8+ hour, 27+ min ago   (912+ words) A Colorado native who originally planned to attend college close to home, Sydney Baller decided to come to MIT for the strong academic community. She knew she had found a new home in McCormick Hall after attending its Campus Preview…...

22+ hour, 2+ min ago   (930+ words) In the 20th century, the United States built the world’s dominant manufacturing powerhouse. A thriving middle class grew, well into the 1970s. The U.S. was a beacon of democracy, defeating fascism in World War II and beating back communism and other forms…...

1+ day, 6+ hour ago   (881+ words) A former MIT class project is becoming an $850 million effort to manufacture a new kind of aircraft in Ohio. Electra began as an idea for a hybrid plane that could take off from shorter runways than traditional airplanes but have…...

1+ day, 12+ hour ago   (466+ words) In 2024, landings came in under 750,000 pounds, roughly a quarter of the previous year’s catch. Likewise, the spring 2024 trawl survey documented in the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries Annual Report recorded a historic low in longfin squid biomass, following a record…...

2+ day, 7+ hour ago   (801+ words) Around 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was little more than a giant ball of gas and dust. Over the next few million years, this “solar nebula” underwent a huge transformation, flattening into a disk of matter that then condensed…...

2+ day, 8+ hour ago   (518+ words) Can a city’s seawall stand up to a blockbuster storm? Will a region’s power grid hold against record-breaking heat? And can a town’s fire-fighting resources contain a major wildfire? To answer these questions, communities will first need to know how…...

2+ day, 17+ hour ago   (844+ words) As people age, many cognitive functions tend to decline. Brain scanning studies have revealed corresponding changes in the function of a brain network that is involved in many of these cognitive functions, including working memory and problem-solving. When it comes…...

6+ day, 7+ hour ago   (848+ words) The traditional way of making ammonia, in use for more than a century and accounting for the vast majority of production, is the Haber-Bosch process, which relies on fossil fuels to provide the needed heat. Hydrogen used in the process…...

6+ day, 22+ hour ago   (646+ words) “This is a more intuitive way to command the machine,” says Hermano Krebs, principal research scientist in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “With this new interface, we can eliminate a lot of the mental maps that an operator would need…...

1+ week, 8+ hour ago   (387+ words) Toxoplasma gondii, or Toxoplasma, is a parasite that infects hundreds of millions of people around the world. Although cases are often mild, it can cause severe symptoms in in people with weakened immune systems, and in developing fetuses. It can…...