SHASS

Prof. Heidi Williams has been named a 2015 MacArthur “Genius” award winner, according to the Associated Press. Williams was honored for her research exploring, “the causes and consequences of innovation in health care markets.”

Matt McFarland writes for The Washington Post about Prof. David Mindell’s new book, in which he argues that automation can take away from the enjoyment of working. “The most advanced (and difficult) technologies are not those that stand apart from people, but those that are most deeply embedded in, and responsive to, human and social networks,” Mindell explains.

In an article for The New York Times about the impact of patent laws on drug development, Austin Frakt highlights Prof. Benjamin Roin’s research that indicates pharmaceutical companies reject unpatentable drugs. To counter this problem, Frakt explains that Roin suggests “a period of market exclusivity…to any organization addressing an unmet medical need with a drug that isn’t patentable.” 

Prof. Marcia Bartusiak writes for The Washington Post about Eileen Pollack’s book, “The Only Woman in the Room,” which examines the obstacles facing women in science. Bartusiak writes that, “Pollack draws attention to this important and vexing problem with a personal narrative, beautifully written and full of important insights on the changes needed to make those barriers crumble.” 

A new study co-authored by Prof. Jonathan Gruber found that while Quebec’s low-cost child-care system may help children academically, students who participate in the program may “have worse outcomes when it comes to health, life satisfaction and crime rates,” reports Jordan Press for The Huffington Post. 

Prof. Junot Diaz speaks with Carolyn Kellogg of The Los Angeles Times about reading, writing, and racism. “Being around other readers and talking about reading and talking about the love of books is very natural,” says Diaz. “I sometimes think I became a writer as a pretext of being a full-time reader.” 

Architect David Adjaye has been named the recipient of the 2016 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, writes Mark Shanahan for The Boston Globe. The prize “includes an artist residency at MIT next spring during which Adjaye will participate in four programs open to the public.”

Prof. Thomas Levenson writes for The Boston Globe about sexism in science. “Sadly and infuriatingly, the habits of mind that once almost entirely barred women from the lab remain, less potent, perhaps, but still at work,” writes Levenson. 

Comparative Media Studies research affiliate Sam Ford writes for The Boston Globe about former Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s recent professional wrestling appearances. “I’m guessing Stewart finds something refreshing about a world where the performance comes with a wink and where fans are invited to be in on the con,” writes Ford. 

Prof. Alan Lightman writes for The New York Times about the disillusionment he felt when he went to visit his childhood home and found that it had been taken down. “I try to put back the house where it was, the kitchen, the bedrooms, the closets, my father practicing his guitar, my mother dressing in front of her long mirror,” Lightman writes. 

Money reporter Penelope Wang writes about a new study by Prof. James Poterba that examined why Americans often did not have enough money saved for retirement. The researchers found that, “how much subjects had the first year their assets were measured showed the strongest determinant of the amount of the wealth they had at the end of life.”

Prof. Kenneth Oye speaks with NPR’s Michaeleen Doucleff about the need for government regulation for bioengineered microbes that could be used to produce drugs like heroin. "Once a robust, easy-to-grow, heroin-producing yeast strain is out there, its control would be, in my view, virtually possible," Oye says.

Kim Yi Dionne writes for The Washington Post about Professor Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga’s book ‘Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe’: In it, Mavhunga “paints a vivid picture of hunting in Zimbabwe from the pre-colonial period to the present as he demonstrates how innovation is driven by ordinary people.”

Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times writes about Professor Amy Finkelstein’s survey of low-income Oregonians in which she determined that those given access to Medicaid spent more on healthcare than the uninsured. “There’s overwhelming evidence from our study and others that when you cover people with health insurance, they use more health care,” said Finkelstein. 

Megan Turchi writes for Boston.com about ‘The Good Jobs Score,’ a method for evaluating food retailers based on customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and productivity, developed by Professor Zeynep Ton. Ton hopes “the score will bring attention to some of the drivers of success that are rarely included in annual reports.”