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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Bridging careers in aerospace manufacturing and fusion...
“A big theme of my life has been focusing on intentional inclusion and how I can create environments where people can really bring their whole authentic selves to work,” says Joy Dunn ’08. As the head of operations at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinout working to achieve commercial fusion energy, Dunn looks for solutions to the world’s greatest climate challenges — while creating an open and equitable work environment where everyone can succeed. This theme has been cultivated...

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Using seismology for groundwater management
As climate change increases the number of extreme weather events, such as megadroughts, groundwater management is key for sustaining water supply. But current groundwater monitoring tools are either costly or insufficient for deeper aquifers, limiting our ability to monitor and practice sustainable management in populated areas. Now, a new paper published in Nature Communications bridges seismology and hydrology with a pilot application that uses seismometers as a cost-effective way to monitor and map groundwater fluctuations. “Our measurements are independent...

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John Tirman, political theorist and executive director...
John Tirman, an MIT scholar in political theory and expert on U.S.-Iran relations and human security, passed away on the morning of Aug. 19 after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 72. Since 2004, Tirman served as the executive director of and principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies (CIS). During this time, he was a prolific and thoughtful — but always modest — leader of many of the center’s initiatives.  He spearheaded several projects on U.S.-Iran relations, and...

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Stranded assets could exact steep costs on...
A 2021 study in the journal Nature found that in order to avert the worst impacts of climate change, most of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves must remain untapped. According to the study, 90 percent of coal and nearly 60 percent of oil and natural gas must be kept in the ground in order to maintain a 50 percent chance that global warming will not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. As the world transitions away from...

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When a task adds more steps, this...
Life is full of processes to learn and then relearn when they become more elaborate. One day you log in to an app with just a password, then the next day you also need a code texted to you. One day you can just pop your favorite microwavable lunch into the oven for six straight minutes, but then the packaging changes and you have to cook it for three minutes, stir, and then heat it for three more. Our...

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Engineers fabricate a chip-free, wireless electronic “skin”
Wearable sensors are ubiquitous thanks to wireless technology that enables a person’s glucose concentrations, blood pressure, heart rate, and activity levels to be transmitted seamlessly from sensor to smartphone for further analysis. Most wireless sensors today communicate via embedded Bluetooth chips that are themselves powered by small batteries. But these conventional chips and power sources will likely be too bulky for next-generation sensors, which are taking on smaller, thinner, more flexible forms. Now MIT engineers have devised a new...

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Helping older adults stay safe and independent
Smartwatches and Fitbits are great for tracking movement, but they weren’t designed for the type of people for whom collecting movement data is arguably most important: older adults who use mobility aids like walkers. For such adults, a change in activity could signal a life-threatening problem: Falls are a leading cause of injury-based death for older adults in the U.S.  Decreased mobility could also signal problems like heart failure, depression, or cognitive decline. Now WalkWise is helping older adults...

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MeepCon comes to MIT
Meep is not just the sound made by the Road Runner and Beaker the Muppet. Meep is a software package that MIT physicists originally developed in the early 2000s as a custom code written in C++ to facilitate the academic research of photonic crystals. It was released as open source in 2006. After nearly two decades of continuous development and growth, involving contributions from more than 40 developers, Meep is now widely used in the photonics community to research...

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On the front lines of space innovation
George Lordos is not your typical graduate student. A degree in economics from Oxford University, an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a 20-year professional career were not the end of his learning journey. His longtime passion for space, particularly the prospect of making a sustainable society on Mars a reality, drew him back to school yet again, this time to study aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Lordos remembers vividly the impetus for this change in...

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Wesley Harris elected vice president of National...
This spring, some members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) — a group representing the world’s most accomplished engineers — were tasked with electing the institution’s next vice president. MIT’s Wesley Harris emerged as their top choice. Officially announced as NAE’s new VP, Harris will help advance its mission to expand U.S. engineering frontiers while based on MIT’s campus. “It is a delight to see Wesley Harris celebrated for his substantial achievements as a researcher, educator, and mentor,...

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Fighting poverty with direct cash payments
What’s the best way to help someone living in extreme poverty? Some might say improved access to food while others might focus on health care or education. All are worthy causes, but the truth is that the needs of people in extreme poverty vary. Walk through a slum in Kenya, for instance, and you might meet budding entrepreneurs, people who want to invest in education for themselves or their children, and even people who, given the ability, would simply...

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Power, laws, and planning
Think about almost any locale where people live: Why does it have its current built form? Why do people reside where they do? No doubt there are quirks of geography or history involved. But places are also shaped by money, politics, and the law — in short, by power. Studying those issues is the work of Justin Steil, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Steil’s research largely focuses on cities, drawing out the ways...

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U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren visits MIT to...
To celebrate the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 — which authorizes major funding increases for scientific research and provides about $52 billion for U.S. semiconductor research, development, and manufacturing — Sen. Elizabeth Warren paid a visit to MIT’s state-of-the-art facility for nanoscale science and engineering on Wednesday. She arrived at MIT.nano, a shared 214,000-square-foot nanoscale research center located in the heart of campus, one day after President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan measure into law....

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MIT scientists discover new antiviral defense system...
The following press release was issued today by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Bacteria use a variety of defense strategies to fight off viral infection, and some of these systems have led to groundbreaking technologies, such as CRISPR-based gene-editing. Scientists predict there are many more antiviral weapons yet to be found in the microbial world. A team led by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT...

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Scientists identify a plant molecule that sops...
Symbiotic relationships between legumes and the bacteria that grow in their roots are critical for plant survival. Without those bacteria, the plants would have no source of nitrogen, an element that is essential for building proteins and other biomolecules, and they would be dependent on nitrogen fertilizer in the soil.  To establish that symbiosis, some legume plants produce hundreds of peptides that help bacteria live within structures known as nodules within their roots. A new study from MIT reveals...

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