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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.

 
Daniel Hastings and Maria Yang appointed associate...
Professors Daniel Hastings and Maria Yang have been named associate deans of MIT’s School of Engineering. Their new roles took effect August 1. Hastings is the Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a role which he will continue in addition to his associate dean appointment. He will focus on advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the school and in collaboration with Nandi Bynoe, the School of Engineering’s Assistant Dean for Diversity,...

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Global warming begets more warming, new paleoclimate...
It is increasingly clear that the prolonged drought conditions, record-breaking heat, sustained wildfires, and frequent, more extreme storms experienced in recent years are a direct result of rising global temperatures brought on by humans’ addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. And a new MIT study on extreme climate events in Earth’s ancient history suggests that today’s planet may become more volatile as it continues to warm. The study, appearing today in Science Advances, examines the paleoclimate record of...

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Mehrdad Jazayeri wants to know how our...
Much of our daily life requires us to make inferences about the world around us. As you think about which direction your tennis opponent will hit the ball, or try to figure out why your child is crying, your brain is searching for answers about possibilities that are not directly accessible through sensory experiences. MIT Associate Professor Mehrdad Jazayeri has devoted most of his career to exploring how the brain creates internal representations, or models, of the external world...

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Electrifying cars and light trucks to meet...
On Aug. 5, the White House announced that it seeks to ensure that 50 percent of all new passenger vehicles sold in the United States by 2030 are powered by electricity. The purpose of this target is to enable the U.S to remain competitive with China in the growing electric vehicle (EV) market and meet its international climate commitments. Setting ambitious EV sales targets and transitioning to zero-carbon power sources in the United States and other nations could lead to...

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Considering the spiderweb
The spiderweb is an everyday architecture — non-monumental and easily overlooked. Yet artists and scientists are working to unlock the secret of its complex geometry, a mystery that could inspire everything from resilient new building materials to deeper understandings of the structure of the universe.    When artist Tomàs Saraceno first came to MIT in 2012, as the inaugural Center for Art, Science, & Technology (CAST) visiting artist, he had recently pioneered a new method of scanning 3D webs with...

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Machine learning discovers new sequences to boost...
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rare genetic disease usually diagnosed in young boys, gradually weakens muscles across the body until the heart or lungs fail. Symptoms often show up by age 5; as the disease progresses, patients lose the ability to walk around age 12. Today, the average life expectancy for DMD patients hovers around 26. It was big news, then, when Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sarepta Therapeutics announced in 2019 a breakthrough drug that directly targets the mutated gene responsible...

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System trains drones to fly around obstacles...
If you follow autonomous drone racing, you likely remember the crashes as much as the wins. In drone racing, teams compete to see which vehicle is better trained to fly fastest through an obstacle course. But the faster drones fly, the more unstable they become, and at high speeds their aerodynamics can be too complicated to predict. Crashes, therefore, are a common and often spectacular occurrence. But if they can be pushed to be faster and more nimble, drones...

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Biological engineers find a new target for...
Every year, more than 200 million people are infected with malaria, and nearly 500,000 die from the disease. Existing drugs can treat the infection, but the parasite that causes the disease has evolved resistance to many of them. To help overcome that resistance, scientists are now searching for drugs that hit novel molecular targets within the Plasmodium falciparum parasite that causes malaria. An international team that includes MIT researchers has identified a potential new target: the acetyl-CoA synthetase, an...

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Exact symbolic artificial intelligence for faster, better...
The justice system, banks, and private companies use algorithms to make decisions that have profound impacts on people’s lives. Unfortunately, those algorithms are sometimes biased — disproportionately impacting people of color as well as individuals in lower income classes when they apply for loans or jobs, or even when courts decide what bail should be set while a person awaits trial. MIT researchers have developed a new artificial intelligence programming language that can assess the fairness of algorithms more...

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Bio-inspired, blood-repelling tissue glue could seal wounds...
Inspired by the sticky substance that barnacles use to cling to rocks, MIT engineers have designed a strong, biocompatible glue that can seal injured tissues and stop bleeding. The new paste can adhere to surfaces even when they are covered with blood, and can form a tight seal within about 15 seconds of application. Such a glue could offer a much more effective way to treat traumatic injuries and to help control bleeding during surgery, the researchers say. “We...

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New device can diagnose Covid-19 from saliva...
Engineers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a small tabletop device that can detect SARS-CoV-2 from a saliva sample in about an hour. In a new study, they showed that the diagnostic is just as accurate as the PCR tests now used. The device can also be used to detect specific viral mutations linked to some of the SARS-CoV-2 variants that are now circulating. This result can also be obtained within an hour, potentially making it much easier...

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Reimagining an iconic design class
For the past 50 years, mechanical engineering students at MIT have convened on campus for a boisterous robot competition. Since the 1970s, when the late Professor Emeritus Woodie Flowers first challenged students to build a machine using a “kit of junk,” students in class 2.007 (Design and Manufacturing I) have designed and built their own robots to compete in the class’s final robot competition. For many students, the class and competition are a driving factor in their decision to...

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Gerald Wogan, professor emeritus of biological engineering,...
Gerald N. Wogan, the Underwood Prescott Professor of Biological Engineering, Chemistry, and Toxicology emeritus at MIT, passed away after a long illness on July 16 at the age of 91.  “Jerry” Wogan was a pioneering scientist who isolated, characterized, and established the mechanisms of action of many environmental toxins of great relevance to global public health. His leadership on aflatoxin research, a toxin that impacts the lives of billions of people, is a paradigm for environmental toxicology. His work...

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New method opens the door to efficient...
Biological engineers at MIT have devised a new way to efficiently edit bacterial genomes and program memories into bacterial cells by rewriting their DNA. Using this approach, various forms of spatial and temporal information can be permanently stored for generations and retrieved by sequencing the cells’ DNA. The new DNA writing technique, which the researchers call HiSCRIBE, is much more efficient than previously developed systems for editing DNA in bacteria, which had a success rate of only about 1...

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New drug combo shows early potential for...
Pancreatic cancer, which affects about 60,000 Americans every year, is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. After diagnosis, fewer than 10 percent of patients survive for five years.  While some chemotherapies are initially effective, pancreatic tumors often become resistant to them. The disease has also proven difficult to treat with newer approaches such as immunotherapy. However, a team of MIT researchers has now developed an immunotherapy strategy and shown that it can eliminate pancreatic tumors in mice. The...

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