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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.

 
Solar-powered desalination device wins MIT $100K competition
The winner of this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is commercializing a new water desalination technology. Nona Desalination says it has developed a device capable of producing enough drinking water for 10 people at half the cost and with 1/10th the power of other water desalination devices. The device is roughly the size and weight of a case of bottled water and is powered by a small solar panel. “Our mission is to make portable desalination sustainable and easy,”...

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When dueling narratives deepen a divide
For more than four decades, the U.S. and Iran have had a relentlessly poor relationship. To be sure, it is hardly a shock that tensions would run high between the countries following the hostage crisis of 1979-1981, when Iran held more than 50 U.S. diplomats in captivity for 444 days. Even so, little progress has been made in U.S.-Iran relations in subsequent years. Why is this? One factor could be that the dominant stories framing each country’s politics combine...

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Is it neuroscience? Chemistry? Art? Wulff Lecture...
A pivotal moment in Polina Anikeeva’s career was when she looked at an MRI scan of Parkinson’s disease patient, about a decade ago. Now professor of materials science and engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, Anikeeva had recently worked on optoelectronics, devices that can detect and control light, and her work was used to illuminate the quantum-dot displays on Samsung TVs. But Anikeeva’s research interests started to stray into biology and neuroscience, disciplines outside her immediate orbit....

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3 Questions: Daniel Anderson on the progress...
Two mRNA vaccines, which received emergency authorization in late 2020, have proven critical in the fight against Covid-19. These vaccines, the first of their kind, were the culmination of decades of research on RNA. Delivered as strands of mRNA that encode a viral protein, the vaccines enter cells and begin producing proteins, allowing the immune system to recognize the virus if encountered later. Following the success of Covid-19 vaccines, researchers hope that mRNA vaccines and therapies will prove useful...

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A bright light on New York’s Bengali...
When Alaudin Ullah was growing up in East Harlem in the 1970s and 1980s, he loved hip-hop, graffiti art, and the New York Yankees, like many kids did at the time. Still, there was one readily evident difference between Ullah and his peers. Ullah’s parents were from Bangladesh, making them the only South Asian family he knew in the Carver Houses, their public-housing project. Ullah had to explain certain things to other kids, for example that the garment his...

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MIT students and postdocs advocate for increased...
Sixteen MIT students and postdocs recently traveled to Washington to advocate for federal funding of scientific research for the 2023 fiscal year. Congressional Visit Days (CVD) are an effort organized by the MIT Science Policy Initiative (SPI), a student group that works at the intersection of policy and research. On April 5-6, students met with 34 congressional offices representing 18 states to speak with congresspeople and staffers about why scientific funding matters to them and how it has influenced...

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Three from MIT elected to the National...
The National Academy of Sciences has elected 120 new members and 30 international associates, including three MIT professors — Angela Belcher, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, and Ronitt Rubinfeld — in recognition of their achievements in original research. Angela Belcher is the James Mason Crafts Professor of Biological Engineering and Materials Science, a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and the head of the Department of Biological Engineering.  She is a biological and materials engineer with expertise...

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Connecting MIT students with women leading in...
Kim Vo ’98, SM ’99, a corporate vice president at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), joined the semiconductor industry for three reasons. “First, it’s extremely cool technology; it’s cutting edge. The second is all the products we create: they touch everyone,” she recently said in a talk at MIT. “And the third reason is because just like at MIT, I get to work with some of the world’s smartest people.” Vo revealed her motivation during her keynote presentation at the...

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Astronomers snap first-ever image of supermassive black...
Black holes are invisible by nature. Their pull is inescapable, forever trapping any light that falls into their gravitational abyss. But just beyond a black hole’s point of no return, light persists, and its patterns, like a photo negative, can reveal a black hole’s lurking presence. Now an international team of astronomers, including researchers at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, has captured the light around our own supermassive black hole, revealing for the first time, an image of Sagittarius A* (Sgr...

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MIT Climate “Plug-In” highlights first year of...
In a combined in-person and virtual event on Monday, members of the three working groups established last year under MIT’s “Fast Forward” climate action plan reported on the work they’ve been doing to meet the plan’s goals, including reaching zero direct carbon emissions by 2026. Introducing the session, Vice President for Research Maria Zuber said that “many universities have climate plans that are inward facing, mostly focused on the direct impacts of their operations on greenhouse gas emissions. And...

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Technique protects privacy when making online recommendations
Algorithms recommend products while we shop online or suggest songs we might like as we listen to music on streaming apps. These algorithms work by using personal information like our past purchases and browsing history to generate tailored recommendations. The sensitive nature of such data makes preserving privacy extremely important, but existing methods for solving this problem rely on heavy cryptographic tools requiring enormous amounts of computation and bandwidth. MIT researchers may have a better solution. They developed a...

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Peter Shor receives 2022-2023 Killian Award
Renowned mathematician and quantum computing pioneer Peter W. Shor PhD ’85 has been named the recipient of MIT’s 2022-2023 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honor the Institute faculty can bestow upon one of its members each academic year. The Killian Award citation credits Shor, who is the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics, with having made “seminal contributions that have forever shaped the foundations of quantum computing. Indeed, quantum computing exists today, in practice, because of...

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Five from MIT Named 2022 Knight-Hennessy Scholars
MIT seniors Desmond Edwards, Michelle Lee, and Syamantak Payra; graduate student Tomás Guarna; and Pranav Lalgudi ’21 have been honored by this year’s Knight-Hennessy Scholars program. They will head to Stanford University this fall to commence their doctoral programs. Knight-Hennessy Scholars receive full funding for up to three years of graduate studies in any field at Stanford University. Fellows, who hail from countries around the world, also participate in the King Global Leadership Program, which aims to prepare them...

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A brain circuit in the thalamus helps...
As people age, their working memory often declines, making it more difficult to perform everyday tasks. One key brain region linked to this type of memory is the anterior thalamus, which is primarily involved in spatial memory — memory of our surroundings and how to navigate them. In a study of mice, MIT researchers have identified a circuit in the anterior thalamus that is necessary for remembering how to navigate a maze. The researchers also found that this circuit...

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MIT class journeys to fascinating places where...
Even for a second-year PhD student researching the mechanics of living cells, the influence of physical forces within the world of living things is a source of wonder. “I did undergrad in engineering mechanics, and ever since I started to look at cells, the more I’ve found it fascinating to look at them as delicate ‘machines,’” says Haiqian Yang. “The cells are ‘smart’ for sure, but I believe they cannot escape physical laws. So where is the limit? Are...

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