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Sponsored by Mathworks, the creator of Matlab and Simulink software

Highlights
Digital accessibility and its importance to engineers and scientists with disabilities
Digital accessibility issues in STEM education and practice
Making data and software tools accessible to all engineers and scientists
Importance of the accessibility of digital documents, including scientific publications and course textbooks
Improving accessibility of data through data sonification, graphical braille displays, and screen readers.

Read the agenda and about the amazing panelists here
https://www.mathworks.com/company/events/seminars/digital-accessibility-engineering-science-3874451.html#skip_link_anchor
Register here
https://www.mathworks.com/company/events/seminars/digital-accessibility-engineering-science-3874451.html
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Kes: Maybe some of you know Lindsay, who has been involved in many science- and tech-related projects here in the Boston area, including projects at MIT.

Astro Access - Tactile Graphics for Space Flight

From: 'Chancey Fleet' via Technology Programs at Andrew Heiskell Braille & Talking Book Library <heiskelltech@googlegroups.com>

Come help make space travel safer for everyone, including future blind and low vision astronauts.
If you are a disabled person aboard the International space Station, what accommodations do you need to become a trusted part of the working crew?
If you can't see, and you are in zero gravity, how does that change the way you get around?
On Tuesday October 18, from 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM Eastern, the library will host representatives of AstroAccess, a nonprofit working to ensure future space travel is accessible to everyone. The program will begin with a short introduction to AstroAccess by Lindsay Yazzolino and Sheri Wells-Jensen, two members of the blind crew who will fly aboard AstroAccess's zero G parabolic flight this December.
We are designing the world's first tactile way finding aids for a zero G environment, and we are are looking for people of all backgrounds to examine our progress and offer feedback.
We will show you the first examples of our tactile graphics system designed to provide
basic zero G orientation information such as which way is 'down' (should gravity return), and direction of emergency supplies and emergency exits. We need your feedback and suggestions.
If we can make space accessible, we can make any space accessible.

Where: Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library
40 West 20th St | NYC
We'll be hands-on with tactile graphics so in-person participation is encouraged, but we'll also have a Zoom for those who want to hear the discussion from afar.
Register here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdquunwFi_CIY88ofZvFLCNbDqtbMr-vfkfO9jn9OQhxkAKeg/viewform
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Kes: sorry this doesn't link to a complete article but hey, quantum physics is getting more queer all the time.

Physicists wonder if the Higgs boson is a hermaphrodite
By David Larousserie
Published on June 10, 2022 at 16h02, updated at 16h02 on June 10, 2022
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/science/article/2022/06/10/physicists-wonder-if-the-higgs-boson-is-a-hermaphrodite_5986332_10.html

There is another even more fascinating prospect. "Is the Higgs boson a hermaphrodite?" asked Mr. Sirois eagerly. In other words, can it reproduce by itself to give two identical Higgs babies? "The standard model of particples does not allow this. We have never seen a particle interact with itself. It would be a first," said Christophe Grojean, a physicist at DESY, a research center in particle physics and synchrotron radiation located in Germany.

This "reproduction" is all the more important to observe, and even to quantify, since it is at the very origin of the Universe. A few moments after the Big Bang, when the Universe was no bigger than a football and still very hot, all the forces and particles were, in a way, indistinguishable. Then cooling caused a major change, the same way liquid water becomes ice or a magnetic material suddenly loses its electrical resistance. That change broke the beautiful homogeneity, which specialists call "symmetry," of the Universe, and the particles and forces we know today became distinguishable. The particles acquired the mass that we know. And the details of what exactly happened during this key period depend on what is discovered about how the Higgs boson interacts with itself and reproduces itself. This means that observing the Higgs chain split in two means taking a great leap back in time to the origin of the matter that makes up the world and its contents.

You have 8.39% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
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Two-part transaction would turn edX into a public benefit company while generously funding a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening the impact of digital learning.
MIT News Office
Publication Date:June 29, 2021
https://news.mit.edu/2021/mit-harvard-transfer-edx-2u-0629

MIT and Harvard University have announced a major transition for edX, the nonprofit organization they launched in 2012 to provide an open online platform for university courses: edX’s assets are to be acquired by the publicly-traded education technology company 2U, and reorganized as a public benefit company under the 2U umbrella.

The transaction is structured to ensure that edX continues in its founding mission, and features a wide array of protections for edX learners, partners, and faculty who contribute courses.

