news

Cellphone data helps pinpoint source of traffic tie-upsStudy: Congestion can be alleviated throughout a metropolitan area by altering the trips of drivers in specific neighborhoods.

MIT researchers discover a new kind of magnetismExperiments demonstrate ‘quantum spin liquid,’ which could have applications in new computer memory storage.

A flow of creativityMIT’s Gediminas Urbonas emerged from the old Soviet Union to produce new art in Cambridge.

Graduate student David Sengeh gives back to Sierra LeoneMedia Lab doctoral student created a competition to help youth in his home country create their own solutions.

Explained: GraphsA simple tool for representing relationships between data, devices or almost anything else has ubiquitous applications in computer science.

New technology may enable earlier cancer diagnosisNanoparticles amplify tumor signals, making them much easier to detect in the urine.

Tissue engineering: Growing new organs, and moreResearch could lead to better ways to heal injuries and develop new drugs.

In Profile: Roman Stocker finds big effects from tiny organismsFrom microbes in the ocean to cats in the kitchen, MIT researcher uncovers surprising phenomena where biology meets fluid mechanics.

In search of better antidepressantsNew study suggests targeting dopamine-releasing neurons could lead to more effective therapies.

The subculture of cheeseMIT anthropologist looks inside the growing world of do-it-yourself American cheese-makers.

Final 2.009 projects make outdoor living betterFrom rescue beacons to rain shields for bicycles, student innovations offer ways to improve experiences out in the elements.

Inspiration from a porcupine’s quillsUnderstanding the mechanisms behind quill penetration and extraction could help engineers design better medical devices.

Tiny compound semiconductor transistor could challenge silicon’s dominanceMIT researchers develop the smallest indium gallium arsenide transistor ever built.

3 Questions: David Kaiser on Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shiftScholars mark 50th anniversary of 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.'

A new ‘branch’ of mathResearchers find a common angle and tipping point of branching valley networks.

When the first stars blinked onThe very first stars may have turned on when the universe was 750 million years old.

GRAIL reveals a battered lunar historyTwin spacecraft create a highly detailed gravity map of the moon, finding an interior pulverized by early impacts.

Building a better worldFrom fuel cells to bamboo, and from Tanzania to Brazil, MIT senior Arfa Aijazi crosses borders and disciplines to make an impact.

How ‘transparent’ is graphene?MIT researchers find that adding a coating of graphene has little effect on how a surface interacts with liquids — except in extreme cases.

Study: At most a third of us show a consistent approach to financial riskEmpirically rich new study finds most people alter their risk-management approach depending on the type of financial decision.