MIT in the news archive

Innovation fuels solar power drive - "An MIT team yesterday announced it had developed a new way to concentrate solar beams, potentially reducing the cost of solar panels." (Boston Globe) July 11, 2008

Online tales of everyday heroes - "Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad student Alyssa Wright designed the [Hero Reports] website in response to the New York subway safety slogan: 'If you see something, say something.'" (Christian Science Monitor) July 17, 2008

MIT breaks through with 'finer lines' for microchips, touts efficiency model - "MIT researchers announced that they had created the finest patterns over the largest areas in a microchip yet, with lines at 25 nanometers wide, and separated by spaces 25 nanometers apart." (Wired News) July 9, 2008

Snails inspire design for state-of-the-art robots - "Hosoi collects snails not to keep them as pets or to cook escargot but instead to place them in a foliage-filled glass terrarium inside her lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she works as an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering." (CNN.com) July 9, 2008

Solar dyes give a guiding light - "A new way of capturing the energy from the Sun could increase the power generated by solar panels tenfold, a team of American scientists has shown." (BBC) July 11, 2008

Alan Lightman of Harpswell — gives to others - "Alan Lightman has a long list of accolades attached to his name. He was the first professor at MIT to teach in both the humanities and science departments. He is the author of an international best-selling book, 'Einstein's Dreams.' But what has satisfied him the most is his charitable work in Cambodia." (The Times Record) July 7, 2008

Ten leadership lessons for MBAs - "The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner [Muhammad Yunus] addressed the entire body of MIT graduates, but his message that businesses should exist first to serve social good was perhaps heard loudest by Sloan's MBA grads." (BusinessWeek) July 7, 2008

Berners-Lee named to MIT faculty - "[Tim Berners-Lee] has been named 3Com Founders Professor of Engineering in MIT's School of Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science." (The Industry Standard) July 7, 2008

Singing until the cows come home - "The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been conducting research to find out what sounds could attract [cow] wanderers back to the barn." (CityNews) July 7, 2008

Moon machines: Navigation - "We tell the story of how a group of computer scientists grappled with the challenge of navigation of a round trip to the Moon back in the days when computer code and software hadn't been invented and computing power was a fraction of what it is today." (Science Channel) July 7, 2008

Live (or not) from MIT, it's TechTV - "Pursuing mind-blowing pastimes is nothing new for MIT students. Only recently, however, have they been broadcast to the general public. The venue is the school's new Web-based video-sharing platform called MIT TechTV." (Boston Globe) July 6, 2008

Capture power with your curtains - "[Sheila Kennedy] is not an interior designer but an architect and professor in practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is convinced that solar textiles will revolutionize the way we collect and consume power." (CNN) July 2, 2008

Remembering Robert Seamans Jr., a NASA and Energy Department pioneer - "Robert C. Seamans Jr., the retired MIT professor who died last week, was best-known as a NASA manager who drove the Apollo moon-landing program. But Seamans, of Beverly Farms, also was the insightful head of the nation's energy department after the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s." (Greenblog, Boston.com) July 4, 2008

Power from a floating metal donut - "Energy from a floating nuclear donut? It might just happen if MIT researchers have their way. James Williams and Tracy Staedter dig in to the details." (Discovery News video) July 1, 2008

Asteroid anniversary recalls Earth's rocky history - "Any life on the early planet would have been sterilized instantly, says Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led one of the studies detailing the 6,600 mile-wide impact basin, the biggest one left in the solar system." (USA Today) June 30, 2008

Sloan creates Wall Street wizards - "The Sloan school at MIT is to join the growing number of North American schools that offer a masters degree specialising in finance, for those who want a career on Wall Street. The 12-month programme will begin in the 2009 academic year and MIT Sloan has a target of 60 students. David Schmittlein, dean of MIT Sloan, says the programme will build on the school’s long tradition in finance." (Financial Times) June 30, 2008

Tibetans ditch yak dung stove for solar cooker - "Imagine, if you will, that you’re a Tibetan villager, and a hungry one at that, and you want to rustle up a tasty meal." (Greenbang) June 25, 2008

