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Predicting what it takes to push through sand, gravel, or other soft media can help engineers drive a rover over Martian soil, anchor a ship in rough seas, and walk a robot through sand and mud. But modeling the forces involved in such processes is a huge computational challenge that often takes days to weeks to solve. Now, engineers at MIT and Georgia Tech have found a faster and simpler way to model intrusion through any soft, flowable material. Their new method quickly maps the forces it would take to push, wiggle, and drill an object through granular material in real-time. The method can apply to objects and grains of any size and shape, and does not require complex computational tools as other methods do. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2023/soft-push-granular-intrusion-0119

By modeling the conditions of an entire wind farm rather than individual turbines, engineers can squeeze more power out of existing installations. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/wind-farm-optimization-energy-flow-0811

Piction Health, a startup founded by Susan Conover SM '15, lets doctors classify skin conditions with the snap of a picture. Their app uses machine learning to help physicians identify and manage skin diseases. Read the article on MIT News: https://news.mit.edu/2022/piction-health-skin-app-0706

Studying a powerful type of cyberattack, researchers identified a flaw in how it’s been analyzed before, then developed new techniques that stop it in its tracks. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/side-channel-attacks-detection-0609

What does a sunset sound like? With the Sonification Toolkit, almost anything can be transformed into sound that is aesthetically satisfying and analytically illuminating. The newly released prototype, a work in progress with cutting-edge capabilities, is a robust exploratory foray into possibilities for sonification. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/sound-sunset-sonification-toolkit-0209

Using a new sonification toolkit, designed but MIT's Digital Humanities Lab, senior Moises Trejo was able to turn a sunrise and a sunset into sound. What the toolkit does is convert the annual times of sunrises and sunsets in a particular location and turns them into a simple soundwork. Depending on the settings it either becomes a two-voice melody (in a strange tuning) or a gradual modification of an evolving sound, or somewhere in between. In this piece the lower tone of the chord is the sunrise time, and the higher tone is the sunset time. The time course of the piece represents the days in the year, as sunrise and sunset gradually move further apart from each other (as the days get longer) and then move towards each other (as the days get shorter). Listen to the article: https://soundcloud.com/mitnewsoffice/audio-article-the-sound-of-a-sunset?si=76714eafe06742f698b283a79d713750&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/sound-sunset-sonification-toolkit-0209

MIT neuroscientists have identified a specific signal that young children and even babies can use to determine whether two people have a strong relationship and a mutual obligation to help each other: whether those two people kiss, share food, or have other interactions that involve sharing saliva. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/babies-relationships-saliva-0120

A machine-learning expert from MIT and a psychology researcher/clinician from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have teamed up to develop tools for mental health care delivery. They hope that their algorithms will eventually equip physicians and patients with useful information about individual disease trajectory and effective treatment. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/deploying-machine-learning-improve-mental-health-rosalind-picard-0126

Spoiler Alert, a company founded by two MIT alumni, is helping companies bridge the gap between food waste and food insecurity with a platform connecting major food and beverage brands with discount grocers, retailers, and nonprofits. The platform helps brands discount or donate excess and short-dated inventory days, weeks, and months before it expires. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/spoiler-alert-food-waste-0105

A team of MIT scientists have generated a detailed, three-dimensional "atlas" of the largest oxygen-deficient zones (ODZ) in the tropical Pacific. And though these ODZs make up less than 1 percent of the ocean’s total volume, they are a significant source of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/oxygen-deficient-ocean-map-1227

A novel approach to testing for the presence of the virus that causes Covid-19 may lead to tests that are faster, less expensive, and potentially less prone to erroneous results than existing detection methods. Though the work, based on quantum effects, is still theoretical, these detectors could potentially be adapted to detect virtually any virus, the researchers say. Read the article: http://news.mit.edu/2021/quantum-sensor-detect-covid-1220

Researchers at MIT have done a detailed analysis and created a set of computational tools to enable architects and engineers to design truss structures in a way that can minimize their embodied carbon while maintaining all needed properties for a given building application. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/truss-structure-carbon-materials-1129

MIT researchers have now incorporated certain social interactions into a framework for robotics, enabling machines to understand what it means to help or hinder one another, and to learn to perform these social behaviors on their own. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/robots-social-skills-1105

Good sleep can be hard to come by. But a new study by researchers at MIT and the University of São Paulo in Brazil finds that if you can make up for lost sleep, even for just a few weekend hours, the extra zzz’s could help reduce fatigue-induced clumsiness, at least in how you walk. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/lack-sleep-walk-1026

As climate change brings greater threats to coastal ecosystems, new research can help planners leverage the wave-damping benefits of marsh plants. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/how-marsh-grass-protects-shorelines-1018

Researchers at MIT and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are combining machine learning and human-computer interaction to create a better electronic health record (EHR). They developed MedKnowts, a system that unifies the processes of looking up medical records and documenting patient information into a single, interactive interface. Read the article: http://news.mit.edu/2021/medknowts-electronic-health-record-0923

Engineers at MIT have developed a new approach to removing lead or other heavy-metal contaminants from water, in a process that they say is far more energy-efficient than any other currently used system, though there are others under development that come close. Ultimately, it might be used to treat lead-contaminated water supplies at the home level, or to treat contaminated water from some chemical or industrial processes. Read the article: http://news.mit.edu/2021/removing-lead-water-electrodialysis-0922

Would you like to live longer? It turns out that where you live, not just how you live, can make a big difference. That’s the finding of an innovative study co-authored by an MIT economist, which examines senior citizens across the U.S. and concludes that some locations enhance longevity more than others, potentially for multiple reasons. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/seniors-relocate-longevity-0901

Electrochemical reactions that are accelerated using catalysts lie at the heart of many processes for making and using fuels, chemicals, and materials — including storing electricity from renewable energy sources in chemical bonds, an important capability for decarbonizing transportation fuels. Now, research at MIT could open the door to ways of making certain catalysts more active, and thus enhancing the efficiency of such processes. Read the article: http://news.mit.edu/2021/elecrochemical-reaction-catalyst-efficiency-0908

In the face of grave concerns about misinformation, social media networks and news organizations often employ fact-checkers to sort the real from the false. But fact-checkers can only assess a small portion of the stories floating around online. A new study by MIT researchers suggests an alternate approach: Crowdsourced accuracy judgements from groups of normal readers can be virtually as effective as the work of professional fact-checkers. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/crowd-source-fact-checking-0901