Norman Magnuson’s MIT career — culminating in his role as manager of grounds services in the Department of Facilities for the past 20 years — started in 1974 with a summer job. Fresh out of high school and unsure of his next step, Magnuson’s father, Norman Sr., a housing manager at MIT, encouraged him to take a summer staffer position with MIT Grounds Services. That temporary job would turn into a 48-year career, in which Magnuson found and fed……
The plumes of smoke that rose from East Campus one sunny May day could easily have been mistaken for a barbecue taking place in the courtyard. And indeed, burgers were on the grill. But the smoke was coming from a much rarer sight on MIT’s campus — or, in fact, anywhere outside West Africa: a mud-and-straw furnace for smelting iron. For two months, students in class 3.094 (Materials in Human Experience) had been building the furnace, or bloomery, in……
REMINGTON, Va. (AP) — For years, there’s been a cardinal rule for flying civilian drones: Keep them within your line of sight. Not just because it’s a good idea — it’s also the law. But some drones have recently gotten permission to soar out of their pilots’ sight. They can now inspect high-voltage power lines across the forested Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia. They’re tracking endangered sea turtles off Florida’s coast and monitoring seaports in the Netherlands and railroads…
Though they are discrete particles, water molecules flow collectively as liquids, producing streams, waves, whirlpools, and other classic fluid phenomena. Not so with electricity. While an electric current is also a construct of distinct particles — in this case, electrons — the particles are so small that any collective behavior among them is drowned out by larger influences as electrons pass through ordinary metals. But, in certain materials and under specific conditions, such effects fade away, and electrons can……
At the age of 22, when Susan Conover wanted to get a strange-looking mole checked out, she was told it would take three months to see a dermatologist. When the mole was finally removed and biopsied, doctors determined it was cancerous. At the time, no one could be sure the cancer hadn’t spread to other parts of her body — the difference between stage 2 and stage 3 or 4 melanoma. Thankfully, the mole ended up being confined to……
The world’s third largest carbon emitter after China and the United States, India ranks seventh in a major climate risk index. Unless India, along with the nearly 200 other signatory nations of the Paris Agreement, takes aggressive action to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius relative to preindustrial levels, physical and financial losses from floods, droughts, and cyclones could become more severe than they are today. So, too, could health impacts associated with the hazardous air pollution……
LUGANO, Switzerland (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday the reconstruction of his war-battered country is the “common task of the entire democratic world,” as his prime minister laid out a $750 billion recovery plan once the guns of Russia’s invaders fall silent one day. As Russian forces continued their crushing advance in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Zelenskyy spoke by video message to the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Switzerland about the needs of the country that has been…
Independence Day arrives at a time when the United States is roiled by hearings over the Jan. 6 insurrection, awash in turmoil over high court rulings on abortion and guns and struggling to maintain the common bonds that keep it together. Yet many also see cause to celebrate: The pandemic continues to be on the wane and, despite its faults, America’s democracy survives. “I think many of us are feeling conflicted about celebrating 4th of July right now,” obstacle…
Today in History Today is Monday, July 4, the 185th day of 2022. There are 180 days left in the year. This is Independence Day. Today’s Highlight in History: On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. On this date: In 1802, the United States Military Academy officially opened at West Point, New York. In 1826, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted,…
HONG KONG (AP) — China’s famed Palace Museum began displaying artifacts in Hong Kong on Sunday amid a drive to build loyalty to Beijing in the former British colony that reverted to Chinese rule 25 years ago. Works of calligraphy and paintings on silk dating back more than 1,000 years feature heavily in the exhibition, housed in a seven-story building in a newly developed harborside arts district. The delicate artworks will be returned to Beijing for safekeeping after 30…
Coinbase has long been considered an important bellwether of the cryptocurrency market. Last year, when the company was expanding its workforce, adding institutional clients and issuing stock, crypto prices were hitting record highs. Now, in the depths of crypto winter, Coinbase finds itself slashing a fifth of its workforce, losing retail trading volume and contending with downgrades of its credit and stock. This week’s Crypto Biz dissects Goldman Sachs’ latest downgrade of Coinbase and also looks at the latest…
Cooperation is a core part of life for many organisms, ranging from microbes to complex multicellular life. It emerges when individuals share resources or partition a task in such a way that each derives a greater benefit when acting together than they could on their own. For example, birds and fish flock to evade predators, slime mold swarms to hunt for food and reproduce, and bacteria form biofilms to resist stress. Individuals must live in the same “neighborhood” to……
Explanation methods that help users understand and trust machine-learning models often describe how much certain features used in the model contribute to its prediction. For example, if a model predicts a patient’s risk of developing cardiac disease, a physician might want to know how strongly the patient’s heart rate data influences that prediction. But if those features are so complex or convoluted that the user can’t understand them, does the explanation method do any good? MIT researchers are striving……
This July 4 marks 10 years since the discovery of the Higgs boson, the long-sought particle that imparts mass to all elementary particles. The elusive particle was the last missing piece in the Standard Model of particle physics, which is our most complete model of the universe. In early summer of 2012, signs of the Higgs particle were detected in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, which is operated by CERN, the European Organization for……
Kerry Emanuel once joked that whenever he retired, he would start a “hurricane safari” so other people could experience what it’s like to fly into the eye of a hurricane. “All of a sudden, the turbulence stops, the sun comes out, bright sunshine, and it’s amazingly calm. And you’re in this grand stadium ,” he says. “It’s quite an experience.” While the hurricane safari is unlikely to come to fruition — “You can’t just conjure up……
