• Aug. 22, 2014
    Over recent decades, scientists have watched a climate conundrum develop at the opposite ends of Earth: The Arctic has warmed and steadily lost sea ice, whereas Antarctica has cooled in many places...
  • Aug. 20, 2014
    Where the river meets the sea, there is the potential to harness a significant amount of renewable energy, according to a team of mechanical engineers at MIT. The researchers evaluated an emerging...
  • Aug. 18, 2014
    The Simons Foundation, a New York-based philanthropic organization that supports a range of basic science research, has made its first venture into microbial oceanography with a $40 million award to...
  • Aug. 8, 2014
    It’s estimated that more than half of U.S. energy — from vehicles and heavy equipment, for instance — is wasted as heat. Mostly, this waste heat simply escapes into the air. But that’s beginning to...
  • Aug. 6, 2014
    What’s it like living on the bottom of the ocean in a habitat no bigger than a school bus for more than two weeks? Nicer than you might think, according to Grace Young ’14. “It was comfortable. I...
  • Aug. 6, 2014
    MIT engineers have fabricated a new elastic material coated with microscopic, hairlike structures that tilt in response to a magnetic field. Depending on the field’s orientation, the microhairs can...
  • Aug. 1, 2014
    Paper wrinkles, tape tears, cables kink, columns buckle, eggshells break. Pedro M. Reis hopes to transform today’s annoyances into tomorrow’s technology. Reis, who holds a dual appointment in...
  • Aug. 1, 2014
    Researchers at MIT and in Saudi Arabia have developed a new way of making surfaces that can actively control how fluids or particles move across them. The work might enable new kinds of biomedical or...
  • Jul. 29, 2014
    A team of researchers has created a new way of manufacturing microstructured surfaces that have novel three-dimensional textures. These surfaces, made by self-assembly of carbon nanotubes, could...
  • Jul. 29, 2014
    Several years ago, as a graduate student at MIT, Amos Winter spent a summer in Tanzania surveying wheelchair technology. What he found was a disconnect between products and the lives of their...
  • Jul. 28, 2014
    The magnets cluttering the face of your refrigerator may one day be used as cooling agents, according to a new theory formulated by MIT researchers. The theory describes the motion of magnons — quasi...
  • Jul. 23, 2014
    In a recent study published in the Journal of Membrane Science, MIT professor John Lienhard and postdoc Ronan McGovern, both of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, reported that, contrary to...
  • Jul. 22, 2014
    Rohit Karnik, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, addresses real-world challenges with his microfluidics and nanofluidics research. The studies that Karnik and his team have...
  • Jul. 21, 2014
    A new material structure developed at MIT generates steam by soaking up the sun. The structure — a layer of graphite flakes and an underlying carbon foam — is a porous, insulating material structure...
  • Jul. 17, 2014
    Twisting a screwdriver, removing a bottle cap, and peeling a banana are just a few simple tasks that are tricky to pull off single-handedly. Now a new wrist-mounted robot can provide a helping hand...
  • Jul. 16, 2014
    Leslie Bromberg, a research scientist at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and Alexander Sappok ’09 have been recognized by R&D Magazine for inventing one of the top 100 technologies of the...
  • Jul. 14, 2014
    Last year, MIT researchers discovered that when water droplets spontaneously jump away from superhydrophobic surfaces during condensation, they can gain electric charge in the process. Now, the same...
  • Jul. 14, 2014
    In the movie “Terminator 2,” the shape-shifting T-1000 robot morphs into a liquid state to squeeze through tight spaces or to repair itself when harmed. Now a phase-changing material built from wax...
  • Jul. 11, 2014
    Alberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and incoming graduate student Nikhil Chavan-Dafle presented their work on robotic extrinsic dexterity — which they began at...
  • Jul. 8, 2014
    The fields of data communication, fabrication, and ultrasound imaging share a common challenge when it comes to improving speed and efficiency: light’s diffraction limit. Nicholas Fang thinks his...

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