National Science Foundation (NSF)

Results have just been published from a years-long project trying to quantify just how urban-based solar installations are affected by hazes, which tend to be concentrated in dense cities.

Air pollution can put a dent in solar power

Study finds lost revenue can be millions of dollars annually, suggests ways to quantify haze-related reductions in solar panel output.

August 28, 2018

MIT Media Lab researchers have designed a system that allows underwater and airborne sensors to directly share data. An underwater transmitter directs a sonar signal to the water’s surface, causing tiny vibrations that correspond to the 1s and 0s transmitted. Above the surface, a highly sensitive receiver reads these minute disturbances and decodes the sonar signal.

Wireless communication breaks through water-air barrier

In a novel system developed by MIT researchers, underwater sonar signals cause vibrations that can be decoded by an airborne receiver.

August 22, 2018

The quasar dates back to less than one billion years after the big bang.

Light from ancient quasars helps confirm quantum entanglement

Results are among the strongest evidence yet for “spooky action at a distance.”

August 19, 2018

CSAIL researchers have developed a visualization tool for CAD that, for the first time, lets users instead interactively explore all designs that best fit multiple, often-conflicting performance tradeoffs, in real time.

Design tool reveals a product’s many possible performance tradeoffs

Users can quickly visualize designs that optimize multiple parameters at once.

August 15, 2018

MIT researchers used archived data from the CLAS detector to study interactions in neutron-rich atoms.

In neutron stars, protons may do the heavy lifting

The positively charged particles may have an outsize influence on the properties of neutron stars and other neutron-rich objects.

August 13, 2018

Sensor could help doctors select effective cancer therapy

Hydrogen peroxide-sensing molecule reveals whether chemotherapy drugs are having their intended effects.

August 7, 2018

To help students gain a better grasp of biological concepts, MIT and Northwestern University researchers have designed new educational kits that can be used to perform experiments that produce glowing proteins, scents, or other easily observed phenomena, through the engineering of DNA.

Inexpensive biology kits offer hands-on experience with DNA

Using freeze-dried, shelf-stable cellular components, students can learn about key biological concepts.

August 1, 2018

An instrument called a rheometer can measure mechanical properties of materials. The blue-colored gel on the stage of the instrument is the material. The rheometer is used to measure the modulus of the material, to gain an understanding of its stiffness and degree of dynamics.

Light-controlled polymers can switch between sturdy and soft

New material reversibly changes its structure in response to different wavelengths of light.

July 18, 2018

New study again proves Einstein right

Most thorough test to date finds no Lorentz violation in high-energy neutrinos.

July 16, 2018

There may be more than a quadrillion tons of diamond hidden in the Earth’s interior, according to a new study from MIT and other universities.

Sound waves reveal diamond cache deep in Earth’s interior

Study finds 1–2 percent of Earth’s oldest mantle rocks are made from diamond.

July 16, 2018

The clock transmitter chip (pink) wired to a circuit board package. Connected is a metal gas cell (right), in which a 231.061 GHz signal generated from the chip excites the rotation of carbonyl sulfide molecules. Because the peak rotation of the molecules is constant, it can be used as a reference point to keep accurate time.

Molecular clock could greatly improve smartphone navigation

Novel chip keeps time using the constant, measurable rotation of molecules as a timing reference.

July 13, 2018

Numerical simulation of the last instances of a neutron star and black hole merger, as the neutron star is destroyed by the tidal pull of the black hole (at the center of the disk).

Could gravitational waves reveal how fast our universe is expanding?

Signals from rare black hole-neutron star pairs could pinpoint rate at which universe is growing, researchers say.

July 12, 2018

Based on measurements taken at more than 100,000 wells around the country, the MIT researchers identified these locations, indicated by green dots, that have a combination of a severe shortage of freshwater, and a large reserve of brackish groundwater that could potentially be desalinated and used.

Study finds potential in brackish groundwater desalination

Water-starved areas could find new sources by desalinating water that’s much less salty than seawater.

July 4, 2018

Summer Scholar Abigail Nason (left) and graduate student Takian Fakhrul peer into a pulsed laser deposition chamber for creating thin films that combine magnetic properties and infrared light transparency to serve in waveguides and isolators for integrated photonic chips.

Summer projects in motion

Lab assignments for MIT Materials Research Laboratory undergraduate researchers and teachers cut across disciplines.

July 3, 2018

PPC neurons, engineered to glow when active, flicker in response to a mouse seeing a visual stimulus and deciding whether to respond with a licking motion.

Study shows where brain transforms seeing into doing

MIT neuroscientists find posterior parietal cortex region is crucial to connecting perception to action.