Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Communication scheme makes applications 'gracefully mobile'
June 28, 2012 3:35 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsThe Secure Shell, or SSH, is a popular program that lets computer users log onto remote machines. First release in 1995, SSH was designed for an Internet consisting of stationary machines, and it hasn't evolved with the mobile Internet. It also can't handle roaming. Now, a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchs have developed a new remote-login program called Mosh, for mobile shell, which solves many of SSH's problems.
Better surfaces could help dissipate heat
June 26, 2012 3:40 am | by David Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsResearchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that relatively simple, microscale roughening of a surface can dramatically enhance its transfer of heat. Such an approach could be far less complex and more durable than approaches that enhance heat transfer through smaller patterning in the nanometer range.
Computer science tackles 30-year-old economics problem
June 25, 2012 5:44 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsNobel winner Roger Myerson's work on single-item auctions was groundbreaking research, but his question regarding the best way to organize an auction in which bidders are competing for multiple items has remained unanswered for decades. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed an algorithm to generalize this problem.
Revealing the invisible
June 22, 2012 9:15 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsResearchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a software that amplifies variations in successive frames of video that are imperceptible to the naked eye. The software works in real time and displays both the original video and the altered version of the video, with changes magnified.
Technique allows simulation of noncrystalline materials
June 22, 2012 3:36 am | by David Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsA multidisciplinary team of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in Spain has found a new mathematical approach to simulating the electronic behavior of noncrystalline materials, which may eventually play an important part in new devices including solar cells; organic LED lights; and printable, flexible electronic circuits.
Evidence of ice content at the moon's south pole
June 20, 2012 12:20 pm | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsScientists have mapped Shackleton crater with unprecedented detail, finding possible evidence for small amounts of ice on the crater's floor. Using a laser altimeter on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, the team essentially illuminated the crater's interior with laser light, measuring its albedo, or natural reflectance. The scientists found that the crater's floor is in fact brighter than that of other nearby craters—an observation consistent with the presence of ice.
Fishing for answers to autism puzzle
June 19, 2012 12:06 pm | by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office | News | CommentsFish cannot display symptoms of autism, schizophrenia, or other human brain disorders. However, a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologists has shown that zebrafish can be a useful tool for studying the genes that contribute to such disorders.
Researchers calculate size of particles in Martian clouds of CO2 snow
June 19, 2012 3:44 am | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsIn the dead of a Martian winter, clouds of snow blanket the Red Planet's poles—but unlike our water-based snow, the particles on Mars are frozen crystals of carbon dioxide. Most of the Martian atmosphere is composed of carbon dioxide, and in the winter, the poles get so cold—cold enough to freeze alcohol—that the gas condenses, forming tiny particles of snow. Now researchers have calculated the size of snow particles in clouds at both Martian poles from data gathered by orbiting spacecraft.
Making it easier to build secure Web applications
June 18, 2012 9:30 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsTwo years ago, a fledgling social-networking site called Blippy accidentally posted the credit card numbers of its users online. While that was a particularly egregious example, such inadvertent information leaks happen all the time. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new programming system that could help prevent such inadvertent information leaks.
Sharper ultrasound images could improve diagnostics
June 18, 2012 3:34 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsUltrasound images, known as sonograms, have become a familiar part of pregnancy, allowing expectant parents a view of their unborn child. But new research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology could improve the ability of untrained workers to perform basic ultrasound tests, while allowing trained workers to much more accurately track the development of medical conditions, such as the growth of a tumor or the buildup of plaque in arteries.
Aircraft engineered with failure in mind may last longer
June 15, 2012 3:46 am | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsComplex systems inhabit a "gray world" of partial failures, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Olivier de Weck says: While a system may continue to operate as a whole, bits and pieces inevitably degrade. Over time, these small failures can add up to a single catastrophic failure, incapacitating the system. However, De Weck and his colleagues have created a design approach that tailors planes to fly in the face of likely failures.
Textured surface may boost power output of thin silicon solar cells
June 13, 2012 10:18 am | by David Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsHighly purified silicon represents up to 40% of the overall costs of conventional solar-cell arrays—so researchers have long sought to maximize power output while minimizing silicon usage. Now, a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found a new approach that could reduce the thickness of the silicon used by more than 90% while still maintaining high efficiency.
