Massachusetts Institute of Technology
What number is halfway between 1 and 9? Is it 5—or 3?
October 9, 2012 9:41 am | News | CommentsAsk adults what number is halfway between 1 and 9, and most will say 5. But pose the same question to small children and they're likely to answer 3. Cognitive scientists theorize that that's because it's actually more natural for humans to think logarithmically than linearly. A new information-theoretical model of human sensory perception and memory sheds light on these peculiarities of the nervous system.
Drawing a line, with carbon nanotubes
October 9, 2012 8:06 am | by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office | News | CommentsCarbon nanotubes offer a powerful new way to detect harmful gases in the environment. However, the methods typically used to build carbon nanotube sensors are hazardous and not suited for large-scale production. A new fabrication method created by chemists may overcome that obstacle.
New technique reveals lithium in action
October 8, 2012 11:50 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT | News | CommentsExactly what goes inside advanced lithium-air batteries as they charge and discharge has always been impossible to observe directly. Now, a new technique developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers promises to change that, allowing study of this electrochemical activity as it happens.
The mathematics of leaf decay
October 4, 2012 4:48 am | by Jennifer Chu | News | CommentsThe natural decay of organic carbon contributes more than 90% of the yearly carbon dioxide released into Earth's atmosphere and oceans. Understanding the rate at which leaves decay can help scientists predict this global flux of carbon dioxide. But a single leaf may undergo different rates of decay depending on a number of variables. Researchers have just built a mathematical model that incorporates these variables, and have discovered a commonality within the diversity of leaf decay.
Probing the mysteries of cracks, stresses
September 28, 2012 6:28 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsDiving into a pool from a few feet up allows you to enter the water smoothly and painlessly, but jumping from a bridge can lead to a fatal impact. The water is the same in each case, so why is the effect of hitting its surface so different? This seemingly basic question is at the heart of complex research by a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology that studied how materials react to stresses, including impacts. The findings could help explain phenomena as varied as the breakdown of concrete under sudden stress and the effects of corrosion on various metal surfaces.
Measuring the universe's 'exit door'
September 27, 2012 12:06 pm | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsThe point of no return: In astronomy, it's known as a black hole. Black holes that can be billions of times more massive than our sun may reside at the heart of most galaxies. Such supermassive black holes are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies. Now, an international team, has, for the first time, measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy.
Oscillating microscopic beads could be key to biolab on a chip
September 25, 2012 4:45 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsIf you throw a ball underwater, you'll find that the smaller it is, the faster it moves: A larger cross-section greatly increases the water's resistance. Now, a team of researchers has figured out a way to use this basic principle, on a microscopic scale, to carry out biomedical tests that could eventually lead to fast, compact, and versatile medical testing devices.
Automatic building mapping could help emergency responders
September 24, 2012 2:47 pm | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsA prototype sensor array built by Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers can be worn on the chest and automatically maps the wearer’s environment, recognizing movement between floors. The prototype system is envisioned as a tool to help emergency responders coordinate disaster response.
Explained: Femtoseconds and attoseconds
September 18, 2012 5:58 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsIn the first half of the 20th century, the ability to observe changes unfolding at a scale of microseconds—millionths of a second—was considered a remarkable achievement. Nowadays, microsecond-resolution imagery is almost ho-hum, and research has passed through nanoseconds, picoseconds, and, now, femtoseconds. One basic technological innovation made it possible to observe changes at such tiny timescales and it was crucial for understanding certain phenomena in basic physics.
Electrons caught in the act
September 18, 2012 3:34 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsTopological insulators are exotic materials, discovered just a few years ago, that hold great promise for new kinds of electronic devices. The unusual behavior of electrons within them has been very difficult to study, but new techniques developed by a team of researchers could help unlock the mysteries of exactly how electrons move and react in these materials, opening up new possibilities for harnessing them.
Study estimates increasing rate of extreme rainfall with global warming
September 17, 2012 10:03 am | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsGlobal warming is expected to intensify extreme precipitation, but the rate at which it does so in the tropics has remained unclear. Now, a new study has given an estimate based on model simulations and observations: With every 1 C rise in temperature, the study finds, tropical regions will see 10% heavier rainfall extremes, with possible impacts for flooding in populous regions.
Getting drugs under the skin
September 14, 2012 8:18 am | by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office | News | CommentsIn recent years, researchers working to enhance transdermal drug delivery have focused on low-frequency ultrasound, because the high-frequency waves don’t have enough energy. However, these systems usually produce abrasions in the treated area. In a new study, engineers have combined high and low frequencies to enhance the permeability of skin to drugs, making transdermal drug delivery more efficient.
How to clean up oil spills
September 12, 2012 3:38 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsMassachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new technique for magnetically separating oil and water that could be used to clean up oil spills. They believe that, with their technique, the oil could be recovered for use, offsetting much of the cleanup cost.
