MIT researchers have developed a new “window-sized device that can convert vapor from air into safe drinking water using hydrogel,” reports Matthew Burgos for designboom. “With the invention, the MIT engineers want to make it easier for people to produce clean drinking water in places where there’s no river, lake, or well,” Burgos explains, “and where the only source accessible to them that can be converted into water is air.”
Architect reporter Blaine Brownell spotlights Prof. Caitlin Mueller’s work repurposing “discarded tree forks from urban forestry projects [and] repurposing the nodes as structural joints in hybrid reclaimed-engineered wood constructions.” Mueller and her team have “developed computer programs to catalog 3D scans of the tree forks as well as determine the appropriate cuts for their intended structural applications,” explains Brownell. “An algorithm matches prepared tree forks to three-dimensional intersections in the intended structural framework, streamlining the design process.”
MIT researchers have developed a power-free, water-collecting device that extracted a glass of clean water from the air in Death Valley, California, suggesting that “the device could provide the vital resource to arid regions,” reports Alex Wilkins for New Scientist.“Because the design of this device is quite a compact structure, we believe that an even larger area of the device can supply the drinking water for a household for daily consumption,” explains Prof. Xuanhe Zhao.
Senior Research Scientist C. Adam Schlosser speaks with Boston Globe reporter Lindsay Crudele about how tending to personal gardens can be an effective tool in combating climate change. “We obviously have a lot of technologies that are trying to remove carbon from the air,” Schlosser explains, but “the best way of doing that, in terms of nature, is to plant new vegetation.”
Prof. Amos Winter speaks with WBUR reporter Grace Griffin about his work developing a desalination system that relies on solar power. “The majority of water you find in the ground around the world is salty,” says Winter. “The reason we use solar power is that most people around the world are going to be resource-constrained. They may have lower income levels or not have access to grid electricity. So, our technology makes desalination much more accessible in all areas around the world.”
Forbes reporter Cornelia Walther spotlights innovators from MIT Solve’s climate solver teams, which “underscore the power of AI as a catalyst for transforming change across diverse sectors.” The teams illustrate “that when carefully designed and applied, AI can deliver substantial benefits for the environment — improving operational efficiency, cutting waste and even supporting social equity,” writes Walther.
Graduate student Will Parker joins Dana Taylor of the USA Today podcast The Excerpt to discuss his research on the impact of climate change on satellites. “We're seeing a cooling effect in the upper atmosphere where most of our satellites are operating, and because of that cooling effect, we're seeing that the entire atmosphere is contracting, so it's retreating away from low Earth orbit where we rely on that atmosphere for drag on our satellites,” explains Parker. “The effect of that retreat, that shrinking of the atmosphere, is that it's not doing as good a job at cleaning out low Earth orbit, and again, we rely on that cleaning force because we have no other way to remove most of this debris.”
Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer and dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto about the new MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance. “A great amount of innovation happens in academia. We have a longer view into the future,” says Chandrakasan. He adds that while companies like GE Vernova have “the ability to get products out quickly to scale up, to manufacture, we have the ability to think past the short-term. ... It’s super smart of them to surround themselves with this incredible talent in academia. That will allow us to make the kind of breakthroughs that will keep U.S. competitiveness at its peak.”
E&E News reporter Christa Marshall writes that the new MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance will “scale sustainable energy systems across the globe” and advance breakthrough low-carbon technologies.
MIT engineers have developed a new system that helps pesticides adhere more effectively to plant leaves, allowing farmers to use fewer chemicals without sacrificing crop protection, reports Michigan Farm News. The new technology “adds a thin coating around droplets as they are being sprayed onto a field, increasing the stickiness of pesticides by as much as a hundredfold.”
“A breakthrough from MIT researchers and AgZen, a spinoff company, is making agricultural spraying more efficient—cutting pesticide waste, lowering costs, and reducing environmental impact,” reports Rural Radio Network. “The technology works with existing sprayers, eliminating the need for costly equipment changes. In field tests, it doubled product retention on crops like soybeans and kale. AgZen’s spray-monitoring system, RealCoverage, has already helped farmers reduce pesticide use by 30 to 50 percent, and the new coating could improve efficiency even further.”
Researchers at MIT have discovered how “greenhouse gases are impacting Earth’s upper atmosphere and, in turn, the objects orbiting within it,” reports Grace Snelling for Fast Company. “If we don’t take action to be more responsible for operating our satellites, the impact is that there are going to be entire regions of low Earth orbit that could become uninhabitable for a satellite,” says graduate student William Parker.
MIT researchers have discovered that increased greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth’s upper atmosphere can “potentially cause catastrophic satellite collision in low-Earth orbit,” reports Bruce Dorminey for Forbes. “When the thermosphere contracts, the decreasing density reduces atmospheric drag — a force that pulls old satellites and other debris down to altitudes where they will encounter air molecules and burn up,” Dorminey explains. “Less drag therefore means extended lifetimes for space junk, which will litter sought-after regions for decades and increase the potential for collisions in orbit.”
MIT researchers have found that high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere may increase the risk of satellite collisions, reports Sachi Kitajima Mulkey for Grist. “The environment is very cluttered already. Satellites are constantly dodging right and left,” says graduate student William Parker. “As long as we are emitting greenhouse gases, we are increasing the probability that we see more collision events between objects in space.”
Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein writes that MIT scientists have found that climate change could “reduce the available space for satellites in low Earth orbit by anywhere from one-third to 82% by the end of the century, depending on how much carbon pollution is spewed.” Graduate student William Parker explains: “We rely on the atmosphere to clean up our debris. There’s no other way to remove debris. It’s trash. It’s garbage. And there are millions of pieces of it.”