Sometimes things that are technically defects, such as imperfections in a material’s crystal lattice, can actually produce changes in properties that open up new kinds of useful applications. New research from a team at MIT shows that such imperfections in a family of materials known as insulating metal oxides may be key to their performance…
Automatic Code Reuse
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new system that allows programmers to transplant code from one program into another. The programmer can select the code from one program and an insertion point in a second program, and the system will automatically make modifications necessary — such as changing…
New Test Rapidly Diagnoses Zika
MIT researchers have developed a paper-based test that can diagnose Zika infection within 20 minutes. Unlike existing tests, the new diagnostic does not cross-react with Dengue virus, a close relative of the Zika virus that can produce false positives on many Zika tests. This test could offer an easy-to-use, cheap, and portable diagnostic in countries…
Model Predicts Performance of Glucose-Responsive Insulin
People with Type 1 diabetes must check their blood glucose several times a day and inject themselves with insulin to keep their blood sugar levels within a healthy range. A better alternative, long sought by diabetes researchers, would be insulin that is engineered to linger in the bloodstream, becoming active only when needed, such as…
Blood Testing Via Sound Waves May Replace Some Tissue Biopsies
Cells secrete nanoscale packets called exosomes that carry important messages from one part of the body to another. Scientists from MIT and other institutions have now devised a way to intercept these messages, which could be used to diagnose problems such as cancer or fetal abnormalities. Their new device uses a combination of microfluidics and…
How Neural Networks Think
Artificial-intelligence research has been transformed by machine-learning systems called neural networks, which learn how to perform tasks by analyzing huge volumes of training data. During training, a neural net continually readjusts thousands of internal parameters until it can reliably perform some task, such as identifying objects in digital images or translating text from one language…
Firebricks Offer Low-Cost Storage for Carbon-Free Energy
Firebricks, designed to withstand high heat, have been part of our technological arsenal for at least three millennia, since the era of the Hittites. Now, a proposal from MIT researchers shows this ancient invention could play a key role in enabling the world to switch away from fossil fuels and rely instead on carbon-free energy…
Tiny Terahertz Laser Could Be Used for Imaging, Chemical Detection
Terahertz radiation — the band of the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and visible light — has promising applications in medical and industrial imaging and chemical detection, among other uses. But many of those applications depend on small, power-efficient sources of terahertz rays, and the standard method for producing them involves a bulky, power-hungry, tabletop device. For more…
New A.I. Algorithm Monitors Sleep With Radio Waves
More than 50 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders, and diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s can also disrupt sleep. Diagnosing and monitoring these conditions usually requires attaching electrodes and a variety of other sensors to patients, which can further disrupt their sleep. To make it easier to diagnose and study sleep problems, researchers at MIT…
Robotic System Monitors Specific Neurons
Recording electrical signals from inside a neuron in the living brain can reveal a great deal of information about that neuron’s function and how it coordinates with other cells in the brain. However, performing this kind of recording is extremely difficult, so only a handful of neuroscience labs around the world do it. To make…
Monitoring Network Traffic More Efficiently
In today’s data networks, traffic analysis — determining which links are getting congested and why — is usually done by computers at the network’s edge, which try to infer the state of the network from the times at which different data packets reach their destinations. If the routers inside the network could instead report on…
Ancient Earth’s Hot Interior Created “Graveyard” of Continental Slabs
Plate tectonics has shaped the Earth’s surface for billions of years: Continents and oceanic crust have pushed and pulled on each other, continually rearranging the planet’s façade. As two massive plates collide, one can give way and slide under the other in a process called subduction. The subducted slab then slips down through the Earth’s…
Neuroscientists Discover Brain Circuit for Retrieving Memories
When we have a new experience, the memory of that event is stored in a neural circuit that connects several parts of the hippocampus and other brain structures. Each cluster of neurons may store different aspects of the memory, such as the location where the event occurred or the emotions associated with it. Neuroscientists who…
