MIT researchers have developed a new, breathable hydrogel material that is “packed with microscopic air tunnels inspired by the way human lungs move oxygen” and allows heat and sweat to escape, reports Luis Prada for VICE. “The material proved to be about 10 times more breathable than conventional hydrogels and retained about 95 percent of its airflow even after being stretched 10,000 times,” explains Prada.
MIT researchers have developed a low temperature process to extract battery-grade lithium from spodumene, the most common type of mineral containing lithium, using a reusable liquid reagent, writes Electronic Design’s Lee Goldberg. “The new process uses a liquid reagent to dissolve the rock into the useful forms of its constituent parts — not just battery-ready lithium salts, but also smelter-grade alumina and cement-ready silica,” writes Goldberg. “After the minerals are extracted, the solvent and reagent can be recovered and used again so that waste levels approach zero.”
Smithsonian Magazine reporter Margherita Bassi highlights a new robot developed by Prof. Raphael Zufferey that mimics aquatic birds’ ability to fly and swim underwater. “Our dream vision is for oceanographers, marine biologists and members of coastal communities to launch this robot from a boat or from shore, and it would fly close to the area of interest, such as an iceberg or a port facility or over a pod of whales,” Zufferey says. “It would dive into the water to take a measurement or collect a sample and fly back to deliver the data at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.”
In a new study by MIT FutureTech, 272 researchers ranked the top 24 AI risks, write Axios reporters Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. The researchers “assessed a 12% chance that AI's dangerous capabilities produce a catastrophic outcome by 2030, and another 12% chance of AI-enabled weapons and mass-harm capabilities [with mitigation efforts to reduce risk],” VandeHei and Allen explain.
Researchers from MIT and Toyota Research Institute developed SceneSmith, a system that allows robots to practice everyday tasks and action plans in over 1,300 AI generated environments before entering a real home or workplace, writes Fox News’ Kurt Knutsson. “SceneSmith's ability to combine realistic design with usable physics gives the project its strongest advantage,” notes Knutsson.
Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, joins Hakeem Oluseyi, host of GBH’s “Particles of Thought,” to discuss the lab’s work utilizing AI to enhance robots’ ability to move, reason, and act like humans. “The objective is to bring AI’s ability to understand text, images, and other online information to make physical machines intelligent, and if we achieve this then AI will not just reside in our computers—it will drive, it will walk it will fly, it will interact with us in the physical world.”
Graduate student Peter Zhi Xuan Li speaks to Tech Briefs’ Andrew Corselli about his team’s work developing a new chip that allows small, autonomous robots and other battery-limited devices to construct detailed 3D maps of their environments using a fraction of the power required by other systems. “Today, a robot uses separate, incompatible internal representations for different jobs: one for mapping, another for tracking its own motion, another for rendering what it sees, and every conversion adds memory footprint and energy,” says Li. “Our goal is a single shared representation.”
By studying ‘smears’ in fast radio bursts, fleeting flashes of radiation, MIT researchers discovered diffuse clouds of baryonic gas may contain the missing ordinary matter in the universe, writes Gizmodo’s Gayoung Lee. “These diffuse clouds may be flung outside galaxies through black hole jets,” Lee explains.
Boston Art Review’s Kim Córdova spotlights coverage of the MIT Museum’s “No Recombination Without Representation,” an immersive theatrical reenactment honoring the fiftieth anniversary of a little-known Cambridge City Council meeting that has had major historical impact beyond the local community.
A new study by MIT researchers finds high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets may increase the risk of certain intestinal cancers, writes Newsweek’s Daniella Gray. “The researchers say future studies will be needed to better understand how specific dietary fats influence cancer risk and whether modifying the composition of ketogenic diets could reduce potential harms while preserving any health benefits,” writes Gray.
Smithsonian Magazine’s Sarah Kuta highlights Lecturer Franco Rossi’s work identifying the name of ancient Maya mathematician Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-chested fox,” inscribed in a chamber with murals, hieroglyphs and mathematical texts. One of Waax’s equations, linking the cycles of Mars and Venus to units of time in the Maya calendar, is “meant to concisely and meaningfully show the relationship between these two planets and human counts of time in ways that could then be applied to political ceremony, predictive astronomy and understandings of seasonality,” says Rossi.
MIT researchers found that the keto diet, which emphasizes low carbs and sugar, could increase the risk of tumors in the small intestine, explains New York Post reporter Allie Yang. The researchers found that “cells burning fat (from ketosis) start a chain reaction which leads to stem cells multiplying rapidly, increasing the chance they go out of control and become cancer,” Yang explains.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Washington Post reporter Benjamin Guggenheim about his views on advancing AI, and how the technology might impact the labor market over the next decade. “What we saw at the end of ‘25 and the beginning of ‘26 was an acceleration. I think the agentic AI models are certainly much better in terms of a number of tasks, such as coding and other sort of simple cognitive tasks,” says Acemoglu.
The Guardian’s David Kohn points to a study by Prof. Siniša Hrvatin that proposes targeting the preoptic area of the brain to induce torpor (a hibernation-like state) as a solution for astronauts to survive long term space travel. “Key aspects of the circuit appear to be conserved across different animals,” says Hrvatin. “I think we can use it to modify metabolism.”
Fast Company’s Adele Peters spotlights “Project Obsidian,” a new geothermal power plant developed by MIT spinout Quaise Energy. The findings of former Senior Research Engineer Paul Woskov helped Quaise develop their tech. “Paul’s epiphany was realizing that if we can use the same energy to heat plasmas to millions of degrees Celsius to get fusion, why not use that for heating and drilling through rock at a much more modest temperature?” says Matthew Houde, Quaise co-founder.