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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.

 
Ana Pantelic appointed executive director of MIT...
MIT D-Lab recently welcomed new Executive Director Ana Pantelic to its team. Pantelic has worked at the confluence of systems change and social innovation and brings nearly 15 years of experience in policy and practice from Latin America, East Africa, and the Balkans. “As we prepare to enter our third decade, we are excited to have Ana on board to guide our vision and help implement our goal to deepen and broaden D-Lab’s impact at MIT and in the...

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MIT economist Nancy Rose receives the Carolyn...
MIT economist Nancy L. Rose, the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics, has been awarded the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP). The annual prize, named in honor of the late Wellesley College faculty member who was the first chair of CSWEP, recognizes an individual who has furthered the status of women in the economics profession through example, achievements, increasing our understanding of how...

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Professor Emeritus Frederick Frey, a leader in...
MIT Professor Emeritus Frederick A. Frey, a geochemist whose innovative research unlocked many mysteries of the Earth’s interior, died Sept. 13 in Natick, Massachusetts. He was 83. Frey was a pioneer of trace element geochemistry in the study of Earth’s mantle. He established himself as a leading geochemist early in his career by introducing novel applications of techniques and instrumentation — such as radiochemical neutron activation analysis, integrating it with X-ray fluorescence, isotope dilution, radiogenic isotope ratios and field...

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Budding coders create apps aimed at real-world...
How can computer science be used to help make the world a better place? It’s a lofty question, but one that drives the team behind MIT App Inventor, a virtual programming platform that allows budding programmers of all ages to create their own apps. Following a year of disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the App Inventor team hosted its second annual virtual Appathon for Good this summer, a marathon-like event during which over 1,000 coders used the App...

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MIT brings Campaign for a Better World...
MIT has announced the conclusion of its Campaign for a Better World, which raised $6.24 billion to support the Institute’s work on some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Altogether, 112,703 individuals and organizations contributed to the campaign, which was publicly launched in 2016 and formally ran from July 2011 to June 2021. Sixty-four percent of all donors were MIT alumni, while more than 56,000 donors made their first gift to MIT during the campaign. “Everywhere I traveled throughout...

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Freedom Dreaming: Calvin Williams Answers Your Questions...
Freedom Dreaming: Calvin Williams Answers Your Questions on Afrofuturism Sep 29, 2021 How can we think about the future outside the social construct of time? How can we create narratives that imagine new possible realities rather than offer escapist fantasies? Where can you learn more about Afrofutures? On Thursday, August 12th, IFTF hosted a Foresight Talks webinar with Afrofuturist Calvin Williams, Founder of Wakanda Dream Lab, who spoke about freedom dreaming and the methods of Afrofutures (you can find...

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The language of change
Ryan Conti came to MIT hoping to find a way to do good things in the world. Now a junior, his path is pointing toward a career in climate science, and he is preparing by majoring in both math and computer science and by minoring in philosophy. Language for catalyzing change Philosophy matters to Conti not only because he is interested in ethics — questions of right and wrong — but because he believes the philosophy of language can...

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3 Questions: Paula Hammond and Tim Jamison...
Launched in June, the MIT Ad Hoc Committee on Graduate Advising and Mentoring is aimed at delivering a strategic plan to guide and inform the development of effective mentoring policies and programs that would be implemented at the Institute. Made up of 10 graduate students and 11 other members representing staff and faculty, the committee plans to include elements of the recommendations provided in a 2019 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) on the...

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Foresight Forensics: Breaking the Rules
Foresight Forensics: Breaking the Rules Sep 28, 2021 By Jamais Cascio The process of creating forecasts, especially scenario-based forecasts, is simultaneously creative and structured. On the one hand, you want the scenario to engage the reader, provoking them into new perspectives on an issue. On the other, you want the forecast to be grounded in plausibility. This balance can be tricky, and there are pitfalls that can be easy to stumble into. I wrote a quick list of those...

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Zeroing in on the origins of Earth’s...
Some time in Earth’s early history, the planet took a turn toward habitability when a group of enterprising microbes known as cyanobacteria evolved oxygenic photosynthesis — the ability to turn light and water into energy, releasing oxygen in the process. This evolutionary moment made it possible for oxygen to eventually accumulate in the atmosphere and oceans, setting off a domino effect of diversification and shaping the uniquely habitable planet we know today.   Now, MIT scientists have a precise...

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Citizens emerge from the slums
Do the world’s nearly 1 billion urban poor, who subsist without legal housing, reliable water and sewer infrastructure, and predictable employment, lack political engagement as well? Ying Gao does not buy the claim by many social scientists that social and economic marginalization necessarily means political marginalization. “My results contradict the prevailing wisdom about slums and the political behaviors they are believed to foster,” says Gao, a doctoral student in political science. “I’m discovering that people do not participate less...

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Counting cells may shed light on how...
As tumors grow within an organ, they also release cells that enter the bloodstream. These cells can travel to other organs, seeding new tumors called metastases. MIT engineers have now developed a technique that, for the first time, allows them to measure the generation rate of these circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in mice. Their approach, which also reveals how long CTCs survive once released into the bloodstream, could help scientists learn more about how different types of cancers spread...

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Lindsey Backman: Biochemist, mentor, and advocate
Raised in Tampa, Florida, Lindsey Backman takes pride in her family’s history and its role in the vibrant Cuban American community there. She remembers the weekends she would spend as a kid, getting café con leche with her grandparents and dancing in the studio with her friends. The cultural experiences she shared with friends, family, and  neighbors growing up helped her feel comfortable being herself while growing up, and showed her from an early age how valuable a welcoming...

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Using AI and old reports to understand...
Getting a quick and accurate reading of an X-ray or some other medical images can be vital to a patient’s health and might even save a life. Obtaining such an assessment depends on the availability of a skilled radiologist and, consequently, a rapid response is not always possible. For that reason, says Ruizhi “Ray” Liao, a postdoc and a recent PhD graduate at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), “we want to train machines that are capable...

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