Cockroaches are changing up their sex lives, and it’s all our fault. Faced with sweet poisoned bait, roaches first ended up with a mutation that made them hate sweets, hindering their mating strategies. Now, more roach mutations are emerging, showing you can’t keep a good pest down. Like many animals, cockroaches have a sweet tooth, […]
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Probabilistic machine learning methods are becoming increasingly powerful tools in data analysis, informing a range of critical decisions across disciplines and applications, from forecasting election results to predicting the impact of microloans on addressing poverty. This class of methods uses sophisticated concepts from probability theory to handle uncertainty in decision-making. But the math is only […]
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“For so long, the culture has been, in the hospital, that medical emergencies are the true emergencies,” said Dr. Christine M. Crawford, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Boston Medical Center, who was not involved in the study. Mental health training, she said, should be given throughout the hospital, “kind of like how everyone in […]
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Q: If I get less than the recommended seven or eight hours of sleep every night, will a midday nap make up for that loss? Maybe you stayed up too late scrolling TikTok, or tossed and turned because of anxious thoughts. And now you’re wondering if a quick lunchtime nap will give you the energy […]
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Benjamin Franklin invented lightning rods in the 18th century, and the devices have been protecting buildings and people from the destructive forces of lightning ever since. But the details of how lightning rods function are still the subject of scientific research. Although modern lightning protection systems involve extra equipment that makes them more efficient, the […]
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Despite the many advantages of concrete as a modern construction material, including its high strength, low cost, and ease of manufacture, its production currently accounts for approximately 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Recent discoveries by a team at MIT have revealed that introducing new materials into existing concrete manufacturing processes could significantly reduce […]
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It’s a familiar, dreaded scenario in many parts of Africa and Asia: An elephant shows up, wanders into farmers’ fields, and tramples and eats crops. Sometimes farmers fight back, and elephants are killed. That series of events seemed likely to play out recently when a forest elephant bull emerged from the dense jungle surrounding Gbarnjala […]
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High in the treetops of a Chinese rainforest, Ming Guo began to explore the influence of a single cell. A student in China’s Tsinghua University, Guo was studying the mechanical properties of plant cells. As part of his master’s thesis he took on an intriguing question: Does a cell’s physical integrity — its size, shape, […]
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When it came to the treatment of diseases, the ancient Romans had no shortage of magical remedies, several of which involved iron nails. To cure epilepsy, the first-century historian Pliny the Elder advised driving a nail into the ground at the spot where the afflicted person’s head lay at the start of the seizure. The […]
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Researchers have developed a novel combination therapy using the anticancer agent mitoxantrone (MTX), together with an antibiotic, vancomycin, for treating bacteria that are resistant to the vancomycin, which are also known as vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecalis or VRE. The therapy uniquely targets both VRE and the host, stimulating the host immune system to more effectively clear […]
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Microsoft is betting heavily on integrating OpenAI’s GPT language models into its products to compete with Google, and, the company now claims, its AI is an early form of artificial general intelligence (AGI). On Wednesday, Microsoft researchers released a paper on the arXiv preprint server titled “Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4.” […]
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The Environmental Protection Agency is considering new standards for the maximum amount of fine particulate matter, tiny specks about one-thirtieth the diameter of a human hair that can penetrate the lungs, in outdoor air. A recent study examined how the benefits of stricter limits would be distributed across American society. What’s new in this research […]
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Goblin sharks are deep-sea fish whose frightening, protrusile jaws served as an inspiration for the terrifying creatures in the “Alien” movie franchise. Little is known about these elusive sharks, and sightings of them are extraordinarily rare. They are known to live in deep coastal waters all over the world but have never been found in […]
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With the passage of the vernal equinox a few days ago, we in the Northern Hemisphere can look forward to the warmer days of spring while those in the Southern Hemisphere will begin to feel the chill of autumn. The seasons change on other planets too, none more so than Uranus, which is essentially tipped […]
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Average crop yields in Africa are consistently far below those expected, and one significant reason is the prevalence of counterfeit seeds whose germination rates are far lower than those of the genuine ones. The World Bank estimates that as much as half of all seeds sold in some African countries are fake, which could help […]
