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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.

 
Astronomers image magnetic fields at the edge...
This article is adapted from an announcement by the Event Horizon Telescope. MIT Haystack Observatory is one of the 13 stakeholder institutions that constitute the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, which produced the first-ever image of a black hole. The EHT revealed today a new view of the massive object at the center of the M87 galaxy: how it looks in polarized light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarization, a signature of magnetic...

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3 Questions: Artificial intelligence for health care...
The potential of artificial intelligence to bring equity in health care has spurred significant research efforts. Racial, gender, and socioeconomic disparities have traditionally afflicted health care systems in ways that are difficult to detect and quantify. New AI technologies, however, are providing a platform for change. Regina Barzilay, the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of AI and Health and faculty co-lead of AI for the MIT Jameel Clinic; Fotini Christia, professor of political science and director of the MIT Sociotechnical Systems...

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MindHandHeart Community Innovation Fund supports 77 projects...
The past year has been challenging — for MIT and the world. Scattered across states, countries, and continents, MIT community members have shown remarkable resiliency and creativity in finding new ways to come together and support one another amidst adversity. Sponsored and funded by the MIT Office of the Chancellor, the MindHandHeart (MHH) Community Innovation Fund, a grant program advancing projects focused on mental health, well-being, connectedness, and racial justice, has supported a record number of 77 projects during...

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Study reveals plunge in lithium-ion battery costs
The cost of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries used for phones, laptops, and cars has fallen dramatically over the last three decades, and has been a major driver of the rapid growth of those technologies. But attempting to quantify that cost decline has produced ambiguous and conflicting results that have hampered attempts to project the technology’s future or devise useful policies and research priorities. Now, MIT researchers have carried out an exhaustive analysis of the studies that have looked at...

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Providing kind networks
Undeterred by the pandemic, professors Gigliola Staffilani and Daron Acemoglu persist in ensuring their students have fulfilling graduate school experiences. The two have been honored as “Committed to Caring” for their dedicated advocacy and for connecting students with wider intellectual communities. Daron Acemoglu: Celebrating potential Daron Acemoglu is an MIT Institute Professor of Economics. His research delves into political economy, economic development and growth, human capital theory, growth theory, innovation, search theory, network economics, and learning. Recently, he has...

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Transforming lives by providing safe drinking water
As a child, Susan Murcott ’90 SM ’92 saw firsthand the long-term impact that water- and food-borne illness can have on people. At age 16, her maternal grandmother contracted polio, which can be transmitted through direct contact with someone infected with the virus or, occasionally, through contaminated food and water. As a result of the illness, she was forever paralyzed from the waist down. Though Murcott didn’t know it at the time, her decades-long career focusing on clean water...

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School of Engineering first quarter 2021 awards
Members of the MIT engineering faculty receive many awards in recognition of their scholarship, service, and overall excellence. The School of Engineering periodically recognizes their achievements by highlighting the honors, prizes, and medals won by faculty working in our academic departments, labs, and centers. Cullen Buie of the Department of Mechanical Engineering was named an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellow on Feb. 16.       Anantha Chandrakasan of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science was named an ACM...

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Exploring culture, identity, and the arts to...
Jeff Toney would like you to think differently about who’s doing the teaching at MIT. The visiting professor in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy piloted an ambitious Independent Activities Period (IAP) project, bringing together students from MIT and Wellesley College to explore the rich trove of knowledge each student already possesses as a cultural inheritance. “STEM education is rooted in a tradition of students mentored by masters and icons of their field,” says Toney, who is also...

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Found in space: Complex carbon-based molecules
Much of the carbon in space is believed to exist in the form of large molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Since the 1980s, circumstantial evidence has indicated that these molecules are abundant in space, but they have not been directly observed. Now, a team of researchers led by MIT Assistant Professor Brett McGuire has identified two distinctive PAHs in a patch of space called the Taurus Molecular Cloud (TMC-1). PAHs were believed to form efficiently only at high...

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System detects errors when medication is self-administered
From swallowing pills to injecting insulin, patients frequently administer their own medication. But they don’t always get it right. Improper adherence to doctors’ orders is commonplace, accounting for thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in medical costs annually. MIT researchers have developed a system to reduce those numbers for some types of medications. The new technology pairs wireless sensing with artificial intelligence to determine when a patient is using an insulin pen or inhaler, and flags potential errors...

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At MIT Energy Conference, experts zero in...
Global power generation from renewables like solar and wind continues to rise, and innovation in fields like clean hydrogen production and nuclear fusion is thriving. But translating all that progress into lower global emissions will require major changes to legacy energy systems around the world. That was the most discussed challenge among speakers at this year’s MIT Energy Conference, hosted virtually last week by the MIT Energy Club. In some cases, energy systems can be adapted to integrate new...

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Letter from President Reif: Supporting our Asian...
The following letter was sent to the MIT community today by President L. Rafael Reif. To the members of the MIT community, This message is for everyone. But let me begin with a word for the thousands of members of our MIT family – undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, staff, faculty, alumni, parents and Corporation members – who are Asian or of Asian descent: We would not be MIT without you.  You are our colleagues, our students, our classmates, our...

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Traveling the world for global health solutions
As a kid, Andrea Orji always loved it when her grandpa would visit from Nigeria. He would share stories about his home to teach Orji, a Texas native, about her family’s heritage. But while she and her family attended school and work, her grandpa remained at the house, frequently alone. She could tell he longed to return to the familiarity of his own country, yet he remained in order to undergo and then recover from cataract surgery. Later on,...

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MIT.nano courses bring hands-on experimentation to virtual...
Every minute, a person just sitting or standing without moving sheds 100,000 particles that are 500 nanometers or larger. Is that person exercising? Now it’s 10 million particles per minute, says Jorg Scholvin, assistant director of user services for Fab.nano. That’s why users of the MIT.nano cleanroom — which is controlled to have fewer than 100 such particles per cubic foot of air — wear full-body “bunnysuits” and other specialized garments to maintain the pristine environment required for nanoscale...

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How coal’s decline impacts county and school...
More extreme weather, heat waves, and inland flooding are some of the impacts that the state of Pennsylvania expects to see with a changing climate. And scientists and economists agree that, if we don’t quickly reduce the greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuels like coal and gas that contribute to warming the planet, these impacts will only grow more costly and dangerous. Yet parts of western Pennsylvania, like many regions of the United States, rely on coal and gas...

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