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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.

 
2.009 gets “Wild!”
Things got “WILD!” in Kresge auditorium on Monday night — that was the theme for this year’s class 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes) senior capstone course, and it’s also a great word to describe of the energy of the capacity crowd gathered for the course’s annual product prototype launch event. The popular mechanical engineering course, known on campus as “two-double-oh-nine,” is designed to emulate what engineers might experience as part of a design team at a modern product development firm....

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LIFT Program helps Cambridge youth become tomorrow’s...
On Nov. 29, a team of young adults stood in front of a crowd at The Link coworking space in Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and presented their idea for a smart, watch-like device that monitors a user’s vitals for signs of anger and prompts them with guided breathing exercises. The device would also connect via Bluetooth to a virtual reality headset that could lead the user through conflict resolution scenarios. Such high-tech presentations are common in Kendall Square, but...

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Three MIT students selected as inaugural MIT-Pillar...
MIT-Pillar AI Collective has announced three inaugural fellows for the fall 2023 semester. With support from the program, the graduate students, who are in their final year of a master’s or PhD program, will conduct research in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science with the aim of commercializing their innovations. Launched by MIT’s School of Engineering and Pillar VC in 2022, the MIT-Pillar AI Collective supports faculty, postdocs, and students conducting research on AI, machine...

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Angela Belcher delivers 2023 Dresselhaus Lecture on...
“How do we get to making nanomaterials that haven’t been evolved before?” asked Angela Belcher at the 2023 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture at MIT on Nov. 20. “We can use elements that biology has already given us.” The combined in-person and virtual audience of over 300 was treated to a light-up, 3D model of M13 bacteriophage, a virus that only infects bacteria, complete with a pull-out strand of DNA. Belcher used the feather-boa-like model to show how her research...

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Satellite-based method measures carbon in peat bogs
Peat bogs in the tropics store vast amounts of carbon, but logging, plantations, road building, and other activities have destroyed large swaths of these ecosystems in places like Indonesia and Malaysia. Peat formations are essentially permanently flooded forestland, where dead leaves and branches accumulate because the water table prevents their decomposition. The pileup of organic material gives these formations a distinctive domed shape, somewhat raised in the center and tapering toward the edges. Determining how much carbon is contained...

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Closing the design-to-manufacturing gap for optical devices
Photolithography involves manipulating light to precisely etch features onto a surface, and is commonly used to fabricate computer chips and optical devices like lenses. But tiny deviations during the manufacturing process often cause these devices to fall short of their designers’ intentions. To help close this design-to-manufacturing gap, researchers from MIT and the Chinese University of Hong Kong used machine learning to build a digital simulator that mimics a specific photolithography manufacturing process. Their technique utilizes real data gathered...

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Ronald Garcia Ruiz named a Popular Science...
Popular Science magazine has named Ronald Fernando Garcia Ruiz, assistant professor with MIT’s Department of Physics and a researcher in the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, as one of its Brilliant 10 for 2023. Garcia Ruiz is featured in the Dec. 5 issue. The Garcia Ruiz Lab (the Laboratory for Exotic Molecules and Atoms) focuses its research on the development of laser spectroscopy techniques to investigate the properties of subatomic particles using atoms and molecules made up of short-lived radioactive...

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MIT campus goals in food, water, waste...
With the launch of Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade, the Institute committed to decarbonize campus operations by 2050 — an effort that touches on every corner of MIT, from building energy use to procurement and waste. At the operational level, the plan called for establishing a set of quantitative climate impact goals in the areas of food, water, and waste to inform the campus decarbonization roadmap. After an 18-month process that engaged staff, faculty, and...

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Boosting faith in the authenticity of open...
Open source software — software that is freely distributed, along with its source code, so that copies, additions, or modifications can be readily made — is “everywhere,” to quote the 2023 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report. Ninety-six percent of the computer programs used by major industries include open source software, and 76 percent of those programs consist of open source software. But the percentage of software packages “containing security vulnerabilities remains troublingly high,” the report warned. One...

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MIT Generative AI Week fosters dialogue across...
In late November, faculty, staff, and students from across MIT participated in MIT Generative AI Week. The programming included a flagship full-day symposium as well as four subject-specific symposia, all aimed at fostering a dialogue about the opportunities and potential applications of generative artificial intelligence technologies across a diverse range of disciplines. “These events are one expression of our conviction that MIT has a special responsibility to help society come to grips with the tectonic forces of generative AI —...

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Moungi Bawendi honored during Nobel Week in...
The 2023 Nobel Prize winners received their awards in a grand ceremony yesterday in Stockholm, Sweden. Among those honored was MIT Professor Moungi Bawendi, who shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Louis Brus and Aleksey Yekimov for their work on quantum dots. As part of the annual Nobel Week festivities, Bawendi gave a lecture about his research, participated in a Nobel Banquet, and took part in a conversation with Danish European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, a...

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Two from MIT named 2024 Marshall Scholars
Anushree Chaudhuri and Rupert Li have won Marshall Scholarships, a prestigious British government-funded fellowship that offers exceptional American students the opportunity to pursue several years of graduate study in any field at any university in the United Kingdom. Up to 50 scholarships are awarded each year by the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission. The students were advised and supported by the distinguished fellowships team, led by Associate Dean Kim Benard in Career Advising and Professional Development. They also received mentorship...

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Scientists 3D print self-heating microfluidic devices
MIT researchers have used 3D printing to produce self-heating microfluidic devices, demonstrating a technique which could someday be used to rapidly create cheap, yet accurate, tools to detect a host of diseases. Microfluidics, miniaturized machines that manipulate fluids and facilitate chemical reactions, can be used to detect disease in tiny samples of blood or fluids. At-home test kits for Covid-19, for example, incorporate a simple type of microfluidic. But many microfluidic applications require chemical reactions that must be performed...

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MIT group releases white papers on governance...
Providing a resource for U.S. policymakers, a committee of MIT leaders and scholars has released a set of policy briefs that outlines a framework for the governance of artificial intelligence. The approach includes extending current regulatory and liability approaches in pursuit of a practical way to oversee AI. The aim of the papers is to help enhance U.S. leadership in the area of artificial intelligence broadly, while limiting harm that could result from the new technologies and encouraging exploration...

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Breakerspace illuminates the mysteries of materials
Days before the opening of the Breakerspace, a new laboratory and lounge at MIT, actor and rapper Jaden Smith tried out the facility’s capabilities, putting his bracelet under a digital optical microscope. On the screen in front of him was a 3D rendering of woven threads, each strand made up of smaller strands, with specks of matter dotting the surface. “His eyes just lit up,” says Professor Jeffrey Grossman, the Morton and Claire Goulder and Family Professor in Environmental...

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