National Science Foundation (NSF)

A patterned and cylindrical structure made up of carbon nanotubes.

New device uses carbon nanotubes to snag molecules

Nanotube “forest” in a microfluidic channel may help detect rare proteins and viruses.

December 21, 2015

A new stretchy hydrogel can be embedded with various electronics. Here, a sheet of hydrogel is bonded to a matrix of polymer islands (red) that can encapsulate electronic components such as semiconductor chips, LED lights, and temperature sensors.

Stretchable hydrogel electronics

Water-based “Band-Aid” senses temperature, lights up, and delivers medicine to the skin.

December 7, 2015

A favorite BioBuilder lab among students, Kuldell says, is called “Eau That Smell,” which involves examining bacteria engineered to smell like ripe bananas at a certain stage of their growth. Students also enjoy “What a Colorful World,” a lab where students study E. coli programmed to change colors. Another lab, “Golden Bread,” has students add beta-carotene to baker’s yeast.

Bringing synthetic biology education to life

Nonprofit provides hands-on experiments to students and teachers worldwide.

December 4, 2015

A group of Burmese woman grow rice on a rice paddy. A new study indicates that agriculture in Mynamar and other countries will experience substantial productivity declines in the next 30 years due to climate change.

Grow your own way

Study: Trade may not help a warming planet fight its farming failures.

November 20, 2015

Close-up image of part of the shell of a chiton (Acanthopleura granulata) shows the two kinds of sensory organs that cover the shell surface. The eyes are the dark bumps with shiny centers. The exact function of other sensory organs called aesthetes (small bumps with black centers) is not yet known.

Armor plating with built-in transparent ceramic eyes

Tiny sea creatures feature transparent optical systems as tough as their shells.

November 19, 2015

In this artist's rendering of GJ 1132b, a rocky exoplanet very similar to Earth in size and mass, circles a red dwarf star. GJ 1132b is relatively cool (about 450 degrees F) and could potentially host an atmosphere. At a distance of only 39 light-years, it will be a prime target for additional study with Hubble and future observatories like the Giant Magellan Telescope.

New exoplanet in our neighborhood

Though likely uninhabitable, planet is rocky, Earth-sized, and near enough for study of its atmosphere.

November 11, 2015

Engineered hydrogel being pulled away from a glass surface. The material shows a property called “tough wet adhesion” comparable to tendon and bone interface. The wavy edge instability at the interface is a hallmark of strongly adhered soft material on a rigid surface.

Hydrogel superglue is 90 percent water

New “water adhesive” is tougher than natural adhesives employed by mussels and barnacles.

November 9, 2015

Harvesting more energy from photons

Quantum process increases the number of electrons produced when light strikes a metal-dielectric interface.

November 5, 2015

This image shows abrupt de-pinning and de-stabilization of a line defect due to repeated cyclic loading. Figure (a) shows the evolution of nominal tensile stress during two loading and unloading cycles. Figures (b) to (f) are still frames from a video that correspond to the stress state marked in (a), where the white dashed lines indicate the original defect location, and the colored dashed lines ...

Metal defects can be eliminated by cyclic loading

Finding shows small amounts of repeated stretching can eliminate crystal defects in nanoscale metal parts.

October 21, 2015

An ''atmospheric brown cloud'' of manmade aerosols produced by agricultural (marked in red) and other fires may reduce monsoon-related rainfall and crop yields in central India.

Messing with the monsoon

Study: Manmade aerosols can alter rainfall in the world’s most populous region.

September 30, 2015

A new soft robotic gripper from MIT can estimate the size and shape of an object accurately enough to identify it from a set of multiple items.

Soft robotic hand can pick up and identify a wide array of objects

Team from Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab develops silicone rubber gripper and advanced object-identification algorithms.

September 30, 2015

How to make large 2-D sheets

MIT-led team develops method for scaling up production of thin electronic material.

September 21, 2015

Middle school students Halle Armstrong, Jeffery Alphonso, Angelique Jean-Noel, and Kamaru Oseni use wooden skewers to build marshmallow towers on the first day of Engineering Design in the 2015 MIT STEM Summer Institute.

Middle schoolers get hands-on in summer engineering design course

Eighth graders from Boston, Cambridge, and Lawrence, Massachusetts, learn from recent MIT graduates as part of STEM Summer Institute.

September 16, 2015

Photo of a volcano erupting with a smoke plume

Siberian Traps likely culprit for end-Permian extinction

New study finds massive eruptions likely triggered mass extinction.

September 16, 2015

A schematic drawing of how a ring of exceptional points (shown in white) can be spawned from a Dirac point (a dot), and thus change the dispersion from the normal, widely known conical shape into an exotic lantern-like shape

How to spawn an “exceptional ring”

Researchers create exotic states that could lead to new kinds of sensors and optical devices.

September 9, 2015

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