Physicists used andom-matrix theory—a mathematical method for finding otherwise hidden correlations within groups of data—in the 1990s and early 2000s to predict stock market volatility. Arup Chakraborty, a chemistry and chemical engineering professor at MIT, is a researcher at the Ragon Institute in Massachusetts. Ragon and a scientific collegue used random-matrix theory to analyze enzymes, and develop new ways to treat HIV. 

An estimated 300 million people use the internet search engine Google every day. They do more than search the web with Google. They write emails with it, plan their lives with the Google calendar, exchange documents and images, translate from one language to another. And while Google doesn't have a monopoly, but seems to have become ubiquitous in our everyday lives.

John is broadcasting from our partner station, WGBH, in Boston today. He's there to take part in the celebrations surrounding the 25th anniversary of the MIT Media Lab. 

Over the years a long list of new computer and digital technologies were developed there. Since then the lab has also become hugely prolific developer of medical technologies. Researchers at the lab have worked on projects as abstract as figuring out how to improve health care record keeping and as concrete as how to hybridize robotic technologies with prosthetics to improve the lives of veterans and civilians who've lost limbs.

Cap and trade, it’s not a breakfast cereal or an off-season NFL strategy. Yes even though the NFL draft starts tomorrow, but no, it is not some new football strategy or rule. So what exactly is cap and trade, and why are some Republicans predicting that it’s going to cost each household in the United States over $3,000 if this Democrat-sponsored global warming proposal gets approved?

To answer these questions, The Takeaway is joined by John Reilly, an MIT Environmental Economist. He is the man behind the curtain who actually calculated the cost of the proposed cap and trade. And he says that the GOP has misrepresented his data.