Since the 1950s, more than 100 spacecraft have launched to the moon. Twelve astronauts have walked on its surface; 842 pounds of moon rocks and soil have been returned to Earth for meticulous analysis. And ...
Mar 08, 2013
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A 70-pound "cheetah" robot designed by MIT researchers may soon outpace its animal counterparts in running efficiency: In treadmill tests, the researchers have found that the robot—about the size and weight ...
Mar 08, 2013
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Researchers at MIT and the Santa Fe Institute have found that some widely used formulas for predicting how rapidly technology will advance—notably, Moore's Law and Wright's Law—offer superior approximations ...
Mar 06, 2013
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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 new analysis lays out ...
Mar 04, 2013
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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, ...
Mar 01, 2013
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When a field-goal kicker lines up for an attempt in a football game, television viewers will typically be presented with the kicker's record from that distance—on all attempts from 40 to 49 yards, for instance. ...
Mar 01, 2013
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Economists often talk about "moral hazard," the idea that people's behavior changes in the presence of insurance. In finance, for instance, investors may take more risks if they know they will be bailed out, ...
Feb 27, 2013
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Inspired by a chemical that fungi secrete to defend their territory, MIT chemists have synthesized and tested several dozen compounds that may hold promise as potential cancer drugs.
Feb 27, 2013
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Using sunlight, researchers and students at MIT are trying to change how medical equipment is sterilized in remote clinics—and a pilot project in Nicaragua has begun to show promising results.
Feb 26, 2013
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What kinds of industrial production can bring innovation to the American economy? An intensive, long-term study by a group of MIT scholars suggests that a renewed commitment to research and development in ...
Feb 25, 2013
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Many commercial robotic arms perform what roboticists call "pick and place" tasks: The arm picks up an object in one location and places it in another. Usually, the objects—say, automobile components along ...
Feb 25, 2013
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"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 ...
Feb 21, 2013
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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 ...
Feb 21, 2013
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It took only a few years for high-definition televisions to make the transition from high-priced novelty to ubiquitous commodity—and they now seem to be heading for obsolescence just as quickly. At the ...
Feb 20, 2013
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Understanding exactly how droplets and bubbles stick to surfaces—everything from dew on blades of grass to the water droplets that form on condensing coils after steam drives a turbine in a power plant—is ...
Feb 19, 2013
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