Research

Janos Pasztor, senior advisor to the U.N. secretary-general on climate change, at one of five daily talks on international climate change negotiations that he presented at MIT.

Getting the world to turn down the heat

Top U.N. climate advisor highlights successes in Paris, challenges ahead.

March 11, 2016

“Now, just over four years since its inception, Skoltech is an active graduate university with outstanding faculty, students, research and education programs, and a fledgling campus,” says Bruce Tidor (pictured).

3Q: Bruce Tidor on the MIT Skoltech partnership

Collaboration has created a pioneering new graduate university in Russia, says project director.

March 10, 2016

The Pirahã reside along the Maici River, which branches off the Amazon in Brazil. MIT researchers are now making public the most extensive data set yet accumulated on the Pirahã language.

Bringing more data to language debate

Larger set of translations may shed light on an idiosyncratic Amazonian language.

March 9, 2016

System loads Web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively

"Polaris" system from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab accelerates website load-time by decreasing network trips.

March 9, 2016

“It certainly is the case that trade contributes to certain lower-priced goods and services, and on the average, that lowers the cost of living,” David Autor notes. “But for displaced workers, the fact that things are 10 percent cheaper at Walmart is just not making up for the fact that they’re not employed.”

Trading places

Economists take a new look at the evidence that the U.S. has lost millions of jobs to China.

March 9, 2016

Artist interpretation of a cancer cell dividing

How cancer cells fuel their growth

Scientists surprised to find amino acids, not sugar, supply most building blocks for tumor cells.

March 7, 2016

“Data has traditionally been used by anyone from corporations to the government,” Mor Naaman says. “But the goal of this system is to make the data more useful for the individuals themselves, to give them more control, and to make it more useful to communities.”

Browsing in public

System lets Web users share aspects of their browsing history with friends, researchers.

March 7, 2016

Researchers have designed and built a quantum computer from five atoms in an ion trap. The computer uses laser pulses to carry out Shor’s algorithm on each atom, to correctly factor the number 15.

The beginning of the end for encryption schemes?

New quantum computer, based on five atoms, factors numbers in a scalable way.

March 3, 2016

"[W]e hope that our studies of vps-50 will provide insights into human neuropsychiatric disorders,” H. Robert Horvitz says.

Neuroscientists discover a gene that controls worms’ behavioral state

Gene required for the control of behavioral state is also found in humans, may be linked to autism.

March 3, 2016

“Not only does the high-fat diet change the biology of stem cells, it also changes the biology of non-stem-cell populations, which collectively leads to an increase in tumor formation,” Omer Yilmaz says.

How diet influences colon cancer

Study ties high-fat diet to changes in intestinal stem cells, may help explain increased cancer risk.

March 2, 2016

Using acoustic data, researchers identified and mapped the calls of diverse marine mammal species in fish spawning grounds on Georges Bank, including (from top right, clockwise): blue (snout only is pictured), humpback, orca, fin, dolphin, sei, pilot, sperm, and minke.

Whales dine with their own kind

Mapping whale calls, researchers find the predators feed in species-specific hotspots.

March 2, 2016

The metal with carbon nanotubes uniformly dispersed inside “is designed to mitigate radiation damage” for long periods without degrading, Kang Pyo So says. Pictured is an example of how the researchers created aluminum with carbon nanotubes inside.

Carbon nanotubes improve metal’s longevity under radiation

Aluminum used in nuclear reactors and other harsh environments may last longer with new treatment.

March 2, 2016

“Without compressibility and gravity, we cannot describe low-frequency sound waves correctly,” Usama Kadri says. “This is one of the reasons why researchers have mostly overlooked acoustic-gravity waves.”

New theory of deep-ocean sound waves may aid tsunami detection

Surface waves can trigger powerful sound waves that race through the deep ocean, study suggests.

March 1, 2016

“Why Only Us: Language and Evolution” (MIT Press), by Robert C. Berwick (top left) and Noam Chomsky (bottom left)

Code of the humans

New book by Noam Chomsky and Robert Berwick explores how people acquired unique language skills.

March 1, 2016

MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub principal investigators Franz-Josef Ulm and Roland Pellenq and research scientist Mehdi Akbarian run a pavement-vehicle interaction test that simulates a vehicle moving over pavement. The test determines excess fuel consumption induced by pavement material and structural properties.

Well-maintained roadways improve fuel efficiency

Research aims to encourage decision makers to think of infrastructure as part of the solution in a carbon constrained environment.

February 29, 2016

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Getting the world to turn down the heat

3Q: Bruce Tidor on the MIT Skoltech partnership

Bringing more data to language debate

System loads Web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively

Trading places

How cancer cells fuel their growth

Browsing in public

The beginning of the end for encryption schemes?

Neuroscientists discover a gene that controls worms’ behavioral state

How diet influences colon cancer

Whales dine with their own kind

Carbon nanotubes improve metal’s longevity under radiation

New theory of deep-ocean sound waves may aid tsunami detection

Code of the humans

Well-maintained roadways improve fuel efficiency

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