In exchange, 2U will transfer $800 million to a nonprofit organization, also led by MIT and Harvard, to explore the next generation of online education. Backed by these substantial resources, the nonprofit will focus on overcoming persistent inequities in online learning, in part through exploring how to apply artificial intelligence to enable personalized learning that responds and adapts to the style and needs of the individual learner.

The nonprofit venture will be overseen by a board appointed by MIT and Harvard, and its future work will draw on ideas from current edX partners, as well as MIT and Harvard faculty.
continued below cut )
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Celebrate Harry's birthday by saying "Alexa, read Harry Potter, Book One."

Other nifty things to ask Alexa:

"Alexa, play ocean sounds."

"Alexa, when is high tide today?"

"Alexa, recommend a science podcast."

"Alexa, speak Klingon."

"Alexa, let's chat."
(Chat with 1 of the 10 teams competing in the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge, Amazon’s global university competition to advance conversational AI.)
kestrell: (Default)
Kes: the music of the spheres is nothing new, but this seems as if it would make a really vivid method for teaching physics to visually impaired students , rather than just the same old visual methods.
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-atom-music-atomic-world.html
More at
https://academics.skidmore.edu/blogs/jlinz/atom-scales/
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from
https://scitechdaily.com/new-lab-on-a-chip-could-enable-fast-easy-testing-for-colds-flu-utis-and-covid-19-at-home/

The chip, developed at Imperial College London and known as TriSilix, is a ‘micro laboratory’ which performs a miniature version of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on the spot. PCR is the gold-standard test for detecting viruses and bacteria in biological samples such as bodily fluids, feces, or environmental samples.

Although PCR is usually performed in a laboratory, which means test results aren’t immediately available, this new lab-on-a-chip can process and present results in a matter of minutes.

The chip is made from silicon, the same material that is used to make electronic chips. Silicon itself is cheap, however, it is expensive to process into chips which requires massive, ‘extremely clean’ factories otherwise known as cleanrooms. To make the new lab-on-chip, the researchers developed a series of methods to produce the chips in a standard laboratory, cutting the costs and time they take to fabricate, potentially allowing them to be produced anywhere in the world.

Lead researcher Dr. Firat Guder of Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering said: “Rather than sending swabs to the lab or going to a clinic, the lab could come to you on a fingernail-sized chip. You would use the test much like how people with diabetes use blood sugar tests, by providing a sample and waiting for results — except this time it’s for infectious diseases.”

The paper is published today (December 2, 2020) in Nature Communications.
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Harvard Medical School scientists have successfully restored vision in mice by turning back the clock on aged eye cells in the retina to recapture youthful gene function.

The team’s work, described today (December 2, 2020) in Nature, represents the first demonstration that it may be possible to safely reprogram complex tissues, such as the nerve cells of the eye, to an earlier age.

In addition to resetting the cells’ aging clock, the researchers successfully reversed vision loss in animals with a condition mimicking human glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness around the world.

The achievement represents the first successful attempt to reverse glaucoma-induced vision loss, rather than merely stem its progression, the team said.

If replicated through further studies, the approach could pave the way for therapies to promote tissue repair across various organs and reverse aging and age-related diseases in humans.

“Our study demonstrates that it’s possible to safely reverse the age of complex tissues such as the retina and restore its youthful biological function,” said senior author David Sinclair, professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at HMS and an expert on aging.

Sinclair and colleagues caution that the findings remain to be replicated in further studies, including in different animal models, before any human experiments. Nonetheless, they add, the results offer a proof of concept and a pathway to designing treatments for a range of age-related human diseases.

“If affirmed through further studies, these findings could be transformative for the care of age-related vision diseases like glaucoma and to the fields of biology and medical therapeutics for disease at large,” Sinclair said.

For their work, the team used an adeno-associated virus (AAV) as a vehicle to deliver into the retinas of mice three youth-restoring genes–Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4–that are normally switched on during embryonic development. The three genes, together with a fourth one, which was not used in this work, are collectively known as Yamanaka factors.

The treatment had multiple beneficial effects on the eye. First, it promoted nerve regeneration following optic-nerve injury in mice with damaged optic nerves. Second, it reversed vision loss in animals with a condition mimicking human glaucoma. And third, it reversed vision loss in aging animals without glaucoma.

The team’s approach is based on a new theory about why we age. Most cells in the body contain the same DNA molecules but have widely diverse functions. To achieve this degree of specialization, these cells must read only genes specific to their type. This regulatory function is the purview of the epigenome, a system of turning genes on and off in specific patterns without altering the basic underlying DNA sequence of the gene.

