. Turing Award, widely regarded as the “Nobel Prize in Computing,” to CSAIL researcher and adjunct professor Michael Stonebraker, reports Barb Darrow for Fortune. Stonebraker is “famous for arguing that database is not a one-size-fits-all category."
Michael Stonebraker, a principal investigator at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and an adjunct professor at MIT, has won the A.M. Turning Award for his work with database management systems, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. “This is every computer scientist’s lifetime dream, and it came true for me,” said Stonebraker.
In a piece for The Boston Globe, Juan Enriquez writes about the groundbreaking research and developments coming out of the Boston-Cambridge region, highlighting the work of several MIT faculty members, including Professors Angela Belcher, Ed Boyden, Robert Langer, Susan Lindquist, David Page and Eric Lander.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Prof. Marc Kastner has been appointed the first president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance. The alliance is aimed at increasing “philanthropic giving for basic science by an additional $1-billion annually within five years.”
For his work developing pricing models, Prof. Stephen Ross has been awarded the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, Reuters reports. The Center for Financial Studies, which awards the prize, said that, "Ross’s models have changed and advanced economic practice profoundly.”