A new twist on airplane wing design
“Morphing” wing could enable more efficient plane manufacturing and flight.
Battery challenges: cost and performance
Industry speakers and MIT faculty offer solutions to problems ranging from small portable devices to large fixed installations.
Engineers design a new weapon against bacteria
Antimicrobial peptides can kill strains resistant to existing antibiotics.
Predicting cancer cells’ response to chemotherapy
Measuring DNA repair capability can reveal tumors’ sensitivity to drugs.
Nanobionic spinach plants can detect explosives
After sensing dangerous chemicals, the carbon-nanotube-enhanced plants send an alert.
Making computers explain themselves
New training technique would reveal the basis for machine-learning systems’ decisions.
Retracing the origins of a massive, multi-ring crater
Scientists reconstruct first hours after a giant impact created one of the largest craters on the moon.
Why have solar energy costs fallen?
MIT team awarded U.S. Department of Energy grant to investigate cost reductions in solar energy systems.
Finding patterns in corrupted data
New model-fitting technique is efficient even for data sets with hundreds of variables.
Mapping buried magnetism
MIT researchers use an optical technique to probe magnetism at a hidden interface between two exotic thin films.
Making it easier to collaborate on code
CSAIL team's “Gitless” fixes Git’s biggest issues — and suggests their approach could help improve systems like Gmail and Dropbox.
3-D-printed structures shrink when heated
Counterintuitive “metamaterial” may enable heat-resistant circuit boards.
Study suggests approach to waking patients after surgery
Activating certain brain neurons may spur recovery from general anesthesia.