Author: Ms. R.

In June 2023, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities could no longer use race as a factor in their admission decisions, many higher education institutions across the United States faced the same challenge: how to maintain diversity in their student bodies. So Noelle Wakefield, director of MIT’s Summer Research Program (MSRP) and assistant dean for diversity initiatives in MIT’s Office of Graduate Education (OGE), started planning. On July 31, a little more than a year after the decision……

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In 2023, more than 100,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. The most effective way to save someone who has overdosed is to administer a drug called naloxone, but a first responder or bystander can’t always reach the person who has overdosed in time. Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a new device that they hope will help to eliminate those delays and potentially save the lives of people who overdose. The device, about the size……

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Early-stage trials in Alzheimer’s disease patients and studies in mouse models of the disease have suggested positive impacts on pathology and symptoms from exposure to light and sound presented at the “gamma” band frequency of 40 hertz (Hz). A new study zeroes in on how 40Hz sensory stimulation helps to sustain an essential process in which the signal-sending branches of neurons, called axons, are wrapped in a fatty insulation called myelin. Often called the brain’s “white matter,” myelin protects……

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Eleven faculty in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning have been recognized with promotions for their significant contributions to the school, effective July 1. Five faculty promotions are in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning; four are in the Department of Architecture; and two are in the program in Media Arts and Sciences. “Whether architects, urbanists, historians, artists, economists, or aero-astro engineers, they represent our school at its best, in its breadth of inquiry and in its persistence to improve, by……

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Cynthia Griffin Wolff, a noted scholar of American literature, passed away on July 25. She was 87. Wolff joined the humanities faculty at MIT in 1980 and was named the Class of 1922 Professor of Humanities in 1985. She taught in the Literature Section, and later moved to the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. Her expertise was in the exploration of 19th and 20th century female American writers. She retired from MIT in 2003. Wolff was born in……

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Quantum materials — those with electronic properties that are governed by the principles of quantum mechanics, such as correlation and entanglement — can exhibit exotic behaviors under certain conditions, such as the ability to transmit electricity without resistance, known as superconductivity. However, in order to get the best performance out of these materials, they need to be properly tuned, in the same way that race cars require tuning as well. A team led by Mingda Li, an associate professor……

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MIT D-Lab students and instructors are improving the efficacy and economics of a brooder technology for newborn chicks that utilizes a practical, local resource: beeswax. Developed through participatory design with agricultural partners in Cameroon, their Off-Grid Brooder is a solution aimed at improving the profitability of the African nation’s small- and medium-scale poultry farms. Since it is common for smallholders in places with poor electricity supply to tend open fires overnight to keep chicks warm, the invention might also……

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MIT chemists have developed a new way to synthesize complex molecules that were originally isolated from plants and could hold potential as antibiotics, analgesics, or cancer drugs. These compounds, known as oligocyclotryptamines, consist of multiple tricyclic substructures called cyclotryptamine, fused together by carbon–carbon bonds. Only small quantities of these compounds are naturally available, and synthesizing them in the lab has proven difficult. The MIT team came up with a way to add tryptamine-derived components to a molecule one at……

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