A new method for removing lead from drinking water

MIT Engineers designed a relatively low-cost, energy-efficient approach to treating water contaminated with heavy metals such as lead. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Toward a smarter electronic health record

MedKnowts, a “smart” electronic health record system, can help doctors work more efficiently by presenting relevant information from a patient’s medical history, autocompleting medical terms as a clinician types, and auto-populating repetitive fields. The system was developed by … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

RNA-targeting enzyme expands the CRISPR toolkit

A newly discovered bacterial enzyme could expand scientists’ CRISPR toolkit, making it easy to cut and edit RNA with the kind of precision that, until now, has only been available for DNA editing. The work was led by researchers at MIT’s McGovern Institute. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Researchers find a new way to control magnets

Researchers have developed a way of rapidly switching the magnetic polarity of a ferrimagnet 180 degrees, using just a small applied voltage. The discovery could usher in a new era of ferrimagnetic logic and data storage devices, the researchers say. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Super Mario Brothers

MIT’s Erik Demaine has proven that the video game “Super Mario Brothers” is even harder than NP-hard — meaning it’s among the hardest problems in the complexity class PSPACE. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Biologists identify new targets for cancer vaccines

Vaccinating against certain cancer proteins can boost overall T cell response and help shrink tumors in mice, according to MIT scientists. The findings could help researchers decide what proteins to include in cancer vaccines. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

New programmable gene editing 'OMEGAS' proteins found outside of CRISPR systems

MIT scientists have discovered a new class of compact DNA modifying systems called OMEGAs that naturally shuffle DNA in bacteria and can be engineered to work in human cells. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Engineers grow pancreatic organoids that mimic the real thing

MIT engineers developed a way to grow tiny replicas of the pancreas, using either healthy or cancerous pancreatic cells. Their models could help researchers develop and test potential drugs for pancreatic cancer. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

For the first time, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet was ramped to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created. The demonstration helps resolve the greatest uncertainty in the quest to build the first fusion power … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Paul Penfield Dies at 88

MIT Professor Emeritus Paul Penfield, chronicler of entropy and lifelong teacher, died at age 88. A longtime department head, Penfield developed courses illuminating the equivalence of information and thermodynamic entropy. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

MIT Study: Crowds can wise up to fake news

Crowdsourcing fact-checking of news stories can work about as effectively as using professional fact-checkers, according to a study co-authored by Professor David Rand and PhD student Jenny Allen of the MIT Sloan School of Management. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Arrow, a reconfigurable fiber optics network developed at MIT

Computer scientists have developed a way to preserve a network when the fiber is down. The ARROW system reconfigures optical light from a damaged fiber to healthy ones. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Analysis of Medicare data finds location matters, not just past health behavior

Moving to certain locations in the U.S. can have a significant impact on the longevity of senior citizens, according to research co-authored by MIT economist Amy Finkelstein. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

A peculiar state of matter in layers of semiconductors

MIT researchers suggest a way to protect qubit states using a phenomenon called many-body localization (MBL) — a peculiar phase of matter that is unlike solid or liquid, and never reaches equilibrium. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Countering climate change with cool pavements

To mitigate heat waves and climate change, cities can use cool paving materials that reflect more light and emit less heat. Research from the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub finds that cool pavements would reduce Phoenix’s emissions by up to 6%. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Solar-powered system extracts drinkable water from “dry” air

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have significantly boosted the output from a system that can extract drinkable water directly from the air even in dry regions, using heat from the sun or another source. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

High-speed camera captures a water jet’s splashy impact as it pierces a droplet

A study by MIT and University of Twente researchers involves firing small jets of water through many kinds of droplets, using high-speed cameras to capture each watery impact — similar to the famous strobe-light photographs of a bullet piercing an apple, pioneered by MIT’s Harold … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Inflatable robotic hand gives amputees real-time tactile control

An MIT-developed inflatable robotic hand gives amputees real-time tactile control. The smart hand is soft and elastic, weighs about half a pound, and costs a fraction of comparable prosthetics. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Designing better batteries for electric vehicles

Researchers are working to adapt the standard lithium-ion battery to make safer, smaller, and lighter versions. An MIT-led study describes an approach that can help researchers consider what materials may work best in their solid-state batteries, while also considering how those … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Exact symbolic AI for faster, better assessment of AI fairness

A new domain-specific artificial intelligence programming language developed at MIT allows for error-free, exact, automatic solutions to hard AI problems — and it’s thousands of times faster than alternatives. The researchers' Sum-Product Probabilistic Language could have us … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Considering the Spiderweb

After nearly a decade, an interdisciplinary collaboration between MIT's Markus Buehler, Tomas Sacareno, and others to model a 3D spider web has led to many surprising results. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

System trains drones to fly around obstacles at high speeds

A new algorithm helps drones find the fastest route around obstacles without crashing. The MIT system could enable fast, nimble drones for time-critical operations such as search and rescue. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

New drug combo shows early potential for treating pancreatic cancer

A team of MIT researchers has developed an immunotherapy strategy that can eliminate pancreatic tumors in mice. The new therapy, a combination of three drugs that boost the body’s immune defenses against tumors, is expected to enter clinical trials later this year. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

