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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.

 
Molecules found in mucus can thwart fungal...
Candida albicans is a yeast that often lives in the human digestive tract and mouth, as well as urinary and reproductive organs. Usually, it doesn’t cause disease in its host, but under certain conditions, it can switch to a harmful form. Most Candida infections are not lethal, but systemic Candida infection, which affects the blood, heart, and other parts of the body, can be life-threatening. MIT researchers have now identified components of mucus that can interact with Candida albicans...

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MIT Corporation elects nine term members, three...
The MIT Corporation — the Institute’s board of trustees — has elected nine full-term members, who will each serve for five years; and three life members. Corporation Chair Diane Greene SM ’78 announced the election results; all positions are effective July 1. The nine full-term members are: Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87; Rafael del Pino SM ’86; José Antonio Fernández Carbajal; Danielle A. Geathers ‘22; William A. Gilchrist ’77, MArch ’82, SM ’82; Darryll J. Pines SM ’88, PhD ’92;...

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Helping dairy farmers raise healthy cows
Dairy farmers around the world have an information problem. To get the most accurate measurements of cow health and milk quality, many have to ship milk samples to labs or wait for a technician to come to the farm to collect milk samples from each cow. Now Labby, a startup founded by two MIT alumni, is helping farmers get a clearer picture of their cows’ health with a device that can test milk from individual cows in less than...

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Making the case for “fake lawyering”
Most people wouldn’t put the words “MIT” and “lawyer” in the same sentence. In fact, only 1,393 alumni — about 1 percent — are lawyers, according to the MIT Alumni Association. But a contingent of MIT undergraduates is steadily earning a reputation for its prowess in “fake lawyering.” That’s how head coach Brian Pilchik describes the premise of the MIT Mock Trial program, which consists of a group of about 30 students that competes against other colleges around the...

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Making data visualization more accessible for blind...
Data visualizations on the web are largely inaccessible for blind and low-vision individuals who use screen readers, an assistive technology that reads on-screen elements as text-to-speech. This excludes millions of people from the opportunity to probe and interpret insights that are often presented through charts, such as election results, health statistics, and economic indicators.  When a designer attempts to make a visualization accessible, best practices call for including a few sentences of text that describe the chart and a...

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When politics is local in the Middle...
As the old adage has it, all politics is local. That might seem a quaint idea in an age of social media and global connectivity. And yet, as a study co-led by an MIT political scientist finds, it may describe Middle East politics more accurately than many people realize. More specifically, sectarian identity in the Muslim world — especially the split between the Shia and Sunni sects of Islam — is often described as a transnational matter, in which...

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First-year students take center stage on Killian...
On a chilly Monday in May, MIT’s Killian Court was transformed into a festival of fun. Over 1,200 members of the community enjoyed hot dogs, fried dough, and bouncy castles before cozying up on picnic blankets to watch the main event. First-year students took to the stage to perform skits — or “PLAYsentations” — demonstrating the toys they created this semester in mechanical engineering class 2.00b (Toy Product Design). For the 150 students in the class, presenting in front...

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Cracking the case of Arctic sea ice...
Despite its below-freezing temperatures, the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. As Arctic sea ice melts, fewer bright surfaces are available to reflect sunlight back into space. When fractures open in the ice cover, the water underneath gets exposed. Dark, ice-free water absorbs the sun’s energy, heating the ocean and driving further melting — a vicious cycle. This warming in turn melts glacial ice, contributing to rising sea levels. Warming climate and rising...

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Inaugural Day of AI brings new digital...
The first annual Day of AI on Friday, May 13 introduced artificial intelligence literacy to classrooms all over the world. An initiative of MIT Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE), Day of AI is an opportunity for teachers to introduce K-12 students of all backgrounds to artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in their lives. With over 3,000 registrations from educators across 88 countries — far exceeding the first-year goal of 1,000 registrations in the United States...

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Engineers develop nanoparticles that cross the blood-brain...
There are currently few good treatment options for glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer with a high fatality rate. One reason that the disease is so difficult to treat is that most chemotherapy drugs can’t penetrate the blood vessels that surround the brain. A team of MIT researchers is now developing drug-carrying nanoparticles that appear to get into the brain more efficiently than drugs given on their own. Using a human tissue model they designed, which accurately replicates...

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How the brain responds to surprising events
When your brain needs you to pay attention to something important, one way it can do that is to send out a burst of noradrenaline, according to a new MIT study. This neuromodulator, produced by a structure deep in the brain called the locus coeruleus, can have widespread effects throughout the brain. In a study of mice, the MIT team found that one key role of noradrenaline, also known as norepinephrine, is to help the brain learn from surprising...

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In bias we trust?
When the stakes are high, machine-learning models are sometimes used to aid human decision-makers. For instance, a model could predict which law school applicants are most likely to pass the bar exam to help an admissions officer determine which students should be accepted. These models often have millions of parameters, so how they make predictions is nearly impossible for researchers to fully understand, let alone an admissions officer with no machine-learning experience. Researchers sometimes employ explanation methods that mimic...

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SMART researchers enable early-stage detection of microbial...
Researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, have identified a critical quality attribute (CQA) that potentially allows the development of a rapid and sensitive process analytical technology for sterility. Specifically, this technology enables the detection of early-stage microbial contamination in human cell therapy products (CTPs). Cell therapy represents one of the most advanced biotechnology revolutions in medicine, with strong potential to repair damaged tissues and treat a range of conditions such...

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Convenience-sized RNA editing
Last year, researchers at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research discovered and characterized Cas7-11, the first CRISPR enzyme capable of making precise, guided cuts to strands of RNA without harming cells in the process. Now, working with collaborators at the University of Tokyo, the same team has revealed that Cas7-11 can be shrunk to a more compact version, making it an even more viable option for editing the RNA inside living cells. The new, compact Cas7-11 was described May...

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“Zoom out”: Kealoha Wong ’99 calls on...
On Saturday, poet Kealoha Wong ’99 delivered the address at a special Commencement ceremony for the classes of 2020 and 2021, asking the graduates to look both outward and inward. He urged them to widen their perspective on life and recognize the enormity of human history and our natural world, but also to look into their hearts and grasp every opportunity to find meaning in their lives. “We are nobody/ and yet at the same time/ we are everything,”...

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