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1) Graphene, grown on copper foil, is pressed against a supporting sheet of polycarbonate. 2) The polycarbonate acts to peel the graphene from the copper. 3) Using interfacial polymerization, researchers seal large tears and defects in graphene. 4) Next, they use oxygen plasma to etch pores of specific sizes in graphene.

Scientists produce dialysis membrane made from graphene

Material can filter nanometer-sized molecules at 10 to 100 times the rate of commercial membranes.

June 28, 2017

Aerospace engineers from MIT have developed a laser sensing technique that can decipher not only where but what kind of space junk may be passing overhead.

Space junk: The cluttered frontier

New laser technique identifies the makeup of space debris, from painted shards to Teflon.

June 19, 2017

Metafluidics.org, a new MIT open-source website, supplies blueprints for microfluidic parts. Pictured are a few photographs from the website.

Microfluidics for the masses

New open-source website features blueprints for lab-on-a-chip devices.

June 13, 2017

Engineers design drones that can stay aloft for five days

New design could provide communication support in disaster zones.

June 6, 2017

This artist's conception shows two merging black holes similar to those detected by LIGO. The black holes are spinning in a nonaligned fashion, which means they have different orientations relative to the overall orbital motion of the pair. LIGO found hints that at least one black hole in the system called GW170104 was nonaligned with its orbital motion before it merged with its partner.

LIGO detects merging black holes for third time

Nearly 3 billion light years from Earth, the black holes are the farthest ever detected.

June 1, 2017

Engineers at MIT have come up with a scaling law to describe how objects move through sand. The scaling law can be used to predict how large trucks and cars drive through this material, based on how toy versions of those vehicles drive through an experimental sandbox containing the same grains.

New scaling law predicts how wheels drive over sand

Formula could help optimize construction vehicles, military tanks, and rovers on Mars.

May 29, 2017

Engineers at MIT have come up with an algorithm to tune a Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) camera, simplifying a scene to its most essential visual elements and potentially enabling the development of faster drones.

Faster, more nimble drones on the horizon

New algorithm quickly makes sense of incoming visual data.

May 25, 2017

These pasta shapes were caused by immersing a 2-D flat film into water.

Researchers engineer shape-shifting noodles

Sheets of gelatin transform into 3-D shapes when dunked in water; could save food shipping costs.

May 24, 2017

Professor Sara Ellison (center) and Professor Esther Duflo (right) receive an award from Professor Isaac Chuang for their work on "Data Analysis for Social Scientists.” Their course was awarded for the importance and relevancy of the topic, how the course is used in both the Data, Economics, and Development Policy MicroMasters program and for MIT undergraduate students, and how it provides stude...

First-ever winners of MITx Prize for Teaching and Learning in MOOCs announced

New annual prize lauds innovation in online courses.

May 22, 2017

This breathable workout suit prototype has ventilating flaps that open and close in response to an athlete’s body heat and sweat. The left photo was taken before exercise when ventilation flaps are flat; after exercise, the ventilation flaps have curved.

Researchers design moisture-responsive workout suit

Ventilating flaps lined with live cells open and close in response to an athlete’s sweat.

May 19, 2017

Left to right: River networks on Mars, Earth, and Titan. Researchers report that Titan, like Mars but unlike Earth, has not undergone any active plate tectonics in its recent past.

Rivers on three worlds tell different tales

Study finds history of Titan’s landscape resembles that of Mars, not Earth

May 18, 2017

“The observations are telling us there will be increases [in extreme rainfall] at almost all latitudes, but if you want to know what’s going to happen at the scale of a continent or smaller, it’s a much more difficult question,” Paul O’Gorman says.

Varied increases in extreme rainfall with global warming

Intensification of extreme rainfall varies from region to region, study shows.

May 15, 2017

“I’m driven by developing methodology that will be broadly useful,” says Youssef Marzouk, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.

Illuminating uncertainty

Youssef Marzouk aims to improve predictions of everything from underground pollution to daily weather.

May 11, 2017

MIT physicists have found that a flake of graphene, when brought in close proximity with two superconducting materials, can inherit some of those materials’ superconducting qualities. As graphene is sandwiched between superconductors, its electronic state changes dramatically, even at its center. Pictured is the experimental concept and device schematic.

Sandwiched between superconductors, graphene adopts exotic electronic states

Platform may be used to explore avenues for quantum computing.

May 4, 2017

On the left, an atomic-force microscopy image shows a nanoporous graphene membrane after a burst test at 100 bars. The image shows that failed micromembranes (the dark black areas) are aligned with wrinkles in the graphene. On the right, two zoomed-in scanning electron microscopy images of graphene membranes show the before (top) and after of a burst test at pressure difference of 30 bars. The i...

Graphene holds up under high pressure

Used in filtration membranes, ultrathin material could help make desalination more productive.

April 24, 2017

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