MIT News

• Complex brain function depends on flexibility May 19, 2013
  Over the past few decades, neuroscientists have made much progress in mapping the brain by deciphering the functions of individual neurons that perform very specific tasks, such as recognizing the location or color of an object. However, there are many neurons, especially in brain regions that perform sophisticated functions such as thinking and planning, th […]
• Using literature to understand violence against blacks May 17, 2013
  The grim history of lynching in the United States may be over, but it has been preserved through photographs, memoirs, novels and poetry. To Sandy Alexandre, an associate professor of literature at MIT, those images and words help make clear, in retrospect, how closely lynching was related to the issue of property, in the form of bodies, possessions and land […]
• A caring mind May 17, 2013
  At a health clinic in Guatemala, Paula Trepman watched as a visiting physician from the United States showed local workers how to properly administer a labor-inducing drug to pregnant women — a process that, if done at the wrong time, could have fatal consequences.It was the summer after her sophomore year at MIT, and Trepman — now a senior — was helping to […]
• 3dim wins MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition May 16, 2013
  On Wednesday night, 3dim earned the grand prize at this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition after successfully pitching its business plan to merge two of today’s most popular, and profitable, technological phenomena: gesture-recognition and smart devices. The startup was one of eight finalists that pitched business plans to a capacity crowd in Kres […]
• Stacking 2-D materials produces surprising results May 16, 2013
  Graphene has dazzled scientists, ever since its discovery more than a decade ago, with its unequalled electronic properties, its strength and its light weight. But one long-sought goal has proved elusive: how to engineer into graphene a property called a band gap, which would be necessary to use the material to make transistors and other electronic devices.N […]