Professor Emeritus Stephan Chorover, a founding faculty member of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, died on Feb. 20, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “In his writings and in the classroom, Dr. Chorover encouraged scientists and students to look closely at the wider social context of current and historical attempts to control behavior,” Marquard writes.
In the first of a series of conversations, Professor Emeritus Robert Solow speaks with Paul Solman of PBS NewsHour about the past week’s economics news. Solow and Solman discuss recent fluctuations in the stock market, Federal Reserve interest rates and the response to the Greek debt crisis.
Steve Annear writes for The Boston Globe about Pi Day at MIT. “The serendipitous date has led to officials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology timing the release of student acceptance notifications to go live on the school’s admissions website right when the clock strikes 9:26 Saturday morning,” Annear explains.
NPR’s Jessica Harris speaks with Prof. Robert Langer about his pioneering work with drug delivery and tissue engineering. “My goals were to do things that I someday thought might improve people’s lives,” says Langer.
Nidhi Subbaraman writes for BetaBoston about MIT’s new cybersecurity initiatives designed to “tackle tech security problems both big and small.” The new efforts are aimed at addressing cybersecurity’s technical, policy and business challenges.
Spencer Kelly reports for BBC News on a video made by the MIT Admissions Office illustrating what it might look like to deliver acceptance letters by drone. The video was made to mark “Pi Day” on March 14, when MIT traditionally releases admissions decisions.
Adam Rutherford of BBC Radio 4 speaks with Prof. Nicholas Makris about his work examining the evolution of violin design during the 17th and 18th centuries. Makris explains that, “if you go over that roughly 200 years you see that the F-hole length was increasing over that time period,” an adjustment that increased the violin’s acoustic power.
Washington Post reporter Annie Gowen writes about how MIT researchers have found that India’s latest swine flu outbreak may have mutated into a more dangerous strain. The researchers found “new mutations in the protein known to make the virus more virulent.”
Professor Ram Sasisekharan and research scientist Kannan Tharakaraman have found that a strain of H1N1 influenza in India is more virulent than health authorities have indicated, writes Rishi Lyengar of Time. “They found mutations in the Indian strains in a protein called hemagglutinin, which binds with receptors on the human body’s respiratory cells,” Lyengar writes.
Jim Nash of Scientific American speaks with Professor W. Craig Carter about why snow squeaks when it’s stepped on. Carter explains that the breaking of tiny bonds formed between individual snowflakes could cause the squeaking noise. “I believe the squeak depends on the fallen snow forming the welds to sinter together,” says Carter of his theory.
Laura Santhanam writes for the PBS NewsHour that MIT researchers have found that a strain of swine flu in India is more dangerous than originally thought. The researchers found that “a mutation in the new H1N1 strain allows this form of swine flu to attack an infected person’s respiratory cells more virulently.”
BBC News reports on the “FingerSynth,” a glove created by graduate student Gershon Dublon “that allows you to hear the sounds of objects through touch.” The device allows the wearer to explore the resonance of different physical objects.
The Boston Globe reports that the MIT List Visual Arts Center has received a gift of $200,000 from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation to support Joan Jonas’ presentation at the Venice Biennale. Jonas is developing a new multimedia installation for the Biennale incorporating video, drawings, objects and sounds.
MIT is launching three cybersecurity efforts, including one aimed at managing cybersecurity within critical infrastructure, reports Rachael King for The Wall Street Journal. “We’re hoping to develop a number of new approaches and techniques that measure security culture in organizations,” says Prof. Stuart Madnick.
Professor Emeritus Jack Ruina, a noted expert on strategic arms control who served as MIT’s vice president for special laboratories and was the first director of MIT’s Security Studies Program, passed away Feb. 4, reports Boston Globe reporter Bryan Marquard. Prof. Emeritus George Rathjens said that “there wasn’t a better faculty member that I knew in the universe.”