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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.

 
“SCOUT” helps researchers find, quantify significant differences...
The ability to culture cerebral organoids, or “minibrains,” using stem cells derived from people has given scientists experimentally manipulable models of human neurological development and disease, but not without confounding challenges. No two organoids are alike and none of them resemble actual brains. This “snowflake” problem has held back the science by making scientifically meaningful quantitative comparisons difficult to achieve. To help researchers overcome those limitations, MIT neuroscientists and engineers have developed a new pipeline for clearing, labeling, 3D...

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For cultural and political conflicts, a humanizing...
Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Nasir Almasri heard so many discussions about the political struggles of Palestinians that by the time he was 7, he thought he’d heard enough to last a lifetime. He was wrong. Decades later, Almasri is now in his fourth year in the MIT political science PhD program pursuing answers to thorny political questions around authoritarian regimes and opposition groups — scholarship with deep roots in the dinner-table conversations of his childhood. In...

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Q&A: Holly Jackson on building a cosmic...
Holly Jackson doesn’t think of herself as an astronomer, but her work has contributed to some of the most startling and original research in the field this century. A junior majoring in electrical engineering and computer science, Jackson has become a valued member of Professor Paula Jofré’s research team in the astronomy department at Diego Portales University in Santiago, Chile. As a participant in MISTI, MIT’s international internship program, Jackson traveled to Santiago in 2019, well before the Covid-19...

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An LED that can be integrated directly...
Light-emitting diodes — LEDs — can do way more than illuminate your living room. These light sources are useful microelectronics too. Smartphones, for example, can use an LED proximity sensor to determine if you’re holding the phone next to your face (in which case the screen turns off). The LED sends a pulse of light toward your face, and a timer in the phone measures how long it takes that light to reflect back to the phone, a proxy...

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Model could help determine quarantine measures needed...
Some of the research described in this article has been published on a preprint server but has not yet been peer-reviewed by experts in the field. As Covid-19 infections soar across the U.S., some states are tightening restrictions and reinstituting quarantine measures to slow the virus’ spread. A model developed by MIT researchers shows a direct link between the number of people who become infected and how effectively a state maintains its quarantine measures. The researchers described their model...

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SMART researchers engineer a plant-based sensor to...
Scientists from the Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) research group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, have engineered a novel type of plant nanobionic optical sensor that can detect and monitor, in real time, levels of the highly toxic heavy metal arsenic in the underground environment. This development provides significant advantages over conventional methods used to measure arsenic in the environment and will be important for both environmental...

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MISTI shifts to fully remote global internships...
The 10.5-hour time difference between the eastern United States and India may seem like it would pose a challenge to collaborative teamwork. However, MIT junior Robert Koirala and sophomore Grace Smith quickly got used to scheduling team meetings as late as 11 p.m. as remote interns for India-based Ek Kadam Aur Foundation for Education and Health. Koirala was working from Dayton, Ohio, and Smith from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The time change was easy to overcome considering their commitment to the...

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Case studies show climate variation linked to...
Tree growth rings and ice cores illuminate the climatic conditions of times gone by. When combined with historical records and documents, climate data can also shed light on important events in human history — including the activities of nomadic groups such as the ancient Türks and Mongols. “Climate data actually can tell us quite a lot about the history of nomadic empires,” said Nicola Di Cosmo, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and an expert on China...

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Students present product prototypes inspired by kindness
On the evening of Dec. 7, six teams of mechanical engineering students presented the product prototypes they developed this semester in class 2.s009 (Explorations in Product Design), a special version of class 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes). For many MIT seniors, their entire undergraduate experience culminates in these final presentations. But this year, there were no guarantees.   “I spent three years wondering if 2.009 would measure up to the expectations I had. And then the pandemic hit, and essentially...

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An engineering student expands her focus
Danielle Grey-Stewart, a senior majoring in materials science and engineering, is a fierce believer that public service and engineering go hand in hand. She aspires to be a leader in equitable science policy and plans on using her time at Oxford University, where she will be studying next year as a Rhodes Scholar, to study nature, society, and environmental governance. Despite her interest in public service, Grey-Stewart didn’t always see policy as a future career route. A passion for...

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3 Questions: Phillip Sharp on the discoveries...
Some of the most promising vaccines developed to combat Covid-19 rely on messenger RNA (mRNA) — a template cells use to carry genetic instructions for producing proteins. The mRNA vaccines take advantage of this cellular process to make proteins that then trigger an immune response that targets SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Compared to other types of vaccines, recently developed technologies allow mRNA vaccines to be rapidly created and deployed on a large-scale — crucial aspects in the...

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Explained: Why RNA vaccines for Covid-19 raced...
Developing and testing a new vaccine typically takes at least 12 to 18 months. However, just over 10 months after the genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was published, two pharmaceutical companies applied for FDA emergency use authorization of vaccines that appear to be highly effective against the virus. Both vaccines are made from messenger RNA, the molecule that cells naturally use to carry DNA’s instructions to cells’ protein-building machinery. A vaccine based on mRNA has never been approved...

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Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT launches...
The Knight Science Journalism (KSJ) Program at MIT has announced the publication of a new digital handbook for science editors, offered without cost to journalists around the world, and a new fact-checking site that includes a searchable database of fact-checkers and a free teaching module for university students. Both of these pioneering projects are part of a redesign of KSJ’s home website and can be found under the resources tab on the home page. Other updates include a pictorial...

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SMART researchers use lysins to selectively target...
Researchers from the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, have developed a method to produce customizable engineered lysins that can be used to selectively kill bacteria of interest while leaving others unharmed. The discovery presents a promising alternative to antibiotics for treating existing drug-resistant bacteria and bacterial infections without the risk of causing resistance. Lysins are enzymes produced by bacteriophages to break open the bacteria...

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One more clue to brain changes in...
Huntington’s disease is a fatal inherited disorder that strikes most often in middle age with mood disturbances, uncontrollable limb movements, and cognitive decline. Years before symptom onset, brain imaging shows degeneration of the striatum, a brain region important for the rapid selection of behavioral actions. As the striatal neurons degenerate, their “identity” proteins, the building blocks that give particular cell types their unique function, are gradually turned off. A new study from the lab of Institute Professor Ann Graybiel...

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