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Engineers at MIT can now predict a liquid’s droplet size distribution, including the likelihood of producing very big and very small droplets, based on one main property: the liquid’s viscoelasticity, or stickiness.

Spray tuning

New method determines distribution of droplet sizes for wide range of sticky fluids.

November 9, 2016

“…[I]f a fluorescence microscope’s resolution is set at 2 micrometers, our technique can have 300 nanometer resolution — about a sixfold improvement over regular microscopes,” says MIT graduate student Frederick Sangyeon Cho. “The idea is very simple but very powerful and can be useful in many different imaging applications.”

Laser particles could provide sharper images of tissues

New imaging technique stimulates particles to emit laser light, could create higher-resolution images.

November 3, 2016

This image shows the basic setup that enables researchers to use lasers as optical “tweezers” to pick individual atoms out from a cloud and hold them in place. The atoms are imaged onto a camera, and the traps are generated by a laser that is split into many different focused laser beams. This allows a single atom to be trapped at each focus.

Scientists set traps for atoms with single-particle precision

Technique may enable large-scale atom arrays for quantum computing.

November 3, 2016

This image shows free-air gravitational anomalies and a shaded topographic relief of the Moon’s 930-km-diameter Orientale impact basin. Red corresponds to mass excesses and blue to mass deficits relative to a reference value. This gravitational field model, based on measurements acquired from the NASA GRAIL mission, shows the detailed structure of the central basin depression that is filled with...

Retracing the origins of a massive, multi-ring crater

Scientists reconstruct first hours after a giant impact created one of the largest craters on the moon.

October 27, 2016

While most solid materials expand with heat, this 3-D-printed structure, designed by MIT engineers, is designed to shrink, based on the stretching and pulling of its internal beams and trusses.

3-D-printed structures shrink when heated

Counterintuitive “metamaterial” may enable heat-resistant circuit boards.

October 25, 2016

(Left to right): M. Nafi Toksöz, professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS); Oral Buyukozturk, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE); and Hao Sun, a postdoc in CEE. The Green Building, behind them, has 36 accelerometers that record vibrations and movements on selected floors, from the building’s foundation to its roof.

With new model, buildings may “sense” internal damage

System predicts how MIT’s tallest structure responds to vibrations, may help monitor stress over time.

October 18, 2016

MIT researchers have developed a stretchy optical fiber in which they have injected multiple organic dyes (yellow, blue, and green regions). In addition to lighting up, the dyes act as a strain sensor, enabling researchers to quantify where and by how much a fiber has been stretched.

Stretchy optical fibers for implanting in the body

Biocompatible fibers could use light to stimulate cells or sense signs of disease.

October 17, 2016

MIT researchers have found that interactions between electrons and heat-carrying particles called phonons can play a significant role in preventing heat dissipation in microelectronic devices.

Electron-phonon interactions affect heat dissipation in computer chips

Study shows particle collisions may explain overheated circuits, improve thermoelectric devices.

October 12, 2016

ABRACADABRA (A Broadband/Resonant Approach to Cosmic Axion Detection with an Amplifying B-field Ring Apparatus), consists of a series of magnetic coils, wound in the shape of a toroid, or donut, which is then encased in a layer of superconducting metal and kept at temperatures just above absolute zero. The scientists plan to use a highly sensitive magnetometer, placed inside the donut hole, to det...

Team simulates a magnetar to seek dark matter particle

Detecting “axion” particles may solve longstanding problem in particle physics.

October 7, 2016

“We are particularly interested in wetsuits for surfing, where the athlete moves frequently between air and water environments,” says Anette (Peko) Hosoi, a professor of mechanical engineering and associate head of the department at MIT. “We can control the length, spacing, and arrangement of hairs, which allows us to design textures to match certain dive speeds and maximize the wetsuit's dr...

Beaver-inspired wetsuits in the works

Rubbery hair-lined wetsuits may help keep surfers warm.

October 5, 2016

Ocean engineers from MIT, the University of Minnesota at Duluth, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have accurately simulated the motion of internal tides along a shelf break called the Middle Atlantic Bight — a region off the coast of the eastern U.S. that stretches from Cape Cod in Massachusetts to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.

Researchers find explanation for interacting giant, hidden ocean waves

Better simulations of internal tides may benefit sonar communications, protect offshore structures, and more.

September 28, 2016

This computational illustration shows a graphene network structure below a layer of water.

How to power up graphene implants without frying cells

New analysis finds way to safely conduct heat from graphene to biological tissues.

September 23, 2016

“Learning from this model, we can understand what’s really going on in these superconductors, and what one should do to make higher-temperature superconductors, approaching hopefully room temperature,” says Martin Zwierlein, professor of physics and principal investigator in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics.

For first time, researchers see individual atoms keep away from each other or bunch up as pairs

Observations of atomic interactions could help pave way to room-temperature superconductors.

September 15, 2016

This artist's depiction shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft contacting the asteroid Bennu with its Touch-And-Go Sample Arm. The mission aims to return a sample of Bennu's surface coating to Earth and to return detailed information about the asteroid and its trajectory.

MIT’s REXIS is bound for asteroid Bennu

Instrument will help OSIRIS-REx mission identify locations for collecting an asteroid sample.

September 8, 2016

“The ocean has been the only true sink for anthropogenic emissions since the industrial revolution,” says MIT graduate student Sophie Chu, pictured here. “Right now, it stores about 1/4 to 1/3 of the anthropogenic emissions from the atmosphere. We’re expecting at some point the storage will slow down.”

Study finds increased ocean acidification due to human activities

More anthropogenic carbon in the northeast Pacific means weaker shells for many marine species.

September 7, 2016

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