MIT

20:56 November 1, 2009 PST

The small dashboard robot that allows AIDA to communicate with the driver

Vehicles are slowly but surely heading towards a future where the driver is almost irrelevant. A raft of new technologies will be employed to control a vehicle’s performance, speed and steering. Eventually leading to vehicles that drive themselves. Many Technologies designed to assist drivers are already reaching fruition including systems that recognize tiredness in drivers or control the throttle and brakes for the duration of a journey. The latest driver assist technology to catch our eye comes out of the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT), where researchers are creating an in-car personal robot that is designed to offer the same kind of guidance as “an informed and friendly companion.” Read More

MIT's one-way road for microwave light makes efficient lightwave circuits closer

19:13 October 13, 2009 PDT

MIT researchers have found a way to make light travel one-way without reflections in a lo...

Light normally bounces off obstacles in its way, and the part of the beam that is reflected back and captured by our eyes contributes to our perception of the world around us. However, every reflection dissipates a small part of the beam's energy, and can eventually weaken it significantly. A team of MIT researchers have developed an innovative waveguide that allows microwave light to travel one way only and without reflections, paving the way to much more efficient lightwave circuits and connections. Read More

ROBOTICS

MIT's robo-fish swims like the real thing

By Michael Mulcahy

00:23 October 9, 2009 PDT

MIT's robo-fish takes a well-earned break in the lab with Valdivia y Alvarado

What is it with scientists and robotic animals? Did they not have pets as children? This year alone, we’ve seen robot ferrets, penguins, dogs, locusts, moles and bats. And now, scientists at MIT have come up with a robotic fish. Although we’ve seen mechanical fish before, this one is different in a very significant way – the robofish truly mimics the natural swimming action of real fish, flexing mechanical muscles to propel itself through the water. Read More

CAMERAS AND IMAGING

An electron microscope that won't destroy living cells

23:19 October 6, 2009 PDT

An electron microscope image of a house dust mite - don't worry, it's dead

Instead of light, traditional high-resolution electron microscopes use a particle beam of electrons to illuminate a specimen. However, the particle beam also destroys the samples, meaning that electron microscopes can’t be used to image living cells. Electrical engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have proposed a new scheme that can overcome this critical limitation by using a quantum mechanical measurement technique that allows electrons to sense objects remotely without ever hitting the imaged objects, thus avoiding damage. Read More

ECOGIZMO

Research says 'enact policies now' to limit risk of climate catastrophe

By Jeff Salton

21:03 October 6, 2009 PDT

Ronald Prinn, director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, and his group have revis...

Researchers at MIT have continued a study of climate risk and released a new report to show that even moderate carbon-reduction policies can substantially lower the risk of future climate change. It also shows that action is needed quickly if global emissions reductions are to provide a good chance of avoiding a temperature increase of more than 2°C above the pre-industrial level — a widely discussed target. But the researchers determined that failing to take prompt action could result in extreme changes that could become much more difficult, if not impossible, to control. Read More

HEALTH AND WELLBEING

Diamonds could soon be used to probe living cells and drug molecules

18:41 September 30, 2009 PDT

When hit by green light, nitrogen impurities in diamonds become fluorescent and emit a bri...

While working on their long-term goal of achieving a true quantum computer, a team of researchers from Stanford University, the Joint Quantum Institute, MIT and Texas A&M University has recently discovered that tiny nitrogen impurities in diamonds make outstanding magnetic probes in the cellular and molecular scale, with important applications that could truly benefit medical research. Read More

CAMERAS AND IMAGING

Atmospheric photos from Project Icarus

By Paul Ridden

17:19 September 21, 2009 PDT

The Earth as seen from probably the cheapest balloon photography setup ever

Attaching a camera to a helium-filled balloon, a group of students from MIT recently managed to get some pretty decent photographs of our beautiful planet from an estimated 93000 feet up. Nothing remarkable there you might say - high altitude balloon photography has been around a long, long time - until you consider the cost of the experiment: about USD$150. Read More

AUTOMOTIVE

MIT tackles challenge of electric car that recharges in ten minutes flat

By Michael Mulcahy

00:53 August 6, 2009 PDT

An electric vehicle is nothing without a catchy name - meet MIT EVT's elEVen

Sometimes in science, it helps to set the bar high. That seems to be the attitude of the MIT Electric Vehicle Team (EVT). By their reckoning, one of the biggest impediments to the average driver adopting an electric vehicle is recharge times. So, having converted a Porsche 914 to electric, their next project is to produce a prototype family car that will achieve 0-60mph in under nine seconds, have a range of 200 miles, and fully recharge in under 11 minutes. Read More

New barcode system could see the end of ugly stripes

By Michael Mulcahy

20:03 August 2, 2009 PDT

Compared to standard barcode devices, the Bokode is tiny, yet it can incorporate an enormo...

