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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.

 
Ice, ice, maybe
From above, Antarctica appears as a massive sheet of white. But if you were to zoom in, you would find that an ice sheet is a complex and dynamic system. In the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), graduate student Meghana Ranganathan studies what controls the speed of ice streams — narrow, fast-flowing sections of the glacier that funnel into the ocean. When they meet the ocean, losing ground support, they calve and break off into icebergs....

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What jumps out in a photo changes...
What seizes your attention at first glance might change with a closer look. That elephant dressed in red wallpaper might initially grab your eye until your gaze moves to the woman on the living room couch and the surprising realization that the pair appear to be sharing a quiet moment together. In a study being presented at the virtual Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference this week, researchers show that our attention moves in distinctive ways the longer we stare at an image, and that...

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Building a framework for remote making
Making is central to MIT’s identity. It is the embodiment of MIT’s motto, “mens et manus” — “mind and hand.” For many students, making is more than designing, engineering, arts, and crafts; it is an act of community. But as campus closed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in March, makerspaces were shuttered across campus and many students had to abandon their projects. With most of these spaces remaining closed to students over the summer, a remote making resource...

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Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves,...
A team of astronomers, including researchers at MIT, has picked up on a curious, repeating rhythm of fast radio bursts emanating from an unknown source outside our galaxy, 500 million light years away. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are short, intense flashes of radio waves that are thought to be the product of small, distant, extremely dense objects, though exactly what those objects might be is a longstanding mystery in astrophysics. FRBs typically last a few milliseconds, during which...

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Why the Mediterranean is a climate change...
Although global climate models vary in many ways, they agree on this: The Mediterranean region will be significantly drier in coming decades, potentially seeing 40 percent less precipitation during the winter rainy season. An analysis by researchers at MIT has now found the underlying mechanisms that explain the anomalous effects in this region, especially in the Middle East and in northwest Africa. The analysis could help refine the models and add certainty to their projections, which have significant implications...

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3 questions with James H. Williams, Jr.,...
In two new textbooks, Professor of Mechanical Engineering James H. Williams, Jr. shares his engineering knowledge, joy, and teaching style that have inspired generations of MIT students as well as engineers and scientists worldwide. As a mechanical engineering professor, Williams is the first to receive the Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the first to receive the Jacob P. Den Hartog Distinguished Educator Award, and the first to be named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow. He...

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Study sheds light on a classic visual...
It’s a classic visual illusion: Two gray dots appear on a background that consists of a gradient from light gray to black. Although the two dots are identical, they appear very different based on where they are placed against the background. Scientists who study the brain have been trying to figure out the mechanism behind this illusion, known as simultaneous brightness contrast, for more than 100 years. An MIT-led study now suggests that this phenomenon relies on brightness estimation...

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Steady demand for PPE might encourage local...
Without a vaccine for Covid-19, health care and other frontline workers must rely on personal protective equipment (PPE) to guard themselves from exposure to the novel coronavirus. Demand for PPE has been substantial in Massachusetts since the outbreak began. What’s unclear is just how great the demand will remain going forward, and if the state is equipped to meet it. To help settle this uncertainty, MIT Lincoln Laboratory conducted a study to estimate demand for PPE in Massachusetts over...

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What moves people?
It’s easy to think of urban mobility strictly in terms of infrastructure: Does an area have the right rail lines, bus lanes, or bike paths? How much parking is available? How well might autonomous vehicles work? MIT Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao views matters a bit differently, however. To understand urban movement, Zhao believes, we also need to understand people. How does everyone choose to use transport? Why do they move around, and when? How does their self-image influence their...

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Study finds path for addressing Alzheimer’s blood-brain...
By developing a lab-engineered model of the human blood-brain barrier (BBB), neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have discovered how the most common Alzheimer’s disease risk gene causes amyloid protein plaques to disrupt the brain’s vasculature and showed they could prevent the damage with medications already approved for human use. About 25 percent of people have the APOE4 variant of the APOE gene, which puts them at substantially greater risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Almost everyone with...

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Startup with MIT roots develops lightweight solar...
Joel Jean PhD ’17 spent two years working on The Future of Solar Energy, a report published by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) in 2015. Today, he is striving to create that future as CEO of Swift Solar, a startup that is developing lightweight solar panels based on perovskite semiconductors. It hasn’t been a straight path, but Jean says his motivation — one he shares with his five co-founders — is the drive to address climate change. “The whole...

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From delayed deceleration to Zooming
On Nov. 21, 2019, the sun had set just a couple of hours before on an unseasonably warm day, and Jacqueline Thomas PhD ’20 found herself sitting on the edge of her seat in a typical meeting room in the William J. Hughes Technical Center, part of the Federal Aviation Administration, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Thomas, a graduate student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) at MIT, focused intently in front of a small monitor, her...

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Capturing stardust
Danielle Frostig spent the last Friday in February with the rest of the Astronomical Instrumentation Team at MIT, carefully packing an astronomical instrument bound for Chile. This instrument, a prototype of the larger, complete spectrograph, which will image some of the faintest and oldest stars, will be mounted on the Magellan Telescope in Las Campanas, Chile. “I’ve never thought of shipping crates or tax forms before,” confesses Frostig, a graduate student in the group of Rob Simcoe, director of...

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Team 2020 charts a course for MIT
In late March, as part of the Institute’s response to the evolving Covid-19 pandemic, the Team 2020 working group was charged with rigorously evaluating options for the upcoming academic year, to inform the final decisions by the senior administration. Co-leads Ian A. Waitz, vice chancellor for undergraduate and graduate education, and Tony P. Sharon, acting deputy executive vice president, dove into the complex task, framing it as “defining all the switches that needed to be turned off (to scale...

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Newly observed phenomenon could lead to new...
An exotic physical phenomenon known as a Kohn anomaly has been found for the first time in an unexpected type of material by researchers at MIT and elsewhere. They say the finding could provide new insights into certain fundamental processes that help determine why metals and other materials display the complex electronic properties that underlie much of today’s technology. The way electrons interact with phonons — which are essentially vibrations passing through a crystalline material — determines the physical...

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