Thermal batteries can efficiently store energy as heat. But building them requires a carefully designed system with materials that can withstand cycles of extremely high temperatures, without succumbing to problems like corrosion, thermal expansion, and structural fatigue.Many thermal battery systems move high-temperature gas or molten salt around through metal pipes. Fourth Power, founded by MIT Professor Asegun Henry, is turning these materials inside out, using molten metal to transport the heat, which is stored in carbon bricks.“The idea was, instead of making the system from metal, let’s move liquid metals,” says Henry SM ’06, PhD ’09.Henry’s approach earned him a…

Each April in Japan, people participate in a tradition called “hanami,” or cherry-blossom viewing, where they picnic under the blooming trees. The tradition has a second purpose: The presence of people at these gatherings, often by water, helps solidify riverbanks and protect them from spring floods. The celebration has a dual purpose, by addressing, however incrementally, the threat of natural disaster.The practice of creating things that also protect against disasters can be seen all over Japan, where many new or renovated school buildings have design features unfamiliar to students elsewhere. In Tokyo, one elementary school has a roof swimming pool…

Joseph Paradiso thinks that the most engaging research questions usually span disciplines. Paradiso was trained as a physicist and completed his PhD in experimental high-energy physics at MIT in 1981. His father was a photographer and filmmaker working at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and the MITRE Corporation, so he grew up in a house where artists, scientists, and engineers regularly gathered and interesting music was always playing. That mix of influences led him to the MIT Media Lab, where he is the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Professor, academic head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, and director of the Responsive Environments research group.At…

Young adults growing up in the attention economy — preparing for adult life, with social media and chatbots competing for their attention — can easily fall into unhealthy relationships with digital platforms. But what if chatbots weren’t mere distractions from real life? Could they be designed humanely, as moral partners whose digital goal is to be a social guide rather than an addictive escape?At MIT, a friendship between two professors — one an anthropologist, the other a computer scientist — led to creation of an undergraduate class that set out to find the answer to those questions. Combining the two…

Professor John Ochsendorf, a member of the MIT faculty since 2002, is taking on a new role in support of the research efforts of faculty and students in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P). At the start of this year, Ochsendorf was appointed to lead an initiative strengthening research strategy, support, and funding across the school.“John is a bridge-builder by instinct and practice, and we look forward to the bridges he will build between our school and industry, our school and MIT, and between research and pedagogy in our school,” says SA+P Dean Hashim Sarkis. The appointment comes…

A mosquito finds its target with the help of certain cues in its environment, such as a person’s silhouette and the carbon dioxide they exhale.Now researchers at MIT and Georgia Tech have found that these visual and chemical cues help determine the insects’ flight paths. The team has developed the first three-dimensional model of mosquito flight, based on experiments with mosquitoes flying in the presence of different sensory cues.Their model, reported today in the journal Science Advances, identifies three flight patterns that mosquitoes exhibit in response to sensory stimuli.When they can only see a potential target, mosquitoes take a “fly-by”…

One of the symptoms of schizophrenia is difficulty incorporating new information about the world. This can lead people with schizophrenia to struggle with making decisions and, eventually, to lose touch with reality.MIT neuroscientists have now identified a gene mutation that appears to give rise to this type of difficulty. In a study of mice, the researchers found that the mutated gene impairs the function of a brain circuit that is responsible for updating beliefs based on new input.This mutation, in a gene called grin2a, was originally identified in a large-scale screen of patients with schizophrenia. The new study suggests that…

MIT researchers have spent more than a decade studying techniques that enable robots to find and manipulate hidden objects by “seeing” through obstacles. Their methods utilize surface-penetrating wireless signals that reflect off concealed items.Now, the researchers are leveraging generative artificial intelligence models to overcome a longstanding bottleneck that limited the precision of prior approaches. The result is a new method that produces more accurate shape reconstructions, which could improve a robot’s ability to reliably grasp and manipulate objects that are blocked from view.This new technique builds a partial reconstruction of a hidden object from reflected wireless signals and fills in…

Large language models (LLMs) can generate credible but inaccurate responses, so researchers have developed uncertainty quantification methods to check the reliability of predictions. One popular method involves submitting the same prompt multiple times to see if the model generates the same answer.But this method measures self-confidence, and even the most impressive LLM might be confidently wrong. Overconfidence can mislead users about the accuracy of a prediction, which might result in devastating consequences in high-stakes settings like health care or finance. To address this shortcoming, MIT researchers introduced a new method for measuring a different type of uncertainty that more reliably…

Researchers have developed a new method for monitoring iron flux — the movement and rate at which cells take in, store, use and release iron — in stem cells known as mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). The system can provide insights within a minute about a cell’s ability to grow cartilage tissue for cartilage repair. The breakthrough offers a promising pathway toward more consistent and efficient manufacturing of high‑quality MSCs for regenerative therapies to treat joint diseases such as osteoarthritis, chronic joint degeneration conditions, and cartilage injuries.The work was led by researchers from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP) group within…