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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.

 
Helping students of all ages flourish in...
A new cross-disciplinary research initiative at MIT aims to promote the understanding and use of AI across all segments of society. The effort, called Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE), will develop new teaching approaches and tools to engage learners in settings from preK-12 to the workforce. “People are using AI every day in our workplaces and our private lives. It’s in our apps, devices, social media, and more. It’s shaping the global economy, our institutions, and...

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Global Languages announces new HASS concentration in...
Students at MIT will now be able to take their Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences concentration in Korean. The new concentration extends the options for Asian languages at MIT, which also include Japanese and Mandarin. In response to long-term student demand and the growing importance of international activities in Korea, MIT Global Languages identified Korean as a key area of strategic growth in 2016. Following a successful four-year pilot, Korean was added to the Global Languages curriculum in 2020,...

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Ice melts on US-Sudan relations, providing new...
It was over 27 years in the making. When the White House removed Sudan from the “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list in December 2020, ZAHARA for Education was ready. ZAHARA was founded by MIT technology and policy master’s student Ilham Ali and Harvard University alumna Sahar Omer to expand educational opportunities between Sudan and the United States. Earlier this year, the organization partnered with MIT-Africa, an MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) program, to launch the first-ever Global...

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3 Questions: President Reif on the search...
Earlier this month, President L. Rafael Reif announced that Cynthia Barnhart SM ’86, PhD ’88, MIT’s chancellor since 2014, will step down this summer. Following a sabbatical leave, she’ll return to teaching and research. At MIT, the chancellor has responsibility for “all things students”: graduate and undergraduate education, student life, student services, and other areas that affect the student experience. In sharing the news of Chancellor Barnhart’s decision, President Reif wrote that he has launched a search to fill...

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Supermassive black holes devour gas just like...
On Sept. 9, 2018, astronomers spotted a flash from a galaxy 860 million light years away. The source was a supermassive black hole about 50 million times the mass of the sun. Normally quiet, the gravitational giant suddenly awoke to devour a passing star in a rare instance known as a tidal disruption event. As the stellar debris fell toward the black hole, it released an enormous amount of energy in the form of light. Researchers at MIT, the...

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Dynamic thinking about management problems
It’s a familiar story. Tens of millions of U.S. workers toil away in insecure, low-paid jobs in retail and services. It seems clear why companies keep wages low: more profits for ownership. Yet several successful firms in these industries — Costco, Trader Joe’s, QuikTrip — pay workers more and are still very profitable. Why don’t more companies try this? The answer isn’t simple. But that’s why it interests Hazhir Rahmandad, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of...

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To understand race in Africa today, look...
Last year protests erupted in the U.S. and parts of South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, with the central message — Black Lives Matter. Ignited by the demonstrations for racial justice and police reform in the U.S., the protests around the world erupted in solidarity with the American cause, but took on the nuances of each context. The adaptation of the Black Lives Matter slogan to “Las Vidas Negras Importan” in Colombia or “Papuan Lives Matter” in Indonesia has...

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Crowdsourcing data on road quality and excess...
America has over 4 million miles of roads and, as one might expect, monitoring them can be a monumental task.   To collect high-quality data on the conditions of their roads, departments of transportation (DOTs) can expect to spend $200 per mile for state-of-the-art laser profilers. For cities and states, these costs are prohibitive and often force them to resort to rudimentary approaches, like visual inspection. Over the past three years, a collaboration between the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub...

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Market report: Rising stock wealth does boost...
The stock market is a staple of business news, but it is unclear how meaningful stock prices are to the larger economy. Do changes in stock prices directly affect shorter-term consumption, or are they just leading indicators for subsequent economic activity? The U.S. Federal Reserve, for its part, usually seems to act as if stock-based wealth does help drive spending and employment. But is this correct? A new study co-authored by an MIT economist brings data to the discussion...

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Mobilizing the masses, one person at a...
Collective action can lead to fundamental change in societies, giving a voice to marginalized citizens and creating opportunities for greater political and economic equity. But for it to work, numbers matter. So Gabriel Nahmias is asking, “How do we get more people to engage in politics, and then how do we get those who are engaged to recruit others?” For the fifth-year doctoral student in political science, this is not just a matter of academic focus, but of keen...

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Helping robots collaborate to get the job...
Sometimes, one robot isn’t enough. Consider a search-and-rescue mission to find a hiker lost in the woods. Rescuers might want to deploy a squad of wheeled robots to roam the forest, perhaps with the aid of drones scouring the scene from above. The benefits of a robot team are clear. But orchestrating that team is no simple matter. How to ensure the robots aren’t duplicating each other’s efforts or wasting energy on a convoluted search trajectory? MIT researchers have...

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Advance may enable “2D” transistors for tinier...
Moore’s Law, the famous prediction that the number of transistors that can be packed onto a microchip will double every couple of years, has been bumping into basic physical limits. These limits could bring decades of progress to a halt, unless new approaches are found. One new direction being explored is the use of atomically thin materials instead of silicon as the basis for new transistors, but connecting those “2D” materials to other conventional electronic components has proved difficult....

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Building robots to expand access to cell...
Over the last two years, Multiply Labs has helped pharmaceutical companies produce biologic drugs with its robotic manufacturing platform. The robots can work around the clock, precisely formulating small batches of drugs to help companies run clinical trials more quickly. Now Multiply Labs, which was founded by Fred Parietti PhD ’16 and former visiting PhD at MIT Alice Melocchi, is hoping to bring the speed and precision of its robots to a new type of advanced treatment. In a...

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Robert C. Merton honored with MIT’s Killian...
Acclaimed finance expert Robert C. Merton PhD ’70 has been named the recipient of MIT’s 2021-2022 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honor the Institute faculty can confer upon one of its members.  The Killian Award citation hails Merton, the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, as “one of the founding architects of modern finance theory,” whose work has “become an integral part of the global financial system.”...

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MIT unveils a new action plan to...
MIT has released an ambitious new plan for action to address the world’s accelerating climate crisis. The plan, titled “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade,” includes a broad array of new initiatives and significant expansions of existing programs, to address the needs for new technologies, new policies, and new kinds of outreach to bring the Institute’s expertise to bear on this critical global issue. As MIT President L. Rafael Reif and other senior leaders have written...

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