Postdoctoral Fellow Lydia Harrington and Boston University Postdoctoral Associate Chloe Bordewich speak with WBUR reporter Yasmin Amer about their exhibit at the MIT Rotch Library on Boston's former Little Syria neighborhood. “We want to show very positive things that Syrians brought with them, as well as their contributions to Boston,” says Harrington. “We wanted to show things in the exhibit that showed everyday life and well-known people in the neighborhood.”
Nature Physics senior editor Silvia Milana spotlights “Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus” a new book written by MIT News Deputy Editorial Director Maia Weinstock. “Carbon Queen does not only capture the journey into the personal and professional life of an outstanding figure in carbon science, it is a careful account of the evolution of societal attitudes towards women from the 1950s to today” writes Milana.
Ariana Remmel spotlights “Carbon Queen,” a new book written by MIT News Deputy Editorial Director Maia Weinstock, which highlights the career of Institute Professor Mildred S. Dresselhaus. “Weinstock navigates the complexities of theoretical physics and research bureaucracy deftly,” writes Remmel. “She describes of carbon – from diamond to graphite – and their properties with sleek diagrams and colourful analogies that unpack basic principles and broader implications.”
Science writer Maia Weinstock, deputy editorial director at MIT News, has written a new book titled “Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus,” which highlights the career of Institute Professor Mildred S. Dresselhaus, reports Vijaysree Venkatraman for Science. “In “Carbon Queen,” Weinstock has pieced together Dresselhaus’s story using decades of profiles, print interviews, oral histories conducted with the scientists herself, and new interviews with her contemporaries,” writes Venkatraman.
Physics World reporter Jesse Wade spotlights “Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus,” a new book by Maia Weinstock, deputy editorial director at MIT News. “With Carbon Queen, Weinstock does more than tell the story of a brilliant scientist’s life,” writes Wade. “She transports you into a world of curiosity and wonder, driven by enthusiasm and persistence.”
An international team of scholars, including MIT researchers, has published a new study exploring the history and use of letterlocking, reports William J. Broad for The New York Times. The researchers note that they hope their work prompts “novel kinds of archival research, and allows even very well-known artefacts to be examined anew.”
Researchers from MIT and other institutions have successfully uncovered the letterlocking technique that Mary, Queen of Scots, used to seal her final letter, reports NPR’s Tien Le. “The spiral lock requires more than 30 steps and involves cutting out a ‘lock,’ often resembling a dagger or sword, out of the blank margin of the letter,” writes Le. “The lock acts as a needle and is sewn through the letter after folding it.”
The MIT Press will publish all monographs and edited collections on an open-source access basis this upcoming spring, reports Suzanne Smalley for Inside Higher Ed. The move presents a “model that scholars and librarians say could be revolutionary for cash-strapped libraries, university presses and a dwindling number of humanities scholars,” writes Smalley.
An international team of researchers has found that Mary, Queen of Scots, used a complicated paper-folding technique called letterlocking to conceal the contents of her final letter, reports Alison Flood for The Guardian. MIT Libraries Conservator Jana Dambrogio explains that working on Mary's last letter “and figuring out its unique spiral lock was thrilling as a researcher – and a real a-ha! moment in the study of letterlocking.”
Researchers from MIT and other institutions have developed a new virtual-reality technique that has allowed them to unearth the contents of letters written hundreds of years ago, without opening them, writes New York Times reporter William J. Broad. “The new technique could open a window into the long history of communications security,” writes Broad. “And by unlocking private intimacies, it could aid researchers studying stories concealed in fragile pages found in archives all over the world.”
Using X-ray imaging and algorithms, MIT researchers have been able to virtually open and read letters that been sealed for more than 300 years, writes Priti Parikh for New Scientist. “Studying folding and tucking patterns in historic letters allows us to understand technologies used to communicate,” says Jana Dambrogio, a conservator at the MIT Libraries.
Inside Higher Ed reporter Lindsay McKenzie writes that MIT’s Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access has released a draft set of recommendations aimed at increasing the open sharing of MIT publications, data, software, and educational materials.
Writing for Atlas Obscura, Abigail Cain spotlights how Jana Dambrogio, a conservator at MIT Libraries, is building a dictionary cataloging the historical practice of letterlocking. Dambrogio explains that to accurately recreate some of the more intricate locks requires “looking at thousands of artifacts and having the ability to remember them.”
In an article for The Boston Globe, Micah Altman, director of research at the MIT Libraries, points to the safeguarding of sensitive information in scientific research as proof that it is possible to protect online privacy. With institutional review boards and informed consent practices, academia demonstrates “that you don’t have to choose between privacy and valuable data,” explains Altman.
Barbara Fister writes for Inside Higher Ed about the task force report examining the future of MIT’s libraries. “The library it envisions is so much more than information rented annually for the use of a single community. It’s a place that values its local community and provides a physical space in which to learn and ask questions.”