June 24, 2023
Greetings! Here’s a roundup of the latest from the MIT community.
 
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Gut Check
A neon-outlined brain sits atop a blue-neon large intestine, which is filled with red, yellow, orange, and purple hollow pill graphics.
    
“For a long time, we thought the brain is a tyrant that sends output into the organs and controls everything. But now we know there’s a lot of feedback back into the brain,” Professor Polina Anikeeva says. Her team has uncovered significant crosstalk between the brain and GI tract.
Top Headlines
Atlas of human brain blood vessels highlights changes in Alzheimer’s disease
MIT researchers characterize gene expression patterns for 22,500 brain vascular cells across 428 donors, revealing insights for Alzheimer’s onset and potential treatments.
MIT Heat Island
A clean alternative to one of the world’s most common ingredients
C16 Biosciences, founded by MIT alumni, has developed a microbial oil to replace palm oil, whose production reaps environmental devastation.
MIT Heat Island
Charlie Farquhar: Forger of chemical and social bonds
While developing targeted drug-delivery methods, the PhD student advocates for inclusion, belonging, and collaboration.
MIT Heat Island
Professor Emeritus Roman Jackiw, “giant of theoretical physics,” dies at 83
Over more than 50 years at MIT, he made fundamental contributions to quantum field theory and discovered topological and geometric phenomena.
MIT Heat Island
A brief history of MIT’s Dormline
The system let generations of students call each other from phones in their rooms.
MIT Heat Island
#ThisisMIT
Eight students pose near a mini hive pollinator garden that is wooden and at waist-level. Text via @sustainablemit: Keep an eye out for Mini Hive Pollinator Gardens popping up around campus, like this one at Burton-Conner, planted in partnership with UA Sustain, the MIT Office of Sustainability, Burton-Conner, the Native American Students Association, and GSC Sustain. The goal is that Mini Hives across MIT will provide a pathway of native pollinator plants at the intersection of sustainability and Traditional Knowledge.
In the Media
Why the “Mother of Dragons” at SpaceX left her job building rockets to work on nuclear fusion // CNBC
CNBC’s Catherine Clifford discusses the journey that led Darby Dunn ’08 from building rockets for SpaceX to working on making fusion energy a reality at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS).
MIT unveils a megawatt motor for electric aircraft // IEEE Spectrum
MIT researchers developed a compact, lightweight design for a 1-megawatt electrical motor that could open the door to electrifying much larger aircraft.
With new toilet seat, BU and MIT engineers want to nip bathroom mishaps in the bud // The Boston Globe
Cleana, a startup launched by engineers from MIT and Boston University, is developing “a new kind of toilet seat that raises or lowers itself to avoid unwelcome splashes, or to prevent objects from falling accidentally into the bowl.”
Opinion: Will Boston spiral into the “urban doom loop”? Not if we act. // The Boston Globe
Professor of the practice Carlo Ratti emphasizes that in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic “urban areas need to fundamentally reweave their fabric to thrive in the era of flexible work: That means ending homogeneous zoning, promoting mixed-use developments, converting some offices into housing, and giving more space to arts and culture.”
Did You Know?
Two women engineers, while wearing safety goggles and glasses, work in a foundry. One of them holds a wired device under a hose-like light structure.
Yesterday was International Women in Engineering Day. To mark the occasion, MIT Open Learning has added new content to a recent blog post highlighting teaching and learning resources by and about MIT women in engineering. From course materials on MIT OpenCourseWare to podcasts, videos, and additional blog posts, the resources will allow you to tap into the wisdom of some of MIT’s remarkable women in STEM.
Listen
The text reads “MIT CSAIL Alliances”. “CSAIL” is in white block letters with a red trapezoid behind “CS”, a cylindrical yellow shape behind “AI”, and a narrow gray trapezoid behind “L”.
On a new episode of the CSAIL Alliances Podcast, host Kara Miller speaks with MIT Associate Professor Vivienne Sze on the rising energy costs of artificial intelligence computing, which has both environmental and financial dimensions. They also discuss recent breakthrough work on how to let AI proliferate while still addressing those costs.
Listen to the episode
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