MIT reports some of its researchers have figured out how to use X rays to virtually unravel and even read centuries-old letters that were carefully folded and "locked" in the days before envelopes were invented and offered some measure of privacy. Read more.

The New Haven Independent reports on what has become a national manhunt for Qinxuan Pan (shown right), who is considered armed and dangerous. Kevin Jiang was shot to death on Feb. 6.

Jiang was recently engaged to a woman who graduated from MIT before moving to New Haven to become a doctoral student herself at Yale.

Researchers at MIT report they've discovered that two sheets of graphene - an incredibly thin carbon hexagonal lattice - one layered atop the other, create an unusual "ferroelectric" property that could lead to "neuromorphic computing," which "could usher in new, faster information-processing paradigms." Read more.

An MIT professor who specializes in energy-related nanotechnology was arrested today to face federal charges that he hid contracts and grants awarded by Chinese universities and agencies from both the federal government and MIT. Read more.

A scientist's curiosity about an odd RNA discovery at MIT in the 1970s led to him winning a Nobel Prize and laid the foundation for the work that led to today's Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for Covid-19. MIT News interviews Phillip Sharp about what happened after he read a report that one virus's RNA was longer inside the nucleus of a cell it had invaded than it was in the rest of the cell and he wondered why.

Researchers at MIT, Harvard and Mass. General report progress in developing a "universal" flu vaccine that would work by getting the body to recognize a flu protein that rarely mutates but which the human immune system normally does not recognize. Read more.

Government lawyers agreed today to drop an ICE policy that would have forced foreign students to leave the country if they were unwilling or unable to find a school that would teach their classes in person. Read more.

The MIT Tech reports. The news comes a day after Harvard announced only freshmen and some other students would be allowed back. Both schools, meanwhile, now have to figure out what to do about international students the government wants to kick out.

A team of MIT researchers is working on a system through which people's phones would send out a constant stream of Bluetooth "chirps" that would then be picked up and stored by other people's phones. Somebody who tests positive for coronavirus could then upload his or her chirps to a database that others could then check to see if they were close enough to that person to warrant their own trip to testing site or to self quarantine. Read more.