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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.

 
Scientists find neurons that process language on...
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), neuroscientists have identified several regions of the brain that are responsible for processing language. However, discovering the specific functions of neurons in those regions has proven difficult because fMRI, which measures changes in blood flow, doesn’t have high enough resolution to reveal what small populations of neurons are doing. Now, using a more precise technique that involves recording electrical activity directly from the brain, MIT neuroscientists have identified different clusters of neurons that...

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Uphill battles: Across the country in 75...
Amulya Aluru ’23, MEng ’24, will head to the University of California at Berkeley for a PhD in molecular and cell biology PhD this fall. Aluru knows her undergraduate 6-7 major and MEng program, where she worked on a computational project in a biology lab, have prepared her for the next step of her academic journey. “I’m a lot more comfortable with the unknown in terms of research — and also life,” she says. “While I’ve enjoyed what I’ve...

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3 Questions: From the bench to the...
Pursuing an Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program project (or two or three) is a quintessential part of the academic experience at MIT. The program, known as UROP, allows students to be “shoulder to shoulder” with faculty, graduate students, and affiliated researchers in MIT’s labs. Given the plethora of research options and disciplines — everything from getting a crash course in advancing quantum computing to developing neuroprosthetics — it’s no surprise that over 90 percent of undergraduates end up doing a UROP...

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Duane Boning named vice provost for international...
Duane Boning ’84, SM ’86, PhD ’91 has been named the next MIT vice provost for international activities (VPIA), effective Sept. 1. Boning, the Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT, succeeds Japan Steel Industry Professor Richard Lester, who has served as VPIA since 2015. The VPIA provides intellectual leadership, guidance, and oversight of MIT’s international policies and engagements. In this role, Boning will conduct strategic reviews of the portfolio of international activities,...

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Q&A: Undergraduate admissions in the wake of...
Earlier today, MIT Admissions released demographic data about the undergraduate Class of 2028, the first class of students admitted after the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard that banned the consideration of race in undergraduate admissions. As Dean of Admissions and Student Financial Services Stu Schmill ’86 anticipated in a blog post last June, the court’s decision has resulted in a decline in the proportion of enrolling first-year students who are members of historically under-represented racial and...

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Creating connection with science communication
Before completing her undergraduate studies, Sophie Hartley, a student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, had an epiphany that was years in the making. “The classes I took in my last undergraduate semester changed my career goals, but it started with my grandfather,” she says when asked about what led her to science writing. She’d been studying comparative human development at the University of Chicago, which Hartley describes as “a combination of psychology and anthropology,” when she took courses...

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More durable metals for fusion power reactors
For many decades, nuclear fusion power has been viewed as the ultimate energy source. A fusion power plant could generate carbon-free energy at a scale needed to address climate change. And it could be fueled by deuterium recovered from an essentially endless source — seawater. Decades of work and billions of dollars in research funding have yielded many advances, but challenges remain. To Ju Li, the TEPCO Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering and a professor of materials science...

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Christine Ortiz named director of MIT Technology...
Christine Ortiz, the Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, has been named the next director of the MIT Technology and Policy Program (TPP). “Christine is a force of nature,” says Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of the Social Sciences and director of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), which houses TPP. “Her years of service to the Institute, her support of grad students in particular, her research focus on innovation and...

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MIT engineers design tiny batteries for powering...
A tiny battery designed by MIT engineers could enable the deployment of cell-sized, autonomous robots for drug delivery within in the human body, as well as other applications such as locating leaks in gas pipelines. The new battery, which is 0.1 millimeters long and 0.002 millimeters thick — roughly the thickness of a human hair — can capture oxygen from air and use it to oxidize zinc, creating a current of up to 1 volt. That is enough to power...

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New open-source tool helps to detangle the...
In late 2023, the first drug with potential to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease was approved by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration. Alzheimer’s is one of many debilitating neurological disorders that together affect one-eighth of the world’s population, and while the new drug is a step in the right direction, there is still a long journey ahead to fully understanding it, and other such diseases. “Reconstructing the intricacies of how the human brain functions on a cellular level is...

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Building bidirectional bridges
In June 2023, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities could no longer use race as a factor in their admission decisions, many higher education institutions across the United States faced the same challenge: how to maintain diversity in their student bodies. So Noelle Wakefield, director of MIT’s Summer Research Program (MSRP) and assistant dean for diversity initiatives in MIT’s Office of Graduate Education (OGE), started planning. On July 31, a little more than a year after the decision...

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An implantable sensor could reverse opioid overdoses
In 2023, more than 100,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. The most effective way to save someone who has overdosed is to administer a drug called naloxone, but a first responder or bystander can’t always reach the person who has overdosed in time. Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a new device that they hope will help to eliminate those delays and potentially save the lives of people who overdose. The device, about the size...

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Study reveals ways in which 40Hz sensory...
Early-stage trials in Alzheimer’s disease patients and studies in mouse models of the disease have suggested positive impacts on pathology and symptoms from exposure to light and sound presented at the “gamma” band frequency of 40 hertz (Hz). A new study zeroes in on how 40Hz sensory stimulation helps to sustain an essential process in which the signal-sending branches of neurons, called axons, are wrapped in a fatty insulation called myelin. Often called the brain’s “white matter,” myelin protects...

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Faculty receive promotions in the School of...
Eleven faculty in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning have been recognized with promotions for their significant contributions to the school, effective July 1. Five faculty promotions are in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning; four are in the Department of Architecture; and two are in the program in Media Arts and Sciences. “Whether architects, urbanists, historians, artists, economists, or aero-astro engineers, they represent our school at its best, in its breadth of inquiry and in its persistence to improve, by...

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Cynthia Griffin Wolff, acclaimed biographer and longtime...
Cynthia Griffin Wolff, a noted scholar of American literature, passed away on July 25. She was 87. Wolff joined the humanities faculty at MIT in 1980 and was named the Class of 1922 Professor of Humanities in 1985. She taught in the Literature Section, and later moved to the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. Her expertise was in the exploration of 19th and 20th century female American writers. She retired from MIT in 2003. Wolff was born in...

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