Subterms
MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation hosted IdeaStream, an annual showcase of technologies being developed across MIT, online for the first time in the event’s 18-year history. Last month, more than 500 people worldwide tuned in each day to view the breakthrough research and to chat with the researchers. Speakers from 19 MIT teams that […] More
From above, Antarctica appears as a massive sheet of white. But if you were to zoom in, you would find that an ice sheet is a complex and dynamic system. In the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), graduate student Meghana Ranganathan studies what controls the speed of ice streams — narrow, fast-flowing […] More
Although global climate models vary in many ways, they agree on this: The Mediterranean region will be significantly drier in coming decades, potentially seeing 40 percent less precipitation during the winter rainy season. An analysis by researchers at MIT has now found the underlying mechanisms that explain the anomalous effects in this region, especially in […] More
It’s easy to think of urban mobility strictly in terms of infrastructure: Does an area have the right rail lines, bus lanes, or bike paths? How much parking is available? How well might autonomous vehicles work? MIT Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao views matters a bit differently, however. To understand urban movement, Zhao believes, we also […] More
About 10 percent of the Earth’s land mass is covered in glaciers, most of which slip slowly across the land over years, carving fjords and trailing rivers in their wake. But about 1 percent of glaciers can suddenly surge, spilling over the land at 10 to 100 times their normal speed. When this happens, a […] More
It was during a cruise in Alaska that Linda Zhong realized that the world didn’t have to be full of plastic. “I grew up in cities, so you’re very used to seeing all kinds of trash everywhere,” says the graduate student in microbiology. Zhong, who is Canadian and lived in Ottawa growing up and in […] More
In less than three decades, most of Southeast Asia’s peatlands have been wholly or partially deforested, drained, and dried out. This has released carbon that accumulated over thousands of years from dead plant matter, and has led to rampant wildfires that spew air pollution and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The startling prevalence of such […] More
How can the world combat the continued rise in global temperatures? How about shading the Earth from a portion of the sun’s heat by injecting the stratosphere with reflective aerosols? After all, volcanoes do essentially the same thing, albeit in short, dramatic bursts: When a Vesuvius erupts, it blasts fine ash into the atmosphere, where […] More