High-tech cowboy calls the cattle home - "Why did the farmer put a Walkman on his cow? Because an MIT professor told him to. In a research project aimed at helping cattle farmers corral their herds more efficiently, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the US Department of Agriculture has devised a way to remotely issue commands to cows." (Boston Globe) June 30, 2008

Huge meteor strike explains Mars’s shape, reports say - "'What we found, very surprisingly, is that the dichotomy boundary is very well matched by an ellipse on the surface of Mars,' said Jeffrey C. Andrews-Hanna, a postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T. and the lead author of the first Nature paper. 'That was kind of the smoking gun for us.'" (New York Times) June 26, 2008

The crowd within - A battle of ideas is going on inside your mind - "Until now, psychologists have assumed that when people make a guess, they make the most accurate guess that they can. Ask them to make a second and it should, by definition, be less accurate. If that were true, averaging the first and second guesses should decrease the accuracy. Yet Edward Vul at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harold Pashler at the University of California, San Diego, have revealed in a study just published in Psychological Science that the average of first and second guesses is indeed better than either guess on its own." (The Economist) June 26, 2008

MIT gets inventive with ‘EurekaFest’ - "Teens from California enlightened an MIT audience Thursday on the best way to get coconuts from trees in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. And so it goes at MIT’s 'EurekaFest,' the annual event that brings together inventors young and old for a four-day 'celebration of the inventive spirit.'" (Boston Metro) June 27, 2008

Make your data sing – literally - "Gil Alterovitz, a research fellow and Harvard/MIT Division of Health Science and Technology (in Children's Hospital Informatics Program) and a research affiliate, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, has been pioneering efforts to turn data – gene expression levels, for example – into musical applications that could be used in biomedical research, diagnostics, and for an endless variety of monitoring systems." (Bio-ITWord.com) June 27, 2008

MIT solar dish melts steel - Eat your heart out Archimedes - "MIT boffins have developed a parabolic collector which concentrates sunlight so intensely it can melt steel." (Inquirer, UK) June 23, 2008

Life after death - Nuclear power is clean, but can it overcome its image problem? - "Ernest Moniz, MIT’s leading energy guru and himself a nuclear physicist, agrees. He thinks that, on the technical side at least, the key to a nuclear revival is to go from a craft-based approach, in which each reactor is a bespoke thing of beauty, to a manufacturing approach, in which modules of components are made in factories and simply bolted together on site. The other modern desideratum, he believes, is 'passive safety'." (The Economist) June 19, 2008

Brain cell's purpose is finally unraveled - "A hundred years after star-shaped cells called astrocytes were found in the brain, MIT scientists say they have finally discovered the function of these pervasive cells." (Boston Globe) June 23, 2008

Trade winds - Wind power has come of age. But to make the most of it, electrical grids will have to be overhauled - "That makes wind power competitive with electricity generated by burning natural gas. Coal power is still cheaper, at about 5 cents a kWh. But according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), that would rise to 8 cents if the CO2 from coal-fired power stations had to be captured and stored underground (see article)—or, for that matter, if a carbon tax of $30 a tonne were imposed." (The Economist) June 19, 2008

Beneath your feet - Geothermal could be hot - "[The Philippines ... a quarter of its electricity is generated from underground heat.  ... It is also part of a geology that sees parts of the country devastated by volcanic eruptions from time to time. The geysers that turn the generators are merely the gentlest manifestations of this volcanism. The question that exercises Jefferson Tester, a researcher at MIT, is whether it is possible to have the one without the other. The Earth’s depths are, after all, hot everywhere. So if there is no natural volcanism around to bring this heat to the surface, his answer is to create controlled, artificial volcanism—what is known as an engineered geothermal system (EGS). Instead of relying on natural hot springs, you make your own." (The Economist) June 19, 2008

Dig deep - Carbon storage will be expensive at best. At worst, it may not work - "As to the cost, a report published last year by MIT reckons on $25 a tonne to capture CO2 and pressurise it into a superfluid, and $5 a tonne to transport it to its burial site. It therefore suggests that power stations which dump CO2 into the atmosphere should be charged $30 a tonne, a figure conveniently near both the middle of the IPCC’s suggested carbon price and the actual price in Europe." (The Economist) June 19, 2008

