MIT researchers have found that different parts of the human brain work best at different ages, reports Susan Pinker for The Wall Street Journal. “Some abilities mature early, such as how fast we recall names and faces. Others, like vocabulary and background knowledge, are late bloomers,” Pinker explains.
Barb Darrow reports for Fortune that MIT researchers have discovered a vulnerability in Tor, a network known for cloaking user identities and locations, as well as a way to fix the problem. It’s estimated that 2.5 million people use Tor daily, Darrow explains.
Popular Science reporter Levi Sharpe writes that MIT researchers have developed an object recognition system that can accurately identify and distinguish items. “This system could help future robots interact with objects more efficiently while they navigate our complex world,” Sharpe explains.
MIT researchers have “developed a new ring-like device made of a polymer that can deliver drugs to the stomach over the course of a week,” writes Alexandra Ossola for Popular Science. The team anticipates that the technology could be used for a variety of medical applications.
A new study on cancer drug development by MIT researchers found that pharmaceutical firms overlook drugs for early-stage tumors, writes Jordan Graham for The Boston Herald. “There’s dramatically more investments in the late-stage treatments,” says Prof. Benjamin Roin.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton writes for The Boston Globe about the importance of businesses sharing profits with their employees, highlighting Prof. Zeynep Ton’s research on the topic. “Research out of MIT has shown that well-paid and well-trained employees tend to work more efficiently, stay on the job longer, and provide better customer service,” Clinton explains.
Karen Weintraub writes for The Boston Globe about Prof. Susumu Tonegawa’s research examining how triggering happy memories could help alleviate depression. “When that kind of technology is invented,” Tonegawa explains, “it could potentially become very powerful therapy.”
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes about the growing influence of MIT economists in policy positions and in policy discourse. “M.I.T.-trained economists, especially Ph.D.s from the 1970s, play an outsized role at policy institutions and in policy discussion across the Western world,” Krugman explains.
The Economist highlights Prof. César Hidalgo’s new book, which examines how economies grow. “His aim is nothing less than to lay out a universal theory of information—one that applies to everything, from the lifeless to the living, and to all scales, from atoms to economies.”
MIT researchers have found that increasing ocean acidification will impact phytoplankton species worldwide, reports Michelle Toh for The Christian Science Monitor. Toh explains that the researchers found, “the balance of various plankton species will radically change as the world’s oceans increase in acidity over the next 85 years.”
UPI reporter Brook Hays writes about new MIT research examining how ocean acidification will impact phytoplankton. The researchers found that “more acidic waters could allow some species to outcompete and wipe out entire other species" of phytoplankton.
New York Times reporter Eduardo Porter writes about the lack of investment in developing technologies to combat climate change, highlighting a recent MIT report on the future of solar power. In the report, MIT researchers examined the challenges to making solar a bigger share of the world’s energy.
In an article for USA Today about slouching, Julia Savacool highlights an MIT study that found “people who assumed more ‘expansive’ postures, such as sprawling out in a chair as opposed to sitting in a gentlemanly fashion, were more likely to steal money or cheat on a test.”
Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, writes for the Huffington Post about aging. Coughlin argues that, “it may not be so bad to be old after all,” citing new research showing that “older Americans, those age 55 and older, have a higher state of well-being than the younger population.”
Felicia Gans writes for The Boston Globe that the images and information gathered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has changed the way that Prof. Richard Binzel and other scientists think about Pluto. “We had expected to be surprised by what Pluto had to offer, but this is beyond anything we imagined,” says Binzel.