Author: Ms. R.

The human immune system is a network made up of trillions of cells that are constantly circulating throughout the body. The cellular network orchestrates interactions with every organ and tissue to carry out an impossibly long list of functions that scientists are still working to understand. All that complexity limits our ability to predict which patients will respond to treatments and which ones might suffer debilitating side effects. The issue often leads pharmaceutical companies to stop developing drugs that……

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Favianna Colón Irizarry spent last summer at Tecnológico de Monterrey, working alongside Mexican biotechnology researchers to develop a biodegradable coating that prolongs the shelf life of local foods. Assisting in this and other innovative projects at one of Mexico’s top research institutions was the opportunity of a lifetime, for sure. But, for Colón Irizarry, it’s the tapestry of experiences that accompanied her MIT-Mexico internship that will always resonate. “From my internship, I gleaned a vital lesson: Cultural proficiency is……

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The spread of radioactive isotopes from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan in 2011 and the ongoing threat of a possible release of radiation from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex in the Ukrainian war zone have underscored the need for effective and reliable ways of detecting and monitoring radioactive isotopes. Less dramatically, everyday operations of nuclear reactors, mining and processing of uranium into fuel rods, and the disposal of spent nuclear fuel also require monitoring of radioisotope release…….

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QS World University Rankings has placed MIT in the No. 1 spot in 11 subject areas for 2024, the organization announced today. The Institute received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Computer Science and Information Systems; Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Linguistics; Materials Science; Mechanical, Aeronautical, and Manufacturing Engineering; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Statistics and Operational Research. MIT also placed second in five subject……

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A user could ask ChatGPT to write a computer program or summarize an article, and the AI chatbot would likely be able to generate useful code or write a cogent synopsis. However, someone could also ask for instructions to build a bomb, and the chatbot might be able to provide those, too. To prevent this and other safety issues, companies that build large language models typically safeguard them using a process called red-teaming. Teams of human testers write prompts……

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The prevalence of remote work since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic has significantly changed urban transportation patterns in the U.S., according to new study led by MIT researchers. The research finds significant variation between the effects of remote work on vehicle miles driven and on mass-transit ridership across the U.S. “A 1 percent decrease in onsite workers leads to a roughly 1 percent reduction in vehicle miles driven, but a 2.3 percent reduction in mass transit ridership,”……

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It’s commonly thought that the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen, exists mainly alongside other elements — with oxygen in water, for example, and with carbon in methane. But naturally occurring underground pockets of pure hydrogen are punching holes in that notion — and generating attention as a potentially unlimited source of carbon-free power. One interested party is the U.S. Department of Energy, which last month awarded $20 million in research grants to 18 teams from laboratories, universities, and……

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Since the 1970s, modern antibiotic discovery has been experiencing a lull. Now the World Health Organization has declared the antimicrobial resistance crisis as one of the top 10 global public health threats.  When an infection is treated repeatedly, clinicians run the risk of bacteria becoming resistant to the antibiotics. But why would an infection return after proper antibiotic treatment? One well-documented possibility is that the bacteria are becoming metabolically inert, escaping detection of traditional antibiotics that only respond to……

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