Say WOW

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.

 
Startup improving chemical separations wins MIT $100K...
In America’s quest to slash greenhouse gas emissions, many have cited the chemical industry as one of the hardest to decarbonize. It’s a significant roadblock: Chemical separation alone is responsible for up to 15 percent of the U.S.’s total energy usage. Osmoses, a startup trying to dramatically increase the efficiency of chemical separations, got a major boost Thursday when it won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. The company has developed a molecular filtration solution containing tiny channels that can...

Read More

Twelve from MIT awarded 2021 Fulbright Fellowships
Twelve MIT student affiliates have won fellowships for the Fulbright 2021-22 grant year. Their host country destinations include Brazil, Iceland, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain, and Taiwan, where they will conduct research, earn a graduate degree, or teach English. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers opportunities for American student scholars in over 160 countries. Last fall, Fulbright received a record number of applications, making this the most competitive...

Read More

A searching discussion about being Asian American...
A broad-ranging panel discussion on May 18 examined the complexities of Asian American and Pacific Islander identity and acceptance at MIT, while underscoring the need for collaborative work among groups to combat prejudice and create equity. The online forum was held amid an ongoing string of violent assaults on Asian Americans in the U.S., which has raised public awareness about anti-Asian discrimination. But the forum — featuring faculty, students, and staff — made clear that anti-Asian American violence, stereotyping,...

Read More

 
Astronaut Michael Fincke ’89 offers students out-of-this-world...
Life was very different in 1989. A trip to the movie theater cost less than $4, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” was newly released, and the World Wide Web had just been invented. That year, Michael Fincke, a recent MIT grad who had just completed a BS in aeronautics and astronautics and Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences, set foot for the first time in Moscow. It was one of the last summers before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Fincke...

Read More

Inhabiting 21st-century science fiction
In March, literary heavyweights Kazuo Ishiguro and Neil Gaiman — a Nobel laureate, and the beloved author of “American Gods,” “Sandman,” and “Good Omens,” respectively — convened at an independent bookstore event to discuss genre and science fiction. They arrived at twin conclusions: one, that rigid genre distinctions between literary works promote an unproductive and false hierarchy of worth, and two, that the 21st century is a very tricky time to attempt to define “science fiction” at all. Gaiman...

Read More

Study: Culture influences mask wearing
Around the world and within the U.S., the percentage of people wearing masks during the Covid-19 pandemic has varied enormously. What explains this? A new study co-authored by an MIT faculty member finds that a public sense of “collectivism” clearly predicts mask usage, adding a cultural and psychological perspective to the issue. The study uses a series of datasets about mask usage and public attitudes, along with well-established empirical indices of collectivism, to evaluate the impact of those cultural...

Read More

 
Lessons from teaching about the pandemic in...
Just a few months after the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, Alan Grossman was already mulling over an idea for a new class to help people make sense of the virus. As head of MIT’s Department of Biology, he was aware of the key role fundamental research would play in the coming months. From RNA viruses and genomic sequencing to antibodies and vaccines, MIT students and the general public would need reliable scientific information to understand the evolving situation —...

Read More

Improving the way videos are organized
At any given moment, many thousands of new videos are being posted to sites like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. An increasing number of those videos are being recorded and streamed live. But tech and media companies still struggle to understand what’s going in all that content. Now MIT alumnus-founded Netra is using artificial intelligence to improve video analysis at scale. The company’s system can identify activities, objects, emotions, locations, and more to organize and provide context to videos in new...

Read More

Does correcting online falsehoods make matters worse?
So, you thought the problem of false information on social media could not be any worse? Allow us to respectfully offer evidence to the contrary. Not only is misinformation increasing online, but attempting to correct it politely on Twitter can have negative consequences, leading to even less-accurate tweets and more toxicity from the people being corrected, according to a new study co-authored by a group of MIT scholars. The study was centered around a Twitter field experiment in which...

Read More

 
Scene at MIT: Setting up camp under...
It sounds like a prank — a tent pitched under the Great Dome in the middle of the Barker Library Reading Room. But this tent was all library business, erected to provide the Institute community access to materials critical for teaching and research. Last August, after MIT Distinctive Collections was displaced from Building 14 to Barker Library due to the Hayden Library renovation, they set up work spaces along the perimeter of the Great Dome to allow staff to...

Read More

MIT.nano launches START.nano accelerator
MIT.nano has announced a new pilot program, START.nano, to support hard-tech ventures in their early stages. Seven companies with nanoscale technologies at the core of their business have been accepted to the program. For 2021, the primary benefit for the START.nano participants will be discounted access to MIT.nano’s cleanrooms, characterization tools, and other laboratories. MIT.nano’s staff will use the pilot year to explore with the companies what programmatic support START.nano can incorporate to boost the success of hard-tech ventures....

Read More

 
Susan Solomon, scholar of atmospheric chemistry and...
Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist whose work explaining the Antarctic ozone hole informed international policy, has received the 2020-2021 James R. Killian, Jr. Faculty Achievement Award. The highest such honor at the Institute, the award was established in 1971 to honor Killian, who served as MIT’s 10th president from 1948 to 1959, and chair of the MIT Corporation from 1959 to 1971. As this year’s recipient, Solomon on April 14 delivered a one-hour lecture in which she touched on...

Read More

Behind Covid-19 vaccine development
When starting a vaccine program, scientists generally have anecdotal understanding of the disease they’re aiming to target. When Covid-19 surfaced over a year ago, there were so many unknowns about the fast-moving virus that scientists had to act quickly and rely on new methods and techniques just to even begin understanding the basics of the disease. Scientists at Janssen Research & Development, developers of the Johnson & Johnson-Janssen Covid-19 vaccine, leveraged real-world data and, working with MIT researchers, applied...

Read More

Ozone-depleting chemicals may spend less time in...
MIT scientists have found that ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, stay in the atmosphere for a shorter amount of time than previously estimated. Their study suggests that CFCs, which were globally phased out in 2010, should be circulating at much lower concentrations than what has recently been measured. The new results, published today in Nature Communications, imply that new, illegal production of CFCs has likely occurred in recent years. Specifically, the analysis points to new emissions of CFC-11, CFC-12, and...

Read More