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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.

 
A robot that can help you untangle...
With rapidly growing demands on health care systems, nurses typically spend 18 to 40 percent of their time performing direct patient care tasks, oftentimes for many patients and with little time to spare. Personal care robots that brush hair could provide substantial help and relief.  This may seem like a truly radical form of “self-care,” but crafty robots for things like shaving, hair-washing, and makeup are not new. In 2011, the tech giant Panasonic developed a robot that could...

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Innovations in water accessibility
Growing up in coastal Connecticut, Flora Klise’s childhood was shaped by water. She spent summers taking sailing lessons and working at a local marina. But it wasn’t until she stood next to a well in rural Tanzania that she realized she wanted to pursue a career in water innovation. The summer before her junior year, Klise traveled to Tanzania alongside a team of MIT D-Lab students to work on the Okoa Project, an ambulance trailer that can be attached...

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Media Advisory — MIT researchers: AI policy...
On Thursday, May 6 and Friday, May 7, the AI Policy Forum — a global effort convened by researchers from MIT — will present their initial policy recommendations aimed at managing the effects of artificial intelligence and building AI systems that better reflect society’s values. Recognizing that there is unlikely to be any singular national AI policy, but rather public policies for the distinct ways in which we encounter AI in our lives, forum leaders will preview their preliminary findings and policy recommendations...

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Ways of seeing the world
Anjali Nambrath is about to graduate from MIT with a double major in physics and mathematics, but her big project this winter didn’t center on neutrinos, the subject of her undergraduate thesis. Instead, she worked on translating “Hurlevents,” a Quebecois play by Fanny Britt, from French into English. “I just fell in love with the play,” says Nambrath, who has also earned a minor in French. She started the translation project during class 21M.716 (Play Translation and Cultural Transmission),...

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Nano flashlight enables new applications of light
In work that could someday turn cell phones into sensors capable of detecting viruses and other minuscule objects, MIT researchers have built a powerful nanoscale flashlight on a chip. Their approach to designing the tiny light beam on a chip could also be used to create a variety of other nano flashlights with different beam characteristics for different applications. Think of a wide spotlight versus a beam of light focused on a single point. For many decades, scientists have...

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Climate solutions depend on technology, policy, and...
“The challenge for humanity now is how to decarbonize the global economy by 2050. To do that, we need a supercharged decade of energy innovation,” said Ernest J. Moniz, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems Emeritus, founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative, and a former U.S. secretary of energy, as he opened the MIT Forefront virtual event on April 21. “But we also need practical visionaries, in every economic sector, to develop new...

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With a zap of light, system switches...
When was the last time you repainted your car? Redesigned your coffee mug collection? Gave your shoes a colorful facelift? You likely answered: never, never, and never. You might consider these arduous tasks not worth the effort. But a new color-shifting “programmable matter” system could change that with a zap of light. MIT researchers have developed a way to rapidly update imagery on object surfaces. The system, dubbed “ChromoUpdate” pairs an ultraviolet (UV) light projector with items coated in...

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Can US states afford to meet net-zero...
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts recently passed a climate bill that sets a target of net-zero emissions for the state by the year 2050. The bill is one of several successful legislative efforts in Northeastern states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 80 to 100 percent by mid-century. To achieve these ambitious targets — which align with the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst impacts of...

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Undergraduates explore practical applications of artificial intelligence
Deep neural networks excel at finding patterns in datasets too vast for the human brain to pick apart. That ability has made deep learning indispensable to just about anyone who deals with data. This year, the MIT Quest for Intelligence and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab sponsored 17 undergraduates to work with faculty on yearlong research projects through MIT’s Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (SuperUROP). Students got to explore AI applications in climate science, finance, cybersecurity, and natural language...

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Cynthia Barnhart to step down as MIT’s...
Cynthia Barnhart SM ’86, PhD ’88 will step down from her role as chancellor and return to the faculty on July 1, President L. Rafael Reif announced today in an email to the MIT community. During her seven years at the post, Barnhart and her team took a range of actions to make MIT a more caring environment where support is easier to find. She oversaw an expansion of student health and wellness programs, launched a campaign to prevent...

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Five from MIT elected to the National...
The National Academy of Sciences has elected 120 new members and 30 international associates, including five professors from MIT — Dan Freedman, Robert Griffin, Larry Guth, Stephen Morris, and Gigliola Staffilani — in recognition of their “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” Current membership totals 2,461 active members and 511 international associates. Membership is one of the highest honors that a scientist can achieve. The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional...

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Robotic solution for disinfecting food production plants...
The winners of this year’s Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize got a good indication their pitch was striking a chord when a judge offered to have his company partner with the team for an early demonstration. The offer signified demand for their solution — to say nothing of their chances of winning the pitch competition. The annual competition’s MIT-based grand-prize winner, Human Dynamics, is seeking to improve sanitation in food production plants with a robotic drone — a...

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David Miliband SM ’90 warns of “age...
Former British foreign minister David Miliband SM ’90 offered a sobering warning about human rights and democracy while delivering a special MIT lecture on Wednesday — and outlined how we might confront the emerging “age of impunity,” in which authoritarian governments and even democracies are increasingly flouting the rule of law. “The next decade promises to be a race or a fight between accountability and impunity, within our own countries and internationally,” Miliband said, noting that lawlessness on the...

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Nanostructured device stops light in its tracks
Understanding how light waves oscillate in time as they interact with materials is essential to understanding light-driven energy transfer in materials, such as solar cells or plants. Due to the fantastically high speeds at which light waves oscillate, however, scientists have yet to develop a compact device with enough time resolution to directly capture them. Now, a team led by MIT researchers has demonstrated chip-scale devices that can directly trace the weak electric field of light waves as they...

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On course to create a fusion power...
“There is no lone genius who solves all the problems.” Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), is reflecting on a guiding belief behind his nuclear science and engineering class 22.63 (Principles of Fusion Engineering). He has recently watched his students, working in teams, make their final presentations on how to use fusion technology to create carbon-free fuel for shipping vessels. Since taking on the course over a decade ago, Whyte has moved away from...

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