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MIT offers all its courses free online: University:
‘We are fighting commercialization of knowledge’ Oct.
10 — The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology has decided to publish online all its course materials — a $107,840
value. The MIT OpenCourseWare project
launched two weeks ago with a preliminary pilot that just scratches the surface
of MIT’s publishing ambitions. As
of Sept. 30, people with an Internet connection and a Web browser have been
able to access the syllabus, lecture notes, exams and answers, and in some
cases, even the videotaped lectures of 32 MIT courses. http://www.msnbc.com/news/819892.asp?0dm=N1ALT FDA panel: ‘Bubble boy disease’gene therapy trial should go
forward Oct.
10 — Gene therapy that saved a French baby’s
life three years ago probably also gave him a leukemia-like illness this
summer. But the side effect isn’t a big enough risk yet that genetic
experiments for children with an often fatal immune disease should stop, U.S.
scientists said Thursday. http://www.msnbc.com/news/819727.asp?0dm=T1BRH Oregon weighs universal health plan: Ballot measure would create nation’s most ambitious program
http://www.msnbc.com/news/818883.asp?0dm=H1HRH ASSOCIATED PRESS SALEM,
Ore., Oct. 8 — Every man, woman and child in
Oregon would receive full medical insurance — no co-payments, no deductibles —
under a measure on the Nov. 5 ballot that would create the first universal
health care plan in the nation. The question is whether Oregonians are willing
to pay higher taxes for a plan so generous it would cover even acupuncture and
massage therapy. “What we are proposing is ambitious and audacious, but we believe the
health care system now is in a crisis,” said Mark Lindgren, spokesman for the
Health Care for All Oregon campaign, sponsor of Measure 23. Under the existing system, he said, an estimated 423,000 of Oregon’s
3.3 million residents have no health insurance — about 70,000 of them
children. Nationally, the number
of uninsured is about 41 million. The Oregon plan would be financed by a new payroll tax of up to 11.5
percent on businesses and an increase in personal income taxes. The top rate would rise from its
current 9 percent to as high as 17 percent. |
