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.”
The Economist spotlights how MIT researchers created a virtual technique to decipher the contents of a letter that was sealed 300 years ago. The letter was originally sealed by its sender using the historical practice of securing correspondence called letterlocking. The new virtual technique “seems to hold plenty of promise for future research into a fascinating historical practice.”
A new imaging technique created by researchers from MIT and other institutions has been used to shed light on the contents of an unopened letter from 1697, writes Matt Simon for Wired. “With fancy letterlocking techniques, you will forcibly rip some part of the paper, and then that will become detectable,” says Prof. Erik Demaine, of the method used to seal the letter.
Guardian reporter Alison Flood explores the new technique created by MIT researchers to virtually unseal an unopened letter written in 1697. The researchers, “worked with X-ray microtomography scans of the letter, which use X-rays to see inside the document, slice by slice, and create a 3D image,” writes Flood.
Jana Dambrogio, the Thomas F. Peterson Conservator at MIT Libraries, describes the new technique developed by researchers at MIT and other institutions that has allowed for the virtual exploration of a letter that has been sealed since 1697. “It's quite beautiful and it's thrilling that we can read it without tampering with the letter packet, leaving it to study as an unopened object,” says Dambrogio.
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.