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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.

 
Professor Emeritus Peter Schiller, a pioneer researcher...
Peter Schiller, professor emeritus in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of the MIT faculty since 1964, died on Dec. 23, 2023. He was 92. Born in Berlin to Hungarian parents in 1931, Schiller and his family returned to Budapest in 1934, where they endured World War II; in 1947 he moved to the United States with his father and stepmother. Schiller attended college at Duke University, where he was on the soccer and tennis...

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Award shines a spotlight on local science...
Local reporting is a critical tool in the battle against disinformation and misinformation. It can also provide valuable data about everything from environmental damage derived from questionable agribusiness practices to the long-term effects of logging on communities.  Reporting like this requires more than just journalistic chops. It needs a network that can share these important stories, access to readers, and financial support. That’s why organizations like the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT and its Victor K. McElheny Award...

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Remembering Elise O’Hara, Media Lab staff member
Elise O’Hara, a cherished member of the Media Lab community, died on Dec. 12, 2023, as a result of complications following the birth of a healthy child. As an administrative assistant for multiple research groups and initiatives — most recently, the Space Exploration Initiative and Tangible Media Group — O’Hara managed a variety of complex, high-priority projects with skill, patience, and good humor. In her time at the Media Lab, O’Hara was perhaps best known for her warmth and...

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Solving complex problems with technology and varied...
Something new, large, and round has dominated the Las Vegas skyline since July: Sphere. After debuting this summer, the state-of-the-art entertainment venue became instantly recognizable thanks to pictures and videos on social media and Reddit. Some of the most viral posts depict the 580,000-square-foot, fully programmable LED Exosphere projecting a giant yellow emoji that smiles, sleeps, and follows airplanes flying overhead with a look of wonder. According to Jared Miller ’98, MBA ’03, SM ’03, Sphere’s growing popularity even...

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Getfit, MIT Health’s winter exercise challenge, turns...
“Getfit” isn’t a command, but rather a friendly challenge from MIT Health (formerly MIT Medical) to spend the cold months exercising with a group of people you choose in any way you choose. This year, the popular winter fitness program is celebrating its 20th year. What began as a goal-oriented exercise incentive for MIT Health staff in its pilot year, and expanded in 2005 to the entire MIT community, has now become a cherished tradition for many. Tom Goodwin,...

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Blueprint Labs launches a charter school research...
Over the past 30 years, charter schools have emerged as a prominent yet debated public school option. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 7 percent of U.S. public school students were enrolled in charter schools in 2021, up from 4 percent in 2010. Amid this expansion, families and policymakers want to know more about charter school performance and its systemic impacts. While researchers have evaluated charter schools’ short-term effects on student outcomes, significant knowledge gaps still exist. ...

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New hope for early pancreatic cancer intervention...
The first documented case of pancreatic cancer dates back to the 18th century. Since then, researchers have undertaken a protracted and challenging odyssey to understand the elusive and deadly disease. To date, there is no better cancer treatment than early intervention. Unfortunately, the pancreas, nestled deep within the abdomen, is particularly elusive for early detection.  MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) scientists, alongside Limor Appelbaum, a staff scientist in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Beth Israel...

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Meeting the clean energy needs of tomorrow
Yuri Sebregts, chief technology officer at Shell, succinctly laid out the energy dilemma facing the world over the rest of this century. On one hand, demand for energy is quickly growing as countries in the developing world modernize and the global population grows, with 100 gigajoules of energy per person needed annually to enable quality-of-life benefits and industrialization around the globe. On the other, traditional energy sources are quickly warming the planet, with the world already seeing the devastating...

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Reasoning and reliability in AI
In order for natural language to be an effective form of communication, the parties involved need to be able to understand words and their context, assume that the content is largely shared in good faith and is trustworthy, reason about the information being shared, and then apply it to real-world scenarios. MIT PhD students interning with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab — Athul Paul Jacob SM ’22, Maohao Shen SM ’23, Victor Butoi, and Andi Peng SM ’23 — are...

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Evidence that gamma rhythm stimulation can treat...
A surprising MIT study published in Nature at the end of 2016 helped to spur interest in the possibility that light flickering at the frequency of a particular gamma-band brain rhythm could produce meaningful therapeutic effects for people with Alzheimer’s disease. In a new review paper in the Journal of Internal Medicine, the lab that led those studies takes stock of what a growing number of scientists worldwide have been finding out since then in dozens of clinical and lab benchtop studies. Brain rhythms...

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MedLinks volunteers aid students in residence halls...
For 30 years, MIT MedLinks liaisons have volunteered to support MIT students with first-line medical care. Living in each of MIT’s residence halls and in numerous fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups, MedLinks administer basic first aid, share over-the-counter medicines when needed, explain MIT Health’s policies and procedures, and often simply listen to classmates talk about their health and well-being. MedLinks also help build community and plan events that bring people in their residence halls together. Recent events include...

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Study reveals a universal pattern of brain...
Throughout the brain’s cortex, neurons are arranged in six distinctive layers, which can be readily seen with a microscope. A team of MIT and Vanderbilt University neuroscientists has now found that these layers also show distinct patterns of electrical activity, which are consistent over many brain regions and across several animal species, including humans. The researchers found that in the topmost layers, neuron activity is dominated by rapid oscillations known as gamma waves. In the deeper layers, slower oscillations...

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Self-powered sensor automatically harvests magnetic energy
MIT researchers have developed a battery-free, self-powered sensor that can harvest energy from its environment. Because it requires no battery that must be recharged or replaced, and because it requires no special wiring, such a sensor could be embedded in a hard-to-reach place, like inside the inner workings of a ship’s engine. There, it could automatically gather data on the machine’s power consumption and operations for long periods of time. The researchers built a temperature-sensing device that harvests energy...

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Stratospheric safety standards: How aviation could steer...
What is the likelihood of dying in a plane crash? According to a 2022 report released by the International Air Transport Association, the industry fatality risk is 0.11. In other words, on average, a person would need to take a flight every day for 25,214 years to have a 100 percent chance of experiencing a fatal accident. Long touted as one of the safest modes of transportation, the highly regulated aviation industry has MIT scientists thinking that it may...

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The art of being FLI
When you walk through Memorial Lobby (better known as Lobby 10), you never know what you might find. The space has long been a campus hub for any manner of activities — from students tabling for their organizations and the iconic glass pumpkin sale to the MIT Juggling Club practicing their craft. On a sunny, crisp Wednesday in November, passersby likely saw a sea of students affiliated with MIT’s First Generation/Low Income (FLI) Program in Lobby 10 milling about...

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