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The peace and quiet that envelope a lone hiker on a leaf-riddled trail or a rock climber perched on the top of a cliff seem a world away from the noise of a social media feed. But Department of...
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Two months ago, with great anticipation, Dora Aldama ’11 boarded for her first time a 787 Dreamliner plane, headed from Los Angeles to Shanghai. To a typical passenger, the twin-engine jet airliner...
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When engineers design a new aircraft, they carry out much of the initial testing not on full-sized jets but on model planes that have been scaled down to fit inside a wind tunnel. In this more...
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A team of MIT researchers has designed a breathable workout suit with ventilating flaps that open and close in response to an athlete’s body heat and sweat. These flaps, which range from thumbnail-...
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If you haven’t used a 3-D printer yet, you may be surprised to learn that it isn’t fully automated the way your office’s inkjet is.
With paper printers, users queue documents from a computer, and...
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A new system developed by engineers at MIT could make it possible to control the way water moves over a surface, using only light. This advance may open the door to technologies such as microfluidic...
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A single sheet of graphene, comprising an atom-thin lattice of carbon, may seem rather fragile. But engineers at MIT have found that the ultrathin material is exceptionally sturdy, remaining intact...
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Many farms in drought-prone regions of the U.S. rely on drip irrigation as a water-saving method to grow crops. These systems pump water through long thin tubes that stretch across farm fields....
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The Lemelson-MIT Program today announced the winners of the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize after a nationwide search for the most inventive college students. The Lemelson-MIT Program awarded $115,000 in...
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In 2016, annual global semiconductor sales reached their highest-ever point, at $339 billion worldwide. In that same year, the semiconductor industry spent about $7.2 billion worldwide on wafers that...
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The archer fish is arguably the ninja of the aquatic world, known for its stealth-like, arrow-straight aim while shooting down unsuspecting prey. Once the fish has sighted its target, it can spit...
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When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suffered a catastrophic explosion and blowout on April 21, 2010, leading to the worst oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, the well’s operators...
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Severe water shortages already affect many regions around the world, and are expected to get much worse as the population grows and the climate heats up. But a new technology developed by scientists...
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From an electron’s point of view, graphene must be a hair-raising thrill ride. For years, scientists have observed that electrons can blitz through graphene at velocities approaching the speed of...
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New research offers insights into how crystal dislocations — a common type of defect in materials — can affect electrical and heat transport through crystals, at a microscopic, quantum mechanical...
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Liquid droplets are natural magnifiers. Look inside a single drop of water, and you are likely to see a reflection of the world around you, close up and distended as you’d see in a crystal ball....
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A good rain can have a cleansing effect on the land. But an MIT study published today in Nature Communications reports that, under just the right conditions, rain can also be a means of spreading...
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Vaccines are among the most transformative and successful outcomes of modern medicine. For countries fortunate enough to have immunization coverage, their value can also lower or avert health care...
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As the world transitions to a low-carbon energy future, near-term, large-scale deployment of solar power will be critical to mitigating climate change by midcentury. Climate scientists estimate that...
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Engineers and biologists at MIT have teamed up to design a new “living material” — a tough, stretchy, biocompatible sheet of hydrogel injected with live cells that are genetically programmed to light...