Smart Mats Detect Early Warning Signs of Foot Ulcers
While completing his residency in anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in the mid-2000s, Jon Bloom saw his fair share of foot amputations among patients with diabetes. The culprit: infected foot ulcers. “Some days, I would spend the entire day doing nothing but amputations,” Bloom says. “It’s a major problem we haven’t really moved forward on.”…
Open-Source Entrepreneurship
Open-source software is free software whose underlying code, or “source code,” is also freely available. Open-source development projects often involve hundreds or even thousands of volunteer coders scattered around the globe. Some of the best known are the Linux operating system, the Firefox web browser, and the WordPress blogging platform. This past spring, MIT professor…
Researchers Clarify Mystery About Proposed Battery Material
Battery researchers agree that one of the most promising possibilities for future battery technology is the lithium-air (or lithium-oxygen) battery, which could provide three times as much power for a given weight as today’s leading technology, lithium-ion batteries. But tests of various approaches to creating such batteries have produced conflicting and confusing results, as well…
Hybrid Drones Carry Heavier Payloads for Greater Distances
MIT alumnus Long Phan SM ’99, PhD ’12 is a technology innovator and entrepreneur with several engineering “firsts” under his belt. In the mid-1990s, Phan helped build the Draper Small Autonomous Aerial Vehicle, the world’s first fully autonomous helicopter. While working on Wall Street in the early 2000s, he became an early pioneer of the…
Deadly Heat Waves Could Hit South Asia This Century
In South Asia, a region of deep poverty where one-fifth of the world’s people live, new research suggests that by the end of this century climate change could lead to summer heat waves with levels of heat and humidity that exceed what humans can survive without protection. There is still time to avert such severe…
Ultracold Molecules Hold Promise for Quantum Computing
Researchers have taken an important step toward the long-sought goal of a quantum computer, which in theory should be capable of vastly faster computations than conventional computers, for certain kinds of problems. The new work shows that collections of ultracold molecules can retain the information stored in them, for hundreds of times longer than researchers…
Coaching Platform Improves Health Outcomes, Lowers Medical Costs
Lack of patient adherence to treatment plans is a lingering, costly problem in the United States. But MIT Media Lab spinout Twine Health is proving that regular interventions from a patient’s community of supporters can greatly improve adherence, leading to improved health outcomes and savings. Twine has developed a platform that lets users build customized…
Bringing Neural Networks to Cellphones
In recent years, the best-performing artificial-intelligence systems — in areas such as autonomous driving, speech recognition, computer vision, and automatic translation — have come courtesy of software systems known as neural networks. But neural networks take up a lot of memory and consume a lot of power, so they usually run on servers in the cloud,…
Study Predicts Heart Cells’ Response to Dwindling Oxygen
Time is of the essence when treating a patient undergoing a heart attack. Cardiac surgeons attempt to quickly stabilize the heart by applying reperfusion, a technique that restores oxygen to the heart by opening up blocked vessels with balloons and stents. While reperfusion can restore cardiac function, such sudden infusions of oxygen can also further…
Using Robots to Prevent Water, Gas Leaks Before They Happen
Access to clean, safe water is one of the world’s pressing needs, yet today’s water distribution systems lose an average of 20 percent of their supply because of leaks. These leaks not only make shortages worse but also can cause serious structural damage to buildings and roads by undermining foundations. Unfortunately, leak detection systems are…
Study Suggests Route to Improving Rechargeable Lithium Batteries
Most of today’s lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from cars to phones, use a liquid as the electrolyte between two electrodes. Using a solid electrolyte instead could offer major advantages for both safety and energy storage capacity, but attempts to do this have faced unexpected challenges. Researchers now report that the problem may be an…
Toward Better Batteries
Most of today’s lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from cars to phones, use a liquid as the electrolyte between two electrodes. Using a solid electrolyte instead could offer major advantages for both safety and energy storage capacity, but attempts to do this have faced unexpected challenges. Researchers now report that the problem may be an…