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Engineering and the Ocean Environment: Challenge and Opportunity
by Alissa Mallinson
Vast and seemingly impenetrable, the ocean inspires endless fascination. It is the topic of countless tales...
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Researchers at MIT have discovered a new way of harnessing temperature gradients in fluids to propel objects. In the natural world, the mechanism may influence the motion of icebergs floating on the...
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“For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself,” wrote English adventurer Sir Walter...
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Their effect on the surface of the ocean is negligible, producing a rise of just inches that is virtually imperceptible on a turbulent sea. But internal waves, which are hidden entirely within the...
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Fog-harvesting system developed by MIT and Chilean researchers could provide potable water for the world’s driest regions.
By David Chandler, MIT News Office
Photo courtesy of researchers.
In...
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Four MIT seniors — Kate Koch, Colleen Loynachan, Kirin Sinha, and Grace Young — are among 34 new winners nationwide of prestigious Marshall Scholarships, which support two years of graduate study in...
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When an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011, knocking out emergency power supplies, crews sprayed seawater on the reactors to cool them — to no avail.
One...
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The concept of a market-based mechanism to curb emissions of greenhouse gases — and thus slow the pace of climate change — has often been suggested in recent decades. But one particular version of...
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If you take a stroll past the MIT Sailing Pavilion on Memorial Drive, you may see, among the usual glut of sailboats on the Charles River, two red child-sized kayaks riding the waves. Instead of the...
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In a completely unexpected finding, MIT researchers have discovered that tiny water droplets that form on a superhydrophobic surface, and then “jump” away from that surface, carry an electric charge...
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Steam condensation is key to the worldwide production of electricity and clean water: It is part of the power cycle that drives 85 percent of all electricity-generating plants and about half of all...
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Melinda Hale
Allison Yost
by Alissa Mallinson
Entrepreneurs abound in MechE, but they couldn’t do it without the MIT entrepreneurial community, comprising an army of faculty, students...
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“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
A version of this quote, originally penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in “The Case-...
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From the Fukushima tsunami disaster to the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, environmental disasters exact all-too-memorable damage to coastal communities. Imagine if it was possible to predict the exact...
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Offshore wind could provide abundant electricity — but as with solar energy, this power supply can be intermittent and unpredictable. But a new approach from researchers at MIT could mitigate that...
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Professor Varanasi’s Condiment-Bottle Coating Gives Waste the Slip
Photo: Courtesy of the Varanasi Research Group
by Alissa Mallinson
The Varanasi Research Group, led by Associate Professor...
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Graduating Senior Lays Groundwork for Locating Fresh Water Sources
Photo credit: MIT News Office
by Nancy Adams
Submarine groundwater discharge, or SGD, describes water flowing underground...
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Peter Lehner (SB ’49)
Peter Lehner had always been interested in mechanics, even as a teenager. He loved rebuilding old cars and wanted to become an aircraft engineer after college.
“I knew a...
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Tiny robots may monitor underground pipes for radioactive leaks.
A spherical robot equipped with a camera may navigate underground pipes of a nuclear reactor by propelling itself with an internal...
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MechE Teams Up with Sloan to Offer New Track in Ocean Systems Management
The Ocean Engineering Systems Management track will provide future managers in the shipping industry with both...