Research

Why are some rocks on the moon highly magnetic? MIT scientists may have an answer

Why are some rocks on the moon highly magnetic? MIT scientists may have an answer Where did the moon’s magnetism go? Scientists have puzzled over this question for decades, ever since orbiting spacecraft picked up signs of a high magnetic field in lunar surface rocks. The moon itself has no inherent magnetism today. Now, MIT scientists ...

New research, data advance understanding of early planetary formation

New research, data advance understanding of early planetary formation A team of international astronomers led by Richard Teague, the Kerr-McGee Career Development Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) has gathered the most sensitive and detailed observations of 15 protoplanetary disks to date, giving the ...

$A new approach could fractionate crude oil using much less energy$

A new approach could fractionate crude oil using much less energy Separating crude oil into products such as gasoline, diesel, and heating oil is an energy-intensive process that accounts for about 6 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. Most of that energy goes into the heat needed to separate the components ...

MIT physicists discover a new type of superconductor that’s also a magnet

MIT physicists discover a new type of superconductor that’s also a magnet Magnets and superconductors go together like oil and water — or so scientists have thought. But a new finding by MIT physicists is challenging this century-old assumption.In a paper appearing today in the journal Nature, the physicists report that they ...

Study: Climate change may make it harder to reduce smog in some regions

Study: Climate change may make it harder to reduce smog in some regions Global warming will likely hinder our future ability to control ground-level ozone, a harmful air pollutant that is a primary component of smog, according to a new MIT study.The results could help scientists and policymakers develop more effective strategies for ...

AI learns how vision and sound are connected, without human intervention

AI learns how vision and sound are connected, without human intervention Humans naturally learn by making connections between sight and sound. For instance, we can watch someone playing the cello and recognize that the cellist’s movements are generating the music we hear.A new approach developed by researchers from MIT and elsewhere ...

Learning how to predict rare kinds of failures

Learning how to predict rare kinds of failures On Dec. 21, 2022, just as peak holiday season travel was getting underway, Southwest Airlines went through a cascading series of failures in their scheduling, initially triggered by severe winter weather in the Denver area. But the problems spread through ...

A new technology for extending the shelf life of produce

A new technology for extending the shelf life of produce We’ve all felt the sting of guilt when fruit and vegetables go bad before we could eat them. Now, researchers from MIT and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) have shown they can extend the shelf life of ...

A cool new way to study gravity

A cool new way to study gravity One of the most profound open questions in modern physics is: “Is gravity quantum?” The other fundamental forces — electromagnetic, weak, and strong — have all been successfully described, but no complete and consistent quantum theory of gravity yet exists. “Theoretical ...

How to solve a bottleneck for CO2 capture and conversion

How to solve a bottleneck for CO2 capture and conversion Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere efficiently is often seen as a crucial need for combatting climate change, but systems for removing carbon dioxide suffer from a tradeoff. Chemical compounds that efficiently remove CO₂ from the air do not easily ...

Technique rapidly measures cells’ density, reflecting health and developmental state

Technique rapidly measures cells’ density, reflecting health and developmental state Measuring the density of a cell can reveal a great deal about the cell’s state. As cells proliferate, differentiate, or undergo cell death, they may gain or lose water and other molecules, which is revealed by changes in density.Tracking these ...

Scientists discover potential new targets for Alzheimer’s drugs

Scientists discover potential new targets for Alzheimer’s drugs By combining information from many large datasets, MIT researchers have identified several new potential targets for treating or preventing Alzheimer’s disease.The study revealed genes and cellular pathways that haven’t been linked to Alzheimer’s before, including one involved in DNA repair. ...

Imaging technique removes the effect of water in underwater scenes

Imaging technique removes the effect of water in underwater scenes The ocean is teeming with life. But unless you get up close, much of the marine world can easily remain unseen. That’s because water itself can act as an effective cloak: Light that shines through the ocean can bend, scatter, ...

With AI, researchers predict the location of virtually any protein within a human cell

With AI, researchers predict the location of virtually any protein within a human cell A protein located in the wrong part of a cell can contribute to several diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, cystic fibrosis, and cancer. But there are about 70,000 different proteins and protein variants in a single human cell, and since scientists ...

Particles carrying multiple vaccine doses could reduce the need for follow-up shots

Particles carrying multiple vaccine doses could reduce the need for follow-up shots Around the world, 20 percent of children are not fully immunized, leading to 1.5 million child deaths each year from diseases that are preventable by vaccination. About half of those underimmunized children received at least one vaccine dose but did ...

3 Questions: Making the most of limited data to boost pavement performance

3 Questions: Making the most of limited data to boost pavement performance Pavements form the backbone of our built environment. In the United States, almost 2.8 million lane-miles, or about 4.6 million lane-kilometers, are paved. They take us to work or school, take goods to their destinations, and much more.To secure a more ...

Deploying a practical solution to space debris

Deploying a practical solution to space debris At this moment, there are approximately 35,000 tracked human-generated objects in orbit around Earth. Of these, only about one-third are active payloads: science and communications satellites, research experiments, and other beneficial technology deployments. The rest are categorized as debris — ...

Study shows vision-language models can’t handle queries with negation words

Study shows vision-language models can’t handle queries with negation words Imagine a radiologist examining a chest X-ray from a new patient. She notices the patient has swelling in the tissue but does not have an enlarged heart. Looking to speed up diagnosis, she might use a vision-language machine-learning model to ...

MIT Department of Economics to launch James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality...

MIT Department of Economics to launch James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality... Starting in July, MIT’s Shaping the Future of Work Initiative in the Department of Economics will usher in a significant new era of research, policy, and education of the next generation of scholars, made possible by a gift from the ...

Daily mindfulness practice reduces anxiety for autistic adults

Daily mindfulness practice reduces anxiety for autistic adults Just 10 to 15 minutes of mindfulness practice a day led to reduced stress and anxiety for autistic adults who participated in a study led by scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Participants in the study used a ...

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