Prometheus, the mythological figure who stole fire from the gods, was punished for this theft by being bound to a rock. Each day, an eagle swept down and fed on his liver, which then grew [...]
Author Archive | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Decoding ‘noisy’ language in daily life
Suppose you hear someone say, “The man gave the ice cream the child.” Does that sentence seem plausible? Or do you assume it is missing a word? Such as: “The man gave the ice cream [...]
Nanowires can lift liquids as effectively as tubes
Imagine if you could drink a glass of water just by inserting a solid wire into it and sucking on it as though it were a soda straw. It turns out that if you were [...]
New way to discover HIV vaccine targets
Decades of research and three large-scale clinical trials have so far failed to yield an effective HIV vaccine, in large part because the virus evolves so rapidly that it can evade any vaccine-induced immune response. [...]
Researchers develop solar-to-fuel roadmap for ‘artificial leaf’
Bringing the concept of an “artificial leaf” closer to reality, a team of researchers at MIT has published a detailed analysis of all the factors that could limit the efficiency of such a system. The [...]
Math rocks: New way to solve ‘graph Laplacians’ has big implications
In the last decade, theoretical computer science has seen remarkable progress on the problem of solving graph Laplacians — the esoteric name for a calculation with hordes of familiar applications in scheduling, image processing, online [...]
Taking a new look at high- temperature super-conductors
While the phenomenon of superconductivity — in which some materials lose all resistance to electric currents at extremely low temperatures — has been known for more than a century, the temperature at which it occurs [...]
How human language could have evolved from birdsong
“The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language,” Charles Darwin wrote in “The Descent of Man” (1871), while contemplating how humans learned to speak. Language, he speculated, might have [...]
Planet Mercury may have harbored an ancient magma ocean
By analyzing Mercury’s rocky surface, scientists have been able to partially reconstruct the planet’s history over billions of years. Now, drawing upon the chemical composition of rock features on the planet’s surface, scientists at MIT [...]
Engineering cells for more efficient biofuel production
In the search for renewable alternatives to gasoline, heavy alcohols such as isobutanol are promising candidates. Not only do they contain more energy than ethanol, but they are also more compatible with existing gasoline-based infrastructure. [...]
New material harvests energy from water vapor
MIT engineers have created a new polymer film that can generate electricity by drawing on a ubiquitous source: water vapor. The new material changes its shape after absorbing tiny amounts of evaporated water, allowing it [...]
How to reflect heat like light
An MIT researcher has developed a technique that provides a new way of manipulating heat, allowing it to be controlled much as light waves can be manipulated by lenses and mirrors. The approach relies on [...]