Future Archives - Page 193 of 288 - BRANDMOIAHORA

Say WOW

Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

Everything is a Brand

Studying learner engagement during the Covid-19 pandemic

November 16, 2021

While massive open online classes (MOOCs) have been a significant trend in higher education for many years now, they have gained a new level of attention during the Covid-19 pandemic. Open online courses became a critical resource for a wide audience of new learners during the first stages of the pandemic — including students whose academic programs had shifted online, teachers seeking online resources, and individuals suddenly facing lockdown or unemployment and looking to build new skills. Mary Ellen...

Is watching believing?

November 16, 2021

It might seem that video would be a singularly influential medium for spreading information online. But a new experiment conducted by MIT researchers finds that video clips have only a modestly larger impact on political persuasion than the written word does. “Our conclusion is that watching video is not much more persuasive than reading text,” says David Rand, an MIT professor and co-author of a new paper detailing the study’s results. The study comes amid widespread concern about online...

Managing Covid-19 at MIT this fall: “So...

November 15, 2021

Despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 20,000 people are now studying, working, or living at MIT on any given day. Thanks to a robust plan to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 on campus — masking, attesting, testing, and access control — the number of positive Covid-19 cases has remained very low (at or below 0.1% of tests conducted) in recent weeks. Because of that statistic, nearly all classes, labs, and offices have been, and remain, in-person. Ian Waitz, vice...

New material could be two superconductors in...

November 15, 2021

MIT physicists and colleagues have demonstrated an exotic form of superconductivity in a new material the team synthesized only about a year ago. Although predicted in the 1960s, until now this type of superconductivity has proven difficult to stabilize. Further, the scientists found that the same material can potentially be manipulated to exhibit yet another, equally exotic form of superconductivity. The work was reported in the Nov. 3 issue of the journal Nature. The demonstration of finite momentum superconductivity...

A key brain region responds to faces...

November 15, 2021

Within the visual cortex of the adult brain, a small region is specialized to respond to faces, while nearby regions show strong preferences for bodies or for scenes such as landscapes. Neuroscientists have long hypothesized that it takes many years of visual experience for these areas to develop in children. However, a new MIT study suggests that these regions form much earlier than previously thought. In a study of babies ranging in age from two to nine months, the...

For stem cells, bigger doesn’t mean better

November 12, 2021

MIT biologists have answered an important biological question: Why do cells control their size? Cells of the same type are strikingly uniform in size, while cell size differs between different cell types. This raises the question of whether cell size is important for cellular physiology. The new study suggests that cellular enlargement drives a decline in function of stem cells. The researchers found that blood stem cells, which are among the smallest cells in the body, lose their ability to...

Dexterous robotic hands manipulate thousands of objects...

November 12, 2021

At just one year old, a baby is more dexterous than a robot. Sure, machines can do more than just pick up and put down objects, but we’re not quite there as far as replicating a natural pull toward exploratory or sophisticated dexterous manipulation goes. Artificial intelligence firm OpenAI gave it a try with Dactyl (meaning “finger,” from the Greek word “daktylos”), using their humanoid robot hand to solve a Rubik’s cube with software that’s a step toward more...

MIT makes strides on climate action plan

November 12, 2021

Two recent online events related to MIT’s ambitious new climate action plan highlighted several areas of progress, including uses of the campus as a real-life testbed for climate impact research, the creation of new planning bodies with opportunities for input from all parts of the MIT community, and a variety of moves toward reducing the Institute’s own carbon footprint in ways that may also provide a useful model for others. On Monday, MIT’s Office of Sustainability held its seventh...

Meet Director of Philanthropy and Foresight Charles...

November 11, 2021

Nov 10, 2021 Charles Tsai, Director of Philanthropy and Foresight Charles Tsai lives in Vancouver, and brings his deep experience in philanthropy to IFTF—a field that he believes is due for some big, structural change. “Typically, people talk about philanthropy as society’s risk capital,” Charles says. “But the problem is, we haven’t really used that money to take big risks and make big bets to bring about the transformations that we need in the world.” He was drawn to...

MIT Press announces Grant Program for Diverse...

November 10, 2021

In keeping with its mission and longstanding commitment to grow diversity in the ranks of published authors, the MIT Press has announced the launch of the Grant Program for Diverse Voices. The initiative will expand funding for new work by authors whose voices have been excluded and chronically underrepresented across the arts, humanities, and sciences. The grant program will be supported by the press’s existing Fund for Diverse Voices. The MIT Press welcomes applications from new or returning authors...

Radio-frequency wave scattering improves fusion simulations

November 10, 2021

In the quest for fusion energy, understanding how radio-frequency (RF) waves travel (or “propagate”) in the turbulent interior of a fusion furnace is crucial to maintaining an efficient, continuously operating power plant. Transmitted by an antenna in the doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber common to magnetic confinement fusion devices called tokamaks, RF waves heat the plasma fuel and drive its current around the toroidal interior. The efficiency of this process can be affected by how the wave’s trajectory is altered (or...

Study finds a striking difference between neurons...

November 10, 2021

Neurons communicate with each other via electrical impulses, which are produced by ion channels that control the flow of ions such as potassium and sodium. In a surprising new finding, MIT neuroscientists have shown that human neurons have a much smaller number of these channels than expected, compared to the neurons of other mammals. The researchers hypothesize that this reduction in channel density may have helped the human brain evolve to operate more efficiently, allowing it to divert resources...

American Physical Society honors nine with MIT...

November 9, 2021

Nine MIT community members have been selected for the American Physical Society (APS) spring 2022 prizes and awards. Those awarded include Professor Edmund Bertschinger, Associate Professor Nikta Fakhri, and Professor (post-tenure) Robert Jaffe; late Research Scientist Gene Dresselhaus, Research Scientist Peter Fritschel; and Lecturer and Junior Lab Manager Sean Robinson; as well as alumni Sylvester James Gates Jr. ’73, PhD ’77, Terence Tai-Li Hwa PhD ’90; and Sanat Kumar ’84, ScD ’87. These highly regarded honors represent critical recognition from the...

Gene Dresselhaus, influential research scientist in solid-state...

November 9, 2021

Gene Dresselhaus, a longtime research physicist at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and later the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory at MIT (now part of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center), died peacefully at his home in California on Sept. 29. He was 91. Dresselhaus was a theoretical solid-state physicist whose work focused on the science of materials. He was an early pioneer behind the physics of what is now known as spintronics, a field concerned with a property of electrons...

J-WAFS launches Food and Climate Systems Transformation...

November 9, 2021

Food systems around the world are increasingly at risk from the impacts of climate change. At the same time, these systems, which include all activities from food production to consumption and food waste, are responsible for about one-third of the human-caused greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet. To drive research-based innovation that will make food systems more resilient and sustainable, MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) announced the launch of a new initiative at an...

193 of 288
« Previous
1
…
191
192
193
194
195
…
288
Next »

© 2021 BrandMoiAhora. All Rights Reserved

Powered by Curiosity