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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 win grants to develop and...
The MIT Jameel World Education Lab has awarded $917,526 in Education Innovation Grants to support 14 research projects exploring a range of topics, including electrical engineering, extended reality, physical movement, and ecological sustainability. The grants will support researchers from 11 departments, labs, and centers across MIT. “Our Education Innovation Grants support MIT research that can improve learning everywhere,” says Anjali Sastry, faculty director of the Jameel World Education Lab. “We share ideas, disseminate emerging findings, and collaborate with innovators...

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Devices offers long-distance, low-power underwater communication
MIT researchers have demonstrated the first system for ultra-low-power underwater networking and communication, which can transmit signals across kilometer-scale distances. This technique, which the researchers began developing several years ago, uses about one-millionth the power that existing underwater communication methods use. By expanding their battery-free system’s communication range, the researchers have made the technology more feasible for applications such as aquaculture, coastal hurricane prediction, and climate change modeling. “What started as a very exciting intellectual idea a few years...

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“Move-in day is kind of like our...
The academic year has officially begun at MIT, and the halls are once again filled with the energy and excitement that only students can bring. But MIT’s campus does not come to life automatically. The flurry of activity happening around campus this week was preceded by a lot of hard work by thousands of staff members committed to getting the school year off to a seamless start. “Getting MIT ready to welcome new and returning students is a real...

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Elsa Olivetti appointed associate dean of engineering
Elsa Olivetti, the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been appointed as associate dean of engineering, effective Sept. 1. As associate dean, Olivetti will oversee a number of strategically important programs and initiatives across MIT’s School of Engineering. She will help lead and shape school-wide efforts related to climate and sustainability. In close collaboration with Nandi Bynoe, the assistant dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion; the school’s DEI faculty lead;...

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3 Questions: How are cities managing record-setting...
July 2023 was the hottest month globally since humans began keeping records. People all over the U.S. experienced punishingly high temperatures this summer. In Phoenix, there were a record-setting 31 consecutive days with a high temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or more. July was the hottest month on record in Miami. A scan of high temperatures around the country often yielded some startlingly high numbers: Dallas, 110 F; Reno, 108 F; Salt Lake City, 106 F; Portland, 105 F....

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Fast-tracking fusion energy’s arrival with AI and...
As the impacts of climate change continue to grow, so does interest in fusion’s potential as a clean energy source. While fusion reactions have been studied in laboratories since the 1930s, there are still many critical questions scientists must answer to make fusion power a reality, and time is of the essence. As part of their strategy to accelerate fusion energy’s arrival and reach carbon neutrality by 2050, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has announced new funding for...

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Putting public service into practice
Salomé Otero ’23 doesn’t mince words about the social impact internship she had in 2022. “It was transformational for me,” she says. Otero, who majored in management with a concentration in education, always felt that education would play some role in her career path after MIT, but she wasn’t sure how. That all changed her junior year, when she got an email from the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (PKG Center) about an internship at The Last Mile,...

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Kimberly Rose Bennett awarded HHMI Gilliam Fellowship
Kimberly Rose Bennett, a PhD candidate in the Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) program within the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), has been selected by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to be one of the 50 Gilliam Fellows for 2023. Bennett is the first HST student to receive this prestigious fellowship. The Gilliam Fellows are outstanding doctoral students, chosen to recognize exceptional research in their respective scientific fields and their dedication to the advancement of a...

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A bigger, better space-ripple detector
The search for space-shaking ripples in the universe just got a big boost. An MIT-led effort to build a bigger, better gravitational-wave detector will receive $9 million dollars over the next three years from the National Science Foundation. The funding infusion will support the design phase for Cosmic Explorer — a next-generation gravitational-wave observatory that is expected to pick up ripples in space-time from as far back as the early universe. To do so, the observatory’s detectors are planned...

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Teachers embrace hands-on learning in Materials Genome...
Amid the brick furnaces of MIT’s forge and foundry, Mike Tarkanian poured liquid metal into a mold until it filled, then he emptied the rest into a trough. To demonstrate how quickly it solidified in the ambient temperature of the room, the senior lecturer in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) kicked the trough over, and a solid chunk of metal fell out. The demonstration was part of the annual Materials Genome Camp, a weeklong workshop to educate...

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Apekshya Prasai: Up in arms
Although women’s wartime roles and agency tend to be neglected in conventional discourses on conflict, there are times when women not only take up arms but also shape the practices and policies of insurgent groups they fight for. Apekshya Prasai, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Political Science, studies how rebel groups subvert entrenched patriarchal structures, ideas, and norms, and the role women play in this process.     “All insurgents operate in, recruit from, and depend on...

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Dreaming of waves
Ocean waves are easy on the eyes, but hard on the brain. How do they form? How far do they travel? How do they break? Those magnificent waves you see crashing into the shore are complex. “I’ve often asked this question,” the eminent wave scientist Walter Munk told MIT Professor Stefan Helmreich several years ago. “If we met somebody from another planet who had never seen waves, could dream about what it’s like when a wave becomes unstable...

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New clean air and water labs to...
MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is launching the Clean Air and Water Labs, with support from Community Jameel, to generate evidence-based solutions aimed at increasing access to clean air and water. Led by J-PAL’s Africa, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and South Asia regional offices, the labs will partner with government agencies to bring together researchers and policymakers in areas where impactful clean air and water solutions are most urgently needed. Together, the labs aim...

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Incoming MIT students surprise President Kornbluth with...
On the first day of fall class registration, MIT President Sally Kornbluth entered her office to find a life-sized Barbie-themed phone booth sitting in the reception area. Intrigued, she opened the pink phone booth door and stepped inside, where she discovered a complex web of mirrors and lights that give the illusion of infinite space travel. After enjoying a good laugh, she was greeted by the six incoming first-year students behind the project. “This exemplifies the creativity, the innovation,...

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Study connects neural gene expression differences to...
Figuring out how hundreds of different kinds of brain cells develop from their unique expression of thousands of genes promises to not only advance understanding of how the brain works in health, but also what goes wrong in disease. A new MIT study that precisely probes this “molecular logic” in two neuron types of the Drosophila fruit fly shows that even similar cells push and pull many levers to develop distinct functions. In the study in Neuron, a team of neurobiologists at...

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