MIT's Testing Trailer | | | In two months, staff from MIT Medical and across campus designed and built a 60-foot trailer that is now the main Covid-19 testing site for members of the MIT community. The trailer began operating in early July, and can test up to 1,500 people per day. Full story via MIT News → |
Diane Greene SM ’78 elected chair of the MIT Corporation | Former CEO of Google Cloud succeeds Robert Millard; will become the first female leader of the Corporation. Full story via MIT News → | |
|
Building empathy and sharing wisdom on MIT’s Day of Dialogue With more than 1,000 participants, the daylong event encouraged anti-racism conversations in the MIT community. Full story via MIT News → | |
|
Finding Joy in Making, and the Making of #HellaJuneteenth Over a few days, designer Quinnton Harris ’11 and his firm built a campaign that led 655 companies to recognize Juneteenth. Full story via Slice of MIT → | |
|
How airplanes counteract St. Elmo’s fire during thunderstorms On the ground, windy conditions strengthen these electrical flashes, but new experiments tell a different story for flying objects. Full story via MIT News → | |
|
Rebuilding cultures through art, design, and community Once displaced by war, MIT’s Azra Akšamija creates works of cultural resilience in the face of social conflict. Full story via MIT News → | |
|
How I cracked a 50-year-old math problem in a week // New Scientist Assistant Professor Lisa Piccirillo discusses what led her to a career in math and how she solved the decades-old Conway knot problem. Full story via New Scientist → |
|
A reckoning has emerged on American English, rife with words and phrases with racist origins or connotations // The Boston Globe | Professor Michel DeGraff discusses the growing awareness of language with racist connotations or history. “People have always been aware of the power of language to discriminate, to dominate, but also to liberate,” says DeGraff. Full story via The Boston Globe → |
|
Water cooler moments don’t have to disappear in the virtual workplace // Quartz Professor Thomas Malone discusses Minglr, a new videoconferencing platform he co-created that replicates the type of chance meetings that happen at in-person conferences. Full story via Quartz → |
|
Cutting-edge research shows how hair dulls razor blades // NPR | Using a scanning electron microscope, MIT researchers observed how hair produces tiny chips in steel razor blades. “For me, personally, it was both a scientific curiosity, of 'What’s going on?’ and also aiming to solve an important engineering problem,” says Associate Professor C. Cem Tasan. Full story via NPR → |
| | The lead-up to NASA’s April 9 launch to the International Space Station coincided with the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic. Astronaut Chris Cassidy SM ’00 says the launch process remained the same, but precautions were different. “It was a different feel,” the astronaut explained in an interview recorded hundreds of miles above Earth. In a new video, Cassidy describes prelaunch isolation, fellow crew members’ experience returning to a planet in the grip of coronavirus, and more. Watch the video → | |