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A good rain can have a cleansing effect on the land. But an MIT study published today in Nature Communications reports that, under just the right conditions, rain can also be a means of spreading...
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Vaccines are among the most transformative and successful outcomes of modern medicine. For countries fortunate enough to have immunization coverage, their value can also lower or avert health care...
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As the world transitions to a low-carbon energy future, near-term, large-scale deployment of solar power will be critical to mitigating climate change by midcentury. Climate scientists estimate that...
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Engineers and biologists at MIT have teamed up to design a new “living material” — a tough, stretchy, biocompatible sheet of hydrogel injected with live cells that are genetically programmed to light...
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Eight MIT faculty are among the 84 new members and 22 foreign associates elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Newly elected members for this year also include an impressive 18 MIT-...
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Engineers at MIT have fabricated transparent, gel-based robots that move when water is pumped in and out of them. The bots can perform a number of fast, forceful tasks, including kicking a ball...
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India has millions of small farms, many an acre or less in size, cultivating rice, wheat, sugarcane, and other staple crops. And twice a year, when the harvest is done, these farms go up in flames....
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Leonardo DiCaprio began 2016 by capturing his long-awaited Academy Award for Best Actor, but his year ended in defeat, thanks to MIT graduate student Maher Damak.
Damak, a PhD candidate in the...
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Ketchup’s sluggish pace as it oozes out of its bottle is a longstanding nuisance — but one that is about to be upended by a new product coming to market. The brainchild of MIT mechanical engineer...
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Food and water are two necessities for survival, but what happens when a changing climate in key agricultural regions threatens crop production? Or when the quality of milk cannot be ensured as it is...
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Making an academic makerspace isn’t easy. There’s no easy formula for setting up and operating safe, effective, readily available university environments where students can come together, make plans...
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Since 2013, the Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant has been supporting MIT faculty with big, bold, and unconventional research visions. In the latest round of grants, four proposals from six MIT...
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Artificial muscles — materials that contract and expand somewhat like muscle fibers do — can have many applications, from robotics to components in the automobile and aviation industries. Now, MIT...
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Diabetes is a growing epidemic in the United States. Now the seventh leading cause of death, the condition plagues more than an estimated 29 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease...
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If you’ve ever splattered paint on a canvas or sprayed a cookie sheet with oil, you likely created — aside from a minor mess — a shower of droplets, ranging from dime-sized splotches to pencil-point...
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A team of MIT engineers has described a novel way of controlling the flow of water in flexible tubes, a finding with implications for agricultural systems worldwide. Their research, published in the...
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MIT researchers have been awarded a grant of nearly $1.3 million through the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative to study the reasons for solar energy’s rapid and sustained cost decline...
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Almost all solid materials, from rubber and glass to granite and steel, inevitably expand when heated. Only in very rare instances do certain materials buck this thermodynamic trend and shrink with...
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Researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School have developed a biocompatible and highly stretchable optical fiber made from hydrogel — an elastic, rubbery material composed mostly of water. The...
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Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new way of driving fluid droplets across surfaces in a precisely controlled way. The method could open up new possibilities for highly adaptable...