Deciphering the language of transcription factors
September 11, 2012 3:25 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsA new, Massachusetts Institute of Technology-developed analytical method identifies the precise binding sites of transcription factors—proteins that regulate the production of other proteins—with 10 times the accuracy of its predecessors.
Weapons of mass protection
September 7, 2012 5:18 am | by Denise Brehm, Civil and Environmental Engineering | News | CommentsCompetition is a strong driving force of evolution for organisms of all sizes: Those individuals best equipped to obtain resources adapt and reproduce, while others may fall by the wayside. Many organisms also form cooperative social structures that allow resources to be defended and shared within a population. But surprisingly, even microbes, which are thought to thrive only when able to win the battle for resources against those nearest to them, have a somewhat sophisticated social structure that relies on cooperation, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists.
Researchers identify biochemical functions for most of the human genome
September 5, 2012 11:06 am | by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office | News | CommentsOnly about 1% of the human genome contains gene regions that code for proteins, raising the question of what the rest of the DNA is doing. Scientists have now begun to discover the answer: About 80% of the genome is biochemically active, and likely involved in regulating the expression of nearby genes, according to a study from a large international team of researchers.
Mapping neurological disease
September 5, 2012 4:36 am | by Helen Knight, MIT News correspondent | News | CommentsDisorders such as schizophrenia can originate in certain regions of the brain and then spread out to affect connected areas. Identifying these regions of the brain, and how they affect the other areas they communicate with, would allow drug companies to develop better treatments and could ultimately help doctors make a diagnosis. But interpreting the vast amount of data produced by brain scans to identify these connecting regions has so far proved impossible, until now.
Making Web applications more efficient
September 4, 2012 3:54 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsMost major Websites maintain huge databases. Almost any transaction on a shopping site, travel site, or social networking site require multiple database queries, which can slow response time. Now, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a system that automatically streamlines Websites' database access patterns, making the sites up to three times as fast.
A one-way street for spinning atoms
August 30, 2012 12:01 pm | News | CommentsElementary particle have a property called "spin" that can be thought of as rotation around their axes. In work reported this week in Physical Review Letters , Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicists have imposed a stringent set of traffic rules on atomic particles in a gas: Those spinning clockwise can move in only one direction, while those spinning counterclockwise can move only in the other direction.
Researchers engineer light-activated skeletal muscle
August 30, 2012 3:47 am | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsMany robotic designs take nature as their muse: sticking to walls like geckos, swimming through water like tuna, sprinting across terrain like cheetahs. Such designs borrow properties from nature, using engineered materials and hardware to mimic animals' behavior. Now, scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania are taking more than inspiration from nature—they're taking ingredients.
Merging tissue and electronics
August 27, 2012 3:33 am | by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office | News | CommentsTo control the 3D shape of engineered tissue, researchers grow cells on tiny, sponge-like scaffolds. These devices can be implanted into patients or used in the laboratory to study tissue responses to potential drugs. A team of researchers has now added a new element to tissue scaffolds: electronic sensors. These sensors could be used to monitor electrical activity in the tissue surrounding the scaffold, control drug release, or screen drug candidates for their effects on the beating of heart tissue.
Engineers achieve longlasting goal of stable nanocrystalline metals
August 23, 2012 12:50 pm | News | CommentsMost metals are made of crystals. In many cases the material is made of tiny crystals packed closely together, rather than one large crystal. Indeed, for many purposes, making the crystals as small as possible provides significant advantages in performance, but such materials are often unstable. Now, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have found a way to avoid that problem.
One-molecule-thick material has big advantages
August 23, 2012 3:44 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsGraphene has been heralded for its strength and other novel characteristics, but one property in particular—its 2D nature—suggests that graphene its just the start of a wave of new 2D materials. The latest one, molybdenum disulfide, was first described just a year ago by researchers in Switzerland. In that year, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which struggled unsuccessfully to build circuits from graphene, succeeded in making a variety of electronic components from molybdenum disulfide. They say the material could help usher in radically new products.
Teaching a microbe to make fuel
August 21, 2012 3:23 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsA humble soil bacterium called Ralstonia eutropha has a natural tendency, whenever it is stressed, to stop growing and put all its energy into making complex carbon compounds. Now scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have taught this microbe a new trick: They've tinkered with its genes to persuade it to make fuel—specifically, a kind of alcohol called isobutanol that can be directly substituted for, or blended with, gasoline.
Patterning defect-free nanocrystal films with nanometer resolution
August 20, 2012 3:33 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsFilms made of semiconductor nanocrystals are seen as a promising new material for a wide range of applications. The size of a semiconductor nanocrystal determines its electrical and optical properties. But it's hard to control the placement of nanocrystals on a surface in order to make structurally uniform films. Now, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have found ways of making defect-free patterns of nanocrystal films where the shape and position of the films are controlled with nanoscale resolution.
