Research

Hanna Ali of NOVA Next speaks with Prof. Desiree Plata about methane emissions and Prof. Tim Swager about his work developing sensors that could allow users to “see” methane, track down its source and mitigate impacts. “You probably hear headlines all the time, ‘Everywhere we look for plastics in the environment, we find them,’” Plata says. “The same is true of most industrial chemicals, but the problem is I can’t pull out my cell phone and take a picture of [them]. Tim’s sensors are helping to close that gap.”

In a new data sonification project, a team of MIT researchers have translated the vibrations of a spider’s web into music, writes Maddie Bender for Motherboard. The team "used the physics of spiderwebs to assign audible tones to a given string’s unique tension and vibration," writes Bender. "Summing up every string’s tone created an interactive model of a web that could produce sound through manipulation or VR navigation."

A team of MIT researchers have translated the vibrations of a spider’s web into music, reports Isaac Schultz for Gizmodo. “Spiders live in this vibrational universe,” says Prof. Markus Buehler. “They live in this world of vibrations and frequencies, which we can now access. One of the things we can do with this instrument with this approach is we can, for the first time, begin to feel a little bit like a spider or experience the world like the spider does.”

Forbes contributor Andrea Morris spotlights how MIT researchers have created a virtual reality experience that allows people to experience a spider web’s vibrations as music. "The team is working on a study exploring the boundaries between the kinds of compositions we humans create from synthetic instruments and our own conventional tuning, and compositions created from instruments that have been crafted and tuned by other biological beings, like spiders," writes Morris. 

MIT researchers have created a new audio-visual virtual reality that can provide a sense of what it’s like to be a spider by converting a spider web’s vibrations into sounds that humans can hear, reports Ian Morse for New Scientist. “The spider web can be viewed as an extension of the body of the spider, in that it lives within it, but also uses it as a sensor,” says Prof. Markus Buehler. “When you go into the virtual reality world and you dive inside the web, being able to hear what’s going on allows you to understand what you see.”

UPI reporter Brooks Hays writes that a new tool developed by researchers from MIT and other institutions can precisely control gene expression without altering the underlying gene sequence. “Scientists hope this new ability to silence any part of the human genome will lead to powerful insights into functionality of the human genome, as well as inspire new therapies for a variety of diseases and genetic disorders,” writes Hays.

On The Interchange podcast, Prof. Jessika Trancik discusses her research exploring the cost declines in lithium-ion batteries and what it will take to reach mass-market adoption of electric vehicles.

Writing for The Conversation, Prof. Jessika Trancik explores how government policies can spark innovation in clean energy markets, helping to reduce carbon emissions. “Left to its own devices, technological change will not necessarily solve climate change, especially not in the limited time we have left to act,” writes Trancik. “But my research on technology evolution suggests that government policy can help propel this powerful process toward rapid progress and beneficial outcomes.”

Researchers from MIT and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras have developed a new technique to grow and culture human brain tissue in an inexpensive bioreactor, writes Christa Lesté-Lasserre for New Scientist. The researchers have now “reported the growth of a brain organoid over seven days. This demonstrates that the brain cells can thrive inside the chip.”

Senior Research Scientist Stephanie Seneff co-authored an opinion piece for The Washington Post, which examines how the high level of herbicide chemicals found in Florida waterways is contributing to a record number of manatee deaths. “If we want to stop manatees from starving, we have to stop using this harmful chemical on our crops, on our lawns and in our waterways,” they conclude. 

Chris Woolston highlights research from Prof. Laura Schulz as he examines the benefits of playtime for The Atlantic. “Pretending to fight dragons won’t make you any better at fighting dragons,” says Schulz, but when children play pretend, “they’re setting up a cognitive space where they can create a problem and then solve it.”

A new study by researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) finds that ride-sharing services can lead to increased congestion, both in intensity and duration, reports E&T. “While mathematical models in prior studies showed that the potential benefit of on-demand shared mobility could be tremendous, our study suggests that translating this potential into actual gains is much more complicated in the real world,” says Prof. Jinhua Zhao.

CSAIL researchers have developed a new material with embedded sensors that can track a person’s movement, reports Mashable. The clothing could “track things like posture or give feedback on how you’re walking.”

Fast Company reporter Elizabeth Segran spotlights how CSAIL researchers have crafted a new smart fabric embedded with sensors that can sense pressure from the person wearing it. “Sensors in this new material can be used to gather data about people’s posture and body movements,” writes Segran. “This could be useful in a variety of settings, including athletic training, monitoring the health of elderly patients, and identifying whether someone has fallen over.”

A new study by Prof. Jeffrey Harris finds that the extensive research invested in developing a vaccine for HIV has contributed to the successful development of Covid-19 vaccines, writes Derek Thompson for The Atlantic. Nearly 90 percent of COVID-19 vaccines that made it to clinical trials used technology that “could be traced back to prototypes tested in HIV vaccine trials,” Harris found.