A Washington Post article by graduate student Nina McMurry explores the effectiveness of the peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. “Research cautions that it’s unrealistic to expect outside military forces to prevent violence when those involved haven’t agreed to stop fighting or — more important — haven’t agreed on how to resolve the political differences that prompted violence in the first place,” McMurry writes.
MIT has been named the top university in the world in the latest QS World University Rankings, reports Nick Morrison for Forbes. This is the fifth consecutive year that MIT has earned the number one spot in the QS rankings.
Prof. Ricardo Caballero and his colleagues have found that due to the integrated nature of the world’s financial markets, “a slump in some economies can eventually engulf all of them.” The Economist notes that the researchers found “once a few economies become stuck in the zero-rate trap, their current-account surpluses exert a pull which threatens to drag in everyone else.”
In an NPR article about the difficulty of dispelling political rumors, Danielle Kurtzleben cites a study by Prof. Adam Berinsky that shows trying to correct political myths may only entrench them further.
In an article for Scientific American, Layla Eplett writes about Prof. Heather Paxson’s book on American artisanal cheese culture. Eplett writes that after observing the increasing number of artisanal cheese shops, Paxson was inspired to visit "artisanal cheesemakers throughout the US who revealed diverse backgrounds and motivations for learning the craft.”
A study co-authored by Dr. Jim Walsh of the Center for International Studies finds that sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea’s nuclear-missile program are ineffective, writes Alastair Gale for The Wall Street Journal. The researchers found that “North Korea has grown resistant to sanctions by building up its business operations inside China.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Susan Silbey found that many women leave engineering because of sexism at school and in the workplace, writes Valentina Zarya for Fortune. The researchers found that “female engineers’ first substantive experiences with sexism occurred in school, with many women describing being treated differently by professors and classmates.”
Dan Butin writes for Inside Higher Ed that MITx will begin offering students taking a popular philosophy MOOC the chance to have their work evaluated by professional philosophers. “MITx has solved a real problem in the MOOC world – of quality feedback and engagement – and has done so in a way that sustains the ability to scale,” Butin writes.
In an article for The Boston Globe, Kevin Hartnett explores a study co-authored by Prof. Danny Fox that examines why children confuse the words “and” and “or.” The researchers found that “children may conduct exactly the same logical process as adults, but arrive at different conclusions because they run that process over a narrower set of alternative sentences.”
In an article for The Washington Post, Prof. Charles Stewart III examines how American voters have become increasingly concerned about the fairness of the electoral process. “The best hope is for a combination of voices, both partisan and nonpartisan, to remind Americans of the mechanisms in place to ensure that votes are counted fairly.”
Prof. Charles Stewart III writes for The Washington Post that the latest Pew Charitable Trust Elections Performance Index shows there has been improvement in U.S. election administration. Stewart explains that the index gauges “performance across several dimensions of election administration, including the quality of voter registration, ballot casting, and vote counting.”
During a Financial Times podcast, Prof. Heidi Williams speaks about her work studying the impact of patent policy and technology on medical research and health care. Williams explains that her work focuses on the role patents and policies play in developing "the medical technologies that are most beneficial to patients.”
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady argues that technology, not free trade, is the reason for the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. O’Grady highlights a paper by Prof. Autor examining why automation has impacted middle class jobs, which finds that “traditional middle-education jobs have been the easiest to replace with technology.”
Graduate student Anna Wexler writes for The New York Times about people performing low-level electrical stimulation on their brains. “The growth of D.I.Y. brain stimulation stems in part from a larger frustration with the exclusionary institutions of modern medicine, such as the exorbitant price of pharmaceuticals and the glacial pace at which new therapies trickle down to patients.”
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Jason Zweig writes about how investors are buying high-risk bonds instead of high-quality bonds due to low interest rates. Zweig cites a new study co-authored by graduate student Chen Lian showing that “investors generally aren’t tantalized by risky alternatives to safe bonds until rates fall to 3%.”