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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.

 
Jarrod Goentzel receives 2024 Humanitarian Logistics Award
In recognition of his leadership and contributions to global disaster response efforts, Jarrod Goentzel, founder and director of the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab (HSCL), has been awarded the 2024 Humanitarian Logistics Award by the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). This honor underscores the vital work of the lab, particularly during times of crisis, including the ongoing relief efforts during and following Hurricane Milton. For over a decade, Goentzel’s lab at MIT has played a pivotal role in improving...

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MIT affiliates receive 2024-25 awards and honors...
A number of individuals with MIT ties have received honors from the American Physical Society (APS) for 2024 and 2025. Awardees include Professor Frances Ross; Professor Vladan Vuletić, graduate student Jiliang Hu ’19, PhD ’24; as well as 10 alumni. New APS Fellows include Professor Joseph Checkelsky, Senior Researcher John Chiaverini, Associate Professor Areg Danagoulian, Professor Ruben Juanes, and seven alumni. Frances M. Ross, the TDK Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, received the 2025 Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science  “for groundbreaking...

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Brains, fashion, alien life, and more: Highlights...
What is it like to give birth on Mars? Can bioengineer TikTok stars win at the video game “Super Smash Brothers” while also answering questions about science? How do sheep, mouse, and human brains compare? These questions and others were asked last month when more than 50,000 visitors from across Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Greater Boston participated in the MIT Museum’s annual Cambridge Science Festival, a week-long celebration dedicated to creativity, ingenuity, and innovation. Running Monday, Sept. 23 through Sunday,...

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Implantable microparticles can deliver two cancer therapies...
Patients with late-stage cancer often have to endure multiple rounds of different types of treatment, which can cause unwanted side effects and may not always help. In hopes of expanding the treatment options for those patients, MIT researchers have designed tiny particles that can be implanted at a tumor site, where they deliver two types of therapy: heat and chemotherapy. This approach could avoid the side effects that often occur when chemotherapy is given intravenously, and the synergistic effect...

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Interactive mouthpiece opens new opportunities for health...
When you think about hands-free devices, you might picture Alexa and other voice-activated in-home assistants, Bluetooth earpieces, or asking Siri to make a phone call in your car. You might not imagine using your mouth to communicate with other devices like a computer or a phone remotely.  Thinking outside the box, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Aarhus University researchers have now engineered “MouthIO,” a dental brace that can be fabricated with sensors and feedback components...

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Study: Hospice care provides major Medicare savings
Hospice care aims to provide a health care alternative for people nearing the end of life by sparing them unwanted medical procedures and focusing on the patient’s comfort. A new study co-authored by MIT scholars shows hospice also has a clear fiscal benefit: It generates substantial savings for the U.S. Medicare system. The study examines the growth of for-profit hospice providers, who receive reimbursements from Medicare, and evaluates the cost of caring for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related...

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Study: Fusion energy could play a major...
For many decades, fusion has been touted as the ultimate source of abundant, clean electricity. Now, as the world faces the need to reduce carbon emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change, making commercial fusion power a reality takes on new importance. In a power system dominated by low-carbon variable renewable energy sources (VREs) such as solar and wind, “firm” electricity sources are needed to kick in whenever demand exceeds supply — for example, when the sun isn’t shining or...

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SMART researchers develop a method to enhance...
Researchers from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP) interdisciplinary research group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, alongside collaborators from the National University of Singapore Tissue Engineering Programme, have developed a novel method to enhance the ability of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) to generate cartilage tissue by adding ascorbic acid during MSC expansion. The research also discovered that micro-magnetic resonance relaxometry (µMRR), a novel process analytical tool developed by SMART CAMP, can...

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Aspiring to sustainable development
In a first for both universities, MIT undergraduates are engaged in research projects at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG), while MIT scholars are collaborating with UVG undergraduates on in-depth field studies in Guatemala. These pilot projects are part of a larger enterprise, called ASPIRE (Achieving Sustainable Partnerships for Innovation, Research, and Entrepreneurship). Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, this five-year, $15-million initiative brings together MIT, UVG, and the Guatemalan Exporters Association to promote sustainable solutions...

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Brain pathways that control dopamine release may...
Within the human brain, movement is coordinated by a brain region called the striatum, which sends instructions to motor neurons in the brain. Those instructions are conveyed by two pathways, one that initiates movement (“go”) and one that suppresses it (“no-go”). In a new study, MIT researchers have discovered an additional two pathways that arise in the striatum and appear to modulate the effects of the go and no-go pathways. These newly discovered pathways connect to dopamine-producing neurons in...

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Misinformation is all around. How can we...
Political misinformation is a hard problem. False statements pervade contemporary politics, sowing division and distrust, and making it harder for society to operate on the basis of fact and law. Even in matters of health and medicine, where people would seem to have a strong self-interest in knowing the facts, problems such as vaccine misinformation abound. So, what can be done to battle the false stories floating all around us? Misinformation is durable and highly resistant to small-bore solutions,...

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Seven with MIT ties elected to National...
The National Academy of Medicine recently announced the election of more than 90 members during its annual meeting, including MIT faculty members Matthew Vander Heiden and Fan Wang, along with five MIT alumni. Election to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. Matthew Vander Heiden is the director of the Koch Institute for...

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How climate change will impact outdoor activities...
It can be hard to connect a certain amount of average global warming with one’s everyday experience, so researchers at MIT have devised a different approach to quantifying the direct impact of climate change. Instead of focusing on global averages, they came up with the concept of “outdoor days”: the number days per year in a given location when the temperature is not too hot or cold to enjoy normal outdoor activities, such as going for a walk, playing...

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A new framework to efficiently screen drugs
Some of the most widely used drugs today, including penicillin, were discovered through a process called phenotypic screening. Using this method, scientists are essentially throwing drugs at a problem — for example, when attempting to stop bacterial growth or fixing a cellular defect — and then observing what happens next, without necessarily first knowing how the drug works. Perhaps surprisingly, historical data show that this approach is better at yielding approved medicines than those investigations that more narrowly focus...

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How is the world watching the 2024...
No matter the outcome, the results of the 2024 United States presidential election are certain to have global impact. How are citizens and leaders in other parts of the world viewing this election? What’s at stake for their countries and regions? This was the focus of “The 2024 US Presidential Election: The World is Watching,” a Starr Forum held earlier this month on the MIT campus. The Starr Forum is a public event series hosted by MIT’s Center for...

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