Author: Ms. R.

Ketamine, a World Health Organization Essential Medicine, is widely used at varying doses for sedation, pain control, general anesthesia, and as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression. While scientists know its target in brain cells and have observed how it affects brain-wide activity, they haven’t known entirely how the two are connected. A new study by a research team spanning four Boston-area institutions uses computational modeling of previously unappreciated physiological details to fill that gap and offer new insights into……

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Sixteen international mid-career urban planners and public administrators recently bid farewell to the MIT campus, having completed a 10-month exploration of North American education and culture designed to expand their professional networks and infuse their work with new insights as they return to influential positions in government agencies, private firms, and other organizations throughout the developing world. Hailing from Argentina, Bhutan, China, Egypt, Honduras, India, Kosovo, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Trinidad & Tobago, Yemen, and Zimbabwe, they comprise this year’s group……

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Deep brain stimulation, by implanted electrodes that deliver electrical pulses to the brain, is often used to treat Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders. However, the electrodes used for this treatment can eventually corrode and accumulate scar tissue, requiring them to be removed. MIT researchers have now developed an alternative approach that uses ultrasound instead of electricity to perform deep brain stimulation, delivered by a fiber about the thickness of a human hair. In a study of mice, they……

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The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation announced that it has awarded fellowships to 10 PhD students with ties to MIT. The prestigious award provides each recipient with five years of doctoral-level research funding (up to a total of $250,000), which allows them the flexibility and autonomy to pursue their own innovative ideas. Fellows also receive lifelong access to Hertz Foundation programs, such as events, mentoring, and networking. They join the ranks of over 1,300 former Hertz Fellows who are leaders and……

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When robots come across unfamiliar objects, they struggle to account for a simple truth: Appearances aren’t everything. They may attempt to grasp a block, only to find out it’s a literal piece of cake. The misleading appearance of that object could lead the robot to miscalculate physical properties like the object’s weight and center of mass, using the wrong grasp and applying more force than needed. To see through this illusion, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers……

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Let’s say you want to train a robot so it understands how to use tools and can then quickly learn to make repairs around your house with a hammer, wrench, and screwdriver. To do that, you would need an enormous amount of data demonstrating tool use. Existing robotic datasets vary widely in modality — some include color images while others are composed of tactile imprints, for instance. Data could also be collected in different domains, like simulation or human……

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