The fall semester’s final meeting on Dec. 12 had something of a high-stakes feel for members of class 22.033 (Nuclear Science and Engineering Design). “We’re pretty nervous,” said Jared Wilson, a senior majoring in Course 22. With four classmates and a mockup of a fast fission nuclear reactor, Wilson was awaiting the start of their team’s project presentation. […] More
Climate change is causing significant changes to phytoplankton in the world’s oceans, and a new MIT study finds that over the coming decades these changes will affect the ocean’s color, intensifying its blue regions and its green ones. Satellites should detect these changes in hue, providing early warning of wide-scale changes to marine ecosystems. Writing […] More
Developing a perfectly energy-efficient building is relatively easy to do — if you don’t give the building’s occupants any control over their environment. Since nobody wants that kind of building, Professor Christoph Reinhart has focused his career on finding ways to make buildings more energy-efficient while keeping user needs in mind. “At this point in designing buildings, […] More
On a black monitor in a dusty office in MIT’s Green Building, an iceberg the width of three football fields wallows in the shallow, briny waters of the Persian Gulf — also known as the Arabian Gulf — 6,000 miles from its home. Facing the screen is Maryam Rashed Alshehhi, a visiting assistant professor and recent […] More
When it comes to the health of the planet, agriculture and food production play an enormous role. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, roughly 37 percent of land worldwide is used for agriculture and food production, and 11 percent of the Earth’s land surface is used specifically for crop production. […] More
MIT engineers have built a device that soaks up enough heat from the sun to boil water and produce “superheated” steam hotter than 100 degrees Celsius, without any expensive optics. On a sunny day, the structure can passively pump out steam hot enough to sterilize medical equipment, as well as to use in cooking and […] More
“By 2030, there will be a 40 percent gap between water supply and demand. That means that for every five people in this room, only three will have water,” said Mary Conley Egger, the opening keynote speaker at the annual MIT Water Summit. Eggert, vice president of Global Water Works, emphasized those figures to underscore the urgency behind […] More
Plants rely on the energy in sunlight to produce the nutrients they need. But sometimes they absorb more energy than they can use, and that excess can damage critical proteins. To protect themselves, they convert the excess energy into heat and send it back out. Under some conditions, they may reject as much as 70 […] More
