A Smarter Web
March 13, 2007
New technologies will make online search more intelligent–and may even lead to a “Web 3.0.”
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A Smoother Street View
July 28, 2010
New street-level imaging software developed by Microsoft could help people find locations more quickly on the Web.
Microsoft researchers have come up with a refinement to Bing Streetside called Street Slide. It combines slices from multiple panoramas captured along a stretch of road into one continuous view. This can be viewed from a distance, or “smooth scrolled” sideways.
Someone using Street Slide’s panoramic view can slide along the… read more
A Sneak Preview of Wolfram|Alpha
April 30, 2009
Stephen Wolfram’s video presentation of Wolfram|Alpha at Harvard Law School is now available.
A solar energy funnel to harness a broader spectrum of light
MIT engineers propose a new way of harnessing photons for electricity, with the potential for capturing a wider spectrum of solar energy
November 28, 2012
The quest to harness a broader spectrum of sunlight’s energy to produce electricity has taken a radically new turn, with the proposal of a “solar energy funnel” that takes advantage of materials under elastic strain.
“We’re trying to use elastic strains to produce unprecedented properties,” says Ju Li, an MIT professor. In this case, the “funnel” is a metaphor: Electrons and their counterparts, holes… read more
A solar-to-fuel roadmap for crystalline silicon
March 5, 2013
An MIT research team has published a detailed analysis of all the factors that could limit the efficiency of an “artificial leaf” — a small device that, when placed in a container of water and exposed to sunlight, would produce bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen for storing energy.
The new analysis lays out a roadmap for a research program to improve the efficiency of these systems, and… read more
A Soldier’s (Robotic) Best Friend
February 24, 2009
The U.S. Army has released new footage of the BigDog robot–a sophisticated, four-legged “pack-bot” designed to carry 340-pound payloads across all kinds of terrain–up or down hills, through ice, sand, snow, and dirt–by monitoring sensors in its legs and adjusting its posture accordingly.
A solid case of entanglement
January 12, 2010
For the first time, physicists have convincingly demonstrated that physically separated particles in solid-state devices can be quantum-mechanically entangled.
The experiment, which used electrons in a superconductor in place of photons in an optical system, forming entangled “Cooper pairs” over a micron or so, was conducted by a team of physicists from France, Germany and Spain.
A solid-state sequencer
February 25, 2013
Nabsys has developed a solid-state gene sequencing machine that will allow researchers to determine the structural organization of long stretches of DNA, MIT Technology Review reports.
This differs from most existing sequencing methods, which read DNA in short snippets that are later stitched together by software. The new system will, at first, complement existing methods, but it could eventually offer cheaper and faster sequencing than… read more
A Sound Way To Turn Heat Into Electricity
June 4, 2007
University of Utah physicists have developed small devices that turn heat into sound and then into electricity. The technology holds promise for changing waste heat into electricity, harnessing solar energy and cooling computers and radars.
A space-time crystal clock that will last forever
Berkeley Lab researchers propose a way to build the first space-time crystal
September 25, 2012
Imagine a clock that will keep perfect time forever, even after the heat-death of the universe — a four-dimensional “space-time crystal” with periodic structure in time as well as space.
With such a 4D crystal, scientists would have a new and more effective way to study how complex physical properties and behaviors emerge from the collective interactions of large numbers of individual particles, the “many-body problem” of physics. A space-time crystal… read more
A Special Drug Just for You, at the End of a Long Pipeline
November 8, 2005
The age of personalized medicine is on the way. Increasingly, experts say, therapies will be tailored for patients based on their genetic makeup or other medical measurements. That will allow people to obtain drugs that would work best for them and avoid serious side effects.
A Species in a Second: Promise of DNA ‘Bar Codes’
December 14, 2004
If it works as promised, DNA bar coding will assist in the urgent task of cataloging unknown species before their ranks are decimated by extinction.
The technique depends on analyzing part of just one gene, the same gene in all cases, for every species.
If and when a DNA bar code database of all terrestrial plant and animal species is established, a field biologist could take a tiny… read more
A spinning black hole at a galaxy’s center
September 28, 2012
An international team, led by researchers at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy — the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.
Black holes that can be billions of times more massive than our sun may reside at the heart of most galaxies.… read more