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The Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation’s oldest academic honor society, held its MIT induction ceremony on Thursday, May 26, admitting 82 graduating seniors into the MIT chapter, Xi of Massachusetts. Phi Beta Kappa (PBK), founded in 1776 at the College of William and Mary, honors the nation’s most outstanding undergraduate students for excellence in […]

Seven MIT community members have been honored with 2022 American Astronomical Society (AAS) prizes and awards.  Those awarded include two assistant professors of physics, Erin Kara and Kiyoshi Masui, as well as alumni Camille Carlisle SM ’10, Charles Keith Gendreau PhD ’95, Laura Lopez ’04, Richard Mushotzky ’68, and Donald York ’66. Newton Lacy Pierce Prize […]

Serah Reikka is an award-winning actor with more than 79,000 Instagram followers. She is a semi-autonomous artificial intelligence

MIT has again been named the world’s top university by the QS World University Rankings, which were announced today. This is the 11th year in a row MIT has received this distinction. The full 2022 edition of the rankings — published by Quacquarelli Symonds, an organization specializing in education and study abroad — can be […]

On the beautiful beaches of the Canary Islands, scientists discovered a noxious new pollutant: tar mixed with tiny bits of plastic.

We spend so much of our time online without knowing where we are—or how fragmented we’ve become. Locating ourselves can help us leave our bubble.

The national abortion debate has focused on its legal and political dimensions. But that ignores the physiology of pregnancy.

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Salesforce announces NFT Cloud, a service for buying and selling NFTs, available in a closed preview  —  Who knows whether it’s FOMO or actual customer demand for such a thing, but Salesforce announced today that it’s launching a pilot of NFT Cloud, a new platform for buying and selling these crypto […]

Brandy Betz / CoinDesk: Stock advisor Delphia, which offers an algorithm-based service via its app, raises a $60M Series A led by Multicoin Capital and plans its Delphia Data token  —  Investors will earn Delphia Data Tokens for sharing personal shopping and social media data with the advisor.

Ian Allison / CoinDesk: Source: Citadel Securities is building a “cryptocurrency trading ecosystem” in partnership with Virtu, Sequoia, Paradigm, and others  —  The effort also includes Citadel Securities’ recent venture capital (VC) backers, Sequoia and Paradigm, with more trading firms to come, according to a source familiar with the plans.

Lithium-ion batteries often lose their charge at sub-zero temperatures but a design incorporating bumps into one of the main components makes them work much better

When Mark Drela first set foot in Cambridge to study aerospace engineering at MIT in 1978, he was no stranger to wind tunnels. Just two years before, he constructed a 1-foot-by-1-foot wind tunnel for the Westinghouse Science Talent Search that earned him a visit to the White House as a finalist. But nothing could have […]

Research finds that even well-intentioned men who push back against overt sexism are still likely to engage in behavior that reinforces gender stereotypes.

MongoDB claims its new “Queryable Encryption” lets users search their databases while sensitive data stays encrypted. Oh, and its cryptography is open source.

European lawmakers have mandated that mobile devices (looking at you, Apple) must charge using the same standard connector cable.

Apple’s iOS 16 and macOS Ventura will introduce passwordless login for apps and websites. It’s only the beginning.

Amrita Khalid / Engadget: IBM says it will wind down its business in Russia and lay off its workforce there, after suspending operations in the country in March  —  IBM will begin an “orderly” wind-down of its operations in Russia, according to a memo from CEO Arvind Krishna that was released publicly today.

Sheila Dang / Reuters: Internal meeting: Twitter aims to grow its mDAUs by 13M this quarter, the highest goal the company has ever set, and is currently on track with 8.5M users  —  Twitter (TWTR.N) is gearing up for its most ambitious quarter of user growth, leaders of the social media company’s consumer products …

Jacquelyn Melinek / TechCrunch: Calaxy, which runs a marketplace for creators to mint and sell their social tokens, raises $26M in funding co-led by Animoca Brands and the HBAR Foundation  —  The success of websites like Cameo have shown that people want personalized interactions with celebrities and web3 companies …

Collin M. Stultz, the Nina T. and Robert H. Rubin Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at MIT, has been named co-director of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), and associate director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), effective June 1. IMES is HST’s home at MIT. Stultz is […]

Alongside climate change, air pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats to human health. Tiny particles known as particulate matter or PM2.5 (named for their diameter of just 2.5 micrometers or less) are a particularly hazardous type of pollutant. These particles are produced from a variety of sources, including wildfires and the burning of […]

Sponsor content from Smartsheet.

Competitive advantages don’t last as long as they used to.

A conversation with Columbia Law School professor Kathryn Judge on the power of intermediaries like Amazon or Walmart.

