Researchers at MIT have found that climate change could raise the risk of satellite collisions, reports Justine Calma for The Verge. “We’ve really reached the end of that era of ‘space is big,’ and I think we should stop saying that,” says graduate student, William Parker. “People don’t realize that the space sustainability issue is really an issue that impacts them directly.”
Dezeen reporter Rima Sabina Aouf spotlights how MIT researchers have created a “thin and flexible fiber computer and woven it into clothes, suggesting a potential alternative to current wearable electronics.” Prof. Yoek Fink explains: "In the not-too-distant future, fiber computers will allow us to run apps and get valuable health care and safety services from simple everyday apparel.” He adds: "The convergence of classical fibers and fabrics with computation and machine learning has only begun.”
MIT engineers have manufactured a programmable computer fiber that can be woven into clothing and used to help monitor the wearer’s vital signs, reports Jennifer Ouellette for Ars Technica. “The long-term objective is incorporating fiber computers into apparel that can sense and respond to changes in the surrounding environment and individual physiology,” Ouellette notes.
New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins spotlights how MIT researchers have created a “computer that can be stitched into clothes, made from chips that are connected in a thread of copper and elastic fiber.” U.S. Army and Navy members will be testing the use of the fiber computer to help monitor health conditions and prevent injury during a monthlong mission to the Arctic. Prof. Yoel Fink explains: “We’re getting very close to a point where we could write apps for fabrics and begin to monitor our health and do all kinds of things that a phone, frankly, cannot do.”
Research Assistants Maisy Lam and Laura Dodds speak with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about their work developing MiFly, a new approach that “enables a drone to self-localize, or determine its position, in indoor, dark, and low-visibility environments.” Dodds explains: “Our high-level idea was we can place a millimeter wave sensor on the drone, and it can localize itself with respect to a sticker that we place on the wall, a millimeter wave tag. This would allow us to provide a localization system in these challenging environments with minimal infrastructure.”
In this interview (in Spanish), graduate students Suhan Kim and Yi-Hsuan (Nemo) Hsiao speak with Telemundo correspondent Miriam Arias about their work developing insect-sized robots to assist with agricultural needs. “There might be one year where you have a lot of bees in the field that help you pollinate everything. Maybe the next year, it might be affected by the temperature or something [and] you just don’t have enough bees to help you do so,” explains Hsiao.
Graduate students Suhan Kim and Yi-Hsuan (Nemo) Hsiao speak with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about their work developing insect-sized robots capable of artificial pollination. “Typical drones use electromagnetic motors plus propellers. But, our system is a little different in that we are primarily using an artificial muscle,” explains Kim.
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed a new vaccine that “could be potentially used against a broad array of coronaviruses like the one that causes Covid-19 and potentially forestall future pandemics,” reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. “The vaccine involves attaching tiny pieces of virus that remain unchanged across related strains to a nanoparticle,” explains Knapp.
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have develop insect-sized robots that could one day be used to help with farming practices like artificial pollination, reports Alice Rizzo for Reuters. "These type of robots will open up a very new type of use case," says graduate student Suhan Kim. "We can start thinking of using our robot, if it works well, for tools like indoor farming."
Researchers at MIT have developed an insect-like, flying robot capable of performing acrobatic maneuvers and hovering in the air for up to 15 minutes without failing, reports Alex Wilkins for New Scientist. “By having a hugely increased [flying] lifetime, we were able to work on the controller parts so that the robot can achieve precise trajectory tracking, plus aggressive maneuvers like somersaults,” says graduate student Suhan Kim.
Quanta Magazine reporter Charlie Wood spotlights how MIT researchers have contributed to the recent discoveries of new superconductive materials. Prof. Long Ju and his research team “placed a five-layer graphene flake on an insulator at a twisted angle and observed a rare electron behavior that normally requires a strong magnetic field to induce,” explains Wood.
Ars Technica reporter Jacek Krywko spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new photonic chip that that can “compute the entire deep neural net, including both linear and non-linear operations, using photons.” Visiting scientist Saumil Bandyopadhyay '17, MEng '18, PhD '23 explains that: “We’re focused on a very specific metric here, which is latency. We aim for applications where what matters the most is how fast you can produce a solution. That’s why we are interested in systems where we’re able to do all the computations optically.”
Financial Times reporter Clive Cookson spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a “new filtration material based on natural silk and cellulose that removes a wide range of PFAS, while having antimicrobial properties that prevent fouling by bacteria and fungi.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a new AI model capable of assessing a patient’s risk of pancreatic cancer, reports Erez Meltzer for Forbes. “The model could potentially expand the group of patients who can benefit from early pancreatic cancer screening from 10% to 35%,” explains Meltzer. “These kinds of predictive capabilities open new avenues for preventive care.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a “black-hole triple, the first known instance of a three-body system that includes a black hole, which is not supposed to be part of the mix,” reports Dennis Overbye for The New York Times. The researchers propose that the black hole “could have resulted from a sort of immaculate conception whereby the progenitor star disappeared from the universe without any fireworks.”