The UA Senate met for the last time ever on Dec. 12. It will be replaced by a 21-member council in the spring.

Senators of the Undergraduate Association enjoyed a “R.I.P. Senate” cake after the Senate’s last meeting ever on Dec. 12. The body will be replaced by a UA Council made up of representatives from dormitories and FSILGs — a result of the UA’s largest restructuring effort in years.

Despite the cold, sophomores wait outside Kresge Auditorium for the Class of 2014 Ring Premiere last Friday evening. Some stood in line for hours in the hopes of getting a free gift.

Pockets of the Back Bay were still without power Wednesday evening, resulting from a transformer fire on Tuesday. Many venues in the Prudential Center used generators for electricity, but others were shut down. About 4,000 customers still remained without power Thursday evening, down from the 21,000 originally affected.

The tokamak’s lower current hybrid drive, which supplements the main current with over a megawatt of microwave power, sits behind a safety fence.

The neutral beam accelerator at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center’s Alcator C-Mod tokamak. The laboratory, centered around the tokamak, or magnetically confined nuclear fusion device, faces significant cuts under the 2013 presidential budget request. The accelerator fires neutral particles into the plasma, resulting in an X-ray emission that can be used to visualize the plasma within and study its behavior.

This coaxial cable carries several megawatts of radio frequency power into the tokamak to heat the plasma inside at the ion-cyclotron resonance frequency.

A cramped port that grants access into the innards of the tokamak for repairs and routine maintenance glows brightly.

Several of the scientists and engineers who help operate Alcator C-Mod pose for a photograph in the main control room.