Research

Study: Burning heavy fuel oil with scrubbers is the best available option for bulk maritime...

Study: Burning heavy fuel oil with scrubbers is the best available option for bulk maritime... When the International Maritime Organization enacted a mandatory cap on the sulfur content of marine fuels in 2020, with an eye toward reducing harmful environmental and health impacts, it left shipping companies with three main options.They could burn low-sulfur fossil ...

New method assesses and improves the reliability of radiologists’ diagnostic reports

New method assesses and improves the reliability of radiologists’ diagnostic reports Due to the inherent ambiguity in medical images like X-rays, radiologists often use words like “may” or “likely” when describing the presence of a certain pathology, such as pneumonia.But do the words radiologists use to express their confidence level accurately ...

Surprise discovery could lead to improved catalysts for industrial reactions

Surprise discovery could lead to improved catalysts for industrial reactions The process of catalysis — in which a material speeds up a chemical reaction — is crucial to the production of many of the chemicals used in our everyday lives. But even though these catalytic processes are widespread, researchers often ...

Engineers develop a way to mass manufacture nanoparticles that deliver cancer drugs directly to tumors

Engineers develop a way to mass manufacture nanoparticles that deliver cancer drugs directly to tumors Polymer-coated nanoparticles loaded with therapeutic drugs show significant promise for cancer treatment, including ovarian cancer. These particles can be targeted directly to tumors, where they release their payload while avoiding many of the side effects of traditional chemotherapy.Over the past ...

A flexible robot can help emergency responders search through rubble

A flexible robot can help emergency responders search through rubble When major disasters hit and structures collapse, people can become trapped under rubble. Extricating victims from these hazardous environments can be dangerous and physically exhausting. To help rescue teams navigate these structures, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers at ...

Researchers teach LLMs to solve complex planning challenges

Researchers teach LLMs to solve complex planning challenges Imagine a coffee company trying to optimize its supply chain. The company sources beans from three suppliers, roasts them at two facilities into either dark or light coffee, and then ships the roasted coffee to three retail locations. The suppliers ...

Deep-dive dinners are the norm for tuna and swordfish, MIT oceanographers find

Deep-dive dinners are the norm for tuna and swordfish, MIT oceanographers find How far would you go for a good meal? For some of the ocean’s top predators, maintaining a decent diet requires some surprisingly long-distance dives.MIT oceanographers have found that big fish like tuna and swordfish get a large fraction of ...

For plants, urban heat islands don’t mimic global warming

For plants, urban heat islands don’t mimic global warming It’s tricky to predict precisely what the impacts of climate change will be, given the many variables involved. To predict the impacts of a warmer world on plant life, some researchers look at urban “heat islands,” where, because of the ...

Mapping the future of metamaterials

Mapping the future of metamaterials Metamaterials are artificially-structured materials with extraordinary properties not easily found in nature. With engineered three-dimensional (3D) geometries at the micro- and nanoscale, these architected materials achieve unique mechanical and physical properties with capabilities beyond those of conventional materials — and ...

MIT Maritime Consortium sets sail

MIT Maritime Consortium sets sail Around 11 billion tons of goods, or about 1.5 tons per person worldwide, are transported by sea each year, representing about 90 percent of global trade by volume. Internationally, the merchant shipping fleet numbers around 110,000 vessels. These ships, and ...

A new way to make graphs more accessible to blind and low-vision readers

A new way to make graphs more accessible to blind and low-vision readers Bar graphs and other charts provide a simple way to communicate data, but are, by definition, difficult to translate for readers who are blind or low-vision. Designers have developed methods for converting these visuals into “tactile charts,” but guidelines for ...

Technology developed by MIT engineers makes pesticides stick to plant leaves

Technology developed by MIT engineers makes pesticides stick to plant leaves Reducing the amount of agricultural sprays used by farmers — including fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides — could cut down the amount of polluting runoff that ends up in the environment while at the same time reducing farmers’ costs and perhaps ...

Decoding a medieval mystery manuscript

Decoding a medieval mystery manuscript Two years ago, MIT professor of literature Arthur Bahr had one of the best days of his life. Sitting in the British Library, he was allowed to page through the Pearl-Manuscript, a singular bound volume from the 1300s containing the ...

Basketball analytics investment is key to NBA wins and other successes

Basketball analytics investment is key to NBA wins and other successes If you filled out a March Madness bracket this month, you probably faced the same question with each college match-up: What gives one team an edge over another? Is it a team’s record through the regular season? Or the chemistry ...

Mathematicians uncover the logic behind how people walk in crowds

Mathematicians uncover the logic behind how people walk in crowds Next time you cross a crowded plaza, crosswalk, or airport concourse, take note of the pedestrian flow. Are people walking in orderly lanes, single-file, to their respective destinations? Or is it a haphazard tangle of personal trajectories, as people dodge ...

MIT scientists engineer starfish cells to shape-shift in response to light

MIT scientists engineer starfish cells to shape-shift in response to light Life takes shape with the motion of a single cell. In response to signals from certain proteins and enzymes, a cell can start to move and shake, leading to contractions that cause it to squeeze, pinch, and eventually divide. As ...

Engineers develop a better way to deliver long-lasting drugs

Engineers develop a better way to deliver long-lasting drugs MIT engineers have devised a new way to deliver certain drugs in higher doses with less pain, by injecting them as a suspension of tiny crystals. Once under the skin, the crystals assemble into a drug “depot” that could last ...

Device enables direct communication among multiple quantum processors

Device enables direct communication among multiple quantum processors Quantum computers have the potential to solve complex problems that would be impossible for the most powerful classical supercomputer to crack.Just like a classical computer has separate, yet interconnected, components that must work together, such as a memory chip and ...

AI tool generates high-quality images faster than state-of-the-art approaches

AI tool generates high-quality images faster than state-of-the-art approaches The ability to generate high-quality images quickly is crucial for producing realistic simulated environments that can be used to train self-driving cars to avoid unpredictable hazards, making them safer on real streets.But the generative artificial intelligence techniques increasingly being used ...

3D printing approach strings together dynamic objects for you

3D printing approach strings together dynamic objects for you It’s difficult to build devices that replicate the fluid, precise motion of humans, but that might change if we could pull a few (literal) strings.At least, that’s the idea behind “cable-driven” mechanisms in which running a string through an object ...

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