A new MIT report examines the growing innovation deficit caused by declining government support for basic research, reports Sharon Begley for Reuters. Prof. Marc Kastner, who led the committee that prepared the report, explained that the decline in basic research funding, "really threatens America's future."
Craig Lemoult of WGBH News speaks with MIT researchers about a new report examining the impacts of declining government support for basic research. Prof. Marc Kastner notes that many of the “technologies that have made our lives better” stem from basic research advances.
Inside Higher Ed highlights a new report prepared by a committee of MIT researchers that examines the need for increased federal funding for basic research. The report “examines the lost opportunities for science and for U.S. competitiveness vs. other nations due to inadequate federal support for basic research.”
Prof. Philip Sharp writes for The Huffington Post that the government needs to increase support for cancer research. Sharp and his co-author Sherry Lansing, founder and CEO of The Sherry Lansing Foundation, explain that current progress again cancer “can be turned into a tidal wave if we as a nation devote the right level of funding, intensity, and collaboration.”
Thomas Burton of The Wall Street Journal writes that MIT researchers were among those awarded the first research grants under President Obama’s new BRAIN Initiative. Burton writes that one of the MIT grants will go toward “determining which exact brain circuits are involved in generating short-term memories that influence decisions.”
Boston Globe reporter Deborah Kotz writes that MIT researchers have been awarded new grants from the National Institutes of Health to further brain research. “Biophysicist Alan Jasanoff received a grant to develop imaging agents for functional MRI imaging that would target the flow of calcium into and out of brain cells,” writes Kotz of one of the MIT grants.
MIT neuroscientists were among the recipients of new grants for brain research from the National Institutes of Health, reports Jon Hamilton for NPR. Hamilton explains that as part of one grant, “Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will try to adapt functional MRI so that it can show the activity of individual brain cells.”
Richard Harris reports on research by Professor Richard Larson that found that the effects of funding changes to the National Institute of Health on research are amplified due to the way the institute distributes grants. “Larson's analysis offers lessons for avoiding the pain of boom-and-bust funding,” writes Harris.
The MIT Alumni Association’s Slice of MIT blog features highlights of MIT President L. Rafael Reif’s Ice Bucket Challenge. “MIT President L. Rafael Reif is the Institute’s 17th president, but he is almost surely the first MIT president to publicly dump a bucket of near-freezing water over his head,” writes Jay London.
“With the push of a button Monday, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology resumed efforts to try to harness the process that powers the sun — nuclear fusion — in the hope of developing a stable, nonpolluting source of energy,” reports The Boston Globe’s Erin Ailworth on the restarting of MIT’s Alcator C-mod fusion reactor.
WBUR reports that, “now that federal funding has been restored for a fusion energy research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is proposing long-term funding for the project.”