Don't know what it is yet, but Obama is going to spend $500 million so a bunch of guys at MIT can think about it!
"Academics turn minds to factories for a new era; MIT leads effort to reinvent field" December 06, 2011|By Mary Carmichael, Globe Staff
Over the last decade, more than 3 million Americans have lost their jobs as factory workers. It is a safe bet that most have little in common with Suzanne Berger. She has spent four decades as a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has 50 scholarly tomes and treatises to her credit, several written in French. She stands about 5 feet tall.
She does not, in other words, fit the stereotype of a burly worker on an assembly line. But Berger and other academics like her may represent the new face of American manufacturing.
Led by MIT and spurred by a $500 million White House initiative, universities nationwide are helping reinvent one of the country’s most critical industries. They are pouring money and political capital into measures that reach across disciplines to devise new products and produce them....
Why were the old ones sent away? They still seem to be churning out going concerns.
Oh, shift is over!
--more--"
And when they need to take a break to think:
"Novartis complex to fuse art, technology; Cambridge OK’s $600m project" December 08, 2011|By Casey Ross, Globe Staff
In a part of Cambridge filled with hulking science labs, Swiss medical giant Novartis AG is building a striking glass and granite building designed by noted architect Maya Lin.
Lin is among several prominent designers Novartis hired to create a $600 million three-building laboratory and office complex that will be the centerpiece of its worldwide research operations based in Cambridge.
Make no mistake, there is money out there.
Clad in glass, terra cotta, and granite, the complex will also include retail shops to fill in a large hole in the commercial strip along Massachusetts Avenue, as well as a 1.35-acre park adjacent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Lin’s concept is a building that gradually rises along Massachusetts Avenue, with a main entry and an interior courtyard filled with trees and meandering pathways.
“I wanted this to feel not like an isolated island, but something penetrable for everyone from MIT to walk around,’’ said Mark Fishman, the president of the company’s Institutes for Biomedical Research.
--more--"
