The scene. Photograph by Cory Gardner.

Updated with MIT info.

Kanako Miura, 36, a visiting scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, died this afternoon when she was struck by a dump truck, MIT and Stanley Staco report.

Boston Police report the victim was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after the 3:30 p.m. incident.

A mangled silver and black bicycle, believed to be hers, was found several blocks away on Bay State Road at Silber Way, Brian D'Amico reports.

Plans probably don't include restoring Charlesgate to its early 20th-century state.

State officials hold a meeting tonight to discuss options for the turnpike through the Back Bay and the Bowker Overpass - the decaying hulk that now speeds cars across the fetid remains of the Muddy River between Fenway and Storrow Drive.

At the session, which begins at 6 p.m. in the mezzanine conference room at the BPL in Copley Square, state transportation officials will discuss various options for improving the Back Bay for people encased in metal shells, including extending the overpass to the turnpike for people heading to the airport or just tearing it down altogether and replacing it with a simple surface road. Another possibility is a new offramp to Brookline Avenue.

State officials recently announced plans to tear down the equally decrepit Casey Overpass in Jamaica Plain and replace it with surface roads and parkland.

• Massachusetts Turnpike Boston Ramps Study

Nowadays, Charlesgate mostly brings to mind the crumbling ramp system connecting Storrow Drive and the roads of the Fenway - its underside a transient homeless camp next to a mucky "pond."

But once it was a bucolic connection between the Muddy and the Charles rivers, part of Olmsted's creative plan for both creating a key part of the Emerald Necklace and flushing out the Muddy.

Compare the above photo, from the Library of Congress's collection, and taken sometime between 1890 and 1901, to this Google Street View. The only thing the two have in common is the still standing residential building.

Some people want to tear down the Bowker overpass, built in 1967, and restore Charlesgate to its Olmstedian ideal.

Many years ago, I had just dropped my girlfriend off at church for Easter services and was heading back to Brighton when some jerk from New Hampshire plowed through a red light at Charlesgate and ran right into the front of my beloved Chevy Nova. Mats Tolander provides the latest proof that that whole interchange is just evil - photos of a two-car smashup this morning around 6:40.