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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.

 
Titanic robots make farming more sustainable
There’s a lot riding on farmers’ ability to fight weeds, which can strangle crops and destroy yields. To protect crops, farmers have two options: They can spray herbicides that pollute the environment and harm human health, or they can hire more workers. Unfortunately, both choices are becoming less tenable. Herbicide resistance is a growing problem in crops around the world, while widespread labor shortages have hit the agricultural sector particularly hard. Now the startup FarmWise, co-founded by Sebastien Boyer...

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Creating a versatile vaccine to take on...
One of the 12 labors of Hercules, according to ancient lore, was to destroy a nine-headed monster called the Hydra. The challenge was that when Hercules used his sword to chop off one of the monster’s heads, two would grow back in its place. He therefore needed an additional weapon, a torch, to vanquish his foe. There are parallels between this legend and our three-years-and-counting battle with SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Every time scientists have thought they’d...

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What 'Chornobyl dogs' can tell us about...
In the first step toward understanding how dogs — and perhaps humans — might adapt to intense environmental pressures such as exposure to radiation, heavy metals, or toxic chemicals, researchers found that two groups of dogs living within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone showed significant genetic differences between them. The results indicate that these are two distinct populations that rarely interbreed. While earlier studies focused on the effects of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster on various species of wildlife,...

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Working to make nuclear energy more competitive
Assil Halimi has loved science since he was a child, but it was a singular experience at a college internship that stoked his interest in nuclear engineering. As part of work on a conceptual design for an aircraft electric propulsion system, Halimi had to read a chart that compared the energy density of various fuel sources. He was floored to see that the value for uranium was orders of magnitude higher than the rest. “Just a fuel pellet the...

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Study: Smoke particles from wildfires can erode...
A wildfire can pump smoke up into the stratosphere, where the particles drift for over a year. A new MIT study has found that while suspended there, these particles can trigger chemical reactions that erode the protective ozone layer shielding the Earth from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet radiation. The study, which appears today in Nature, focuses on the smoke from the “Black Summer” megafire in eastern Australia, which burned from December 2019 into January 2020. The fires — the...

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MIT Cheney Room reopens with fresh and...
The Margaret Cheney Room celebrated its reopening last month after significant updates and remodeling over the last several months. The celebration was led by Lauryn McNair, assistant dean of LBGTQ+ Women and Gender Services, and attended by MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles, Provost Cynthia Barnhart, and numerous students, staff, and alumni. In 1884, MIT founded the Margaret Cheney Reading Room as a space for women on campus to gather. The room was named after Margaret Swan Cheney, a member of...

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Nanotube sensors are capable of detecting and...
Researchers from the Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) interdisciplinary research group of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, and their collaborators from Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory have developed the first-ever nanosensor that can detect and distinguish gibberellins (GAs), a class of hormones in plants that are important for growth. The novel nanosensors are nondestructive, unlike conventional collection methods, and have been successfully tested in living plants. Applied in the...

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3 Questions: Antje Danielson on energy education...
The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) leads energy education at MIT, developing and implementing a robust educational toolkit for MIT graduate and undergraduate students, online learners around the world, and high school students who want to contribute to the energy transition. As MITEI’s director of education, Antje Danielson manages a team devoted to training the next generation of energy innovators, entrepreneurs, and policymakers. Here, she discusses new initiatives in MITEI’s education program and how they are preparing students to take...

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Learning to compute through art
One student confesses that motors have always freaked them out. Amy Huynh, a first-year student in the MIT Technology and Policy Program, says “I just didn’t respond to the way electrical engineering and coding is usually taught.” Huynh and her fellow students found a different way to master coding and circuits during the Independent Activities Period course Introduction to Physical Computing for Artists — a class created by Student Art Association (SAA) instructor Timothy Lee and offered for the...

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Daniel Hastings named American Institute of Aeronautics...
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) announced Wednesday that MIT professor Daniel Hastings has been elected president-elect of the organization. Hastings, the associate dean of engineering for diversity, equity, and inclusion; head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and the Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, will be AIAA’s the 17th president with ties to MIT and the first Black president. Hastings will assume the presidency in May 2024, succeeding current president...

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Assessing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, after a...
Ukraine has been withstanding Russia’s invasion for slightly more than a year. One element of this resistance has been the military aid many allies have provided Ukraine. But surely the most important factor, ever since Russia attacked in February 2022, has been the strong sense of solidarity Ukranians have displayed in their attempt to keep their country free and democratic. That was one takeaway from a recent public discussion at MIT, “Ukraine and Russia One Year On: The Domestic...

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On social media platforms, more sharing means...
As a social media user, you can be eager to share content. You can also try to judge whether it is true or not. But for many people it is difficult to prioritize both these things at once. That’s the conclusion of a new experiment led by MIT scholars, which finds that even considering whether or not to share news items on social media reduces people’s ability to tell truths from falsehoods. The study involved asking people to assess...

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QuARC 2023 explores the leading edge in...
The second QSEC Annual Research Conference (QuARC) brought together MIT student and postdoctoral researchers, staff, faculty, and industry partners for a two-day exploration of the leading edge in quantum information science and engineering. Held on Jan. 23 and 24 at the Omni Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire, QuARC featured keynote addresses from prominent thinkers in the field, as well as presentations and posters on the latest results from MIT research. The conference launched in 2022 to give members...

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