A study by MIT researchers found that after a law was passed in Louisiana allowing public-school teachers to contradict the scientific curriculum, students scored lower on the science section of the ACT, reports Kevin Lewis for The Boston Globe. The study also showed that, “at the same time, creationism-related search terms on Google became more common, relative to evolution-related terms.”
Prof. Mohammad Alizadeh and his colleagues "have developed a way to approach network monitoring that provides flexibility in data collection while still keeping both the circuit complexity of the router and the number of external servers low," writes Amy Wallace for UPI.
Salon’s Heather Digby Parton highlights research from Prof. Ethan Zuckerman regarding the effects of online media on the last election. The study found that clickbait news sites “received amplification and legitimation through an attention backbone that tied the most extreme conspiracy sites.”
Writing for The New York Times Magazine, Wil S. Hylton highlights Prof. Ethan Zuckerman’s work examining how information travels around the internet. Zuckerman and his colleagues examined whether the internet, “serves mainly as a distribution network for the articles on major media, or if small blogs and websites can funnel their own stories back into the mainstream press.”
CSAIL researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system that can reduce video buffering, writes Kevin Murnane for Forbes. The system, “adapts on the fly to current network and buffers conditions,” enabling smoother streaming than other methods.
Prof. Tim Berners-Lee has been awarded the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Turing prize for his work developing the World Wide Web, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “It is hard to imagine the world before Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention,” says ACM President Vicki Hanson.
Joel Brenner, former NSA inspector general and a research fellow at MIT, speaks to BBC reporter Gareth Mitchell about an MIT report that examines cyber security threats to the nation’s infrastructure. “You can have a digital network that’s not public,” says Brenner, “but you shouldn’t be able to get to the controls of critical infrastructure through the public internet.”
Prof. Tim Berners-Lee has been awarded the Turing Award for his work creating the World Wide Web and its underlying technology, reports Klint Finley for Wired. The web “succeeded because of the work he and so many other put into stewarding it as a platform,” writes Finley.
Prof. Tim Berners-Lee has won this year’s Turing Award, writes AP reporter Michael Liedtke. "It's a crowning achievement," says Berners-Lee of winning what is considered the Nobel prize for computing. "But I think the award is for the Web as a project, and the massive international collaborative spirit of all that have joined me to help."
Forbes reporter Janet Burns writes that Prof. Tim Berners-Lee has been named the recipient of this year’s Turing Award. In an interview with Burns, Berners-Lee emphasized the importance of internet privacy, and explained that he is currently working on building a “basic infrastructure in which each person has control of their own data.”
Ilaria Liccardi, a research scientist at CSAIL, speaks with WBUR’s Meghna Chakrabarti about the repeal of privacy regulations that prevented internet service providers from using, sharing, and selling data collected about users. “If people want to safeguard their privacy they should use services like VPN or Tor,” suggests Liccardi.
A report from MIT’s Center for International Studies and CSAIL encourages the government to increase cybersecurity systems guarding the nation’s infrastructure, reports Jordan Graham for the Boston Herald. One suggestion from the report is to “establish incentives for owners and operators of private infrastructure who boost security,” explains Graham.
James Brenner, the former NSA Inspector General and a research fellow at MIT, speaks with Meghna Chakrabarti of Radio Boston about a new report by MIT researchers that examines potential cyber security vulnerabilities in American infrastructure. Brenner explains that the report aims to “shine a light on what the underlying problems are both technological, commercial and political.”
Timothy Revell writes for New Scientist about a new report by MIT researchers that calls for securing critical U.S. infrastructure against cyberattacks. Joel Brenner, former NSA inspector general and a research fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies, explains that “we know how to fix the vulnerabilities, but there’s no market incentive for companies to do so.”
CNN reporter Selena Larson writes that MIT researchers have released a new report calling for an overhaul of the nation’s cybersecurity for critical infrastructure, like the electric grid. “For infrastructure to be protected against cyberattacks, companies and the government have to collaborate,” Larson explains. She adds that the report suggests, “incentivizing companies to mandate security upgrades.