Q&A: Examining American attitudes on global climate policies
Professor Evan Lieberman describes new research in which he and colleagues find a sharp partisan divide over providing aid to poor nations.
Minimizing the carbon footprint of bridges and other structures
MAD Design Fellow Zane Schemmer writes algorithms that optimize overall function, minimize carbon footprint, and produce a manufacturable design.
Teaching AI to communicate sounds like humans do
Inspired by the human vocal tract, a new AI model can produce and understand vocal imitations of everyday sounds. The method could help build new sonic interfaces for entertainment and education.
Images that transform through heat
The Thermochromorph printmaking technique developed by CSAIL researchers allows images to transition into each other through changes in temperature.
Personal interests can influence how children’s brains respond to language
McGovern Institute neuroscientists use children’s interests to probe language in the brain.
How hard is it to prevent recurring blackouts in Puerto Rico?
Using the island as a model, researchers demonstrate the “DyMonDS” framework can improve resiliency to extreme weather and ease the integration of new resources.
New filter captures and recycles aluminum from manufacturing waste
MIT engineers designed a nanofiltration process that could make aluminum production more efficient while reducing hazardous waste.
A new way to determine whether a species will successfully invade an ecosystem
MIT physicists develop a predictive formula, based on bacterial communities, that may also apply to other types of ecosystems, including the human GI tract.
An abundant phytoplankton feeds a global network of marine microbes
New findings illuminate how Prochlorococcus’ nightly “cross-feeding” plays a role in regulating the ocean’s capacity to cycle and store carbon.
A new computational model can predict antibody structures more accurately
Using this model, researchers may be able to identify antibody drugs that can target a variety of infectious diseases.
MIT scientists pin down the origins of a fast radio burst
The fleeting cosmic firework likely emerged from the turbulent magnetosphere around a far-off neutron star.
MIT’s top research stories of 2024
Stories on tamper-proof ID tags, sound-suppressing silk, and generative AI’s understanding of the world were some of the most popular topics on MIT News.
Bacteria in the human gut rarely update their CRISPR defense systems
A new study of the microbiome finds intestinal bacterial interact much less often with viruses that trigger immunity updates than bacteria in the lab.
Why open secrets are a big problem
Philosopher Sam Berstler diagnoses the corrosive effects of not acknowledging troubling truths.
Ecologists find computer vision models’ blind spots in retrieving wildlife images
Biodiversity researchers tested vision systems on how well they could retrieve relevant nature images. More advanced models performed well on simple queries but struggled with more research-specific prompts.