Tesla makes the most popular electric vehicles on the market today. Many of Tesla's vehicles are equipped with its Autopilot driver assistance system, allowing vehicles to drive themselves in some situations. However, Autopilot does not make Tesla's automobiles fully autonomous, and the system requires driver attention.
Cities of the future may be powered by light-emitting plants rather than street lamps and other sources of lighting. The concept has been presented repeatedly over the past few years, including by a team of engineers at MIT. Those researchers are back with an update on the glowing plant project they introduced back in 2017, revealing their second-generation plants glow more brightly than the first-gen version.
Researchers at MIT have developed a new way to control magnets made of ferrimagnetic materials. Unlike ferromagnetic materials, in a ferrimagnetic material, some of the atoms are aligned in one direction, with others aligned the opposite way. Therefore, what type of magnetic field is produced by a ferrimagnetic material depends on the balance between the two types of atoms.
Researchers at MIT, the University of California at Riverside, and other institutions have been investigating dwarf galaxies. As the name implies, a dwarf galaxy is small and very dim compared to a typical galaxy and contains only a fraction of the number of stars found in the Milky Way. While most dwarf galaxies are typically very small, there is a type called ultra-diffuse galaxies or UDGs that can be scattered over gigantic regions of space.
Researchers have been working to develop something called monoclonal antibodies to help fight disease and illness. A monoclonal antibody is a protein designed to mimic the immune system of the human body. This type of treatment can be used to fight various disease conditions, including some types of cancer and autoimmune disease.
Researchers at MIT and other institutions have created a programmable system based on human proteins to deliver gene editing and molecular therapeutics directly into cells. The system developed by the researchers is called SEND and is programmable to encapsulate and deliver various RNA cargoes directly to the cell. SEND leverages natural proteins found in the human body to form particles similar to a virus that bind RNA.
MIT researchers are working on methods that help people dealing with amputation to control high-tech bionic prosthetic limbs. There are several major challenges to bringing bionic prosthetic limbs to people worldwide, and one of the most challenging is improving the controllability of the prosthetics. Currently, typical prosthetic limbs use electromyography for control.
Researchers at MIT have been conducting an experiment that, on the surface, may not sound particularly useful. The experiment has researchers shooting a high-pressure stream of water through a water droplet. The team says that if the process is precisely and thoroughly understood, the experiment could help scientists learn how to inject fluids, like vaccines, into the skin without using needles.
Drone racing is a relatively new sport, with drones racing around a track with obstacles the drones are required to avoid as quickly as possible. While drone racing is purely for fun, the technology behind avoiding obstacles in these races can also allow drones to avoid obstacles when they're being used for critical and time-sensitive operations such as search and rescue. MIT is trying to make drones capable of flying faster while avoiding obstacles in their way.
Some people have better memories than others, able to recall also the facts and figures with ease. Researchers have been conducting investigations using mouse brains to try and learn more about how the visual cortex stores and remembers individual images. The team found that the brain's memory center is needed to recognize image sequences, but not single sites.
Physicists at MIT have conducted a study on a material called magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene. The material has exhibited signs of a rare type of super connectivity. Physicists at MIT discovered the material exhibits superconductivity at surprisingly high magnetic fields of up to 10 Tesla.
Researchers at MIT have published an interesting study involving how we make memories. The study says quickly expressing learning and memory genes requires brain cells to snap both strands of DNA in many more places and cell types than previously realized. Neurons and other cells inside the brain break open their DNA in numerous locations to provide quick access to genetic instructions for the mechanisms of memory storage.