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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.

MIT researchers devise a way to evaluate...

A savvy hacker can obtain secret information, such as a password, by observing a computer program’s behavior, like how much time that program spends accessing the computer’s memory. Security approaches that completely block these “side-channel attacks” are so computationally expensive that they aren’t feasible for many real-world systems. Instead, engineers often apply what are known as obfuscation schemes that seek to limit, but not eliminate, an attacker’s ability to learn secret information.      To help engineers and scientists better……

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International team reports powerful tool for studying,...

Physicists have been riveted by systems composed of materials only one or a few layers of atoms thick. When a few sheets of these two-dimensional materials are stacked together, a geometric pattern called a moiré pattern can be formed. In these so-called moiré systems, new, exotic phenomena can occur, including superconductivity and unconventional magnetism. As a result, a better understanding of what happens at the interface between each sheet to cause these phenomena could lead to heady applications in……

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Uncovering the invisible pressures shaping language

Sihan Chen’s fascination with languages began when he was a teenager in his high school choir in his hometown of Shenzhen, China. “We sang religious and folk songs in different languages like Mandarin, English, Albanian, and Latin, and I would look up how to pronounce words in different languages,” he says. These early experiences planted the seed for his current research interests in cognition and language as a third-year PhD student in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences……

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Exploring the unexpected social questions behind everyday...

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many hospitals ran out of beds and ventilators, the fingertip pulse oximeter — a $20 neighborhood drugstore purchase — became a primary arbiter of whether a patient was “sick enough” to gain admission to an emergency room. This spring, surrounded by antique telescope models in a classroom tucked inside the MIT Museum, 10 students bent over a square-shaped seminar table. They were building basic pulse oximeters from low-cost do-it-yourself (DIY) kits……

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Column: So many candidates for the US...

Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson still has time on his side, just not as much. He also keeps getting more candidates for his U.S. team, which isn’t making the job any easier. And it’s no longer about Brooks Koepka or anyone else from LIV Golf. “There’s still a lot of golf between now and then,” Johnson said that Sunday morning in May at the PGA Championship, a few hours before Brooks Koepka showed off his major swagger at Oak…

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Connor McDavid wins third NHL MVP, falls...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Connor McDavid won his third Hart Trophy as NHL MVP on Monday night, falling one vote short of unanimous selection after the highest-scoring season by a player in more than a quarter-century. McDavid also won the Ted Lindsay Award as the NHL’s most outstanding player as voted by his peers. The Edmonton Oilers’ captain led the league with 64 goals, 89 assists and 153 points. That’s the most points since Mario Lemieux in 1995-96. McDavid…

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When wealthy adventurers take huge risks, who...

When millionaire Steve Fossett’s plane went missing over the Nevada range in 2007, the swashbuckling adventurer had already been the subject of two prior emergency rescue operations thousands of miles apart. And that prompted a prickly question: After a sweeping search for the wealthy risktaker ended, who should foot the bill? In recent days, the massive hunt for a submersible vehicle lost during a north Atlantic descent to explore the wreckage of the Titanic has refocused attention on that…

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Sensing the world around us

“Sensing is all around you,” said MIT.nano Associate Director Brian W. Anthony at Ambient Sensing, a half-day symposium presented in May by the MIT.nano Immersion Lab. Featuring MIT faculty and researchers from multiple disciplines, the event highlighted sensing technologies deployed everywhere from beneath the Earth’s surface to high into the exosphere. Brent Minchew, assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), kicked off the symposium with a presentation on using remote sensing to understand the……

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A novel combination therapy counters antibiotic-resistant Mycobacterium...

Researchers from the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) interdisciplinary research group at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, in collaboration with Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU Singapore) and National University Hospital, have discovered a novel therapy by combining two antibiotics, rifaximin and clarithromycin, to treat Mycobacterium abscessus, a non-tuberculous mycobacterium (NTM) that causes chronic lung-related infections. Infections caused by NTM are a fast-growing health concern worldwide, particularly in the context of lung-related infections. Among NTMs,……

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MIT climate and sustainability interns consider aviation...

Over 600 MIT students are traveling abroad with the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) to intern, research, and work in organizations across 25 countries this summer. Twenty percent of the students were placed in areas related to climate and sustainability. Through MISTI, hundreds of MIT students travel abroad each summer to intern in companies, universities, governments, and nongovernmental organizations. Since 2018, around 20 percent of the internships and research experiences have been in areas related to climate……

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Redefining design through textiles

Fashion is among the most environmentally damaging industries globally, contributing to water pollution through dyeing processes and generating immense amounts of textile waste. Garments are often shipped all over the world, significantly contributing to carbon emissions. Ganit Goldstein SM ’23, a Jerusalem-born designer who recently completed a master of science in architecture studies in computation at MIT, has spent years exploring alternatives to standard production methods and workflows. Combining traditional craftsmanship with cutting-edge technologies, the former research assistant at……

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Day of AI curriculum meets the moment

MIT Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) recently celebrated the second annual Day of AI with two flagship local events. The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate in Boston hosted a human rights and data policy-focused event that was streamed worldwide. Dearborn STEM Academy in Roxbury, Massachusetts, hosted a student workshop in collaboration with Amazon Future Engineer. With over 8,000 registrations across all 50 U.S. states and 108 countries in 2023, participation in Day of……

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MIT speaker series taps into students’ passion...

Last summer, leaders of MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) noticed a growing trend in entrepreneur applications to the program: An increasing number of aspiring founders were expressing a passion for social impact. VMS, which connects students and alumni with teams of mentors, hosts bootcamps, holds expert office hours, and offers an annual Demo Day, did not previously have offerings to help founders focused on this type of impact, so its leaders decided to pilot an Impact Speaker Series. The……

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With Russia revolt over, mercenaries’ future and...

The rebellious mercenary soldiers who briefly took over a Russian military headquarters on an ominous march toward Moscow were gone Sunday, but the short-lived revolt has weakened President Vladimir Putin just as his forces are facing a fierce counteroffensive in Ukraine. Under terms of the agreement that ended the crisis, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led his Wagner troops in the failed uprising, will go into exile in Belarus but will not face prosecution. But it was unclear what would ultimately…

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A law that bans sex toys as...

A woman attends a workshop on women’s sexual and reproductive health in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Friday, June, 16, 2023. Zimbabwean woman Sitabile Dewa is challenging a sex toys ban in the country which she describes in court papers filed in March as “archaic” and “repressive” laws used to arrest women for having sex toys. Her court challenge – a bold act in a society where females are usually shamed for being openly sexual – highlights the struggles endured by…

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