It’s well known that the production of cement — the world’s leading construction material — is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 8 percent of all such releases. If cement production were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter. A team of researchers at MIT has come up with […] More
After a nearly five-year effort, fueled by the passionate persistence of faculty and students, the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) began offering a new degree this fall: 22-ENG, a program that offers the same fundamentals in the discipline as Course 22, but with considerably more flexibility in course selection. Institute faculty approved the […] More
An exotic physical phenomenon, involving optical waves, synthetic magnetic fields, and time reversal, has been directly observed for the first time, following decades of attempts. The new finding could lead to realizations of what are known as topological phases, and eventually to advances toward fault-tolerant quantum computers, the researchers say. The new finding involves the […] More
The following letter was sent to the MIT community by president L. Rafael Reif. To the members of the MIT community, In keeping with MIT’s broad and intensive efforts outlined in our Plan for Action on Climate Change, last spring I wrote to let the community know that, this academic year, we will host six […] More
Policies to encourage reductions in greenhouse gas emissions tend to stress the need to switch as many vehicles as possible to electric power. But a new study by MIT and the Ford Motor Company finds that depending on the location, in some cases an equivalent or even bigger reduction in emissions could be achieved by […] More
A novel system developed by MIT researchers automatically “learns” how to schedule data-processing operations across thousands of servers — a task traditionally reserved for imprecise, human-designed algorithms. Doing so could help today’s power-hungry data centers run far more efficiently. Data centers can contain tens of thousands of servers, which constantly run data-processing tasks from developers […] More
Stock market investors often rely on financial risk theories that help them maximize returns while minimizing financial loss due to market fluctuations. These theories help investors maintain a balanced portfolio to ensure they’ll never lose more money than they’re willing to part with at any given time. Inspired by those theories, MIT researchers in collaboration […] More
Reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants is widely considered an essential component of any climate change mitigation plan. Many research efforts focus on developing and deploying carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) systems to keep CO2 emissions from power plants out of the atmosphere. But separating the captured CO2 and converting it back into a gas […] More
