Automated Language Learning | | | A new language learning system, developed by MIT researchers, pays attention — and more efficiently than ever before. The combined hardware-software system, dubbed SpAtten, streamlines state-of-the-art sentence analysis. Full story via MIT News → |
New variants of the virus are here; do I need a better mask? MIT Medical provides guidance as potentially more contagious strains of Covid-19 spread around the world. Full story via MIT Medical→ | |
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Nanowire could provide a stable, easy-to-make superconducting transistor Inspired by decades-old MIT research, the new technology could boost quantum computers and other superconducting electronics. Full story via MIT News → | |
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George Shultz PhD ’49, renowned statesman and former professor, dies at 100 |
| Shultz, who held four US Cabinet positions and served in three presidential administrations, devoted himself to ideals of bipartisanship and fairness. Full story via MIT News → | |
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Fintech, explained Successful fintechs possess four kinds of expertise: entrepreneurial, computational, financial, and regulatory. Here's how it all comes together. Full story via MIT Sloan→ | |
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Reducing inequality across the globe and on campus Through research and student leadership, senior Orisa Coombs is tackling problems including water scarcity, food insecurity, and racial injustice. Full story via MIT News → | |
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Out of grief, MIT’s Andrew Lo invented a better way to finance biomedical innovation // Bloomberg Businessweek Following the loss of several people close to him, Professor Andrew Lo was motivated to explore how the field of finance could help advance treatments for orphan diseases. “Finance plays a huge role, sometimes way too big a role, in how drugs get developed,” says Lo. Fixing the financing model could have a “tremendous, tremendous impact on health care.” Full story via Bloomberg Businessweek→ |
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MIT engineers created new internal medical patch inspired by origami // Mashable “Because internal surgeries involve small, specialized tools, the patch was created to fold around these tools and make insertion and use in tight spaces simpler. The patch resists contamination and biodegrades over time.” Full story via Mashable→ |
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Opinion: India’s farm protests turned violent. But why are farmers protesting in the first place? // The Washington Post | Graduate student Aidan Milliff and Saksham Khosla of Dalberg Advisors examine farmer protests in India. The farmers, they note, are concerned new laws aimed at deregulating agricultural markets could create a situation where “farmers would see less long-term stability, and could be at the mercy of big business.” Full story via The Washington Post→ |
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Longtime Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz dies at 100 // Associated Press George Shultz PhD ’49 was “a titan of American academia, business and diplomacy who spent most of the 1980s trying to improve Cold War relations with the Soviet Union and forging a course for peace in the Middle East.” Full story via The Associated Press→ |
| | This month we celebrate a milestone in our understanding of the human genome. In the 1990s, MIT Professor Eric Lander led the 13-year Human Genome Project, an effort to sequence the 3 billion DNA letters in the human genetic code. Lander’s group at the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research contributed one-third of all sequencing for the project, and a report of the first draft was published on Feb. 15, 2001. The following day, Philip Sharp, now an Institute Professor, introduced Lander to a capacity crowd in MIT Room 10-250, stating, “When historians look back on these decades of biological science that bracket the change of the century and the millennium, the most noted advance will be the sequencing of the human genome.” That sequencing was effectively completed in 2003, but scientists are still learning; last week, MIT researchers published new data on so-called “junk” or noncoding human DNA, which now appears not to be junk at all. | | | I wonder whether the tiny atoms and nuclei or the mathematical symbols or the DNA molecules have any preference for either masculine or feminine treatment. ... Why should we not encourage more girls to go to science? | —Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, speaking at the influential MIT Symposium on American Women in Science and Engineering in 1964. Coinciding with both the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (Thursday) and the Lunar New Year (yesterday), Wu is being honored this week with a new U.S. postage stamp. Learn more via MIT Libraries | Symposium proceedings via MIT Press→ | | With Valentine’s Day approaching, you may be anticipating a chocolate bounty. Thanks to a new web series produced by MIT materials science and engineering graduate students, you can find out what material properties make chocolate so delectable. In the latest episode of Kitchen Matters, viewers learn about the composition of chocolate; the difference between dark, milk, and white chocolate; and more. 🍫 Watch the video→ | |