I remember encountering the ugly black-and-white stripes of a barcode for the first time – defacing the front of my favorite magazine. Of course, Mad found a way of dealing with the UPC code by making jokes at its expense. But now, some ground-breaking work at MIT could see the visual blight of barcodes replaced altogether by Bokodes, tiny tenth-of-an-inch optical data tags that can hold thousands of times more information and be read by the camera on your mobile phone. Read More

MIT team develops hi-fi quantum memory

20:27 July 21, 2009 PDT

Timing of the optical writing, write and read signals. (Photo: Haruka Tanji, Saikat Ghosh,...

Scientists are rapidly achieving important breakthroughs in quantum computing, from obtaining precise manipulation of four photons at the same time to the very first quantum processors. But just like in traditional electronics, a quantum computer can't be realized with information processing alone — we need a reliable way to store and retrieve quantum information too. A new breakthrough by MIT researchers represents a step forward in acheiving this goal of high-fidelity quantum memory. Read More

CAMERAS AND IMAGING

MIT’s ‘flexible camera’ replaces lens with fiber web

By Alan Brandon

23:40 July 8, 2009 PDT

SEM micrographs of the fiber show the uniform arrangement of the cross-section structure f...

Imagine that instead of carrying a camera in your jacket pocket, your entire jacket was the camera. That is the promise of a new type of light-detecting fibers developed by researchers at MIT. The team from the Institute's Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) has developed light-detecting fibers that, when woven into a web, act as a flexible “camera”. Fabric made from these fibers could be joined to a computer to create a large, foldable telescope or made into a soldier’s uniform to provide greater situational awareness. Read More

ELECTRONICS

Human ear inspires 'super-radio' design

18:36 June 15, 2009 PDT

RF cochlea, a low-power, ultra-broadband radio chip attached to an antenna. (Credit: Donna...

The human body is a fascinating, well-oiled machine forged and perfected by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. So, when two MIT researchers were looking for a highly efficient design for a spectrum analysis chip, they turned to one of the most efficient designs in nature — the human inner ear — with outstanding results that will bring us 'smart radios' and transmitters capable of adaptively maximizing bandwidth and data transmission rates across all fields of communication. Read More

Reboot takes a hike with Ksplice update software

By Paul Best

23:19 May 25, 2009 PDT

The start-up company Ksplice Inc recently won first prize in MIT’s Entrepreneurship ...

Rebooting your PC after updating software is one of the more tedious aspects of working on computers. New award-winning software, called Ksplice, however, addresses this by enabling important updates, like security patches, without the need to restart – at this stage – Linux-based computers. Read More

HEALTH AND WELLBEING

Cancer monitoring implant could put lab inside the patient

23:02 May 18, 2009 PDT

The 5-mm implant, right, can monitor how a tumour responds to treatment
Photo credit: Mic...

A new implantable device that monitors a tumor for weeks, or months, could offer a simpler, less intrusive alternative to taking biopsies, which are traditionally used to diagnose the presence of cancer – and one that potentially offers a greater chance of successful treatment. Read More

HEALTH AND WELLBEING

Radical tissue scaffold to treat knee injuries

23:21 May 16, 2009 PDT

The new scaffold mimics bone and cartilage when implanted into a joint

Damage to knee cartilage is one of the more common types of sports injuries. Treatment often involves drilling a hole through the cartilage into the bone to stimulate the bone marrow to release stem cells, transplanting cartilage and the underlying bone from another part of the joint, or removing cartilage cells from the body, stimulating them to grow in the lab and re-implanting them. Now MIT engineers have built a new tissue scaffold that can stimulate bone and cartilage growth when transplanted into knees and other joints, potentially offering a more effective, less expensive – and painful – option to more conventional therapies. Read More

ELECTRONICS

New virus-built battery could power cars, electronic devices