May 14, 2009: New tissue scaffold regrows cartilage and bones

MIT engineers have built a new tissue scaffold that can stimulate bone and cartilage growth when transplanted into the knees and other joints. The scaffold could offer a potential new treatment for sports injuries and other cartilage damage, such as arthritis, says Lorna Gibson, MIT professor and co-leader of the research team.

Design of Medical Devices and Implants covers design, safety testing, and clinical trials of implants and other medical devices.

May 12, 2009: Nano-to-Macro Transport Process

MIT researchers are finding many uses for graphene, a form of carbon first identified as a theoretical possibility as early as 1947. Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus and others first worked with multiple layers of graphene in the 1960s when many scientists were saying that such an ultra-thin sheet of matter could never be found or even made.

Dresselhaus gave two guest lectures as part of 2.57 Nano-to-Macro Transport Processes, a course that covers energy levels, energy transport, and applications of nano-and microtechnology.

May 7, 2009: 3 Questions: Fixing the Hubble Space Telescope

Jeffrey Hoffman is a former space shuttle astronaut and professor of practice in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In "3 Questions," Hoffman talks about what the repair crew can expect during the fifth and final Hubble servicing mission on May 11.

For more from Prof. Hoffman, check out Aircraft Systems Engineering.

May 5, 2009: Robots on a recycling rampage

More than 150 robots, in a wide variety of sizes, shapes and capabilities, will battle it out on May 6 and 7 to see which can collect the most soda cans and simulated bales of trash and return then to a recycling facility all in under a minute. The matchups are the culmination of 2.007, a required class for sophomores in mechanical engineering, and it's an MIT tradition that goes back more than two decades.

April 30, 2009: The Dalai Lama Center For Ethics & Transformative Values

His Holiness the Dalai Lama's talk at MIT is among the inaugural events at the new Dalai Lama Center For Ethics & Transformative Values. Why MIT? WBUR's Bob Oakes asked just this question when he interviewed Tenzin Priyadarshi, MIT's Buddhist chaplain.

For a good look at the complex and important issues of ethics and politics, try American Science: Ethical Conflicts and Political Choices.

April 27, 2009: Advanced Organic Chemistry

MIT chemists have synthesized a compound that could open the door to new drug treatments for cancer. Mohammad Movassaghi, associate professor of chemistry, said his team was drawn to the compound not just for its anti-cancer potential but also for its fascinating chemical structure. Learn more about Advanced Organic Chemistry from Prof. Movassaghi in 5.43 Advanced Organic Chemistry.

April 23, 2009: Marathon Mathematics

In this video from Boston.com, MIT sophomore Keone Hon tackles some mathematical questions about the Boston Marathon. "A Fermi equation," Hon says, "is a kind of street-fighting mathematics technique." For more on the art of guessing results and solving problems, check out Street Fighting Mathematics.

April 20, 2009: Laszlo Tisza, physics professor emeritus

Laszlo Tisza, physics professor emeritus and an expert in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, died on Wednesday, April 15. He was 101. Earlier this year, OCW published materials from his 1976 course Applied Geometric Algebra after Samuel Gasster '77 rediscovered his notes from the course. Professor Tisza will be greatly missed by MIT and the physics community.

April 16, 2009: Finite Element Analysis of Solids and Fluids

This rich course teaches the fundamentals of finite element analysis of solids, structures and fluids. It contains a full set of lecture notes as well as student projects created using ADINA. And we think the submarine model is pretty great.

April 14, 2009: The Future of Energy

Policy makers gathered at MIT Monday to discuss promoting clean energy, combatting climate change, and creating new "green-collar" jobs. The forum comes ahead of what is expected to be a major debate in Congress over energy, global warming and economic policy.

MIT has long been a leader in energy research. We've organized courses on OCW that specifically address energy topics to make studying them along with us easy.

April 10, 2009: MIT Professor Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Associate Professor Patrick Doyle is among 180 artists, scientists and scholars awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The foundation selects fellows on the basis of "stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment." Doyle reports he will use his fellowship to develop soft functional microparticles. You can learn about scaling laws and the methods of continuum mechanics from Dr. Doyle in Molecular, Cellular and Tissue Biomechanics.

April 7, 2009: Connections

Connections is a new exhibit from the Sociable Media Group that explores the social potential of new communication technologies. The exhibit, which runs through September 13 at the MIT Museum, includes several panel discussions and lectures. The first happens Tuesday, April 7 at 6pm and features Judith Donath, whose course Techno-Identity: Who We Are and How We Perceive Ourselves and Others, looks at the mutable concept that is human identity and the ever changing impact on our identities by science and technology.

April 3, 2009: The Beeline Festival

The Beeline Festival starts this weekend. Hosted at the Broad Institute, the Festival gathers an exciting variety of musicians from across the country (and sweetens the deal with ice cream, wine and local honey).

The festival includes a performance by Ensemble Robot and will feature pieces by Paul Lansky. Lansky's "Mild und Leise" is sampled in Radiohead's "Idioteque" on the album Kid A. Both tracks, notes on the use of the sample and an incredible variety of other resources such as these are available in the Listening section of Composing with Computers I.