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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.

 
Leveraging the power of neurodiversity
How does a small startup go head to head with the country’s largest IT consulting firms, growing rapidly and securing clients like AIG, Berkshire Hathaway, and WarnerMedia in the process? For the quality engineering startup Ultranauts, the answer lies in the power of its cognitively diverse workforce. More than 75 percent of the company’s employees are on the autism spectrum, allowing Ultranauts to tap into the unique strengths of each team member as it helps large enterprises and mature startups...

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Fikile Brushett is looking for new ways...
Fikile Brushett, an MIT associate professor of chemical engineering, had an unusual source of inspiration for his career in the chemical sciences: the character played by Nicolas Cage in the 1996 movie “The Rock.” In the film, Cage portrays an FBI chemist who hunts down a group of rogue U.S. soldiers who have commandeered chemical weapons and taken over the island of Alcatraz. “For a really long time, I really wanted to be a chemist and work for the...

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Slowing the spread of Covid-19
An air of uncertainty descended on MIT’s campus in early March. Whispers and rumors about campus closing down swirled in the hallways. Students convened en masse on Killian Court to dance, hug, and cry as they were told they had until the end of the week to vacate campus. Within days, the Infinite Corridor’s usual stream of activity and noise was silenced. While MIT’s dorms and classrooms became unnervingly quiet, there was a thrum of activity among faculty and...

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Expressing our immigration stories
The first issue of Rooted: A Sense of Belonging pays tribute to individual immigration stories through a collection of art, poems, and photos. Each piece breathes life into raw and personal accounts of adversity, resilience, and pride of Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage. “Our contributors have poured their dreams, hardships, and success into artistic expression,” says Olivia Yao ’20, magazine editor and recent MIT alum. “I encourage everyone to read every single piece in this publication. Embrace their...

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An escape route for seafloor methane
Methane, the main component of natural gas, is the cleanest-burning of all the fossil fuels, but when emitted into the atmosphere it is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. By some estimates, seafloor methane contained in frozen formations along the continental margins may equal or exceed the total amount of coal, oil, and gas in all other reservoirs worldwide. Yet, the way methane escapes from these deep formations is poorly understood. In particular, scientists have been...

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3 Questions: Joshua Cohen on the qualities...
Joshua Cohen, a member of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future Research Advisory Board and a distinguished senior fellow in law, philosophy, and political science at the University of California at Berkeley recently wrote a research brief, “Good Jobs,” that describes the qualities inherent in “good jobs” and how they fit into a larger world of education, training, consumption, finance, firm organization, and worker representation. Here, Cohen describes some of the main takeaways from his brief,...

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Computer-aided creativity in robot design
So, you need a robot that climbs stairs. What shape should that robot be? Should it have two legs, like a person? Or six, like an ant? Choosing the right shape will be vital for your robot’s ability to traverse a particular terrain. And it’s impossible to build and test every potential form. But now an MIT-developed system makes it possible to simulate them and determine which design works best. You start by telling the system, called RoboGrammar, which...

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3 Questions: Using fabric to “listen” to...
Earlier this month a team of MIT researchers sent samples of various high-tech fabrics, some with embedded sensors or electronics, to the International Space Station. The samples (unpowered for now) will be exposed to the space environment for a year in order to determine a baseline for how well these materials survive the harsh environment of low Earth orbit. The hope is that this work could lead to thermal blankets for spacecraft, that could act as sensitive detectors for...

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Second annual MIT Science Bowl Invitational takes...
Researchers in the Baker group at MIT are studying the mechanisms of proteins that catalyze protein unfolding, which often involves large conformational changes. Which technique can be used to actively monitor these protein conformational changes? A) Förster Resonance Energy Transfer B) Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization C) Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching D) Mass Spectrometry If you chose A, you might have stood a chance at the second annual MIT Science Bowl Invitational. On Nov. 7, 192 high school students logged...

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Center to advance predictive simulation research established...
Understanding the degradation of materials in extreme environments is a scientific problem with major technological applications, ranging from spaceflight to industrial and nuclear safety. Yet it presents an intrinsic challenge: Researchers cannot easily reproduce these environments in the laboratory or observe essential degradation processes in real-time. Computational modeling and simulation have consequently become indispensable tools in helping to predict the behavior of complex materials across a range of strenuous conditions At MIT, a new research effort aims to advance...

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Six MIT faculty elected 2020 AAAS Fellows
Six MIT faculty members have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The new fellows are among a group of 489 AAAS members elected by their peers in recognition of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science. A virtual induction ceremony for the new fellows will be held on Feb. 13, 2021.  Nazli Choucri is a professor of political science, a senior faculty member at the Center of International Studies (CIS), and...

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Meghan Davis named 2022 Mitchell Scholar
MIT senior Meghan Davis has been named one of the 12 winners of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship’s Class of 2022. After graduating next spring with dual majors in biological engineering and urban planning, she will pursue a master’s in global health at Trinity College in Dublin. Mitchell Scholars are selected on the basis of academic achievement, leadership, and dedication to public service. The scholarship is named in honor of U.S. Senator Mitchell’s contributions to the Northern Ireland peace...

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An antidote to “fast fashion”
In today’s world of fast fashion, retailers sell only a fraction of their inventory, and consumers keep their clothes for about half as long as they did 15 years ago. As a result, the clothing industry has become associated with swelling greenhouse gas emissions and wasteful practices. The startup Armoire is addressing these issues with a clothing rental service designed to increase the utilization of clothes and save customers time. The service is based on machine-learning algorithms that use...

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Faculty seed projects grow into pandemic research...
Global partnerships are a fundamental component of research at MIT — even during this time of suspended travel. MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) supports those connections via MISTI Global Seed Funds (GSF). GSF enables participating faculty teams to collaborate with international peers, either at MIT or abroad, to develop and launch joint research projects. MISTI GSF is comprised of a general fund open to any country, as well as numerous country, region, or university-specific funds. This year, there are 26 funds...

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Lincoln Laboratory establishes Biotechnology and Human Systems...
MIT Lincoln Laboratory has established a new research and development division, the Biotechnology and Human Systems Division. The division will address emerging threats to both national security and humanity. Research and development will encompass advanced technologies and systems for improving chemical and biological defense, human health and performance, and global resilience to climate change, conflict, and disasters. “We strongly believe that research and development in biology, biomedical systems, biological defense, and human systems is a critically important part of national...

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