New energy source for future medical implants
June 13, 2012 3:49 am | by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office | News | CommentsMassachusetts Institute of Technology engineers have developed a fuel cell that runs on the same sugar that powers human cells: glucose. This glucose fuel cell could be used to drive highly efficient brain implants of the future, which could help paralyzed patients move their arms and legs again.
Robotic assistants may adapt to humans in the factory
June 12, 2012 3:47 am | News | CommentsIn today's manufacturing plants, the division of labor between humans and robots is quite clear. But according to an assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the factory floor of the future may host humans and robots working side by side, each helping the other in common tasks.
Teaching self-assembling structures a new trick
June 8, 2012 4:23 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsResearchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a new way of making complex 3D structures using self-assembling polymer materials that form tiny wires and junctions. The work has the potential to usher in a new generation of microchips and other devices made up of submicroscopic features.
Latin American, Asian cities lead way in planning for global warming
June 6, 2012 9:37 am | by Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office | News | CommentsA Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey shows that 95% of major cities in Latin America are planning for climate change, compared to only 59% of such cities in the United States.
Researchers learn how populations collapse
June 5, 2012 5:47 am | by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office | News | CommentsIn the early 1990s, overfishing led to the collapse of one of the most bountiful cod fisheries in the world, off the coast of Newfoundland. Twenty years later, the cod population still has not recovered. To explain this kind of collapse, ecologists have long theorized that populations suffering a decline in environmental conditions appear stable until they reach a tipping point where the population plummets. Recovery from such collapses is nearly impossible. Now a study has offered the first experimental validation of this theory.
System improves automated monitoring of security cameras
June 4, 2012 9:27 am | News | CommentsPolice and security teams guarding airports, docks, and border crossings from terrorist attack or illegal entry need to know immediately when someone enter a prohibited area. A network of surveillance cameras is typically used to monitor these at-risk locations. Now, a system being developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology can perform security analysis more accurately and in a fraction of the time it would take a human camera operator.
New device jet-injects drugs
May 24, 2012 3:55 am | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsGetting a shot at the doctor's office may become less painful in the not-too-distant future. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have engineered a device that delivers a tiny, high-pressure jet of medicine through the skin without the use of a hypodermic needle. The device can be programmed to deliver a range of doses to various depths—an improvement over similar jet-injection systems that are now commercially available.
Civil engineers find savings where the rubber meets the road
May 23, 2012 3:44 am | by Denise Brehm, Civil and Environmental Engineering | News | CommentsA new study by civil engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that using stiffer pavements on the nation's roads could reduce vehicle fuel consumption by as much as 3%—a savings that could add up to 273 million barrels of crude oil per year, or $15.6 billion at today's oil prices. This would result in an accompanying annual decrease in carbon dioxide emissions of 46.5 million metric tons.
Mathematical framework formalizes oddball programming techniques
May 22, 2012 8:40 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsA group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers will present a new mathematical framework that allows computer scientists to reason rigorously about sloppy computation. The framework can provide mathematical guarantees that if a computer program behaves as intended, so will a fast-but-inaccurate modification of it.
Deconstructing the cell's most complex structure
May 22, 2012 5:16 am | by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office | News | CommentsOne of the most important structures in a cell is the nuclear pore complex—a tiny yet complicated channel through which information flows in and out of the cell's nucleus, directing all other cell activity. Little is known about this vital cell structure, but a Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist is trying to change that.
Oxygen-separation membranes could aid in carbon dioxide reduction
May 21, 2012 3:34 am | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsResearchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are evaluating a system that efficiently eliminates nitrogen from the combustion process, delivering a pure stream of carbon dioxide after removing other combustion byproducts such as water and other gases.
Newfound exoplanet may turn to dust
May 18, 2012 3:30 am | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsResearchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NASA, and elsewhere have detected a possible planet, some 1,500 light years away, that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star. The scientists infer that a long tail of debris is following the planet, and that this tail may tell the story of the planet's disintegration.
The elusive capacity of networks
May 15, 2012 4:02 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsCalculating the total capacity of a data network is a notoriously difficult problem. However, information theorists are beginning to make some headway. In a recently published paper, a team of information theorists have shown that in a wired network, network coding and error-correcting coding can be handled separately, without reduction in the network's capacity.
