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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.

 
Envisioning education in a climate-changed world
What must colleges and universities do differently to help students develop the skills, capacities, and perspectives they’ll need to live, lead, and thrive in a world being remade by the accelerating climate crisis? That question was at the heart of a recent convening on MIT’s campus that brought together faculty and staff from more than 30 institutions of higher education. Over two days, attendees delved into the need for higher education to align structurally and philosophically with the changing demands...

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With music and merriment, MIT celebrates the...
MIT’s campus spilled over with good cheer yesterday during a community-wide celebration marking the upcoming inauguration of MIT President Sally Kornbluth on Monday. In a day of activities that truly had something for everyone, MIT community members and their families enjoyed an array of student performances, amusement park rides, exhibits hosted by MIT’s departments and labs, and plenty of food. “It’s a historic moment — a lot of change could happen from here forward,” senior Anjali Sinha said. “We’re...

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President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea...
President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea visited MIT on Friday, participating in a roundtable discussion with Institute leaders and faculty about biomedical research and discussing the fundamentals of technology-driven innovation clusters.  South Korea, Yoon noted in his remarks, has highly regarded educational institutions, hospitals, and research facilities, along with robust legal and business systems. However, he added, the country still aims to develop the kind of biomedical innovation cluster exemplified by the Kendall Square area in Cambridge, Massachusetts,...

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J-PAL North America announces six new evaluation...
J-PAL North America, a regional office of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), has announced six new partnerships with government agencies and leading nonprofits through the State and Local Evaluation Incubator and the Housing Stability Evaluation Incubator, launched in August 2022. These collaborators span the contiguous United States and represent a wide range of social policy areas.  Over the next several months, organizations will work with J-PAL North America staff and affiliated researchers to design a randomized evaluation...

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Study: Covid-19 has reduced diverse urban interactions
The Covid-19 pandemic has reduced how often urban residents intersect with people from different income brackets, according to a new study led by MIT researchers. Examining the movement of people in four U.S. cities before and after the onset of the pandemic, the study found a 15 to 30 percent decrease in the number of visits residents were making to areas that are socioeconomically different than their own. In turn, this has reduced people’s opportunities to interact with others...

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Asegun Henry wins National Science Foundation’s Alan...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) today named Asegun Henry, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, as a 2023 recipient of its Alan T. Waterman Award. This award is the NSF’s highest honor for early-career researchers and provides funding for research in any science or engineering field.  This is the second year NSF has chosen to honor three researchers with the award. Henry is the sixth faculty member from MIT to receive this honor in its 47-year history,...

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How to untangle a worm ball: Mathematicians...
As anyone who has ever unwound a string of holiday lights or detangled a lock of snarled hair knows, undoing a knot of fibers takes a lot longer than tangling it up in the first place. This is not so for a wily species of West Coast worm. Found in marshes, ponds, and other shallow waters, California blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) twist and curl around each other by the thousands, forming tightly wound balls over several minutes. In the face...

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MIT engineers “grow” atomically thin transistors on...
Emerging AI applications, like chatbots that generate natural human language, demand denser, more powerful computer chips. But semiconductor chips are traditionally made with bulk materials, which are boxy 3D structures, so stacking multiple layers of transistors to create denser integrations is very difficult. However, semiconductor transistors made from ultrathin 2D materials, each only about three atoms in thickness, could be stacked up to create more powerful chips. To this end, MIT researchers have now demonstrated a novel technology that...

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Robert Armstrong: A lifetime at the forefront...
Robert C. Armstrong, the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering who has been the director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) since 2013 and part of MITEI’s leadership team since its inception in 2007, has announced that he will retire effective June 30. At that time he will have completed 50 years on the MIT faculty.   Armstrong plans to continue to work at 10 percent capacity, focusing on research projects on which he serves as principal investigator and also advising...

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Study offers a new view of when...
Allocating land for people to use is one of the most powerful tools a government can have. A newly published study by an MIT scholar now identifies the extent to which state land distribution can be a politically charged act. The research, focused on Kenya in recent decades, challenges some conventional wisdom while bringing new empirical data to the subject. To explain the “property rights gap” in some countries — in which people do not own the land they...

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Ingestible “electroceutical” capsule stimulates hunger-regulating hormone
Hormones released by the stomach, such as ghrelin, play a key role in stimulating appetite. These hormones are produced by endocrine cells that are part of the enteric nervous system, which controls hunger, nausea, and feelings of fullness. MIT engineers have now shown that they can stimulate these endocrine cells to produce ghrelin, using an ingestible capsule that delivers an electrical current to the cells. This approach could prove useful for treating diseases that involve nausea or loss of...

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Knight Science Journalism Program announces 2023-24 fellows
The internationally renowned Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT has announced the 10 elite science journalists who will make up its 2023-24 fellowship class. Selected from more than 100 applicants, the group comprises award-winning print, audio, and multimedia journalists hailing from seven countries and five continents. “We’re excited to welcome such an accomplished group of journalists to Cambridge,” says Knight Science Journalism Program Director Deborah Blum. “It’s a pleasure to see such a rich variety of reporting backgrounds and...

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MIT Solve names Hala Hanna as new...
MIT Solve has announced Hala Hanna as its new executive director. Solve is a marketplace for social impact innovation with a mission to drive innovation to solve world challenges. Hanna has more than 15 years of experience working across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, with the purpose of creating a more equitable and sustainable world. She spent the last six years at MIT Solve, where she helped build the initiative into a global community.  Solve uses open innovation...

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A simple paper test could offer early...
MIT engineers have designed a new nanoparticle sensor that could enable early diagnosis of cancer with a simple urine test. The sensors, which can detect many different cancerous proteins, could also be used to distinguish the type of a tumor or how it is responding to treatment. The nanoparticles are designed so that when they encounter a tumor, they shed short sequences of DNA that are excreted in the urine. Analyzing these DNA “barcodes” can reveal distinguishing features of...

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MIT graduate engineering, business, science programs ranked...
U.S. News and Word Report has again placed MIT’s graduate program in engineering at the top of its annual rankings. The Institute has held the No. 1 spot since 1990, when the magazine first ranked such programs. The MIT Sloan School of Management also placed highly. It occupies the No. 4 spot for the best graduate business programs, tied with Harvard University. Among individual engineering disciplines, MIT placed first in six areas: aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering, chemical engineering, computer engineering, electrical/electronic/communications...

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