Jeff Kauflin / Forbes: A profile of Chipper Cash, an African cross-border payments services provider valued at $2.2B in November, which had $75M+ in revenue in 2021, up over 4x YoY  —  A pair of twentysomethings from Uganda and Ghana thought there was a fortune to be made bringing transnational financial services to Africa’s 1.2 […]

From mechanical keyboards to the best home composter, we compiled the best Father’s Day gift guide … without a single tie or wallet on the list.

Whether you’re hybrid or at the home office full-time, here’s what you can do to focus your energy, connect meaningfully, and use flexibility to your advantage.

Let’s just say Amazon can send superheroes where Marvel can’t. We talked to the showrunner about how that scene from the third season opener came to be.

Lukasz Olejnik / Wired: How Ukrainian civilians are helping the army using apps, blurring the lines between civilians and soldiers, raising questions of international humanitarian law  —  In Ukraine, civilians are valiantly assisting the army via apps—and challenging a tenet of international law in the process.

Jon Porter / The Verge: EU lawmakers reach an agreement on legislation that will mandate USB-C on smartphones and other electronic devices, starting in autumn 2024, to reduce e-waste  —  A major blow to Apple’s Lightning port  —  European Union lawmakers have reached an agreement on legislation that will force …

International trade exacerbates domestic income inequality, at least in some circumstances, according to an empirical study that two MIT economists helped co-author. The research, focusing on Ecuador as a case study, digs into individual-level income data while examining in close detail the connections between Ecuador’s economy and international trade. The study finds that trade generates […]

Researchers have pioneered a technique that can dramatically accelerate certain types of computer programs automatically, while ensuring program results remain accurate. Their system boosts the speeds of programs that run in the Unix shell, a ubiquitous programming environment created 50 years ago that is still widely used today. Their method parallelizes these programs, which means […]

The company has backed down on its proposal to address school shootings, but the damage was already done.

David Pilling / Financial Times: MFS Africa, a digital payments network in Africa, acquires Oklahoma-based Global Technology Partners, which makes prepaid and mobile payments software, for $34M  —  Deal by MFS Africa is further evolution of continent’s rapidly growing fintech scene  —  MFS Africa, a digital payments company …

Apple has given a guided tour of macOS 13, which is nicknamed Ventura. Here’s what you’ll see on your Mac later this year.

The lock screen gets an all-new look in the iPhone’s upcoming update.

A flying robot inspired by peregrine falcons offers a non-lethal method for scaring flocks of birds from crop fields

Juli Clover / MacRumors: Apple introduces a Rapid Security Response feature in iOS 16 designed to deploy security fixes more easily and quickly without needing a full iOS version update  —  Apple in iOS 16 is introducing a new Rapid Security Response feature that’s designed to make it easier and quicker for the company to […]

Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac: Apple says iOS 16 will support “select” iPhone models using Face ID in landscape orientation; iOS 16 beta 1 limits landscape Face ID to iPhone 12 and iPhone 13  —  iOS 16 will finally allow you to unlock your iPhone in landscape.  On the iOS 16 features page …

A supercomputer called Frontier has been officially crowned as the world’s first exascale computer – one capable of a billion billion operations per second – but more powerful machines may be out there

A pop-up hearing aid exposition called HearWeAre. A travel agency that matches older and younger travelers for group adventures. An app that guides outgoing hospital patients through every step of the discharge process. These are a few of the projects presented by students on the final day in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and […]

For the most creative minds to work together to solve the world’s greatest challenges, it is essential for global collaboration to be unencumbered by distance. The MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Global Seed Funds (GSF) program enables participating faculty teams to collaborate across borders with international partners to develop and launch joint research […]

As babies, we babble and imitate our way to learning languages. We don’t start off reading raw text, which requires fundamental knowledge and understanding about the world, as well as the advanced ability to interpret and infer descriptions and relationships. Rather, humans begin our language journey slowly, by pointing and interacting with our environment, basing […]

Four practices to help organizations evolve.

Six strategies to ensure you’re crafting a strategy that your company can actually execute.

As flex work becomes the norm, companies need to find new ways to keep people in the loop.

Startups like Solid Power are beginning to roll out solid-state batteries that meet the needs of EVs. But hurdles remain for manufacturing them at scale.

DJI branches out from drones again, this time with a wireless mic system that’s one of the best simple options.

At least one employee borrowed $100,000 from the company—and now has just 30 days to pay it back.

Michael McGowan / The Guardian: A federal judge in Australia orders Google to pay an ex-politician $715K for doing “nothing to prevent” YouTuber Friendlyjordies’ “abusive” videos about him  —  Tech giant and comedian Jordan Shanks may face contempt of court charges over videos published during trial