Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT chemists have designed a sensor that detects tiny quantities of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — chemicals found in food packaging, nonstick cookware, and many other consumer products. These compounds, also…

Tumors can carry mutations in hundreds of different genes, and each of those genes may be mutated in different ways — some mutations simply replace one DNA nucleotide with another, while others insert or delete larger sections of…

More than 20 million Americans undergo colonoscopy screenings every year, and in many of those cases, doctors end up removing polyps that are 2 cm or larger and require additional care. This procedure has greatly reduced the overall…

If a robot traveling to a destination has just two possible paths, it needs only to compare the routes’ travel time and probability of success. But if the robot is traversing a complex environment with many possible paths, choosing…

Many employees believe their counterparts at other firms make less in salary than is actually the case — an assumption that costs them money, according to a study co-authored by MIT scholars. “Workers wrongly anchor…

About 10 percent of human-made mercury emissions into the atmosphere each year are the result of global deforestation, according to a new MIT study. The world’s vegetation, from the Amazon rainforest to the savannahs of…

Two MIT faculty, a principal staff member of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and 13 additional alumni are among the 114 new members and 21 international members elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) on Feb. 6. One of the…

When a human-AI conversation involves many rounds of continuous dialogue, the powerful large language machine-learning models that drive chatbots like ChatGPT sometimes start to collapse, causing the bots’ performance to rapidly…

Wildfires in Southeast Asia significantly affect peoples’ moods, especially if the fires originate outside a person’s own country, according to a new study. The study, which measures sentiment by analyzing large amounts of social media…

Every year, around 50,000 people in the United States experience cardiogenic shock — a life-threatening condition, usually caused by a severe heart attack, in which the heart can’t pump enough blood for the body’s needs. Many of…