Researchers from CSAIL, Cornell University, and Maynooth University have released a study concluding that judges in Ireland are utilizing Wikipedia articles to help inform their decisions, reports Colleen Hagerty for Popular Science. Based on their findings, the researchers suggest “the legal community increases its efforts to monitor and fact-check legal information posted on Wikipedia.”
Professor William Oliver, graduate students Bharath Kannan and Tim Menke, Principal Research Scientist Simon Gustavsson, Shereen Shermak MBA ’97, Youngkyu Sung PhD ’22, and former research scientist Jonas Bylander founded Atlantic Quantum, a company that aims to improve the basic hardware behind quantum computing, reports Ariyana Griffin for Forbes. “The focus on Atlantic Quantum is building hardware that improves the ‘coherence’ of quantum computation, which reduces the errors that are the major speed bump for these machines,” writes Griffin.
A new analysis by Prof. Anna Stansbury and University of Michigan graduate student Richard Schultz finds that two thirds of U.S.-born PhD graduates in economics have a parent with a graduate degree, reports Andrew Van Dam for The Washington Post. Stansbury notes that she worries some of the terminology used in courses like Econ 101 “like ‘unskilled’ or ‘low ability’ to describe people who are in low-paid jobs or with little formal education, is offensive. And I can see that this would be disproportionately so to people who are coming from backgrounds where these words are describing family members and friends.”
Lecturer Bill Fischer writes for Forbes after speaking with Prof. Annika Steiber, director of Menlo College’s Silicon Valley RenDanheYi Research Center, about the organizational changes General Electric Appliances (GEA) has made in recent years. “GEA, today, represents what has turned-out to be a successful major organizational turnaround,” writes Fischer.
Prof. Simon Johnson has been working with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s economic advisors to build a plan for Ukraine, reports Daniel Flatley for Bloomberg. “The plan, as Johnson sees it, would leverage the interest that insurance companies and other firms have in facilitating the oil trade and use it to enforce the ban,” explains Flatley.
Prof. Tom Kochan speaks with Inside Intelligence reporter Christina Obolenskaya about the expectations for unionized workplaces and how that will impact retailers. “The most critical thing is to listen and treat the workforce with respect, allowing employees to shape how they come back to work,” says Kochan. “Having a dialogue with the larger team, managers and supervisors need to collaborate on how much flexibility they can provide their employees while still meeting company quotas.”
Writing for The Conversation, John Reilly, co-director emeritus of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, outlines a roadmap for how the U.S. can meet the Biden administration’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions 50% by 2030 below 2005 levels. “By exploiting declining costs of zero- and low-carbon energy sources in a more aggressive and focused way, the U.S. can meet its target within eight years,” writes Reilly, “all while substantially reducing its dependence on fossil fuels, including high-priced gasoline, and cutting back the air pollution, climate and health impacts resulting from their combustion.”
Keri Pearlson, executive director of the Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan consortium, and Prof. Stuart Madnick write for The Wall Street Journal about how managers should build and equip their organizations for cyber threats. “It is more effective to build a cybersecurity culture – an effort that goes beyond training and gets employees to see security as part of their job,” write Pearlson and Madnick.
Associate Provost Richard Lester and Prof. Noelle Selin speak with Tiziana Dearing, host of Radio Boston, about MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges. “To me, the Climate Grand Challenges effort really represents that we’re kind of at a frameshift when thinking about the climate problem. It’s not just a problem that some people can work on,” says Selin. “A climate challenge is a whole of society challenge, and therefore it really has to be a whole of MIT challenge.” Lester adds he hopes the challenges will “inspire a new generation of students to roll up their sleeves, put their shoulders to the wheel and help us solve this problem.”
Prof. Simon Johnson and Oleg Ustenko, economic advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky write for The Los Angeles Times about the importance of restarting the Ukrainian economy as the fighting continues. “The good news is that the European Union, the United States and other allies have already committed substantial resources to support Ukrainians, including when they leave the country as refugees,” write Johnson and Ustenko. “What is needed now is to adjust how those resources are deployed, to encourage these refugees to return home when it is safe to do so.”
Graduate student Tse Yang Lim and his colleagues used federal data on use and death of opioid use and overdose in the United States to build a model that “successfully replicated how certain factors and interventions affect use, treatment, relapse and overdose deaths over 20 years,” reports Sara Reardon for Nature. “Lim hopes that the model will help policymakers and other scientists think about the big picture rather than just how a particular community or demographic is affected,” writes Reardon.
Financial Times reporter Jemima Kelly spotlights Prof. Basima Tewfi’s research on imposter syndrome. Tewfik’s study finds that those who have “imposter workplace thoughts” tend to “have an advantage over their colleagues when it comes to social skills, teamwork and the support of others.”
A new paper from Prof. Roberto Rigobon, research associate Florian Berg, and research affiliate Julian Kolbel explores what causes aggregate confusion among ESG rating agencies, reports Robin Wigglesworth for the Financial Times. The paper “highlights just how tricky it is to come up with an objective, rigorous ESG investing framework,” writes Wigglesworth.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank spotlights postdoctoral research associate Brian Guay’s research examining why “Republicans share between 200 percent and 500 percent more fake news (fabrications published by sites masquerading as news outlets) than Democrats.” Guay explains that “the issue primarily seems to be a supply issue. There’s just way more fake news on the right than the left.”
Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee speaks with Innovator News reporter Jennifer L. Schenker about his upcoming book, “The Geek Way,” which explores how tech companies found the best way to operate their businesses. “If you want your company to be a tech company, then you will be competing against geeks,” says McAfee. “These are people who look at things differently, go deep on a problem, get obsessed with it and fiercely work at it until they think they find a good solution.”