New device can diagnose Covid-19 from saliva samples

A new device can detect SARS-CoV-2 from saliva in about an hour. Developed by MIT and Harvard engineers, the diagnostic is just as accurate as PCR tests and can identify Covid-19 variants. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

MIT and Ericsson research the next generation of mobile networks

MIT and Ericsson are collaborating to research the next generation of mobile networks. Two projects on the design of state-of-the-art hardware could one day power next-generation 5G and 6G mobile networks. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

MIT introduces model to predict technical change

New MIT research using patent data could help inform decision-makers by predicting which technologies are improving the fastest. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Vapor-collection technology saves water while clearing the air

MIT spinoff Infinite Cooling aims to reduce power plants’ significant water needs and to shrink the huge plumes of water vapor produced by their cooling towers. At-scale prototypes tested on MIT facilities have proven effective. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

“Magic-angle” trilayer graphene may be a rare, magnet-proof superconductor

MIT physicists have observed signs of a rare type of superconductivity in a material called “magic-angle” twisted trilayer graphene. They report that the material exhibits superconductivity at surprisingly high magnetic fields of up to 10 Tesla, which is three times higher than w … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Contact-Aware Robot Design

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) created a new method to computationally optimize the shape and control of a robotic manipulator for a specific task. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Getting Dressed with Help from Robots

A human-aware motion planning algorithm from MIT CSAIL addresses the safety gap in collaboration between robots and humans, enabling robots to assist with dressing, for example. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Manipulating Magnets in the Quest for Fusion

After overseeing three years of research and development, MIT Senior Research Scientist Brian LaBombard is ready to test a superconducting toroidal field model coil (TFMC), a prototype for those that will be used in the SPARC fusion experiment. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Summer 2021 recommended reading from MIT

A summer reading list featuring books by MIT faculty and staff that were published from Spring 2020 to Summer 2021. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

A noninvasive test to detect cancer cells and pinpoint their location

MIT engineers have created a nanoparticle for cancer diagnosis that can reveal the presence of cancerous proteins through a urine test, and can also function as an imaging agent, pinpointing the tumor location. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Physicists bring human-scale object to near standstill, reaching a quantum state

MIT physicists have brought a human-scale object to a near-standstill, close to a quantum state | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Giving Robots Better Moves

RightHand Robotics, co-founded by MIT alumnus Lael Odhner, combines machine vision with an intelligent gripper design to offer robots that are more adaptable and reliable in warehouse environments. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Autism and schizophrenia in brain exhibit similar circuit malfunctions

MIT neuroscientists uncovered a common neural mechanism for cognitive impairments seen in some people with autism and schizophrenia, even though the genetic variations that produce the impairments are different for each disorder. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Simple, solar-powered water desalination with efficiency of 385%

A completely passive solar-powered desalination system developed by researchers at MIT and in China could provide more than 1.5 gallons of fresh drinking water per hour for every square meter of solar collecting area. Such systems could potentially serve off-grid arid coastal are … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Physicists observationally confirm Hawking’s black hole theorem for first time

Physicists at MIT and elsewhere have used gravitational waves to observationally confirm Hawking’s black hole theorem for the first time. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

MIT and U.S. Department of Defense team up to launch a new edX learning platform

MIT and the U.S. Department of Defense have teamed up to launch a new edX learning platform, manufacturingworkforce.org, as a way to offer cutting-edge manufacturing education and training for more Americans. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

MIT and Harvard University announced a major transition for edX, the online platform for university courses: edX’s assets are to be acquired by education technology company 2U, and reorganized as a public benefit company. 2U will transfer $800 million to a nonprofit organization, … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

A face mask with a sensor that can diagnose the wearer with Covid-19 in 90mins

Engineers at MIT and Harvard have designed a prototype face mask that can diagnose the person wearing the mask with Covid-19 within about 90 minutes. The technology can also be used to design wearable sensors for a variety of other pathogens or toxic chemicals. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Comparing the 4 satellite networks: similar throughput, different configurations

MIT researchers have run a comparison of the four largest global satellite meganetwork proposals, from SpaceX, Telesat, OneWeb, and Amazon. They found that each network, which would comprise thousands of satellites, could beam down tens of terabits per second, filling gaps left b … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Could all your digital photos be stored as DNA?

MIT biological engineers have demonstrated a way to easily retrieve data files stored as DNA. This could be a step toward using DNA archives to store enormous quantities of photos, images, and other digital content. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Tiny particles power chemical reactions

MIT engineers discovered a way to generate electricity using tiny carbon particles that can create an electric current simply by interacting with an organic solvent in which they’re floating. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Engineers Create a Programmable Fiber

MIT researchers have created the first fabric-fiber to have digital capabilities, ready to collect, store and analyze data using a neural network. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Accelerating AI at the Speed of Light

MIT alumnus Yichen Shen PhD '16 is the CEO of Lightelligence, an MIT spinout using photonics to reinvent computing for artificial intelligence. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Phonon catalysis could lead to a new field

MIT and University of Muenster researchers have enhanced ion diffusion by selectively heating specific phonons without heating the entire material. The new method could lead to low-cost fuel cells and batteries in addition to a new field of research using phonon catalysis. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago

Artificial intelligence system could help counter the spread of disinformation

MIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers built the Reconnaissance of Influence Operations (RIO) system, which automatically detects and analyzes social media accounts that are spreading disinformation. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 years ago