Graduate student Alexandre Kaspar speaks with BBC Click about two new systems that ease the process of designing and making knitted clothing items. Kaspar explains that the systems allow users to “create building blocks of parts that are being knit.”
TechCrunch reporter Catherine Shu writes that CSAIL researchers have developed two new systems that enable users to design and customize their own knitted items, no knitting experience required. Shu explains that the researchers want “to make designing and making machine-knitted garments as accessible as 3D printing is now.”
Researchers from a number of institutions, including MIT, are exploring the feasibility of cold fusion, reports Steven Salzberg for Forbes. The researchers explained that while they were unable to successfully produce cold fusion, their exploration of this topic “is likely to have a substantial impact on future energy technologies.”
National Geographic reporter Michael Greshko writes about a new effort by researchers from a number of institutions, including MIT, to reassess the possibility of cold fusion. Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang explains that he hopes to be able to create a “‘reference experiment’ for other labs to also advance research into lower-energy nuclear physics.”
Prof. Michael Strano speaks about his research on carbon-fixing materials, which are “substances powered by the sun that use atmospheric carbon dioxide to grow and repair themselves, just as plants do,” writes Marlene Cimons for Popular Science. “Making a material that can access the abundant carbon all around us is a significant opportunity for materials science,” said Strano.
IEEE Spectrum reporter Mark Anderson highlights how Prof. Jeehwan Kim’s research group has developed techniques to produce ultrathin semiconducting films and harvest the materials necessary to manufacture 2-D electronics. Anderson explains that the group’s advances could make possible such innovations as high-efficiency solar cells attached to a car’s exterior and low-power, long-lasting wearable devices.
Prof. Yoel Fink speaks with BBC Click about his work developing fabrics embedded with light-emitting diodes that could help keep pedestrians safe. Fink explains that the fabric can detect the lights from an oncoming vehicle and establish an “affirmative link between the car and pedestrian.”
MIT researchers have developed a new waterproof coating method that is safer for both the environment and humans, reports Brooks Hays for UPI. Lab tests showed the coating, “works to waterproof a variety of fabrics and materials against a variety of liquids,” Hays explains.
Writing for The Verge, Angela Chen highlights advances in AI that are allowing researchers to discover and understand new materials at a rapid pace. Chen cites a study co-authored by Assistant Prof. Elsa Olivetti, who “developed a machine-learning system that scans academic papers to figure out which ones include instructions for making certain materials.”
A team led by research scientist Ming Dao has made diamond nano-needles that can bend without breaking and snap back into to their original position, New Scientist reports. “The tiny needles had very little room for defects in their crystal structure, so they could bend without snapping,” the article explains.
Forbes contributor Brid-Aine Parnell describes new research from MIT and others who discovered that even though diamonds are hard and brittle, “needle nanodiamonds can stretch by as much as 9%.” Because of this, such nanodiamonds could “be biocompatible for vivo imaging, optoelectronics or even delivering drugs into cancer cells,” writes Parnell.
Ryan Mandelbaum of Gizmodo writes that MIT scientists have found that diamonds can bend without snapping when in the form of nano-needles. These needles can potentially be used to “store data or to deliver drugs directly into cells, or simply as ultra-strong nanostructures,” explains Mandelbaum.
A paper from MIT and others shows that when diamonds are in the form of a nano-needle, they can be bent and stretched before returning to their original shape, reports Aristos Georgiou for Newsweek. The researchers “found that they could bend and stretch by as much as 9 percent without breaking, which is approaching the theoretical limit of diamond flexibility,” notes Georgiou.
Writing in The Boston Globe, technology reporter Hiawatha Bray examines a bracelet designed by three MIT alumni that “functions like a personal thermostat, cooling you off when you’re hot or warming you up when it’s chilly.” Called Embr Wave, it offers a “sudden surge of heat or cold that makes us feel better, even though our core temperature has hardly changed,” Bray explains.
WCVB reporter Mike Wankum visits Embr Labs, an MIT spinoff that has developed a wristband that can make wearers feel warmer or colder. Wankum explains that after a few minutes of wearing the wristband, “you feel more comfortable. Much like holding a warm cup of coffee to take the chill off a winter morning.”