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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.

 
Department of Biology receives funds to support...
Last month, the Department of Biology received a generous gift from Michael Gould and Sara Moss to support students participating in MIT’s Summer Research Program in Biology (MSRP-Bio). Gould is a philanthropist and the retired chair and CEO of Bloomingdales, and Moss is the vice chair of Estée Lauder Companies. Their gift will supplement the existing Bernard S. and Sophie G. Gould Fund, which the couple initiated in 2015 to honor Gould’s parents. Together, these donations will enable many...

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Oxford Instruments Asylum Research joins MIT.nano Consortium
MIT.nano has announced that Oxford Instruments Asylum Research, a company that manufactures and supplies atomic force microscopy (AFM) instruments for academic research and industrial R&D, has joined the MIT.nano Consortium. Asylum Research, one of seven businesses comprising the Oxford Instruments Group, designs tools for characterizing samples from both materials and bioscience research. In addition to imaging, their equipment has quantitative measurement capabilities for nanoelectrical, nanomechanical, and electromechanical characterization. “We are excited to welcome Oxford Instruments Asylum Research to the...

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Design progresses for MIT Schwarzman College of...
Last fall, the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing embarked on a project to design and construct a new building on Vassar Street in Cambridge, at the former site of Building 44. Working with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the design for the new building is taking shape, with plans for the exterior façade now complete. The proposed project will establish a home for the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, providing state-of-the-art space for computing research and education....

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To combat false news, correct after reading
The battle to stop false news and online misinformation is not going to end any time soon, but a new finding from MIT scholars may help ease the problem. In an experiment, the researchers discovered that fact-checking labels, when attached to online news headlines, actually work better after people read false headlines, compared to when they precede the headline or accompany it. “We found that whether a false claim was corrected before people read it, while they read it,...

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Researchers construct molecular nanofibers that are stronger...
Self-assembly is ubiquitous in the natural world, serving as a route to form organized structures in every living organism. This phenomenon can be seen, for instance, when two strands of DNA — without any external prodding or guidance — join to form a double helix, or when large numbers of molecules combine to create membranes or other vital cellular structures. Everything goes to its rightful place without an unseen builder having to put all the pieces together, one at...

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Learning with — and about — AI...
Between remote learning, more time spent at home, and working parents trying to keep their kids occupied, children across the United States have clocked in record-breaking hours of screen time during the pandemic. Much of it is supervised and curated by teachers or parents — but increasingly, kids of all ages are watching videos, playing games, and interacting with devices powered by artificial intelligence. As head of the Personal Robots group and AI Education at MIT, Media Lab Professor...

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Boosting the efficiency of carbon capture and...
Systems for capturing and converting carbon dioxide from power plant emissions could be important tools for curbing climate change, but most are relatively inefficient and expensive. Now, researchers at MIT have developed a method that could significantly boost the performance of systems that use catalytic surfaces to enhance the rates of carbon-sequestering electrochemical reactions. Such catalytic systems are an attractive option for carbon capture because they can produce useful, valuable products, such as transportation fuels or chemical feedstocks. This...

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Catching cancer in the act
When cancer is confined to one spot in the body, doctors can often treat it with surgery or other therapies. Much of the mortality associated with cancer, however, is due to its tendency to metastasize, sending out seeds of itself that may take root throughout the body. The exact moment of metastasis is fleeting, lost in the millions of divisions that take place in a tumor. “These events are typically impossible to monitor in real time,” says Jonathan Weissman,...

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How chess plays out at MIT
Chess has a long history at MIT that began decades before 62 million households tuned in to Netflix’s miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit.” Though the show ranked as Netflix’s No. 1 in 63 countries within its first month, and sparked a global surge in the sale of chess sets and books, several members of MIT’s chess club say, with a laugh, that they haven’t seen it yet. Tyrone Davis III, a junior computer science major, a U.S. National Chess Master,...

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Four MIT scientists honored with 2021 National...
Four MIT scientists are among the 20 recipients of the 2021 Academy Honors for major contributions to science, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced at its annual meeting. The individuals are recognized for their “extraordinary scientific achievements in a wide range of fields spanning the physical, biological, social, and medical sciences.” The awards recognize: Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, for contributions to the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology through his discovery of correlated insulator behavior and unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle graphene...

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Nanosatellite thruster emits pure ions
A 3D-printed thruster that emits a stream of pure ions could be a low-cost, extremely efficient propulsion source for miniature satellites. The nanosatellite thruster created by MIT researchers is the first of its kind to be entirely additively manufactured, using a combination of 3D printing and hydrothermal growth of zinc oxide nanowires. It is also the first thruster of this type to produce pure ions from the ionic liquids used to generate propulsion. The pure ions make the thruster...

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3 Questions: Thomas Malone and Daniela Rus...
As part of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future’s series of research briefs, Professor Thomas Malone, Professor Daniela Rus, and Robert Laubacher collaborated on “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work,” a brief that provides a comprehensive overview of AI today and what lies at the AI frontier.  The authors delve into the question of how work will change with AI and provide policy prescriptions that speak to different parts of society. Thomas Malone is...

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Fengdi Guo awarded first place in LTTP...
Pavement deterioration takes many forms. It can manifest in almost imperceptible flaws, like surface roughness, to much more evident distresses, such as web-like alligator cracks. While the causes of these distresses are numerous, one cause, in particular, can impose an intractable burden: the weight of a vehicle. In a prize-winning paper, Fengdi Guo, a PhD candidate at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, helps clarify the layered relationship between traffic weight and pavement deterioration. The machine learning models he proposes...

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How to get more electric cars on...
A new study from researchers at MIT uncovers the kinds of infrastructure improvements that would make the biggest difference in increasing the number of electric cars on the road, a key step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. The researchers found that installing charging stations on residential streets, rather than just in central locations such as shopping malls, could have an outsized benefit. They also found that adding on high-speed charging stations along highways and making supplementary vehicles...

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Designing customized “brains” for robots
Contemporary robots can move quickly. “The motors are fast, and they’re powerful,” says Sabrina Neuman. Yet in complex situations, like interactions with people, robots often don’t move quickly. “The hang up is what’s going on in the robot’s head,” she adds. Perceiving stimuli and calculating a response takes a “boatload of computation,” which limits reaction time, says Neuman, who recently graduated with a PhD from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Neuman has found a way...

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