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It’s no secret that OpenAI’s ChatGPT has some incredible capabilities — for instance, the chatbot can write poetry that resembles Shakespearean sonnets or debug code for a computer program. These abilities are made possible by the massive machine-learning model that ChatGPT is built upon. Researchers have found that when these types of models become large […]
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Three MIT-led teams are among 16 nationwide to receive funding awards to address sustainable materials for global challenges through the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program. Launched in 2019, the program targets solutions to especially compelling societal or scientific challenges at an accelerated pace, by incorporating a multidisciplinary research approach. “Solutions for today’s national-scale societal […]
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In the United States, an estimated 15 million tons of textiles end up in landfills or are burned every year. This waste, amounting to 85 percent of the textiles produced in a year, is a growing environmental problem. In 2022, Massachusetts became the first state to enact a law banning the disposal of textiles in […]
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“MIT is a place where dreams come true,” says César Terrer, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Here at MIT, Terrer says he’s given the resources needed to explore ideas he finds most exciting, and at the top of his list is climate science. In particular, he is interested in […]
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A new research collaboration with The Bahrain Institute for Pearls and Gemstones (DANAT) will seek to develop advanced characterization tools for the analysis of the properties of pearls and to explore technologies to assign unique identifiers to individual pearls. The three-year project will be led by Admir Mašić, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, […]
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If you need proof that climate change has altered the wildlife of the city, look no further than the black vultures soaring above Midtown Manhattan. These hulking, baldheaded scavengers have a wingspan that measures nearly five feet and have traditionally inhabited South America, Central America and the southern United States. But the black vulture seems […]
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For more than a decade, researchers at the New England Aquarium in Boston have been trying to breed some of the most elusive and enchanting fish under the sea. Lacy and delicate, sea dragons live only in the waters along Australia’s southern coast, and their small habitat and limited range make them an ideal candidate […]
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In work that could lead to important new physics with potentially heady applications in computer science and more, MIT scientists have shown that two previously separate fields in condensed matter physics can be combined to yield new, exotic phenomena. The work is theoretical, but the researchers are excited about collaborating with experimentalists to realize the […]
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In Japan, it’s possible to enjoy a coffee while an owl perches on your head, or to sit at a bar where live penguins stare out at you from behind a plexiglass wall. The country’s exotic animal cafes are popular with locals as well as visitors seeking novelty, cuteness and selfies. Customers can even buy […]
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WASHINGTON — Long after the Covid pandemic emerged from Wuhan, the origin of the coronavirus remains a subject of intense scientific scrutiny, and even more intense political debate. A team of researchers has added fuel to the bonfire by presenting data at a World Health Organization meeting suggesting a wild animal known as a raccoon […]
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Few spiders in the United States have a more fearsome reputation than black widows. But throughout the South, the bulbous arachnids with red hourglasses on their bellies are engaged in a lethal competition with the brown widow, a relative from abroad — and they’re losing. This isn’t a case of one species outcompeting another for […]
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An international team of virus experts said on Thursday that they had found genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, linking the coronavirus with raccoon dogs for sale there, adding evidence to the case that the worst pandemic in a century could have been ignited by an infected animal that was being dealt through […]
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“When I talk to scientists about climate change, everyone’s all talked out. Essentially everyone knows, so it’s, ‘Why should I listen to you and your report?’” Samartzis said. “These recordings may not be scientifically sound, but it’s a whole other way of communicating knowledge, a different aperture of experience.” Still, at least one pioneer of […]
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Air pollution is a major public health problem: The World Health Organization has estimated that it leads to over 4 million premature deaths worldwide annually. Still, it is not always extensively measured. But now an MIT research team is rolling out an open-source version of a low-cost, mobile pollution detector that could enable people to […]
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Integrating sensors into rotational mechanisms could make it possible for engineers to build smart hinges that know when a door has been opened, or gears inside a motor that tell a mechanic how fast they are rotating. MIT engineers have now developed a way to easily integrate sensors into these types of mechanisms, with 3D […]
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Using an RNA sensor, MIT engineers have designed a new way to trigger cells to turn on a synthetic gene. Their approach could make it possible to create targeted therapies for cancer and other diseases, by ensuring that synthetic genes are activated only in specific cells. The researchers demonstrated that their sensor could accurately identify […]
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