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“The ultimate objective,” atmospheric scientist Jesse Kroll says, “is to understand what policies could help, and what changes policymakers could make to minimize the negative health and climate effects of particulate pollution.”

Zeroing in on the chemistry of the air

Jesse Kroll examines how pollutants change chemically as they waft around the globe.

February 1, 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

“If you really understand the phenomena, you can reduce it to a few nondimensional parameters,” MIT mechanical engineer Kripa Varanasi says. That collapses the complexity into manageable formulas and phase diagrams, “and then we can design new processes, new products, and zero-tradeoff solutions.” That approach, he says, has been “at the heart of the companies we’ve started.”

Kripa Varanasi: Innovating at interfaces

MIT engineer’s research on surfaces is improving everything from power plants to ketchup bottles.

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

New research shows that when metal oxide (flat array of atoms at bottom) is used as a catalyst for splitting water molecules, some of the oxygen produced comes out of the metal oxide itself, not just from the surrounding water. This was proved by first using water with a heavier isotope of oxygen (oxygen 18, shown in white), and later switching to ordinary water (made with oxygen 16, shown in red)...

Study: Some catalysts contribute their own oxygen for reactions

Finding may help researchers fine-tune metal-oxide catalysts to enhance energy storage technology.

January 9, 2017

3-D-printed gyroid models such as this one were used to test the strength and mechanical properties of a new lightweight material.

Researchers design one of the strongest, lightest materials known

Porous, 3-D forms of graphene developed at MIT can be 10 times as strong as steel but much lighter.

January 6, 2017

Researchers are systematically exploring a variety of alternative packaging materials and containers to see which work best, and most cost-effectively, at reducing losses in food aid. Pictured are food aid bags in a Texas warehouse.

Reducing spoilage in food aid shipments

Large-scale tests compare damage from insects and moisture using a variety of containers.

January 6, 2017

New MIT research could offer a way of making tiny movable parts with no solid connections between the pieces, potentially eliminating a major source of wear and failure in microelectromechanical machines. The new system uses a layer of liquid droplets to support a tiny, movable platform.

Movable microplatform floats on a sea of droplets

New technique offers precise, durable control over tiny mirrors or stages.

December 16, 2016

The 1960s were “a heady time for the nation,” recalled civil rights activist Janet Moses, left, at a luncheon celebrating “Activism in the Era of MLK.” Topper Carew, middle, a filmmaker originally from Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood and a principal investigator at MIT’s Media Lab, was also on the panel led by Institute Community and Equity Officer Edmund Bertschinger, right.

Pick an issue and dive in!

Veterans of civil rights movement urge students to join ongoing battle against injustice.

December 15, 2016

Now in its 21st year, the “product engineering processes” class led by David Wallace is designed to give its students a strong sense of what’s involved in taking a product all the way from brainstorming ideas, through preliminary design and testing, to a final, fully functional product design and a basic business plan.

Student product ideas range from lifesaving to just plain fun

Finale of mechanical engineering class unveils wide variety of ingenious new product concepts.

December 13, 2016

A new system to monitor radiation damage in a material creates acoustic oscillations by using two pulsed laser beams aimed at a sample, in such a way that the light waves of the two beams cause an interference pattern. This interference pattern causes heating at the sample surface, generating a standing acoustic wave. The motion of the surface caused by this wave can be monitored by another set of...

Measuring radiation damage on the fly

Technique could continuously assess aging of materials in a high-radiation environment, in real-time.

December 13, 2016

A team at MIT has found an unexpected discovery about water: Inside the tiniest of spaces — in carbon nanotubes whose inner dimensions are not much bigger than a few water molecules — water can freeze solid even at high temperatures that would normally set it boiling. The finding might lead to new applications such as ice-filled wires.

Inside tiny tubes, water turns solid when it should be boiling

MIT researchers discover astonishing behavior of water confined in carbon nanotubes.

November 28, 2016

This image shows simulated iso-frequency contours of a photonic crystal slab superimposed on each other and tiled.

New method for analyzing crystal structure

Exotic materials called photonic crystals reveal their internal characteristics with new method.

November 25, 2016

Images produced from computer simulations show the response of a graphene surface as a silicon tip slides over it. Relative forces of atomic friction on the surface are shown by colors: Red points are “pushing” sites that help propel the tip along the surface, while blue points are “pinning” sites of greater friction that inhibit the tip’s motion.

The science of friction on graphene

Sliding on flexible graphene surfaces has been uncharted territory until now.

November 23, 2016

This image shows the fabrication steps from raw circular filament to a fully functional bending artificial muscle. The bottom filament is a raw circular filament. Researchers press the filament using a rolling mill (the second sample from the bottom). Next, they add a mask in the middle of the surface (the third sample from the bottom). Then, they add the conductive ink (the second sample from the...

Nylon fibers made to flex like muscles

MIT engineers find a simple and inexpensive new approach to creating bending artificial muscle fibers.