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Researchers at MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories have built a low-power chip specialized for automatic speech recognition. With power savings of 90 to 99 percent, it could make voice control practical for relatively simple electronic devices.

Voice control everywhere

Low-power special-purpose chip could make speech recognition ubiquitous in electronics.

February 13, 2017

“There seems to be no shortage of exoplanets,” says Jennifer Burt, a Torres postdoctoral fellow in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “There are a ton of them out there, and a ton of science to be done.”

Scientists make huge dataset of nearby stars available to public

Users can search database of 1,600 stars to find signs of new exoplanets.

February 13, 2017

Left to right: Gabriela Schlau-Cohen, Rafael Jaramillo, David Hsu, Nuno Loureiro

New faculty strengthen, broaden MIT’s energy expertise

MIT's newest faculty bring a wide array of energy interests and developments to the Institute.

February 7, 2017

Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have designed and demonstrated a small, ingestible voltaic cell that is sustained by the acidic fluids in the stomach.

Engineers harness stomach acid to power tiny sensors

Ingestible electronic devices could monitor physiological conditions or deliver drugs.

February 6, 2017

"My own work has drawn heavily on a number of normally distant disciplines," says Richard Nielsen, MIT assistant professor of political science. "I’m convinced that ... despite the tendency for scholars to remain in our own disciplinary silos, the big breakthroughs on complex issues will come at the intersections of fields, from researchers and teams that are willing to bridge disciplinary divid...

3 Questions with Richard Nielsen: How political science helps combat terrorism

Assistant Professor Richard Nielsen explores why some Muslim clerics adopt the ideology of militant jihad while most do not.

February 3, 2017

MIT Professor Tom Leighton (left) and the late Danny Lewin SM '97 have been named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Professor Tom Leighton and Danny Lewin SM ’98 named to National Inventors Hall of Fame

Akamai founders honored for applying algorithms to solve web congestion.

February 2, 2017

“There’s no question that carbon dioxide is the biggest contributor to human-caused climate change, so that’s the big focus of mitigation efforts. But there are a number of others that are also significant,” says Jessika Trancik, the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Associate Professor in Energy Studies at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Explained: Greenhouse gases

Carbon dioxide isn’t the only one that matters, and the gases vary widely in potency and duration.

January 30, 2017

MIT's Maria T. Zuber and Conservation International's Peter Seligmann

MIT, Conservation International announce collaboration on climate adaptation and mitigation

Collaboration will explore ways of working with natural systems to address climate change.

January 27, 2017

MIT Media Lab spinout Changing Environments is the brains behind the solar-powered Soofa Bench, which is equipped with an embedded charging station for mobile devices that also connects to wireless networks. Recently, the startup released the solar-powered Soofa Sign, which displays public transit times, weather, and events, among other city information.

Smart city fixtures

Startup brings solar-powered, phone-charging park benches and digital signs to cities worldwide.

January 27, 2017

“I was interested in clean energy. In a physics textbook, on literally the last page, they made a reference to fusion, ‘the power source of the future.’ I was intrigued and decided to find out more,” says PhD candidate Brandon Sorbom.

Brandon Sorbom: Designing a fusion future

PhD candidate explores a faster, high-magnetic-field pathway to fusion energy.

January 23, 2017

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have designed a new system that automatically handles caching of database queries for web applications written in the web-programming language Ur/Web.

Faster websites with fewer bugs

System that automatically handles database caching in server farms increases speed and reliability.

January 20, 2017

Professor Daniela Rus stands with autonomous SMART vehicles on the MIT campus.

SMART automation

MIT Professor Daniela Rus combines automation and mobility to create a smarter world.

January 19, 2017

A new system called Data Civilizer automatically finds connections among many different data tables and allows users to perform database-style queries across all of them. The results of the queries can then be saved as new, orderly data sets that may draw information from dozens or even thousands of different tables.

Taming data

System finds and links related data scattered across digital files, for easy querying and filtering.

January 19, 2017

The SMAP observations are providing an unprecedented level of detailed, worldwide information on the amount of water in the top 2 inches (5 centimeters) of soil, collected globally every two to three days.

Study tracks “memory” of soil moisture

First year of data from SMAP satellite provides new insights for weather, agriculture, and climate.

January 16, 2017

MapD is a type of commonly used database-management system modified to run on GPUs instead of CPUs, which power most traditional database-management systems. MapD can process billions of data points in milliseconds, making it 100 times faster than those traditional systems, and visualizes that data near instantaneously.

Split-second data mapping

New type of database-analytics platform queries and maps billions of data points in milliseconds.

January 11, 2017

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