Rethinking how our brains use categories to make sense of the world
Researchers propose a challenge to the traditional view of how the brain uses its ability to categorize.
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Games people — and machines — play: Untangling strategic reasoning to advance AI
Assistant Professor Gabriele Farina mines the foundations of decision-making in complex multi-agent scenarios.
An engineer’s guide to birds
In her new book, “Birds Up Close,” MIT materials engineer Lorna Gibson explores feathers, bones, bills, eggs, and flight, and the mechanics behind birds’ extraordinary abilities.
Transforming deep-space signals into cathedral sound
An immersive sound installation at Oulu Cathedral, Finland, co-created by MIT Associate Professor Kiyoshi Masui, transforms more than 4,000 cosmic signals into spatial audio.
MIT engineers’ virtual violin produces realistic sounds
Based on the physics of how the instrument produces sound, the model could help violin makers in the design process.
With a swipe of a magnet, microscopic “magno-bots” perform complex maneuvers
MIT researchers’ new fabrication technique can produce soft, microscopic structures with magnetically activated moving parts.
Plants can sense the sound of rain, a new study finds
Experiments by MIT engineers show rice seeds sprout faster to the sound of rain.
A regulatory loophole could delay ozone recovery by years
Scientists say an exception in the Montreal Protocol for the use of ozone-depleting feedstocks could set the ozone recovery back seven years.
Seeing sounds
Mariano Salcedo ’25, a master’s student in the new Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program, is designing an AI to visualize and express music and other sounds.
Preserving Keres
Linguistics graduate student William Pacheco hopes to preserve his endangered native language, while also becoming a better learner and educator.
“We the People” depicts inventors, dreamers, and innovators in all 50 states
For the 250th anniversary of the US, Joshua Bennett’s epic poem set celebrates unexpected lives forged across the nation.
How the brain handles the “cocktail party problem”
Using a computational model, neuroscientists showed how the brain can selectively focus attention on one voice among others in a noisy environment.
X-raying rocks reveals their carbon-storing capacity
New research by MIT geophysicists could assist efforts to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it underground.
Recreating the forms and sounds of historical musical instruments
Through an interdisciplinary collaboration between MIT and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, researchers are creating playable physical and synthesized replicas.
Mixing generative AI with physics to create personal items that work in the real world
To help generative AI models create durable, real-world accessories and decor, the PhysiOpt system runs physics simulations and makes subtle tweaks to its 3D blueprints.