This theory postulates that changes to the epigenome over time cause cells to read the wrong genes and malfunction–giving rise to diseases of aging. One of the most important changes to the epigenome is DNA methylation, a process by which methyl groups are tacked onto DNA. Patterns of DNA methylation are laid down during embryonic development to produce the various cell types. Over time, youthful patterns of DNA methylation are lost, and genes inside cells that should be switched on get turned off and vice versa, resulting in impaired cellular function. Some of these DNA methylation changes are predictable and have been used to determine the biologic age of a cell or tissue.

Yet, whether DNA methylation drives age-related changes inside cells has remained unclear. In the current study, the researchers hypothesized that if DNA methylation does, indeed, control aging, then erasing some of its footprints might reverse the age of cells inside living organisms and restore them to their earlier, more youthful state.

continued at
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-reverse-the-aging-clock-restore-age-related-vision-loss-through-epigenetic-reprogramming/
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Turns out the six feet guideline was based on 1930s science, pre-fluid mechanics, and the cold dry winter environments indoors mean droplets evaporate more slowly
https://scitechdaily.com/social-distancing-isnt-enough-to-prevent-infection-how-to-detect-covid-19-super-spreaders/
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Kes: Though this is also true of *so* many virtual panels, technology and/or science fiction related, that I listened to this year.
Sadly, even if the majority of the panelists are female and there is only one male, imo, he will still jump in first and seize more of the discussion time than any of the other panelists.

As with many preferences, homophily, or a tendency to associate with similar individuals, tends to operate outside awareness.
We have learned that our intentions, and genuine egalitarian principles, are not enough to guide our behavior.
By: Abigail J. Stewart and Virginia Valian
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/why-its-so-difficult-to-accomplish-inclusion/

This article is adapted from Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian’s book “An Inclusive Academy.”

In 2002, the then dean of engineering at MIT, Thomas Magnanti, wrote in the foreword to the school’s report on the status of women that part of his attraction to engineering as a child had been its promise that anyone with merit could succeed. He was disappointed to discover that, at MIT, that was not so:

We learn, for example, about some of our women faculty colleagues, who despite their superb professional standing and despite the fact that they are highly valued by their faculty colleagues, have never been asked to serve on the Ph.D. committee of even one of their colleagues’ students in their own research area. Stunning.
....
biaswatchneuro
https://biaswatchneuro.com/
includes a formula for how to determine whether the number of women and men on a panel is what you would expect by chance, given the representation of women in the field.
A good starting point might be Jacqueline O’Neill’s timeless article at Foreign Policy,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/08/7-rules-for-avoiding-all-male-panels/
which swiftly outlines seven rules for avoiding all-male panels, or
‘manels
https://undark.org/2017/06/06/manels-all-male-panel/
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from the same MIT newsletter as the previous post

3 who continue doing important work well past age 65

It’s been quite a year for Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. His leadership through the pandemic has made Fauci perhaps the nation’s most trusted voice on COVID-19. Time magazine included him on its list of 100 Most Influential People in 2020 and the National Academy of Sciences recently awarded Fauci its highest honor, the Gustav Lienhard Award.
Quite impressive for a man who’s just two months shy of his 80th birthday.
The physician and immunologist may seem like an anomaly, but in the world of science he isn’t. Many of the nation’s leading research laboratories and universities are teeming with scientists well past the age of 65 who continue to make enormous contributions to their fields of expertise.
https://www.nextavenue.org/why-science-labs-love-older-scientists/
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The mask provides N95-level protection and can be sterilized in a variety of ways
http://news.mit.edu/2020/reusable-silicone-rubber-face-mask-0709
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Fun new Alexa skills:

• “Alexa, speak Spanish”
Hola! Alexa now speaks English and Spanish. Enable the multilingual mode today and enjoy a second language experience on your device.

• “Alexa, speak Klingon”

Also, Alexa loves science:
• “Alexa, recommend a science podcast”

and, because Alexa seems to have a hearing impairment sometimes, too, you can ask her
• “Alexa, tell me what you heard”
kestrell: (Default)
Kes: I mentioned this during a Zoom meeting, and some people hadn't heard of the study, so am reposting it.
Back in 2011, two scientists published a study in the Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England that illuminates a simple, at-home hack for this very phenomenon, which “can be a nuisance and even incapacitate” medical staff.
https://coolblindtech.com/how-to-keep-your-glasses-from-fogging-up-while-wearing-a-face-mask/

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