MIT News Newsletter

	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
March 30, 2018
MIT News: top stories
A weekly digest of the Institute’s research and innovation

Scientists report first results from CUORE neutrino experiment

Data could shed light on why the universe has more matter than antimatter.

Paper-folding art inspires better bandages

Cutting kirigami-style slits in stretchy films could make for bandages, heat pads, and wearable electronics that adhere to flexible surfaces.

A new way to find better battery materials

Design principles could point to better electrolytes for next-generation lithium batteries.

Measuring the economy with location data

Startup’s platform crunches anonymized smartphone GPS data to understand how people shop, work, and live.

Understanding the Earth under Hawaii

Study finds lateral variations in composition at a key depth below the island hotspot, provides scientists a new understanding of mantle mixing.

In the Media

Researchers at MIT have developed a “kirigami” film, based off of the ancient paper-folding technique of the same name, that can be used for bandaging tricky areas like the knee or elbow, writes David Grossman for Popular Mechanics. “We are the first group to find, with a systematic mechanism study, that a kirigami design can improve a material’s adhesion,” says postdoc and lead researcher Ruike Zhao.

MIT researchers have developed a new imaging system that could allow autonomous vehicles to see through dense fog, writes Andrew Liszewski of Gizmodo. The laser-based system, which used a new processing algorithm, was able “to clearly see objects 21 centimeters further away than human eyes could discern,” Liszewski writes.

Prof. Evelyn Wang has improved upon a device she debuted last year that can pull water from the air of even the driest climates, reports UPI's Brooks Hays. The team tested the device in Arizona, “in a place that's representative of these arid areas, and [the device] showed that we can actually harvest the water, even in subzero dew points," said Wang.