Writing for The New York Times, graduate student Erin Rousseau examines how the House tax bill would negatively impact graduate students in the U.S. The bill, “would make meeting living expenses nearly impossible, barring all but the wealthiest students from pursuing a Ph.D. The students who will be hit hardest are those from communities that are already underrepresented in higher education.”
MIT Sloan Senior lecturer Neal Hartman writes for HuffPost about whether it’s possible to prevent election interference via social media. “We can blunt their attempts at manipulation by common-sense corporate, media, government and individual citizen actions, exposing untruths and speaking truths when we can,” writes Hartman.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen writes about how to improve the bipartisan health care bill. Pozen writes that measures such as broadening the use of tax-advantaged accounts and encouraging the growth of interstate sales of health care policies should, “ensure the bill has a smoother journey through the legislative process.”
Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Arianne Cohen spotlights Prof. Andrew Lo’s research examining adaptive markets. Cohen explains that, “Lo’s hypothesis says people act in their own self-interest but frequently make mistakes, figure out where they’ve erred, and change their behaviors. The broader system also adapts.”
Prof. Kerry Emanuel writes for The Washington Post about how climate change and U.S. disaster policies are threat-multipliers for natural disasters like hurricanes. “The confluence of rising sea levels and stronger and wetter hurricanes with increasing coastal population and unwise government interference in insurance markets portends ever increasing hurricane disasters."
Research Scientist Jennifer Morris writes for Salon about her research showing that power companies should invest in carbon-free power sources despite uncertainty about future U.S. emissions limits. Morris and her colleagues found that investing in carbon-free sources, “best positions the United States to meet a wide range of possible future policies at a low cost to the economy.”
Aaron Schrank reports for Marketplace that the textile industry is experiencing a revival as it creates more technologically advanced fabrics. Schrank highlights the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) Institute, led by Prof. Yoel Fink, where researchers have developed programmable backpacks that should be able to “send you an email when they get lost."
Prof. Lawrence Vale writes for Slate that proposed cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s funding could worsen the public housing crisis in the U.S. Vale writes that the American public housing system, “suffers from a toxic convergence of long-deferred maintenance, squeezed budgets and cost-cutting measures.”
Prof. Jonathan Gruber writes for The Washington Post that the Senate’s health care bill could make the opioid epidemic worse by proposing a, “rollback of the Medicaid expansions that had finally slowed the rapid growth of this devastating problem.”
Avantika Chilkoti of The New York Times assesses news coverage of the health care debate using Media Cloud, a platform that tracks online stories developed in part by researchers from the MIT Center for Civic Media. Since May, news about Russia and former FBI director James Comey “outstripped coverage of the health care bill on 30 of 67 days,” writes Chilkoti.
In this New York Times opinion piece, Prof. Emeritus Noam Chomsky discusses the current state of American politics with George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Emory University. Speaking about the weightiest issues facing humanity, Chomsky explained that in his view, “The most important issues to address are the truly existential threats we face: climate change and nuclear war.”
Writing for STAT, Anna Spier, a senior policy associate for J-PAL, emphasizes the importance of relying on scientific evidence when policymakers determine which opioid addiction programs to fund. “As governments and philanthropists collaborate to learn what’s working to fight opioid addiction, establishing an infrastructure to share knowledge across local, state, and federal agencies will accelerate their collective work.”
Times Higher Education reporter Nicola Ingram examines Prof. Peter Temin’s latest book, which examines the state of the U.S. economic system. Temin, “provides an engaging commentary on the complexities of policy developments and their impact on workers’ conditions, as well as the problematic voting behaviour that seals their fate.”
Tom Buerkle of Reuters writes about “Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought,” a new book written by Prof. Andrew Lo, which argues that it is possible for investors to beat the market. Markets seem unpredictable because traders are human and “make decisions using short cuts” rather than weighing all options, explains Buerkle.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Tim Logan writes that MIT filed a mixed-use zoning petition for the 14-acre Volpe site in Kendall Square. Logan notes that the Volpe redevelopment is part of a broader push by MIT to make Kendall Square, “feel more like a fully-fledged neighborhood.”