In the Media

"EdX, the online school founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will offer proctored final exams to allow students to use their results for credentials and job applications."

"A five-year project called ENCODE, for 'Encyclopedia of DNA Elements,' found that about 80 percent of the human genome is biologically active, influencing how nearby genes are expressed and in which types of cells."

"The Twitterati likely already know that last week, I joined MIT science writing professor (and fellow author/physics aficionado) Tom Levenson in the virtual world, Second Life, for the Virtually Speaking Science (VSS) podcast, hosted by BlogTalk Radio."

"We’re trying to put web use for everybody on the international agenda, and for each country that’s wondering what it should do next, help them answer the question." -MIT's Tim Berners-Lee

"Junot Díaz has built a big audience with two books: Drown, a collection of short stories, and his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for fiction."

"For his latest project, 'The Last Pictures,' the experimental artist plans to present his work in space, hanging in the midst of cosmic artifacts rather than earthly masterpieces."

"A pair of robotic spacecraft in orbit around the moon began collecting data on lunar gravity again last week, as part of the probes' extended mission."

"First they sequenced it. Now they have surveyed its hinterlands. But no one knows how much more information the human genome holds, or when to stop looking for it."

"Berenice Abbott's science photographs invite us to contemplate the wonder of creation."

"Some smartphone apps collect and transmit sensitive information stored on a phone, including location, contacts, and Web browsing histories, even when the apps are not being used by the phone’s owner, according to two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

"They bill their new book, Visual Strategies, as a guide to graphics for scientists and engineers, but it will be useful for anyone who wants to make clear presentations of data of any kind."

"We knew before that most cancers were due to mutations in the genes in cancer cells. Now [that we can sequence a tumor’s genes], we’re able to identify the full spectrum of mutations that have occurred in a given cancer." -MIT's Phillip A. Sharp

"In an effort to attract more high school students to science, two teams at MIT took inspiration for projects from reality TV and from online games."

"Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have made the first films of semiconductor nanocrystals that conduct electricity and are free of cracks."

"A marine robot uses sonar to scan for tiny limpet mines attached to a ship’s hull. But military dolphins and sea lions are not out of a job just yet."