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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.

 
Deep machine-learning speeds assessment of fruit fly...
Drosophila — commonly known as fruit flies — are a valuable model for human heart pathophysiology, including cardiac aging and cardiomyopathy. However, a choke point in evaluating fruit fly hearts is the need for human intervention to measure the heart at moments of its largest expansion or its greatest contraction, measurements that allow calculations of cardiac dynamics. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham now show a way to significantly cut the time needed for that analysis while...

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Researchers capture never-before-seen view of gene transcription
Every living cell transcribes DNA into RNA. This process begins when an enzyme called RNA polymerase (RNAP) clamps onto DNA. Within a few hundred milliseconds, the DNA double helix unwinds to form a node known as the transcription bubble, so that one exposed DNA strand can be copied into a complementary RNA strand. How RNAP accomplishes this feat is largely unknown. A snapshot of RNAP in the act of opening that bubble would provide a wealth of information, but...

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Poor health, stress in 20s takes toll...
Higher inflammation in young adulthood linked to lower performance in skills testing in midlife. Young adults who have higher levels of inflammation, which is associated with obesity, physical inactivity, chronic illness, stress and smoking, may experience reduced cognitive function in midlife, a new study out of UC San Francisco has found. Researchers previously linked higher inflammation in older adults to dementia, but this is one of the first studies to connect inflammation in early adulthood with lower cognitive abilities...

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Scientists discover way to 'grow' sub-nanometer sized...
A research team led by Director JO Moon-Ho of the Center for Van der Waals Quantum Solids within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) has implemented a novel method to achieve epitaxial growth of 1D metallic materials with a width of less than 1 nm. The group applied this process to develop a new structure for 2D semiconductor logic circuits. Notably, they used the 1D metals as a gate electrode of the ultra-miniaturized transistor. Integrated devices based on two-dimensional...

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New study on children and food:  Fruit...
If you feel like your six-year-old has suddenly gotten extra fussy about the texture of their dinner, don’t worry. It will pass. A new study from the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Food Science demonstrates that at the age of six, children prefer to avoid crunch in their peanut butter, berries in jam and pieces of fruit in yogurt, In the study, the researchers asked 485 children between the ages of five and twelve to choose between six different...

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Chemists synthesize an improved building block for...
Chemists have overcome a major hurdle in synthesizing a more stable form of heterocycle — a family of organic compounds that are a common component of most modern pharmaceuticals. The research, which could expand the toolkit available to drug developers in improving the safety profiles of medications and reducing side effects, was published in Science by organic chemists at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Michigan. “Azetidines are a...

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Pasteurization inactivates highly infectious avian flu in...
In March 2024, dairy cows in Texas were found to be infected with highly pathogenic avian flu, or H5N1 bird flu, in the first known case of the virus spreading to cattle. Since then, H5N1 has been found in about 200 animals — and 3 people — across 12 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus was soon detected in raw milk, leading researchers to investigate whether dairy products pose a risk to consumers....

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What is language for?
Language is a defining feature of humanity, and for centuries, philosophers and scientists have contemplated its true purpose. We use language to share information and exchange ideas — but is it more than that? Do we use language not just to communicate, but to think? In the June 19 issue of the journal Nature, McGovern Institute for Brain Research neuroscientist Evelina Fedorenko and colleagues argue that we do not. Language, they say, is primarily a tool for communication. Fedorenko...

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Studying astrophysically relevant plasma physics
Thomas Varnish loves his hobbies — knitting, baking, pottery — it’s a long list. His latest interest is analog film photography. A picture with his mother and another with his boyfriend are just a few of Varnish’s favorites. “These moments of human connection are the ones I like,” he says. Varnish’s love of capturing a fleeting moment on film translates to his research when he conducts laser interferometry on plasmas using off-the-shelf cameras. At the Department of Nuclear Science...

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Signal processing: How did we get to...
On May 24, Ford Professor of Engineering Al Oppenheim addressed a standing-room-only audience at MIT to give the talk of a lifetime. Entitled “Signal Processing: How Did We Get to Where We’re Going?”, Oppenheim’s personal account of his involvement in the early years of the digital signal processing field included a photo retrospective — and some handheld historical artifacts — that showed just how far the field has come since its birth at MIT and Lincoln Laboratory. Hosted by...

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How to increase the rate of plastics...
While recycling systems and bottle deposits have become increasingly widespread in the U.S., actual rates of recycling are “abysmal,” according to a team of MIT researchers who studied the rates for recycling of PET, the plastic commonly used in beverage bottles. However, their findings suggest some ways to change this. The present rate of recycling for PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, bottles nationwide is about 24 percent and has remained stagnant for a decade, the researchers say. But their study...

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Summer 2024 recommended reading from MIT
MIT faculty and staff authors have published a plethora of books, chapters, and other literary contributions in the past year. The following titles represent some of their works published in the past 12 months.  Looking for more literary works from the MIT community? Enjoy our book lists from 2023, 2022, and 2021. Happy reading! Novel, memoir, and poetry “Seizing Control: Managing Epilepsy and Others’ Reactions to It — A Memoir” (Haley’s, 2023)By Laura Beretsky, grant writer in the MIT...

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Pioneering the future of materials extraction
The next time you cook pasta, imagine that you are cooking spaghetti, rigatoni, and seven other varieties all together, and they need to be separated onto 10 different plates before serving. A colander can remove the water — but you still have a mound of unsorted noodles. Now imagine that this had to be done for thousands of tons of pasta a day. That gives you an idea of the scale of the problem facing Brendan Smith PhD ’18, co-founder...

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The rules of the game
At the core of Raymond Wang’s work lies a seemingly simple question: Can’t we just get along? Wang, a fifth-year political science graduate student, is a native of Hong Kong who witnessed firsthand the shakeup and conflict engendered by China’s takeover of the former British colony. “That type of experience makes you wonder why things are so complicated,” he says. “Why is it so hard to live with your neighbors?” Today, Wang is focused on ways of managing a...

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Implantable microphone could lead to fully internal...
Cochlear implants, tiny electronic devices that can provide a sense of sound to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, have helped improve hearing for more than a million people worldwide, according to the National Institutes of Health. However, cochlear implants today are only partially implanted, and they rely on external hardware that typically sits on the side of the head. These components restrict users, who can’t, for instance, swim, exercise, or sleep while wearing the external unit,...

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