Author: Ms. R.

When he began his engineering program at École Polytechnique in his hometown of Paris, Jean Pauphilet did not aspire to the academy. “I used to associate academia with fundamental research, which I don’t enjoy much,” he says. “But slowly, I discovered another type of research, where people use rigorous scientific principles for applied and impactful projects.” A fascination with projects that have direct applications to organizational problems led Pauphilet to the field of operations research and analytics — and……

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Moving some 1,200 MIT subjects to a remote teaching and learning model, launched today, has been less like flipping a switch and more like building the switch itself — with whatever was on hand. In short, it’s a very MIT kind of problem. In late February, before the coronavirus altered daily life and work in the U.S., Meghan Perdue, a digital learning lab fellow in Open Learning and an instructor in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences,……

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While much of the MIT campus is quiet, Mail Services has seen a steady stream of activity this week as it acts as the staging and sorting area for thousands of donated Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from across campus. More than 50 departments, labs, and centers — as well as individual community members — have responded to a call to donate extra, unopened PPE to support area hospitals and frontline health care workers in need. Some labs even included……

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Any device that sends out a Wi-Fi signal also emits terahertz waves —electromagnetic waves with a frequency somewhere between microwaves and infrared light. These high-frequency radiation waves, known as “T-rays,” are also produced by almost anything that registers a temperature, including our own bodies and the inanimate objects around us. Terahertz waves are pervasive in our daily lives, and if harnessed, their concentrated power could potentially serve as an alternate energy source. Imagine, for instance, a cellphone add-on that……

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The Knight Science Journalism Program’s second annual Victor K. McElheny Award for local and regional science journalism will honor an investigative series that explores the ongoing risk of deadly wildfires in the American West. Spearheaded by The Arizona Republic, “Ahead of the Fire” shines a light on the hundreds of communities across the West that remain vulnerable — and unprepared — for wildfires like the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people in Paradise, California, and surrounding areas. Arizona……

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Members of the MIT community living all over the world have reached out to offer support for the Institute’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting the creation of two new funds to support MIT’s efforts to help address the public health crisis. The new funds will support MIT’s engagement on two fronts: donating urgently needed supplies and equipment to hospitals and health centers in the greater Boston area, and seeking solutions through research and computing. “Alumni and friends are……

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The research described in this article has been published on a preprint server but has not yet been peer-reviewed by scientific or medical experts. In hopes of developing a possible treatment for Covid-19, a team of MIT chemists has designed a drug candidate that they believe may block coronaviruses’ ability to enter human cells. The potential drug is a short protein fragment, or peptide, that mimics a protein found on the surface of human cells. The researchers have shown……

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