Say WOW

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.

 
Co-creating climate futures with real-time data and...
Virtual story worlds and game engines aren’t just for video games anymore. They are now tools for scientists and storytellers to digitally twin existing physical spaces and then turn them into vessels to dream up speculative climate stories and build collective designs of the future. That’s the theory and practice behind the MIT WORLDING initiative. Twice this year, WORLDING matched world-class climate story teams working in XR (extended reality) with relevant labs and researchers across MIT. One global group...

Read More

Technique could efficiently solve partial differential equations...
In fields such as physics and engineering, partial differential equations (PDEs) are used to model complex physical processes to generate insight into how some of the most complicated physical and natural systems in the world function. To solve these difficult equations, researchers use high-fidelity numerical solvers, which can be very time-consuming and computationally expensive to run. The current simplified alternative, data-driven surrogate models, compute the goal property of a solution to PDEs rather than the whole solution. Those are...

Read More

Stripes in a flowing liquid crystal suggest...
Hold your hands out in front of you, and no matter how you rotate them, it’s impossible to superimpose one over the other. Our hands are a perfect example of chirality — a geometric configuration by which an object cannot be superimposed onto its mirror image. Chirality is everywhere in nature, from our hands to the arrangement of our internal organs to the spiral structure of DNA. Chiral molecules and materials have been the key to many drug therapies,...

Read More

 
MIT researchers outline a path for scaling...
Hydrogen is an integral component for the manufacture of steel, fertilizer, and a number of chemicals. Producing hydrogen using renewable electricity offers a way to clean up these and many other hard-to-decarbonize industries. But supporting the nascent clean hydrogen industry while ensuring it grows into a true force for decarbonization is complicated, in large part because of the challenges of sourcing clean electricity. To assist regulators and to clarify disagreements in the field, MIT researchers published a paper today...

Read More

Inhalable sensors could enable early lung cancer...
Using a new technology developed at MIT, diagnosing lung cancer could become as easy as inhaling nanoparticle sensors and then taking a urine test that reveals whether a tumor is present. The new diagnostic is based on nanosensors that can be delivered by an inhaler or a nebulizer. If the sensors encounter cancer-linked proteins in the lungs, they produce a signal that accumulates in the urine, where it can be detected with a simple paper test strip. This approach...

Read More

Improving patient safety using principles of aerospace...
Approximately 13 billion laboratory tests are administered every year in the United States, but not every result is timely or accurate. Laboratory missteps prevent patients from receiving appropriate, necessary, and sometimes lifesaving care. These medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the nation.  To help reverse this trend, a research team from the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) Engineering Systems Lab and Synensys, a safety management contractor, examined the ecosystem of diagnostic laboratory data. Their...

Read More

 
Inclusive research for social change
Pair a decades-old program dedicated to creating research opportunities for underrepresented minorities and populations with a growing initiative committed to tackling the very issues at the heart of such disparities, and you’ll get a transformative partnership that only MIT can deliver.  Since 1986, the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP) has led an institutional effort to prepare underrepresented students (minorities, women in STEM, or students with low socioeconomic status) for doctoral education by pairing them with MIT labs and research...

Read More

Researchers 3D print components for a portable...
Mass spectrometers, devices that identify chemical substances, are widely used in applications like crime scene analysis, toxicology testing, and geological surveying. But these machines are bulky, expensive, and easy to damage, which limits where they can be effectively deployed. Using additive manufacturing, MIT researchers produced a mass filter, which is the core component of a mass spectrometer, that is far lighter and cheaper than the same type of filter made with traditional techniques and materials. Their miniaturized filter, known...

Read More

MIT community members elected to the National...
The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) recently announced the election of more than 160 individuals to their 2023 class of fellows. Among them are two members of the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Professor Daniel G. Anderson and Principal Research Scientist Ana Jaklenec. In addition, 11 MIT alumni were also recognized. The highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors, election to the NAI recognizes individuals who have created or facilitated outstanding inventions that have made a tangible...

Read More

 
Culturally informed design: Unearthing ingenuity where it...
Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, an MIT PhD student in both media arts and sciences and art, culture, and technology (ACT), explores how technology and culture intersect in spaces often overlooked by mainstream society, stretching beyond the usual scope of design research. A former lecturer and researcher at MIT D-Lab with experience in robotics, Reynolds-Cuéllar is an ACT Future Heritage Lab affiliate, a member of the Space Enabled Group within the MIT Media Lab, and a MAD Fellow who hails from rural...

Read More

A carbon-lite atmosphere could be a sign...
Scientists at MIT, the University of Birmingham, and elsewhere say that astronomers’ best chance of finding liquid water, and even life on other planets, is to look for the absence, rather than the presence, of a chemical feature in their atmospheres. The researchers propose that if a terrestrial planet has substantially less carbon dioxide in its atmosphere compared to other planets in the same system, it could be a sign of liquid water — and possibly life — on...

Read More

Engineers develop a vibrating, ingestible capsule that...
When you eat a large meal, your stomach sends signals to your brain that create a feeling of fullness, which helps you realize it’s time to stop eating. A stomach full of liquid can also send these messages, which is why dieters are often advised to drink a glass of water before eating. MIT engineers have now come up with a new way to take advantage of that phenomenon, using an ingestible capsule that vibrates within the stomach. These...

Read More

 
Leveraging language to understand machines
Natural language conveys ideas, actions, information, and intent through context and syntax; further, there are volumes of it contained in databases. This makes it an excellent source of data to train machine-learning systems on. Two master’s of engineering students in the 6A MEng Thesis Program at MIT, Irene Terpstra ’23 and Rujul Gandhi ’22, are working with mentors in the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab to use this power of natural language to build AI systems. As computing is becoming...

Read More

Carlo Ratti named curator of 2025 Venice...
MIT scholar Carlo Ratti has been named curator of the Venice Biennale’s 19th International Architecture Exhibition, to be held in 2025. The large-scale exhibition is the world’s best-known showcase for architectural work. It began in 1980 and has normally been held every two years since then. Ratti is an expert in urban design and planning, who has conducted many innovative studies of city dynamics using mobile sensors and other technologies, revealing insights that can be applied to the built...

Read More

Institute Professor Emeritus Robert Solow, pathbreaking economist,...
MIT Institute Professor Emeritus Robert M. Solow, a groundbreaking economist whose work on technology and economic growth profoundly influenced the field, and whose ethos of engaged teaching and collegial collaboration deeply shaped MIT’s Department of Economics, died on Thursday. He was 99. Solow’s research, especially a series of papers in the 1950s and 1960s, helped demonstrate at a fundamental level how modern economic growth occurs. As his work shows, technological advances, broadly defined, are responsible for the bulk of...

Read More