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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.

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Professor Emeritus Ronald Probstein, world-renowned expert in...

September 22, 2021

Ronald Probstein, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering, passed away at the age of 93 on Sept. 19. Probstein, who joined MIT’s faculty in 1962, was a leading expert in fluid mechanics. His research advanced a number of fields including spacecraft design, hypersonic flows, desalination, and the removal of toxic waste from soil. Born and raised in New York City, Probstein worked for the mathematician Richard Courant while studying for his bachelor’s degree at night at New York University. After...

Institute Professor Paula Hammond named to White...

September 22, 2021

Paula Hammond, an MIT Institute Professor and head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, has been chosen to serve on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the White House announced today. The council advises the president on matters involving science, technology, education, and innovation policy. It also provides the White House with scientific and technical information that is needed to inform public policy relating to the U.S. economy, U.S. workers, and national security. “For me,...

3 Questions: An anthropologist and a filmmaker...

September 22, 2021

The steel industry in the U.S. shrank dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, with profound effects on the country’s industrial workforce. Suddenly, blue-collar workers who had spent their careers in the mills — often as part of multigenerational steelworking families — found themselves unable to earn a living as communities around them suffered and people lost the middle-class lives they had been fashioning. That process was chronicled in MIT anthropologist Christine Walley’s 2013 book “Exit Zero,” a case study...

A new method for removing lead from...

September 22, 2021

Engineers at MIT have developed a new approach to removing lead or other heavy-metal contaminants from water, in a process that they say is far more energy-efficient than any other currently used system, though there are others under development that come close. Ultimately, it might be used to treat lead-contaminated water supplies at the home level, or to treat contaminated water from some chemical or industrial processes. The new system is the latest in a series of applications based...

Data flow’s decisive role on the global...

September 21, 2021

In 2016, Meicen Sun came to a profound realization: “The control of digital information will lie at the heart of all the big questions and big contentions in politics.” A graduate student in her final year of study who is specializing in international security and the political economy of technology, Sun vividly recalls the emergence of the internet “as a democratizing force, an opener, an equalizer,” helping give rise to the Arab Spring. But she was also profoundly struck...

Predicting building emissions across the US

September 21, 2021

The United States is entering a building boom. Between 2017 and 2050, it will build the equivalent of New York City 20 times over. Yet, to meet climate targets, the nation must also significantly reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of its buildings, which comprise 27 percent of the nation’s total emissions. A team of current and former MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) researchers is addressing these conflicting demands with the aim of giving policymakers the tools and information...

Bringing precision to musculoskeletal health

September 21, 2021

A clinician investigating a muscle injury will usually start the exam with questions about the patient’s medical history and how they think the injury occurred. The clinician might then place their hands on the injured area and ask the patient to move around. Often, the only quantitative data collected in the process come from asking the patient to use a pain scale from 1 to 10. Compare that to the routine for treating a fever or high blood pressure....

How quickly do algorithms improve?

September 20, 2021

Algorithms are sort of like a parent to a computer. They tell the computer how to make sense of information so they can, in turn, make something useful out of it. The more efficient the algorithm, the less work the computer has to do. For all of the technological progress in computing hardware, and the much debated lifespan of Moore’s Law, computer performance is only one side of the picture. Behind the scenes a second trend is happening: Algorithms...

RNA-targeting enzyme expands the CRISPR toolkit

September 20, 2021

Researchers at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research have discovered a bacterial enzyme that they say could expand scientists’ CRISPR toolkit, making it easy to cut and edit RNA with the kind of precision that, until now, has only been available for DNA editing. The enzyme, called Cas7-11, modifies RNA targets without harming cells, suggesting that in addition to being a valuable research tool, it provides a fertile platform for therapeutic applications. “This new enzyme is like the Cas9...

Crossing disciplines, adding fresh eyes to nuclear...

September 20, 2021

Sometimes patterns repeat in nature. Spirals appear in sunflowers and hurricanes. Branches occur in veins and lightning. Limiao Zhang, a doctoral student in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, has found another similarity: between street traffic and boiling water, with implications for making the cooling of nuclear reactors more resilient. Growing up in China, Zhang enjoyed watching her father repair things around the house. He couldn’t fulfill his dream of becoming an engineer, instead joining the police force,...

Researchers find a new way to control...

September 20, 2021

Most of the magnets we encounter daily are made of “ferromagnetic” materials. The north-south magnetic axes of most atoms in these materials are lined up in the same direction, so their collective force is strong enough to produce significant attraction. These materials form the basis for most of the data storage devices in today’s high-tech world. Less common are magnets based on ferrimagnetic materials, with an “i.” In these, some of the atoms are aligned in one direction, but...

New views of autocracy emerge from historic...

September 17, 2021

“There’s a stereotype of dictatorship where one person decides everything, but that’s not always how politics works in an authoritarian regime,” says Emilia Simison, a sixth-year doctoral student in political science. Since 2015, Simison has been able to access and study documents that chronicle the lawmaking machinery of some of the past century’s most notorious dictatorships. Her analysis of these voluminous materials suggests that autocracies do not routinely follow a single “strongman” model, and that some even make room...

Research collaboration puts climate-resilient crops in sight

September 17, 2021

Any houseplant owner knows that changes in the amount of water or sunlight a plant receives can put it under immense stress. A dying plant brings certain disappointment to anyone with a green thumb. But for farmers who make their living by successfully growing plants, and whose crops may nourish hundreds or thousands of people, the devastation of failing flora is that much greater. As climate change is poised to cause increasingly unpredictable weather patterns globally, crops may be...

The next generation of glowing plants

September 17, 2021

Using specialized nanoparticles embedded in plant leaves, MIT engineers have created a light-emitting plant that can be charged by an LED. After 10 seconds of charging, plants glow brightly for several minutes, and they can be recharged repeatedly. These plants can produce light that is 10 times brighter than the first generation of glowing plants that the research group reported in 2017. “We wanted to create a light-emitting plant with particles that will absorb light, store some of it,...

MIT appoints members of new faculty committee...

September 17, 2021

In May, responding to the world’s accelerating climate crisis, MIT issued an ambitious new plan, “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade.” The plan outlines a broad array of new and expanded initiatives across campus to build on the Institute’s longstanding climate work. Now, to unite these varied climate efforts, maximize their impact, and identify new ways for MIT to contribute climate solutions, the Institute has appointed more than a dozen faculty members to a new committee...

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