In an article for The Verge, Angela Chen highlights a new technique developed by MIT researchers to harvest water from fog. In the future, the researchers hope to place the harvesters, “near cooling plumes to collect and reuse water that would otherwise be lost.”
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that MIT researchers have developed a system that captures large amounts of water from the cooling towers used on power plants and data centers. Prof. Kripa Varanasi explains that he hopes this new technology can be used to address water scarcity: “We are thinking of each of these cooling towers as water farms.”
MIT spinout Ginkgo Bioworks is highlighted on the 2018 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, reports CNBC’s Andrew Zaleski. Zaleski notes that Ginkgo Bioworks, “has developed an automated process for combining genetic parts that has made it the largest designer of printed DNA in the world. That breakthrough has positioned the start-up to change the face of a variety of industries.”
MIT researchers have developed a method for turning plant leaves into a light source by injecting light-emitting nanoparticles into the leaves, reports Mark Ellwood for The Wall Street Journal. “Currently, researchers are able to make plants such as spinach, kale and watercress emit a dim light for about 4 hours,” says Ellwood, “up from 45 minutes when the project began in 2015.”
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.
In a VICE News Tonight climate segment, MIT postdocs Volodymyr Koman and Seon-Yeong Kwak explain their technique for making plants glow in the dark to a first-grade class in Boston. Following a demonstration mixing plant glucose with the specialized nanoparticles, one student exclaims in disbelief, “no battery or anything!”
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.
MIT researchers have discovered that arranging two stacked layers of graphene at a slight angle makes the material a superconductor, writes Elizabeth Gibney for Nature. After discovering that the graphene had the ability to conduct electrons, researchers applied “a small electric field to feed just a few extra charge carriers into the system, and it became a superconductor.”
Prof. Michael Strano has developed a new device that generates electricity by harnessing energy from temperature changes. Elements that usually hinder the effectiveness of solar panels, like clouds or sand, “wouldn’t affect [this device's] ability to harness power from the ever-changing temperatures,” explains Sydney Pereira of Newsweek.
Tony Lee of Mashable spotlights the technique developed by MIT researchers that allows plants to glow when inserted with nanoparticles containing luciferase, an enzyme known to make fireflies glow.
Researchers at MIT have developed a process that can produce strong ultrafine nanofibers that can potentially be used in armor, reports Xinhua. The newly developed fibers “combine the desirable qualities of strength, stiffness and toughness in ways that outperform glass fibers or steel wire,” the article explains.
In a Vox article about the increasing scalability of solar photovoltaic power, David Roberts highlights solar cells developed by Prof. Vladimir Bulovic. The solar cells are, “so small and light they could sit atop a soap bubble without popping it,” explains Roberts.