Category: M.I.T
MIT engineers are using carbon nanotubes only billionths of a meter thick to stitch together aerospace materials in work that could make airplane skins and other products some 10 times stronger at a nominal increase in cost.
Folding paper into shapes such as a crane or a butterfly is challenging enough for most people. Now imagine trying to fold something that's about a hundred times thinner than a human hair and then putting it to use as an electronic device.
Lip reading is a critical means of communication for many deaf people, but it has a drawback: Certain consonants (for example, p and b) can be nearly impossible to distinguish by sight alone.
Tactile devices, which translate sound waves into vibrations that can be felt by the skin, can help overcome that obstacle by conveying nuances of speech that can't be gleaned from lip reading.
While U.S. intelligence officials have spent more than seven years searching fruitlessly for Osama bin Laden, UCLA geographers say they have a good idea of where the terrorist leader was at the end of 2001 — and perhaps where he has been in the years since.
A team of MIT undergraduate students has invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road, generating electricity while it smoothes the ride more effectively than conventional shocks.
Using compounds preserved in sedimentary rocks more than 635 million years old, researchers have found some of the earliest evidence for the existence of animals.
Imagine if the planet's collective brainpower and computing power could be brought together to tackle some of the world's toughest problems, including global climate change and cancer.
Nothing kills innovation like having to reinvent the wheel. Imagine how dull your diet would be if you had to build a new stove and hammer out a few cooking pots every time you wanted to test a new recipe.
Schizophrenia may blur the boundary between internal and external realities by overactivating a brain system that is involved in self-reflection, and thus causing an exaggerated focus on self.
Researchers may have discovered the mechanism behind how prions ? pieces of protein molecules? can kill nerve cells in the brain and lead to some serious degenerative diseases. The key seems to lie in how one particular protein misfolds within an organelle inside the cell, transforming itself into a new agent and then poisoning the neuron in which it was made.
The late, great jazz bandleader -- and self-proclaimed cosmic refugee from Saturn -- Sun Ra would be awfully proud. Tomorrow marks the beginning of World Space Week. Brought to you by those black-helicopter-flying folks over at the United Nations General Assembly, the seven-day stretch commemorates the October 4, 1957 launch of Sputnik I and the October 10, 1967 signing of the noble but unwieldy titled document, "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies." In related news, from October 4-6, M.I.T. holds a three-day MarsWeek 2002.
