One of the most promising approaches to curbing the flow of human-made greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is to capture these gases at major sources, such as fossil-fuel-burning power plants, and then inject them into deep, water-saturated rocks where they can remain stably trapped for centuries or millennia.

A bubble-wrapped, sponge-like device that soaks up natural sunlight and heats water to boiling temperatures has been invented by MIT engineers. This "solar vapour generator" doesn't need expensive mirrors or lenses to concentrate the sunlight. It relies instead on a combination of relatively low-tech materials to capture ambient sunlight and concentrate it as heat, which is then directed toward the pores of the sponge, which draw water up and rel...

MIT biological engineers have devised a way to record complex histories in the DNA of human cells, allowing them to retrieve "memories” of past events, such as inflammation, by sequencing the DNA. This analogue memory storage system is the first that can record the duration and/or intensity of events in human cells.

When Alicia Chong Rodriguez first toured the MIT campus as a high school student, she was so impressed by everything she saw that she still remembers excitedly phoning her mom back home in Costa Rica, calling collect from a pay phone in the student center. “It’s the first time I was faced with the fact that people create the things that we use,” says Chong, who has always been interested in technology and computers. &l...

  An MIT spinout is preparing to commercialise a novel rechargeable lithium metal battery that offers double the energy capacity of the lithium ion batteries that power many of today’s consumer electronics.

In 2020, NASA plans to launch a new Mars rover that will be tasked with probing a region of the planet scientists believe could hold remnants of ancient microbial life. The rover will collect samples of rocks and soil, and store them on the Martian surface; the samples would be returned to Earth sometime in the distant future so that scientists can meticulously analyse the samples for signs of present or former extraterrestrial life.

It has been a very hotly debated topic in recent years. Could existing EVs, despite their limited driving range, bring about a meaningful reduction in the greenhouse-gas emissions that are causing global climate change? Researchers at MIT have just completed the most comprehensive study yet to address this question and have reached a clear conclusion: Yes, they can.

Scientists at MIT and the University of São Paulo in Brazil have identified the structure of an enzyme that could be a good target for drugs combating three diseases common in the developing world. The enzyme, fumarate hydratase (FH) is essential for metabolic processes of parasites that are responsible for the spread of three diseases: Leishmaniases, Chagas disease, and sleeping sickness.

Over 13 million pain-blocking epidurals are performed every year in the United States and, although generally regarded as safe, there are complications in up to 10% of cases where the needles are inserted too far or placed in the wrong tissue. Researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital hope to improve this statistic with a new sensor that can be embedded into an epidural needle, helping anaesthetists guide the needle to the correct l...

Head injuries are a hot topic today in sports medicine, with numerous studies pointing to a high prevalence of sports-related concussions, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, among youth and professional athletes. Now an MIT-invented tool is aiding in detecting and diagnosing concussions, in real time. 

Tattoos which contain your music? On-skin jewellery that can control your smartphone? Pay for your coffee with your elbow? …Sound a touch far fetched? A group of students from MIT Media Lab and Microsoft Research have developed prototypes of on-skin user interfaces, which resemble jewellery.

Computer simulations of physical systems are common in science, engineering, and entertainment, but they use several different types of tools. If, say, you want to explore how a crack forms in an airplane wing, you need a very precise physical model of the crack’s immediate vicinity. But if you want to simulate the flexion of an airplane wing under different flight conditions, it’s more practical to use a simpler, higher-level de...

  Genome-wide association studies, which try to find correlations between particular genetic variations and disease diagnoses, are a staple of modern medical research. But because they depend on databases that contain people’s medical histories, they carry privacy risks.

Trapped ions are probably the most widely studied qubit technology, but they've historically required a large and complex hardware apparatus. In Nature Nanotechnology, researchers from MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory report an important step toward practical quantum computers, with a paper describing a prototype chip that can trap ions in an electric field and, with built-in optics, direct laser light toward each of them.

MIT engineers have developed a microfluidic device that replicates the neuromuscular junction - the vital connection where nerve meets muscle. The device, about the size of a U.S. quarter, contains a single muscle strip and a small set of motor neurons. Researchers can influence and observe the interactions between the two, within a realistic, three-dimensional matrix. The researchers genetically modified the neurons in the device to respond...

If you want to save on your monthly electric bill and reduce your greenhouse gas emissions at the same time, you might buy a new, energy-efficient refrigerator. Or water heater. Or clothes dryer. But if you can only replace one of these, which will give you the biggest payback? You could try to figure that out by comparing the energy-use labels from your existing appliances with those of the models you might purchase — if you still hav...

A portable production system, designed to manufacture a range of biopharmaceuticals on demand, has been developed by researchers at MIT, with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers demonstrate that the system can be used to produce a single dose of treatment from a compact device containing a small droplet of cells in a liquid.

The roadway network is an important part of the nation's transportation system, but it also contributes heavily to greenhouse gas emissions. A paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production by researchers with the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) introduces a way to reduce emissions across a roadway network by using big data to identify specific pavement sections where improvements will have the greatest impact.

  MIT researchers have developed a technique for imaging brain tissue at multiple scales, allowing them to peer at molecules within cells or take a wider view of the long-range connections between neurons.

3D movies immerse us in new worlds and allow us to see places and things that we otherwise couldn't. But behind every 3D experience is something that is uniformly despised: those goofy glasses. In a paper, a team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have demonstrated a display that lets you watch 3D films in a movie theater without extra eyewear.