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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.

 
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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This touchy-feely glove senses and maps tactile...
When you pick up a balloon, the pressure to keep hold of it is different from what you would exert to grasp a jar. And now engineers at MIT and elsewhere have a way to precisely measure and map such subtleties of tactile dexterity. The team has designed a new touch-sensing glove that can “feel” pressure and other tactile stimuli. The inside of the glove is threaded with a system of sensors that detects, measures, and maps small changes...

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How authoritarian leaders maintain support
How do authoritarian regimes sustain their popularity? A novel study in China led by MIT scholars shows that anticorruption punishments meted out by government authorities receive significant support among citizens — who believe such actions demonstrate both competence and morally righteous leadership. The findings help explain how authoritarian governments endure, not merely based on domination and fear, but as regimes generating positive public support over time. “What we find is that not only does the punishment of corrupt officials...

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Finding common ground in Malden
When disparate groups convene around a common goal, exciting things can happen. That is the inspiring story unfolding in Malden, Massachusetts, a city of about 60,000 — nearly half people of color — where a new type of community coalition continues to gain momentum on its plan to build a climate-resilient waterfront park along its river. The Malden River Works (MRW) project, recipient of the inaugural Leventhal City Prize, is seeking to connect to a contiguous greenway network where...

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Using graphene foam to filter toxins from...
Some kinds of water pollution, such as algal blooms and plastics that foul rivers, lakes, and marine environments, lie in plain sight. But other contaminants are not so readily apparent, which makes their impact potentially more dangerous. Among these invisible substances is uranium. Leaching into water resources from mining operations, nuclear waste sites, or from natural subterranean deposits, the element can now be found flowing out of taps worldwide. In the United States alone, “many areas are affected by...

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Kristy Johnson: Expanding communication for all
As a teenager, Kristy Johnson thought she had her career all planned out. Raised in a small town in Indiana, she spent much of her childhood stargazing and mapping constellations. She dreamed of becoming an astrophysicist and pursued a rigorous academic path. After achieving top honors as an undergraduate, Johnson immediately began a PhD program in physics at the University of Maryland. Everything changed when she discovered her son, Felix, had a rare genetic disorder, one with only seven...

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Matching health care offices with short-term workers
For small health-care groups like dentist’s offices, one sick staff member can mean a day’s worth of cancelled appointments. Such offices can either continue short-staffed, which could negatively affect patient care, or reschedule appointments, potentially delaying critical procedures and screenings. The MIT alumnus-founded Stynt is solving that problem by helping health care offices fill last-minute shift openings for positions including dental hygienists, assistants, office managers and dentists. Stynt’s online platform lets offices post openings that qualified professionals can then...

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3 Questions: David Kaiser and Julie Shah...
David Kaiser and Julie Shah are on a mission to prepare students and facilitate research to address the broad challenges and opportunities associated with computing. As associate deans of Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) in the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, Kaiser and Shah are advancing a number of initiatives they hope will get students and faculty to reflect on the potential social, ethical, and policy implications of new technologies. To help guide their efforts,...

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Knight Science Journalism Program announces 2021-22 fellows
The Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT (KSJ) has announced that it has selected a group of 21 distinguished science journalists for its 2021-22 project fellowship class — a cohort that ranges from award-winning freelance writers to staff reporters for outlets such as The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times, and MIT Technology Review. It marks the second year that KSJ will offer the remote project fellowships, which were established in response to the unique challenges and public...

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Mapping the cellular circuits behind spitting
For over a decade, researchers have known that the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans can detect and avoid short-wavelength light, despite lacking eyes and the light-absorbing molecules required for sight. As a graduate student in the Horvitz lab, Nikhil Bhatla proposed an explanation for this ability. He observed that light exposure not only made the worms wriggle away, but it also prompted them to stop eating. This clue led him to a series of studies that suggested that his squirming subjects weren’t seeing the light at...

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Vapor-collection technology saves water while clearing the...
About two-fifths of all the water that gets withdrawn from lakes, rivers, and wells in the U.S. is used not for agriculture, drinking, or sanitation, but to cool the power plants that provide electricity from fossil fuels or nuclear power. Over 65 percent of these plants use evaporative cooling, leading to huge white plumes that billow from their cooling towers, which can be a nuisance and, in some cases, even contribute to dangerous driving conditions. Now, a small company...

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News from the Future #60
Fast FuturesTuesday, August 10 | 10–11:30am PDT Not sure how to start your futures-thinking journey? Want to get your colleagues or team members into futures thinking? Fast Futures is a 90-minute $99, introductory-level online learning experience that teaches participants to initiate their own creative foresight. Register here. >> IFTF FORESIGHT TALK Freedom Dreaming in the Midst of Emergency: Methods from the AfrofutureThursday, August 12 | 9:00 a.m. PDT | 12:00 p.m. EDT | 16:00 UTC  What is your most irresistible freedom dream?...

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Apekshya Prasai receives 2021 Jeanne Guillemin Prize
Growing up in the periphery of the civil war in Nepal, Apekshya Prasai was exposed to a 10-year conflict that by some accounts left 19,000 people dead and 150,000 people internally displaced. The insurgency was led by the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists (CPN-M) with the aim of overthrowing the ruling monarchy and establishing a people’s republic. The war ended in 2016 under the auspices of the United Nations, and a peace treaty between the Nepalese government and the Maoist...

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Advancing industry convergence through technology and innovation
Launched in October 2020, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology is intended to demonstrate how the convergence of industries and technologies is powering the next wave of change and innovation. The five-year initiative is designed to advance three main pillars: research, education, and fellowships. As part of the third pillar, Accenture has awarded five fellowships to MIT graduate students working on research in industry and technology convergence who are underrepresented, including by race, ethnicity and...

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