MIT’s biology department is offering a new online class this fall called COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 and the Pandemic. The class will be led by Richard Young and Facundo Batista and will include guest lectures by several leading authorities on Covid-19, coronaviruses, epidemiology, and immune systems like Anthony Fauci, Michael Mina, and Akiko Iwasaki. Here’s the course description and syllabus.
Lectures by leading experts on the fundamentals of coronavirus and host cell biology, immunology, epidemiology, clinical disease, and vaccine and therapeutic development.
The first class is today, Sept 1st, at 11:30am ET and meets on Tuesday through December 8. Lectures are via live video but will be archived if you miss a class. There’s no homework or outside reading (it’s just the lectures), no pre-requisites needed, and it’s a 1-credit pass/fail exploratory course, so despite the source and subject matter, it should be fairly accessible. I’m taking the course and will let you know how it goes! (thx, meg)
Update: Here’s an archive of the first lecture by Bruce Walker of the Ragon Institute.
Quick update on MIT professor Seymour Papert, who was struck by a motorbike in Hanoi in Dec 2006. “Prof Papert’s family said that he had been discharged from the hospital in Boston in the US. He is now still undergoing treatment at home. Luckily enough, he will not have any after-effects after the head trauma and now he can speak.”
Update:Here’s a more accurate update on Dr. Papert’s progress, courtesy of his family: “Seymour continues to make steady progress. He is regaining strength, is becoming more physically active, and is regaining speech. On Friday, January 5, he was able to leave Massachusetts General Hospital for a rehabilitation center in Bangor, Maine, closer to his home. His doctors are expecting a long period of gradual improvement, which could take many months.” (thx, artemis)
The $100 Laptop being designed by the MIT Media Lab was recently unveiled. It’s a bright green, has a hand-crank for recharging the battery, flash memory, USB ports, networking, etc. The target audience is children in third-world countries.
“I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by ‘picking up’ and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside.”
OPENSTUDIO was announced at the conference today by John Maeda. Keith sez about the project: “described as an experiment in creativity, collaboration, and capitalism, Open Studio is designed to simplify tools for the creative process and provide a pseudo-currency model for tool use and sharing.” Gotta go check this one out in the Media Lab space here.
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