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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.

 
Leveraging schools for political influence
“When I began graduate school, the issue of states losing control over their central functions piqued my interest,” says Blair Read, a sixth-year doctoral candidate in political science. To tackle such a broad agenda, she zeroed in on the case of private schooling. “It has exploded worldwide, especially in lower- and middle-income countries, and I’m trying to explain the phenomenon — the politics behind what is happening and how it might change the political landscape,” she says. With survey...

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Launchpad for health care entrepreneurs
When computation and systems biology PhD student Elvira Kinzina was diagnosed with Lyme disease during her first year at MIT, she struggled to find a doctor specializing in the disease — even though Boston is renowned for its thriving health care community. She soon found out this was common for Lyme patients, with many specialists booked out months, years, or indefinitely. Now, she is involved with a new Independent Activities Period (IAP) program focused on health care entrepreneurship, and...

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Gina Raimondo: “Let’s get back to the...
The global semiconductor shortage, a major driver of ballooning U.S. inflation, is as much a national security issue as an economic issue, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said during a recent visit to MIT. Speaking at MIT.nano, a shared 214,000-square-foot research center for nanoscale science and engineering located in the heart of campus, Raimondo said that not long ago, the U.S. produced about 40 percent of the world’s semiconductors. Today, the nation makes only about 12 percent. By...

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Training STEM teachers to uncover students’ full...
In the summer of 2011, MIT PhD student Heather Beem travelled to a rural region of Ghana to try engaging students from low-resource schools in hands-on learning projects. She began by asking a group of high school students what they wanted to work on. “They said, ‘Anything, whatever you want,’” Beem recalls. Hoping to narrow things down a bit, she asked what kinds of materials they had to work with. “As soon as I mentioned materials, the atmosphere in...

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A new resource for teaching responsible technology...
Understanding the broader societal context of technology is becoming ever more critical as advances in computing show no signs of slowing. As students code, experiment, and build systems, being able to ask questions and make sense of hard problems involving social and ethical responsibility is as important as the technology they’re studying and developing. To train students to practice responsible technology development and provide opportunities to have these conversations in the classroom setting, members from across computing, data sciences,...

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Q&A: Elizabeth Wood on Russia’s invasion of...
In its first days, Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in late February has been met with substantial resistance. It has also created civilian casualties, a refugee crisis, a global movement to sanction Russia, and intense concern among observers around the world. MIT News asked Elizabeth Wood, professor of history at MIT and author of the 2016 book “Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine” (published by the Woodrow Wilson Center and Columbia University Press), to evaluate the situation, as of...

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Can the world meet global climate targets...
Like many of its predecessors, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland concluded with bold promises on international climate action aimed at keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, but few concrete plans to ensure that those promises will be kept. While it’s not too late for the Paris Agreement’s nearly 200 signatory nations to take concerted action to cap global warming at 2 C — if not 1.5 C — there is simply...

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Responding to the tragedy in Ukraine
The following letter was sent to the MIT community on Saturday by President L. Rafael Reif. To the members of the MIT community, Though 4,500 miles separate Kyiv and Cambridge, several factors make the shock of the Russian invasion and its terrible consequences feel very close to home. I write to let you know how MIT is responding to this catastrophe and to offer some personal reflections. Caring for members of our community First in our minds are our...

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Bridging the worlds of research and industry
Graduate student Nidhi Juthani was not content with just one graduate degree. Instead, she decided to earn two in one fell swoop, via MIT’s PhD in Chemical Engineering Practice (PhDCEP) program, which allows her to obtain a doctorate and an MBA concurrently. The combination is a perfect fit for Juthani, who wants to pursue a career bridging scientific research and industry. An undergraduate internship helped spark her interest in combining the two fields. As a chemical engineering manufacturing process...

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How to reach a tumbling target in...
In 2002, the European Space Agency launched Envisat, the largest civilian satellite (at the time) to go to low Earth orbit (LEO). For a decade, it observed our planet and sent back valuable data on Earth’s climate, tracking the decline of Arctic sea ice and more, until it went dark in 2012. One of the prevailing theories for its demise is that it simply ran out of fuel. As LEO becomes more crowded, Envisat is a school bus-sized example...

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Whimsy and alkene isomerization in the Wendlandt...
Isomers are compounds that share identical chemical formulae but differ in structure or configuration, affecting their physical and chemical properties. A common example is glucose and fructose; both isomers of C6H12O6 are metabolized differently by our bodies due to a different arrangement of the same atoms. The process of transforming a compound into any of its isomers is called isomerization. This important tool allows scientists to access molecules that are not easily obtained, such as certain alkenes, which are...

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Progress toward a sustainable campus food system
As part of MIT’s updated climate action plan, known as “Fast Forward,” Institute leadership committed to establishing a set of quantitative goals in 2022 related to food, water, and waste systems that advance MIT’s commitment to climate. Moving beyond the impact of campus energy systems, these newly proposed goals take a holistic view of the drivers of climate change and set the stage for new frontiers of collaborative climate work. “With the release of ‘Fast Forward,’ the MIT Office...

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Using artificial intelligence to find anomalies hiding...
Identifying a malfunction in the nation’s power grid can be like trying to find a needle in an enormous haystack. Hundreds of thousands of interrelated sensors spread across the U.S. capture data on electric current, voltage, and other critical information in real time, often taking multiple recordings per second. Researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab have devised a computationally efficient method that can automatically pinpoint anomalies in those data streams in real time. They demonstrated that their artificial...

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MIT entrepreneurs think globally, act locally
Born and raised amid the natural beauty of the Dominican Republic, Andrés Bisonó León feels a deep motivation to help solve a problem that has been threatening the Caribbean island nation’s tourism industry, its economy, and its people. As Bisonó León discussed with his long-time friend and mentor, the Walter M. May and A. Hazel May Professor of Mechanical Engineering (MechE) Alexander Slocum Sr., ugly mats of toxic sargassum seaweed have been encroaching on the Dominican Republic’s pristine beaches...

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Festival of Learning centers on guiding students...
The Festival of Learning is an annual event for MIT faculty, students, and staff, co-sponsored by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor to examine excellent learning practices and research. After a hiatus in 2021, the Festival of Learning resumed this January with a virtual format to explore how education at MIT has been transformed by world events, digital innovations, and renewed commitment to better serve its diverse student population. In Chancellor Melissa Nobles’ opening remarks,...

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