New York Times: Coursera, a distributor of some 200 free massive open online courses (MOOCs) that began five months ago with the participation of Stanford and Princeton Universities, has enrolled 1.35 million students and secured the involvement of 33 universities. New partners include Brown and Columbia Universities, which will offer two engineering MOOCs, as well as “specialized institutions like the Mount Sinai School of Medicine; public research universities like the University of Florida; and more international schools like the University of Melbourne, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.” Coursera’s “students come from 196 countries, with about a third from the United States and the next largest contingents from Brazil and India.” Higher education leaders have expressed “concerns about giving away content with no revenue stream in sight.”
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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