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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.

 
Making machine learning more useful to high-stakes...
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in seven children in the United States experienced abuse or neglect in the past year. Child protective services agencies around the nation receive a high number of reports each year (about 4.4 million in 2019) of alleged neglect or abuse. With so many cases, some agencies are implementing machine learning models to help child welfare specialists screen cases and determine which to recommend for further investigation. But these...

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One autonomous taxi, please
If you don’t get seasick, an autonomous boat might be the right mode of transportation for you.  Scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Senseable City Laboratory, together with Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) in the Netherlands, have now created the final project in their self-navigating trilogy: a full-scale, fully autonomous robotic boat that’s ready to be deployed along the canals of Amsterdam.  “Roboat” has come a long way since the...

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3 Questions: Administering elections in a hyper-partisan...
Charles Stewart III is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT and a renowned expert on U.S. election administration. A founding member of the influential Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, Stewart also founded MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, which recently teamed up with the American Enterprise Institute to release a major report: Lessons Learned from the 2020 Election. MIT SHASS Communications asked Stewart to share some additional insights on the state of U.S. elections in advance...

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Chronicles of the epic mission to deliver...
The race to deliver a Covid-19 vaccine has been likened to a moonshot, but in several ways landing a man on the moon was easier. In his new book, “A Shot in the Arm: How Science, Engineering, and Supply Chains Converged to Vaccinate the World” (MIT CTL Media, 2021), MIT Professor Yossi Sheffi recounts the vaccine’s extraordinary journey from scientific breakthroughs to coronavirus antidote and mass vaccination. And he explores how the mission could transform the fight against deadly...

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Revisiting Dune: Insights for Foresight Practitioners
Revisiting Dune: Insights for Foresight Practitioners Oct 26, 2021 By Jacques Barcia, IFTF Research Fellow *Spoiler alert: The following contains spoilers regarding the book Dune by Frank Herbert (1965). I first read Dune by Frank Herbert as a teenager, and it was a mind-blowing experience. Originally published in 1965, it’s arguably the most popular science fiction book ever, with millions of copies sold worldwide and the subject of comics, TV shows, and movie adaptations—the latest of which just hit...

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Building Forecasts on the Future of Architecture...
Oct 26, 2021 By Mark Bryan, Director of Innovation + Research, M+A Architects When the pandemic hit, the architecture and design profession felt a twinge of collective anxiety over what this inflection point would mean for our industry. Workplaces and stores were going dark, homes became protective silos, and the places we gathered to play and socialize stood empty. The scope of this public health crisis had clear indications for the future of how people would experience public and...

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Carbon nanotube-based sensor can detect SARS-CoV-2 proteins
Using specialized carbon nanotubes, MIT engineers have designed a novel sensor that can detect SARS-CoV-2 without any antibodies, giving a result within minutes. Their new sensor is based on technology that can quickly generate rapid and accurate diagnostics, not just for Covid-19 but for future pandemics, the researchers say. “A rapid test means that you can open up travel much earlier in a future pandemic. You can screen people getting off of an airplane and determine whether they should...

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Legatum Center welcomes the inaugural Foundry Fellows
The Legatum Center for Development & Entrepreneurship at MIT recently introduced the inaugural cohort of Legatum Foundry Fellows. Hailing from eight countries, these 13 entrepreneurs have grown ventures operating in nine different markets across Africa. Having pioneered innovations in health care, fintech, education, and more, the Foundry Fellows are dedicated to transforming systems and improving lives on the continent. Launched earlier this year, the Foundry Fellowship is a first-of-its-kind fellowship focused on African entrepreneurs who have successfully grown ventures...

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Artificial intelligence sheds light on how the...
In the past few years, artificial intelligence models of language have become very good at certain tasks. Most notably, they excel at predicting the next word in a string of text; this technology helps search engines and texting apps predict the next word you are going to type. The most recent generation of predictive language models also appears to learn something about the underlying meaning of language. These models can not only predict the word that comes next, but...

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MIT welcomes Virginia Rometty as its next...
Virginia M. “Ginni” Rometty, a business leader and champion of diversity in the workplace, will serve as the next MIT Visiting Innovation Fellow for the coming academic year. Formerly chairperson, president, and CEO of IBM, Rometty helped streamline the company’s portfolio by transforming it into a leader in AI, hybrid cloud, and quantum computing, both within the company and through acquisition. Under Rometty’s leadership, IBM acquired 65 companies, including Red Hat, a provider of enterprise open-source solutions, which was...

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IFTF Equitable Enterprise initiative Newsletter
Signals From the Future A signal is a disruptive innovation that feels like the beginning of a possible future. A signal can be an unexpected product, practice, technology, event, data point, or organization that has the potential to catch on. What’s outlandish today could be mainstream in a few years.   Is rest a new form of resistance?  The Nap Ministry believes rest is a spiritual practice and a racial and social justice issue. It explores the liberating and restorative power of...

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Fifteen MIT faculty honored as “Committed to...
In a normal academic year at MIT, the guidance and mentoring offered by faculty advisors to their graduate students is of paramount importance. This has only become more true during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, as the entire world was thrust into uncertainty.  Very suddenly, activities that were once commonplace were now shrouded in fear; people were confined to their homes, unable to see family and friends; and academic life at MIT was completely disrupted overnight. Many graduate students were...

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At MIT, Nobel laureate Frances Arnold describes...
“As engineers, we want to create things that don’t necessarily exist on the planet, or may have never existed, but that solve real problems,” said Frances H. Arnold at the 2021 Hoyt C. Hottel Lecture in Chemical Engineering on Oct. 1. Harnessing the process of evolution to optimize and create enzymes, Arnold, the Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at Caltech, launched a field of engineering with applications in alternative energy, medicine, and diverse industries. Her research...

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Coupling power and hydrogen sector pathways to...
Governments and companies worldwide are increasing their investments in hydrogen research and development, indicating a growing recognition that hydrogen could play a significant role in meeting global energy system decarbonization goals. Since hydrogen is light, energy-dense, storable, and produces no direct carbon dioxide emissions at the point of use, this versatile energy carrier has the potential to be harnessed in a variety of ways in a future clean energy system. Often considered in the context of grid-scale energy storage,...

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Innovating delivery of financial services for Asian...
The MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node recently hosted its annual fintech entrepreneurship program, called MIT Entrepreneurship and Fintech Integrator (MEFTI). Designed for student innovators from MIT and Hong Kong, the program offers a real-world lens into Asia’s burgeoning financial services sector. Program partners this year included the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, DBS Bank, and WeBank, where senior leaders provided insights into business needs, helping students connect theory into practice. Due to Covid-19, MIT students participated remotely while Hong Kong...

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