Dear Physics Community,

Breaking news – Feds drop charges against Gang Chen!  Letter from LRR and Universal Hub article.

The cold weather is really here, and IAP progresses.  The Globe declares, “Omicorn has peaked in Mass.” Deer Island (Globe article on Biobot founders here) continues to drop, slowing slightly.  The mRNA rate in the wastewater still exceeds that of the peak from a year ago — about double.  More people have COVID-19, but also Omicron generates many more virons per person, one reason for Omicorn’s virulence.  While the numbers seem to improve, I think many of us remain a ways from feeling at all safe.

We all hope the number of cases will ease and allow us more freedom to gather, eat together, and so on.  I make risk trades right now: I won’t go into Simons for a cup of hot chocolate because I want to allocate that risk increment for a trip to the tailor.  For me, this will be the way things remain for a time, and I think I will feel I have more risk to allocate.  I’ll have to recalibrate a lot when the term starts, and we all will spend more time on campus.  I felt different a year ago — the vaccine was on the way, and then everything would be fine.  I’ve learned differently.

After reading this comic (while waiting for Mathematica to do something), I looked up the word charge, as in electrical charge, and I wanted to know the entomology.  The QED defines charge as “A material load; that which can be borne, taken, or received” with the verb form meaning “A material load; that which can be borne, taken, or received,” perhaps related via old French to “cargo.”  Very exciting, making “charge” a gerund.

https://fisherp.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/MIT-Deshpande-Grants-Available-Please-forward-to-faculty.pdf

Above the Fold

• MIT tries to do a lot more in professional development for students, faculty, and staff.  Human Resources has just announced their classes and trainers for the Spring term.  I try to do one of these a month and find they are generally pretty good. Their Active Listening Workshop is quite helpful.

Announcements

• Junior faculty position at Northern Arizona University – here
• Last call for Alumni Class Funds – proposals due Jan. 28
• Desphande Grant applications are due Feb. 18.

Physics

• Observation of the X particle at CMS from Yen-Jie Lee and the Heavy Ion Group
• TESS observes 5,000th exoplanet, all opportunities for new friends

Dear Physics Community,

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  I always read something he wrote on this day, today will be “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”  If you are looking for smoother way of marking the occasion, the Boston Globe has suggestions here.

IAP continues – the Department and MIT are doing okay.  Not great, but okay.  At the 8 am meeting Friday (slides here), we heard that MIT intends to continue in-person instruction into the Spring term, hopefully relaxing COVID protocols as the term proceeds.  The contingency plan consists of isolation in place, additional testing, etc. but remote learning or sending people home was not discussed.  The Deer Island, a ten day leading indicator of the case rate,  rate has plummeted, leading us to hope things improve in the coming week.  The MIT rate has also gone up, reaching over 6% positivity two weeks ago and is coming down, now at 2.5%.

So, we are doing okay.  Not great, but okay.  I think we need to be cool for another two weeks.  Then something else will happen.

This week, I learned Sav-Mor liquors on the McGrath Highway in East Cambridge will move to Assembly Square.  Sav-Mor always had a message on their sign, the last one is here.  I liked their signs, but never bought liquor there.

Peter

Announcements

• Repperger Research Intern Program here
• Proposals for Alumni Class Funds due January 28 here
• Agilent Early Career Professor Award due Jan. 25, 2022 here
• Graduate Students’ Career and Professional Development here
• Alumni Class Funds proposals due January 28 here

Physics

• Martin Zwierlein makes cold tornados here
• Quantum solution to math problem in Quanta

Dear Physics Community,

Welcome to 2021!  We’re starting the year with an MIT News story on Prof. Kerstin Perez.

Other news is the Omicron variant, Deer Island tells the story.  Our five IAP subjects will all be remote, but MIT will be open for in-person lab work and some events, subject to increased COVID protocols, here. Good luck to all of us.

Update: Did a meteor explode over Pittsburgh?

During this IAP, please try out the Basic Service Pilot, subMIT, to access High Performance Computing, see the announcement below.  The Department will have to decide how to implement the Basic Service this term and user experience will subMIT will be important.  Please try it out and tell us what you think.

Peter

Above the Fold

• High Performance Computing for Physics – The recently inaugurated subMIT computing facility is a login pool that is designed to provide access to the basic research computing resources of the physics department and beyond.We would like to invite members of the physics department and their friends to take note and consider our offer to help to get set up and start attacking your hardest computing challenges. We are collecting input for problems for our one-day workshop on January 26, 2022 [1] and hope you will register for this workshop [2]. The agenda is for still wide open and will fill up during the first week of January.The workshop will present a number of in depth examples of more experienced users and includes detailed explanation and discussion of applications of new or simply interested users. If you have a specific computing intensive task you want to resolve even on the time scale of the workshop or if you are interested to purchase hardware and include it into the existing system, please send an email to <submit-help@mit.edu>.[1] workshop coordinates https://indico.cern.ch/event/1108229/
  [2] registration at https://indico.cern.ch/event/1108229/registrations/

Announcements

• DOE NNSA SSGF Applications Due 1/5/2022 – here
• IAP subject in High Performance Computing here
• Simons fopoundation grants in Mathematics and Physical Sciences here
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS) NSF 22-503 here

Physics

• Sensor based on quantum physics could detect SARS-CoV-2 virus from Paola Cappallero here
• “Newer, nimbler, faster:” Venus probe will search for signs of life in clouds of sulfuric acid from Sara Seager here.
• Could acid-neutralizing life-forms make habitable pockets in Venus’ clouds? Sara Seager –  news story, website
• Quanta has a couple of interesting graphic explanations of recent science stories from Ph.D. ComicsL g-2 explained here and Solar Parker Probe here.
• Fusion’s time may be nearing here