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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.

 
J-WAFS launches Food and Climate Systems Transformation...
Food systems around the world are increasingly at risk from the impacts of climate change. At the same time, these systems, which include all activities from food production to consumption and food waste, are responsible for about one-third of the human-caused greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet.  To drive research-based innovation that will make food systems more resilient and sustainable, MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) announced the launch of a new initiative at an...

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Setting a new standard for hormone health
Half the population lives with monthly ovarian hormone cycles. Those cycles impact menstrual patterns, fertility, and much more, but stigmas around hormone problems have limited awareness about hormone health. Now, Aavia is working to help people understand their hormone cycle and its impacts. “These cycles impact quality of sleep, quality of muscle toning, energy, sex drive, skin health, mental health, energy levels — you name it — but nobody is talking about this,” CEO Aagya Mathur MBA ’18 says....

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Q&A: Options for the Diablo Canyon nuclear...
The Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California, the only one still operating in the state, is set to close in 2025. A team of researchers at MIT’s Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, and Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; Stanford’s Precourt Energy Institute; and energy analysis firm LucidCatalyst LLC have analyzed the potential benefits the plant could provide if its operation were extended to 2030 or 2045. They found...

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Embarking upon a leadership journey
Current developments in the Middle East continue to challenge people in the region and open windows to make a sustainable impact. Challenges like water access, health care, IT, vocational training, and others can be addressed collaboratively with entrepreneurial and novel problem-solving capabilities. To do so, future leaders need to understand the challenges through a regional lens while learning how to collaborate across borders to develop potential solutions. MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) combined 30 students, three Middle...

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Modeling the mechanisms of metastasis
Metastatic cancer is responsible for the vast majority of cancer mortality, but it is difficult for scientists to predict which cells will successfully complete their migration from primary tumor to eventual recolonization in a far-flung region of the body. Subject to a wide range of mechanical and physical forces in the bloodstream, circulating tumor cells can be trapped or damaged before they complete their journey. Additionally, many of the cells that do survive and successfully invade a new site...

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Scientists project increased risk to water supplies...
In 2018, Cape Town, South Africa’s second most populous city, came very close to running out of water as the multi-year “Day Zero” drought depleted its reservoirs. Since then, researchers from Stanford University determined that climate change had made this extreme drought five to six times more likely, and warned that a lot more Day Zero events could occur in regions with similar climates in the future. A better understanding of likely surface air temperature and precipitation trends in South Africa and...

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Hunting a “Jekyll-and-Hyde” molecule
MIT chemical engineers have developed a way of swiftly screening compounds to determine their therapeutic potential for certain kinds of cancers. With a genetically engineered sensor and high-throughput technology, their method probes for changes in cellular concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), a specialized molecule known as an oxidant. “The regulatory pathways of some tumors depend on elevated levels of H2O2,” says Hadley Sikes, associate professor and Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Professor in the Department of Chemical...

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Task Force 2021 and Beyond submits final...
A task force charged with reimagining the future of MIT has released its final report, 18 months after it began work in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic. The report, from Task Force 2021 and Beyond, offers 17 recommendations to strengthen and streamline MIT, and make the Institute more successful across its teaching, research, and innovation endeavors. President L. Rafael Reif, who charged the task force in May 2020, shared its final report today with a letter to the MIT...

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Networking on a global scale
While international travel continues to be limited in much of the world, MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) sought to capitalize on the increased digital connectivity brought about by the pandemic by developing cutting-edge virtual programs designed to allow students to be exposed to international education and build connections around the world. MISTI is MIT’s flagship international education program, with internship and research opportunities spanning more than 25 countries across six continents. In a typical year, MISTI facilitates...

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Toward speech recognition for uncommon spoken languages
Automated speech-recognition technology has become more common with the popularity of virtual assistants like Siri, but many of these systems only perform well with the most widely spoken of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages. Because these systems largely don’t exist for less common languages, the millions of people who speak them are cut off from many technologies that rely on speech, from smart home devices to assistive technologies and translation services. Recent advances have enabled machine learning models that...

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MIT collaborates with Biogen on three-year, $7...
MIT and Biogen have announced that they will collaborate with the goal to accelerate the science and action on climate change to improve human health. This collaboration is supported by a three-year, $7 million commitment from the company and the Biogen Foundation. The biotechnology company, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts’ Kendall Square, discovers and develops therapies for people living with serious neurological diseases. “We have long believed it is imperative for Biogen to make the fight against climate change central...

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3 Questions: Maaya Prasad and Kathleen Esfahany...
If you’re a frequent commuter through Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or a visitor to Massachusetts General Hospital, you might catch a glimpse of an art exhibit featuring some familiar faces. The exhibit, “The Poetry of Science,” pairs photographs of notable scientists, including MIT students and researchers, with poems about their research areas of interest. Two MIT students in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), Kathleen Esfahany and Suparnamaaya “Maaya” Prasad, were recently invited to participate in the program,...

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News from the Future #64
IFTF Foresight Essentials LEARN WITH IFTF FORESIGHT ESSENTIALSNovember 10  | 1:00 PM PST Join Institute for the Future’s renowned foresight learning experts Lyn Jeffery and Sara Skvirsky on Tuesday, November 10th at 1pm Pacific Time for a live 30-minute introductory webinar to see for yourself how IFTF Foresight Essentials builds world-ready, future-ready skills and mindsets. We can help you build foresight and foresight leadership into your daily work and practices!Register here. >> TRAININGIFTF Foresight EssentialsNovember 30–December 15 Finish 2021 with a futures...

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Mark Vogelsberger: Simulating galaxy formation for clues...
For all its brilliant complexity, the Milky Way is rather unremarkable as galaxies go. At least, that’s how Mark Vogelsberger sees it. “Our galaxy has a couple features that might be a bit surprising, like the exact number of structures and satellites around it,” Vogelsberger muses. “But if you average over a lot of metrics, the Milky Way is actually a rather normal place.” He should know. Vogelsberger, a newly tenured associate professor in MIT’s Department of Physics, has...

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Arthur Mattuck, professor emeritus of mathematics, dies...
Arthur Paul Mattuck, emeritus professor of mathematics at MIT, passed away on Friday, Oct. 8, at the age of 91. Mattuck came to MIT as a CLE Moore Instructor, a position he held from 1955 to 1957. He joined the faculty in 1958 and retired after 52 years of service in 2010. He continued to teach through fall 2019. In his specialty, algebraic geometry, Mattuck contributed to the theory of curves and abelian varieties, and to the Riemann-Roch theorem....

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