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Science & Technology
Museum removes Egyptian body parts from galleries
The Chau Chak Wing Museum has this week removed unwrapped mummified body parts from its Egyptian galleries.
The University of Sydney's museum is home to Australia’s largest permanent collection of Egyptian antiquities, a…
New privacy-preserving robotic cameras obscure images beyond human recognition
From robotic vacuum cleaners and smart fridges to baby monitors and delivery drones, the smart devices being increasingly welcomed into our homes and workplaces use vision to take in their surroundings, taking videos and images of our…
For MIT students, there is much to learn from crafting a chair
Design spans disciplines and schools at MIT as a versatile mode of inquiry. Whether software, furniture, robots, or consumer products, design classes at MIT guide students through the iterative process of ideation, planning, and…
Engineering household robots to have a little common sense
From wiping up spills to serving up food, robots are being taught to carry out increasingly complicated household tasks. Many such home-bot trainees are learning through imitation; they are programmed to copy the motions that a…
MIT-derived algorithm helps forecast the frequency of extreme weather
To assess a community’s risk of extreme weather, policymakers rely first on global climate models that can be run decades, and even centuries, forward in time, but only at a coarse resolution. These models might be used to gauge,…
Artificial reef designed by MIT engineers could protect marine life, reduce storm damage
The beautiful, gnarled, nooked-and-crannied reefs that surround tropical islands serve as a marine refuge and natural buffer against stormy seas. But as the effects of climate change bleach and break down coral reefs around the…
With a new experimental technique, MIT engineers probe the mechanisms of landslides and earthquakes
Granular materials, those made up of individual pieces, whether grains of sand or coffee beans or pebbles, are the most abundant form of solid matter on Earth. The way these materials move and react to external forces can determine…
Second round of seed grants awarded to MIT scholars studying the impact and applications of…
Last summer, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Provost Cynthia Barnhart issued a call for papers to “articulate effective roadmaps, policy recommendations, and calls for action across the broad domain of generative AI.” The response to the…
Shining a light on oil fields to make them more sustainable
Operating an oil field is complex and there is a staggeringly long list of things that can go wrong.
One of the most common problems is spills of the salty brine that’s a toxic byproduct of pumping oil. Another is over- or under-pumping…
Persistent “hiccups” in a far-off galaxy draw astronomers to new black hole behavior
At the heart of a far-off galaxy, a supermassive black hole appears to have had a case of the hiccups.
Astronomers from MIT, Italy, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere have found that a previously quiet black hole, which sits at…