Prof. John Lienhard and Dr. Kenneth Strzepek write for The New York Times about the need for Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to successfully share water from the Nile. “The world needs to get good at sharing water, and right away,” they write. “The alternative is frequent regional conflicts of unknowable proportions.”
In collaboration with Columbia University and the University of Nairobi, MIT researchers have created a map of Nairobi’s informal matatu (or mini-bus) transit system, writes Shara Ton for Wired. Ton explains that, “Just as New York commuters can plot their subway routes on the service, residents of Nairobi can now jack into the matatu system on their smartphones.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Zweig writes about anti-poverty research, highlighting an MIT study that showed intervention methods can be effective at alleviating poverty. Prof. Esther Duflo says that, “We are trying to promote a culture of learning that will permeate governments and NGOs and businesses to such an extent that it will become par for the course.”
A new study by MIT researchers has found that anti-poverty intervention methods can be effective, reports Carolyn Johnson for The Boston Globe. Interventions resulted in “fewer skipped meals, more income from livestock and farming, and a durable, though small, increase in how much they consume each day.”
Professor Esther Duflo has been awarded Spain's Princess of Asturias social science prize for her work studying poverty in developing countries, the Associated Press reports. The organizers of the prize said that Duflo has “profoundly changed strategies for education, health and employment in Africa, Asia and Latin America.”
Jim Morelli reports for CNN on a wheelchair developed by Professor Amos Winter to help to meet the needs of people in the developing world. “We essentially had to reinvent the wheelchair,” says Winter of the wheelchair’s design, which is built to handle rough terrain and can be easily repaired.
A group of experts convened by MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Laboratory recently published a report on plans for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, reports William Davison of Bloomberg News. The report’s authors urge greater coordination between Egypt and Ethiopia “to ensure water is shared fairly during periods of reduced flows.”
Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Daron Acemoğlu argues that reform rollbacks in Turkey have caused the country to lose ground on economic progress. Acemoğlu explains that, “modest improvements in economic and political institutions can trigger rapid productivity growth.”
Jillian Eugenios writes for CNN Money about Evaptainers, a startup conceptualized in an MIT course that has developed a refrigerator that runs on water and sunlight. The refrigerator was created in an effort to improve the food production and storage process in developing countries by cutting down on spoilage.
MIT researchers have released a report evaluating solar lanterns in Uganda, writes Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. The group is developing a model to assess products designed for the developing world with the goal of helping organizations “as they make purchases for relief efforts.”
Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston writes about the affordable wheelchair made out of bike parts developed by Prof. Amos Winter. Winter and his team have now created a second wheelchair that allows riders to “navigate ski slopes and bike trails.”
MIT engineers are developing a paper test that can identify Ebola, writes BetaBoston reporter Nidhi Subbaraman. Prof. Lee Gehrke’s goal is to develop a “cheap, disposable front-line detector for this disease that many people can get their hands on — and fast,” Subbaraman reports.
Peter Coy reports for Bloomberg Businessweek on a new partnership between Saudi Arabia and edX, the online education platform founded by MIT and Harvard. The venture aims to educate Saudi women, youth, disabled, and rural poor, all of whom suffer from high unemployment in the gulf kingdom.
Paul Marks writes for The New Scientist about Protoprint, a company founded by MIT alumnus Sidhant Pai that strives to get decent prices for pickers collecting plastic by repurposing plastic waste for 3D printing. "Our waste-pickers will earn 15 to 20 times more for the same amount of plastic," says Pai.
Jeremy Hobson interviews Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia about her work 3-D printing tiny human livers on NPR’s Here and Now. The livers are, “about the size of the pin of a needle, and they allow us to do drug testing to test if drugs would be safe when they got into humans,” Bhatia explains.