MIT's Junot Diaz on The Colbert Report - "Joseph Pulitzer's an immigrant. An immigrant gets it. He probably would have been happy." (The Colbert Report) June 18, 2008

MIT team plays with fire to create cheap energy - "Out on a lawn at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with joggers and traffic passing nearby, Spencer Ahrens is demonstrating what looks like either the future of solar power – or perhaps a death ray." (Christian Science Monitor) June 18, 2008

Is the universe actually made of math? - "Unconventional cosmologist [and MIT professor] Max Tegmark says mathematical formulas create reality." (Discover Magazine) June 16, 2008

Electric car a power trip for Spring Grove grad - "Mike Roberts and 12 of his fellow students at the Massachussets Institute of Technology are getting ready for a road trip from Texas to Alberta, Canada." (The Evening Sun, PA) June 17, 2008

Gas, gas, quick boys - "Not only can [the MIT researchers'] new sensor tell between chemical agents, it can detect them at previously unattainable concentrations—as low as 25 parts in a trillion." (The Economist) June 18, 2008

The most important microbe you've never heard of - "Recently, scientists got together at [MIT] in Cambridge, Mass., to celebrate the discovery of the bacterium." (National Public Radio) June 13, 2008

Potential new weapon against TB: free cell minutes - "A student-led group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a way to use cellphones to let patients test themselves [For TB]. And if the tests show patients are following doctor's orders, they get rewarded with free minutes." (USA Today) June 13, 2008

In search of forever - "Successful work like that at MIT will help to make DMFCs [direct-methanol fuel cells] cheaper and more efficient, which will, in turn, make them even more attractive as power sources for portable devices. " (The Economist) June 12, 2008

MIT scientist Langer wins major technology award - "U.S. engineer Robert Langer [of MIT] was on Wednesday named the winner of the $1.2 million (800,000 euro) Millennium Technology Prize, funded by the Finnish state and industry." (Washington Post (Reuters)) June 11, 2008

Honour for biomaterials pioneer - "One of the most prolific inventors in medicine has won the prestigious Millennium Technology Prize. Professor Robert Langer's biomaterials research has allowed for more accurate and controlled release of drugs into patients' bodies. " (BBC News) June 11, 2008

5 brilliant startup ideas from MIT’s new crop of graduates - "MIT is Division I in academia, and like their counterparts in sports, lots of students turn pro before graduation. As the Class of 2008 tosses their high-tech hats in the air, we look at projects ... with the potential to shake things up in the real world. " (Popular Mechanics) June 10, 2008

Students create video game for blind players - "Students from Singapore and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently created a video game for the blind." (Chronicle of Higher Education) June 10, 2008

Why pop culture loves the 'butterfly effect,' and gets it totally wrong - "Some scientists see their work make headlines. But MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz watched his work become a catch phrase. Pop culture references to the butterfly effect may be bad physics, but they're a good barometer of how the public thinks about science." (Boston Globe) June 8, 2008

Nanny car knows when you're too old to drive - and tells you - "Researchers at MIT's AgeLab are building the 'Aware Car,' a Volvo XC90 packed with cameras, monitors and sensors that keep tabs on drivers and their behavior  to improve safety." (Wired.com) June 8, 2008

New PC game designed for visually impaired - "A new computer game created by MIT and Singaporean students is taking the 'video' out of 'video games.'" (USA Today) June 10, 2008

The wondrous life of Junot Diaz - "'I always kind of giggle any time I'm at an MIT faculty meeting, you know,' Diaz told CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason. 'And people are like, "I got a Nobel Prize." Someone else is like, "I got a Pritzker." And I'm like, "My parents were illegal." Like, I love this. You know, only in America, yeah?' The 39-year-old MIT professor has a lot to celebrate these days. Few books have arrived to more thunderous acclaim than Diaz's first novel, 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao'."  (CBS News) June 8, 2008