MIT

Diamond is an electrical insulator, but maybe not always. A new study calculated that deforming diamond nano-needles would change their conductivity from an insulator to a semiconductor to a highly conductive metal – and back again at will.

One of the ways physicians can gain some forewarning of impending heart failure is through the detection of excess fluid in the lungs, and MIT researchers have developed a new machine learning tool that could offer them a helping hand.

Ultra wide-angle fisheye lenses are typically thick, bulbous contraptions, that can't easily be incorporated into devices such as smartphones. That could be about to change, though, as engineers have now created one that's completely flat.

In order to track how someone's body position changes as they sleep, they typically have to be rigged up with sensors, or filmed by a video camera. MIT's new BodyCompass system, however, offers a third alternative that many people may prefer.

We've already heard about so-called "microneedle patches" that are used for the painless and sustained release of medication through the skin. Now, MIT scientists have adapted the technology for the detection of spoiled food.

Progress on quantum computers may soon stall. Cosmic rays streaming to Earth can interfere with the integrity of information in quantum computers, and now an MIT team has shown just how vulnerable they are and what it might take to protect them.

A new synthetic film developed at MIT could become a powerful tool in helping manage diabetes, with the ability to self-assemble in the intestine to block the absorption of glucose and safely dissolve thereafter. And its potential mightn’t end there.

Derived from living organisms, biologic drugs show a lot of promise. They're often difficult to inject through the skin, though, which is where a new hypodermic needle is designed to come in.

Using a multi-modal approach to data analysis, scientists have identified a subtype of autism linked with a gene cluster known to affect neurodevelopment and lipid metabolism. It's suggested this subtype accounts for nearly seven percent of autism cases.

While bicycle-sharing systems certainly are proving to be popular, they still have a few problems, such as the limited availability of bikes. Researchers at the MIT Media Lab are working on a solution, in the form of the MIT Autonomous Bicycle.

A team of engineers at MIT has discovered why steel razor blades go dull even when cutting hair that's 50 times softer than them. Using an electron microscopic, they found that under the right conditions a single hair can chip a blade edge.

One small, particularly puzzling group of meteorites appears to have been both solid rock and liquid metal. Now scientists have determined that the parent body had a rocky shell and a liquid metal core, which likely generated a strong magnetic field.