| A Passion for Biomaterials | | | | | | Eesha Khare, a PhD student in materials science and engineering, studies the chemical bonds that allow mussels to bind to rocks along turbulent coastlines. Her interests also include science policy, climate advocacy, and entrepreneurship. “I like being outside of my comfort zone,” she says. |
| How are things different with Delta? MIT Medical provides the latest guidance about Covid-19 viral loads, transmission, testing, and masking in response to the now-dominant Delta variant. |  |
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| A new way to detect the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant in wastewater SMART researchers have developed an innovative method to detect and quantify the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant of concern via wastewater epidemiology. |  |
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| Jing Wang, professor of Chinese media and cultural studies, dies at 71 |
Wang, who founded the China-based media activism nonprofit NGO2.0, taught at MIT since 2001. |  |
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| Closing the gap for Black business owners Burunda Prince ’83 is working to build the infrastructure to support Black entrepreneurs in successfully building their companies. |  |
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| Top innovators under 35 for 2021 A dozen alumni, staff, and current or former postdocs from the MIT community were named to the MIT Technology Review“35 Innovators Under 35” list. |  |
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| She has an MIT degree and doesn’t think skateboarding’s a sport. But she plans to win a medal. // The Washington Post |
Alexis Sablone MArch ’16 is “one of the world’s greatest female professional street skateboarders, with seven X Games medals, her own Converse shoe line and now a spot in the Tokyo Olympics.” Sablone discusses skateboarding, the Olympic Games, and why she’s uncomfortable with being defined. “I’m just always trying to be myself and do things that I love to do and not try to fit into these categories in ways that I don’t feel comfortable with,” she says. |
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| Startup claims breakthrough in long-duration batteries // The Wall Street Journal Form Energy, a startup co-founded by Professor Yet-Ming Chiang, has developed an inexpensive iron-air battery that can discharge power for days. The batteries could be “capable of solving one of the most elusive problems facing renewable energy: cheaply storing large amounts of electricity to power grids when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing.” |
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| Stephen Hawking was right: Black holes simply can’t shrink // Popular Mechanics Researchers from MIT and elsewhere observationally confirmed one of Stephen Hawking’s theorems about black holes, measuring gravitational waves before and after a black hole merger to provide evidence that a black hole’s event horizon can never shrink. |
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| Rising seas pose an “existential threat” to MBTA, study warns // The Boston Globe Researchers from MIT and Tulane University have found the MBTA subway network faces the threat of flooding caused by rising sea levels over the next 50 years. “Severe flooding is a grave challenge for the T,” explains graduate student Michael Martello. |
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| China’s digital yuan could pose challenges to the U.S. dollar // CNBC Researchers from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and the Federal Reserve of Boston are exploring what a digital currency might look like in the United States. “I think that if there is a digital dollar, privacy is going to be a very, very important part of that,” says Neha Narula, director of the Digital Currency Initiative. |
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| | | In 2018, photographer Jessica Wynne began capturing images of mathematicians’ chalkboards around the world. Many of her photographs appear in a new book, “Do Not Erase: Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards.” Two MIT chalkboards — those of mathematicians Ankur Moitra (above, top) and Alexei Borodin (above, below) — were recently featured in a Scientific Americanarticle about Wynne’s work. “The chalkboards almost felt like portraits of the person and depended on the personality of the mathematician,” Wynne says. |
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