Latest MIT Stories

MIT researchers have found a way to make solar power perform more efficiently. The team's system produces power using the sun's heat with about eight times the power than previously reported for a solar thermoelectric device. Gang Chen, MIT's Carl Richard Soderberg Professor in Power Engineering and director of the Pappalardo Micro and Nano Engineering Laboratories, said on MIT's website that the concept "is very radical."The new system uses flat, stationary panels similar to...

IRVINE, Calif., May 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Joseph Perry, CEO of FlexEnergy (www.flexenergy.com), a clean tech business with the breakthrough solution to create clean energy with near zero emissions from harmful greenhouse gases, will be a panelist in the upcoming CalTech/MIT Enterprise Forum (www.entforum.caltech.edu). The panel on Renewable Energy and the Smarter Grid: Opportunities for the Entrepreneur, will take place on May 7th 2011 at the California Institute of Technology in...

Maven Wave Launches New Information Technology Spending Index Chicago, IL (PRWEB) May 04, 2011 During the recession, companies cut IT spending as they focused on cost reduction to stop the bleeding in earnings. Doing more with less, businesses put strategic projects on hold. However according to the Maven Wave Partners IT Investment Index (the "MIT Index"), a new bellwether measure of investment in information technology spending, the IT spending squeeze is over. From its low in 3Q...

Researchers at MIT's Media Lab announced on Wednesday that they have developed a new approach to glasses-free 3D technology. The team said they could double the battery life of devices like Nintendo's 3DS portable gaming system without compromising screen brightness or resolution.  The researchers also said that their technique would expand the viewing angle of a 3D screen. According to Doug Lanman, a postdoc in Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar's Camera Culture Group at the Media Lab,...

Landmark International Event Connects MIT Sloan's Leading Research and Education Experts with Top Global CIOs and Business Leaders Cambridge, MA/ Marlborough, MA (PRWEB) May 02, 2011 Unidesk (http://www.unidesk.com) today announced that it has been selected as a finalist in the 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Innovation Showcase (http://www.mitcio.com). The Innovation Showcase highlights ten early stage companies that provide cutting-edge technology and offer new levels of value and...

LONDON, May 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- - Harvard tops first QS World University Rankings(R) for Life Sciences in Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychology - Harvard first and MIT third in medicine following joint stem cell research; Cambridge second after IVF breakthrough - Cambridge beats Oxford but both make top 4 in all subjects - Seven Australian universities in top 50 for Psychology, led by Melbourne (8) - Four Canadian universities in top 50 for Medicine...

Boston College and MIT researchers see broad residential and industrial applicationsHigh-performance nanotech materials arrayed on a flat panel platform demonstrated seven to eight times higher efficiency than previous solar thermoelectric generators, opening up solar-thermal electric power conversion to a broad range of residential and industrial uses, a team of researchers from Boston College and MIT report in the journal Nature Materials.Two technologies have dominated efforts to harness...

MIT reported on Monday that researchers have a used genetically modified virus to produce structures that improve solar-cell efficiency by about one-third. MIT researchers said they have found a way to make significant improvements to the power-conversion efficiency of solar cells by using a tiny virus to perform detailed assembly work at the microscopic level. Sunlight hits a light-harvesting material in a solar cell, which releases electrons that can produce an electric current.  The...

Technique offers detailed view of how RNA levels changeRNA plays a critical role in directing the creation of proteins, but there is more to the life of an RNA molecule than simply carrying DNA's message. One can imagine that an RNA molecule is born, matures, and eventually, meets its demise. Researchers at the Broad have developed an approach that offers many windows into the lifecycle of these essential molecules and will enable other scientists to investigate what happens when something in...

Research refines the tools and techniques to make water available for the world's poorIn the arid Namib Desert on the west coast of Africa, one type of beetle has found a distinctive way of surviving. When the morning fog rolls in, the Stenocara gracilipes species, also known as the Namib Beetle, collects water droplets on its bumpy back, then lets the moisture roll down into its mouth, allowing it to drink in an area devoid of flowing water.What nature has developed, Shreerang Chhatre wants...