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Paul Parravano, who worked for 33 years to build enduring MIT connections with elected officials and the local community, died at his home in Arlington, Massachusetts, on Dec. 9. Parravano, who was 71, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer shortly after retiring in January from his full-time work as co-director of MIT’s Office of Government…

As 3D printers have become cheaper and more widely accessible, a rapidly growing community of novice makers are fabricating their own objects. To do this, many of these amateur artisans access free, open-source repositories of user-generated 3D models that they download and fabricate on their 3D printer. But adding custom design elements to these…

Chart captions that explain complex trends and patterns are important for improving a reader’s ability to comprehend and retain the data being presented. And for people with visual disabilities, the information in a caption often provides their only means of understanding the chart. But writing effective, detailed captions is a labor-intensive process. While autocaptioning…

When manipulating an arcade claw, a player can plan all she wants. But once she presses the joystick button, it’s a game of wait-and-see. If the claw misses its target, she’ll have to start from scratch for another chance at a prize. The slow and deliberate approach of the arcade claw is similar to…

Participating in an intensive three-week lab in Yucatán, Mexico, changed how MIT junior Penelope Herrero-Marques views her role as an engineer. The January trip was the first step in a new partnership between MIT D-Lab and Perkins School for the Blind, a Massachusetts-based national service provider and international nonprofit that strives to make education…

Before James Hermus started elementary school, he was a happy, curious kid who loved to learn. By the end of first grade, however, all that started to change, he says. As his schoolbooks became more advanced, Hermus could no longer memorize the words on each page, and pretend to be reading. He clearly knew…

MIT’s K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics has entered into a collaboration with the government of Sierra Leone to strengthen the capabilities and services of that country’s orthotic and prosthetic (O&P) sector. Tens of thousands of people in Sierra Leone need orthotic braces and artificial limbs, but access to such specialized medical care in this…

On Monday evening, inside a rainbow-lit Kresge Auditorium, a capacity crowd whooped and hollered and shook their pom-poms along to one of the most anticipated shows of the year: the final student presentations of 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes). Known on campus as “two-double-oh-nine,” the popular fall semester course challenges teams of undergraduates over three…

For many of us, the act of breathing comes naturally. Behind the scenes, our diaphragm — the dome-shaped muscle that lies just beneath the ribcage — works like a slow and steady trampoline, pushing down to create a vacuum for the lungs to expand and draw air in, then relaxing as air is pushed…