New York Post reporter Marissa Matozzo cracks into a new study by MIT researchers that uncovers the best way to keep eggs from cracking. The researchers found that eggs dropped sideways are less likely to break than those dropped vertically. “It turns out the sides can take more of a beating than their pointy or rounded ends, and that could mean a lot for proper storage,” says Matozzo.
Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, speaks with Barron’s reporter Megan Leonhardt about the longevity economy, workforce trends, and why he sees opportunities for innovation and growth as the senior population in the U.S. increases. “The future isn’t just about living longer—it is about living better. This gap between traditional aging and modern aspirations creates a white space ripe for investment and innovation,” says Coughlin. “We need to look at what a 100-year life span does to our expectations and behaviors, and probably most important, how government and business are going to innovate around disruptive demographics that don’t fit the story line that has been in place for the past century.”
MIT researchers have discovered that “eggs are less likely to crack when they fall on their side,” reports Adithi Ramakrishnan for the Associated Press. “It’s commonly thought that eggs are strongest at their ends — after all, it’s how they’re packaged in the carton,” explains Ramakrishnan. “The thinking is that the arc-shaped bottom of an egg redirects the force and softens the blow of impact. But when scientists squeezed eggs in both directions during a compression test, they cracked under the same amount of force.”
A study by MIT researchers has found that “dropping an egg horizontally is more likely to keep it intact than a vertical drop,” reports Ed Cara for Gizmodo. “People tend to have better intuition for stiffness and strength, which are important in statics,” explains Prof. Tal Cohen. “It is common that they refer intuitively to the redistribution of a load along the arch. However, when dynamics are involved, toughness is also an important quantity.”
Researchers at MIT have found that eggs dropped on their sides and not their tips are more resilient and less likely to crack, reports Veronique Greenwood for The New York Times. The researchers found that “eggs dropped so they landed on their sides were substantially less likely to crack,” writes Greenwood. “When they hit, the shell was able to compress, absorbing some of the blow. Eggs dropped on their ends, where the shell is stiffer, did not show such flexibility.
Forbes reporter Amanda Kooser spotlights a new study by MIT scientists that has found eggs are less likely to crack when dropped on their side. “The researchers put eggs through their paces in two different tests,” explains Kooser. “One was a static compression test that applied increasing force to the eggs. The other was a drop test.”
Researchers at MIT have discovered that eggs dropped on their side are less likely to crack than those dropped on their tips, reports Doyle Rice for USA Today. The researchers conducted both a drop and compression test on the eggs, and the findings “suggest that future research could explore the application of these findings to engineering scenarios, such as how structures respond to dynamic loads,” writes Rice.
Prof. Carlos Portela and postdoc James Surjadi speaks with TechBriefs reporter Andrew Corselli about their work developing a new metamaterial that is both strong and stretchy. “We have demonstrated the concept with these polymeric materials and, from here, we see a couple of opportunities,” Surjadi explains. “One is extending this to more brittle material systems. The real dream will be to be able to do this with glasses, other ceramics, or even metals — things that normally we don't expect to deform a lot before they break. Brittle materials are the perfect candidates for us to try to make into woven-type architectures.”
Emily Young '18, co-founder and CEO of MIT D-Lab spinout Moving Health, speaks with The World’s Jeremy Siegel about her startup’s commitment to transforming “maternal healthcare in rural Ghana, where access to ambulances is severely limited, by creating an emergency transportation network that uses motorized ambulances." Young discovered that “what rural communities needed most was transportation that could actually handle rough terrain while still being cost effective and easy to scale at a local level.”
Prof. Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Architecture Venice Biennale, speaks with Sofia Lekka Angelopoulou of Designboom about his vision for this year’s showcase, which centers around reimagining the role of intelligence in shaping the built environment. ‘It’s basically about how we can use different disciplines and different forms of intelligence in order to tackle the most important problem today: adaptation,” Ratti explains. “In short, you could say architecture is survival.”
Prof. John Urschel speaks with Guardian reporter Rich Tenorio about his decision to call an audible and leave his career as a guard for the Baltimore Ravens to focus on his love for math as a student and then a professor at MIT. “I realized I was missing the academic environment,” he says. “I missed talking math with people, learning things, being around other people who like … math-related issues."
A study by Prof. Rebecca Saxe and her colleagues has found that the medial prefrontal cortex in infants is active when exposed to faces, reports Elizabeth Hlavinka for Salon. “Maybe it’s not that [at] first babies do visual processing and only later are connected to social meaning,” says Saxe. “Maybe these brain regions are active because babies are responding to the social meaning of people and faces as early on as we can measure their brains.”
Researchers at MIT have conducted a survey to understand how people interact with AI companions, reports David Adam for Nature. The researchers found that 12% [of users] were drawn to the apps to help them cope with loneliness and 14% used them to discuss personal issues and mental health,” writes Adam. “Forty-two per cent of users said they logged on a few times a week, with just 15% doing so every day. More than 90% reported that their sessions lasted less than one hour.”
Prof. Christopher Knittel joins the Marketplace podcast “Make Me Smart” to discuss how the U.S. can be in the best position for global energy dominance. “The world is switching to electric vehicles, the world is switching to solar and wind,” says Knittel. “And the less we do domestically, the less capability we build domestically to provide those clean energy resources, the worse off our industries will be in the future.”
MIT has joined with the American Association of Universities, American Council on Education, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and 12 other universities in filing suit to contest the National Science Foundation announcement that it will implement 15% caps on indirect costs for NSF research grants, reports Juliet Schulman-Hall for MassLive. The suit notes that: “If NSF’s policy is allowed to stand, it will badly undermine scientific research at America’s universities and erode our Nation’s enviable status as a global leader in scientific research and innovation.”