Research

Designing a new way to optimize complex coordinated systems

Designing a new way to optimize complex coordinated systems Coordinating complicated interactive systems, whether it’s the different modes of transportation in a city or the various components that must work together to make an effective and efficient robot, is an increasingly important subject for software designers to tackle. Now, researchers ...

Robotic system zeroes in on objects most relevant for helping humans

Robotic system zeroes in on objects most relevant for helping humans For a robot, the real world is a lot to take in. Making sense of every data point in a scene can take a huge amount of computational effort and time. Using that information to then decide how to best ...

A brief history of expansion microscopy

A brief history of expansion microscopy Nearly 150 years ago, scientists began to imagine how information might flow through the brain based on the shapes of neurons they had seen under the microscopes of the time. With today’s imaging technologies, scientists can zoom in much further, ...

New electronic “skin” could enable lightweight night-vision glasses

New electronic “skin” could enable lightweight night-vision glasses MIT engineers have developed a technique to grow and peel ultrathin “skins” of electronic material. The method could pave the way for new classes of electronic devices, such as ultrathin wearable sensors, flexible transistors and computing elements, and highly sensitive ...

New model predicts a chemical reaction’s point of no return

New model predicts a chemical reaction’s point of no return When chemists design new chemical reactions, one useful piece of information involves the reaction’s transition state — the point of no return from which a reaction must proceed.This information allows chemists to try to produce the right conditions that will ...

MIT engineers print synthetic “metamaterials” that are both strong and stretchy

MIT engineers print synthetic “metamaterials” that are both strong and stretchy In metamaterials design, the name of the game has long been “stronger is better.”Metamaterials are synthetic materials with microscopic structures that give the overall material exceptional properties. A huge focus has been in designing metamaterials that are stronger and stiffer ...

“Periodic table of machine learning” could fuel AI discovery

“Periodic table of machine learning” could fuel AI discovery MIT researchers have created a periodic table that shows how more than 20 classical machine-learning algorithms are connected. The new framework sheds light on how scientists could fuse strategies from different methods to improve existing AI models or come up ...

3D modeling you can feel

3D modeling you can feel Essential for many industries ranging from Hollywood computer-generated imagery to product design, 3D modeling tools often use text or image prompts to dictate different aspects of visual appearance, like color and form. As much as this makes sense as a ...

Astronomers discover a planet that’s rapidly disintegrating, producing a comet-like tail

Astronomers discover a planet that’s rapidly disintegrating, producing a comet-like tail MIT astronomers have discovered a planet some 140 light-years from Earth that is rapidly crumbling to pieces.The disintegrating world is about the mass of Mercury, although it circles about 20 times closer to its star than Mercury does to the ...

Equipping living cells with logic gates to fight cancer

Equipping living cells with logic gates to fight cancer One of the most exciting developments in cancer treatment is a wave of new cell therapies that train a patient’s immune system to attack cancer cells. Such therapies have saved the lives of patients with certain aggressive cancers and few ...

Making AI-generated code more accurate in any language

Making AI-generated code more accurate in any language Programmers can now use large language models (LLMs) to generate computer code more quickly. However, this only makes programmers’ lives easier if that code follows the rules of the programming language and doesn’t cause a computer to crash.Some methods exist ...

New study reveals how cleft lip and cleft palate can arise

New study reveals how cleft lip and cleft palate can arise Cleft lip and cleft palate are among the most common birth defects, occurring in about one in 1,050 births in the United States. These defects, which appear when the tissues that form the lip or the roof of the mouth ...

How should we prioritize patients waiting for kidney transplants?

How should we prioritize patients waiting for kidney transplants? At any given time, about 100,000 people in the U.S. are waiting to become kidney transplant recipients. Roughly one-fifth of those get a new kidney each year, but others die while waiting. In short, the demand for kidneys makes it ...

A faster way to solve complex planning problems

A faster way to solve complex planning problems When some commuter trains arrive at the end of the line, they must travel to a switching platform to be turned around so they can depart the station later, often from a different platform than the one at which they ...

A visual pathway in the brain may do more than recognize objects

A visual pathway in the brain may do more than recognize objects When visual information enters the brain, it travels through two pathways that process different aspects of the input. For decades, scientists have hypothesized that one of these pathways, the ventral visual stream, is responsible for recognizing objects, and that it might have ...

Training LLMs to self-detoxify their language

Training LLMs to self-detoxify their language As we mature from childhood, our vocabulary — as well as the ways we use it — grows, and our experiences become richer, allowing us to think, reason, and interact with others with specificity and intention. Accordingly, our word choices ...

Hundred-year storm tides will occur every few decades in Bangladesh, scientists report

Hundred-year storm tides will occur every few decades in Bangladesh, scientists report Tropical cyclones are hurricanes that brew over the tropical ocean and can travel over land, inundating coastal regions. The most extreme cyclones can generate devastating storm tides — seawater that is heightened by the tides and swells onto land, causing ...

New initiative to advance innovations in pediatric care

New initiative to advance innovations in pediatric care The MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) has announced the establishment of the Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, an ambitious effort designed to drive cutting-edge innovation in children’s health care. Launched in collaboration with the Charles H. Hood Foundation, the ...

Engineered bacteria emit signals that can be spotted from a distance

Engineered bacteria emit signals that can be spotted from a distance Bacteria can be engineered to sense a variety of molecules, such as pollutants or soil nutrients. In most cases, however, these signals can only be detected by looking at the cells under a microscope, making them impractical for large-scale use.Using ...

New method efficiently safeguards sensitive AI training data

New method efficiently safeguards sensitive AI training data Data privacy comes with a cost. There are security techniques that protect sensitive user data, like customer addresses, from attackers who may attempt to extract them from AI models — but they often make those models less accurate.MIT researchers recently ...

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