Dear Physics Community,

More on child care – the benefit is here and will pay the MIT subsidy even if you don’t use the placement service through care.com.  Christina tells me  https://www.bostonsbestbabysitters.com/ is very good (background checks, etc.). There is also online babysitting – I don’t know how well it works.  For more extensive help, see https://hr.mit.edu/covid19/resources or contact Ronnie Mae Weiss.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Advisories

• Summer Options for MIT Students Survey – This survey (on behalf of SORT) is designed to gather information on student needs for the summer as well as ideas of remote summer activities from both students and the broader MIT community. It still only has 77 responses. We are looking to amplify.
• MIT Video Productions virtual event services – Here are a few slides on the services MVP has been providing for virtual events.
• Departmental Survey Collection (i.e. survey of surveys) – The Community Continuity Group plans to conduct a community wide Pulse Survey. Before we move forward and to prevent any duplicate efforts, we would like to ask if your department recently surveyed your constituents. https://forms.gle/sHtxTPqhUV77gQVB6

Educational scenarios for the Fall – the OVC has collected 61 plans, including ours and consolidated, see below.  The initial impressions are: nobody liked three semesters, the social component of being on campus is very important, as is the equity between residential and remote students.  For the next step, the OVC will create 2-3 specific options to analyze.  You can see the responses here:

• Slide deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-Ebdj_WqqYNRscjWkSTh7JS78-T8Jiz-EBSg3iWu1x8/edit?usp=sharing
• Summary document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mvZ_pabNyyOzOKJGBPyWDR7pasl1vbQ7Q10ZvhLQ2DE/edit?usp=sharing
• All scenarios (note there is summary of the majority of the responses in a Google sheet as well as individual submissions):https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kvGH7WksEsBprkMIa2SzfF9XmmrOUiWv?usp=sharing

Physics Department

A talk from Frank Wilczek on anyons – 08:00-09:30, 14th May, 2020  (Boston Time)

Link of online talk: https://www.eeo.cn/webcast.php?courseKey=be687b5f133c9b66&lessonid=164021084

Talk Title: Quanta of the Third Kind: Anyons
Abstract:
Textbooks of quantum mechanics tell us that quantum particles are either bosons or fermions. Now they need to be revised, to make room for anyons. Anyons are a new kind of particle, with a kind of memory. I named them, and I have been exploring their properties theoretically since the 1980s. Now, in pathbreaking experiments, anyons have at last been observed. I will discuss the universe of ideas around anyons, using pictures rather than equations and emphasizing broad concepts rather than technical details.

Pablo II – second Nature paper from Pablo here, MIT news story on both papers.

More KOTO – Or sent a theory paper from Yotam Soreq (former CTP post doc, now at Technion) that made the PRL cover.

Los Endos

6 feet – Matt sent a raft of articles on the 6′ spacing rule, that included this article from the NYT.  I’m going to stick by my view that 6′ is the useful minimum and we should all practice keeping as far from people as reasonably possible to keep the viral loading low.  Thanks to Christoph for pointing out the second A in ALARA, As Low As Reasonably Achievable, in the case regarding the viral dose.

A really tough week – lots of zoom – 7 hours today.

Peter

P.S. I am posting these messages in my blog roll here. Thanks to Physics Council, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, Cathy Modica, Vicky Metternich, and Christina Andujar for input and comments on these messages.