Research

New treatment could reverse hair loss caused by an autoimmune skin disease

New treatment could reverse hair loss caused by an autoimmune skin disease Researchers at MIT, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School have developed a potential new treatment for alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss and affects people of all ages, including children.For most patients with this type ...

Study: Heavy snowfall and rain may contribute to some earthquakes

Study: Heavy snowfall and rain may contribute to some earthquakes When scientists look for an earthquake’s cause, their search often starts underground. As centuries of seismic studies have made clear, it’s the collision of tectonic plates and the movement of subsurface faults and fissures that primarily trigger a temblor.But MIT ...

How AI might shape LGBTQIA+ advocacy

How AI might shape LGBTQIA+ advocacy "AI Comes Out of the Closet" is a large learning model (LLM)-based online system that leverages artificial intelligence-generated dialog and virtual characters to create complex social interaction simulations. These simulations allow users to experiment with and refine their approach to LGBTQIA+ ...

Two MIT PhD students awarded J-WAFS fellowships for their research on water

Two MIT PhD students awarded J-WAFS fellowships for their research on water Since 2014, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has advanced interdisciplinary research aimed at solving the world's most pressing water and food security challenges to meet human needs. In 2017, J-WAFS established the Rasikbhai L. Meswani ...

Exploring the mysterious alphabet of sperm whales

Exploring the mysterious alphabet of sperm whales The allure of whales has stoked human consciousness for millennia, casting these ocean giants as enigmatic residents of the deep seas. From the biblical Leviathan to Herman Melville's formidable Moby Dick, whales have been central to mythologies and folklore. And ...

This sound-suppressing silk can create quiet spaces

This sound-suppressing silk can create quiet spaces We are living in a very noisy world. From the hum of traffic outside your window to the next-door neighbor’s blaring TV to sounds from a co-worker’s cubicle, unwanted noise remains a resounding problem.To cut through the din, an interdisciplinary ...

MIT astronomers observe elusive stellar light surrounding ancient quasars

MIT astronomers observe elusive stellar light surrounding ancient quasars MIT astronomers have observed the elusive starlight surrounding some of the earliest quasars in the universe. The distant signals, which trace back more than 13 billion years to the universe’s infancy, are revealing clues to how the very first black ...

HPI-MIT design research collaboration creates powerful teams

HPI-MIT design research collaboration creates powerful teams The recent ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, which severed the network connecting health care providers, pharmacies, and hospitals with health insurance companies, demonstrates just how disruptive supply chain attacks can be. In this case, it hindered the ability of those ...

MIT conductive concrete consortium cements five-year research agreement with Japanese industry

MIT conductive concrete consortium cements five-year research agreement with Japanese industry The MIT Electron-conductive Cement-based Materials Hub (EC^3 Hub), an outgrowth of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), has been established by a five-year sponsored research agreement with the Aizawa Concrete Corp. In particular, the EC^3 Hub will investigate the infrastructure ...

Physicists arrange atoms in extremely close proximity

Physicists arrange atoms in extremely close proximity Proximity is key for many quantum phenomena, as interactions between atoms are stronger when the particles are close. In many quantum simulators, scientists arrange atoms as close together as possible to explore exotic states of matter and build new quantum ...

Epigenomic analysis sheds light on risk factors for ALS

Epigenomic analysis sheds light on risk factors for ALS For most patients, it’s unknown exactly what causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease characterized by degeneration of motor neurons that impairs muscle control and eventually leads to death.Studies have identified certain genes that confer a higher risk of the ...

Fostering research, careers, and community in materials science

Fostering research, careers, and community in materials science Gabrielle Wood, a junior at Howard University majoring in chemical engineering, is on a mission to improve the sustainability and life cycles of natural resources and materials. Her work in the Materials Initiative for Comprehensive Research Opportunity (MICRO) program has ...

Natural language boosts LLM performance in coding, planning, and robotics

Natural language boosts LLM performance in coding, planning, and robotics Large language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly useful for programming and robotics tasks, but for more complicated reasoning problems, the gap between these systems and humans looms large. Without the ability to learn new concepts like humans do, these systems ...

Science communication competition brings research into the real world

Science communication competition brings research into the real world Laurence Willemet remembers countless family dinners where curious faces turned to her with shades of the same question: “What is it, exactly, that you do with robots?”
It’s a familiar scenario for MIT students exploring topics outside of their family’s scope ...

To understand cognition — and its dysfunction — neuroscientists must learn its rhythms

To understand cognition — and its dysfunction — neuroscientists must learn its rhythms It could be very informative to observe the pixels on your phone under a microscope, but not if your goal is to understand what a whole video on the screen shows. Cognition is much the same kind of emergent property ...

An AI dataset carves new paths to tornado detection

An AI dataset carves new paths to tornado detection The return of spring in the Northern Hemisphere touches off tornado season. A tornado's twisting funnel of dust and debris seems an unmistakable sight. But that sight can be obscured to radar, the tool of meteorologists. It's hard to know ...

Study demonstrates efficacy of MIT-led Brave Behind Bars program

Study demonstrates efficacy of MIT-led Brave Behind Bars program Several years ago, a team of scientists from MIT and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell designed and deployed a first-of-its-kind web programming course for incarcerated individuals across multiple correctional facilities. The program, Brave Behind Bars, uses virtual classroom technology ...

MIT announces 2024 Bose Grants

MIT announces 2024 Bose Grants MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart announced four Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grants to support bold research projects across diverse areas of study, including a way to generate clean hydrogen from deep in the Earth, build an environmentally friendly house of ...

Circadian rhythms can influence drugs’ effectiveness

Circadian rhythms can influence drugs’ effectiveness Giving drugs at different times of day could significantly affect how they are metabolized in the liver, according to a new study from MIT.
Using tiny, engineered livers derived from cells from human donors, the researchers found that many genes involved ...

Ian Waitz named vice president for research

Ian Waitz named vice president for research In a letter to the MIT community today, President Sally Kornbluth announced the appointment of Ian A. Waitz to the position of vice president for research. In the role, Waitz will report to the president and oversee MIT’s vast research ...

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