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E-scooters as a new micro-mobility service
A new study by scientists from Future Urban Mobility (FM), an interdisciplinary research group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, has found that e-scooters, while considered by some to be a hazard to pedestrians and others, provide an important alternative mode of transit, particularly in urban areas. […]

Portable technology offers boost for nuclear security, arms control
About five years ago, Areg Danagoulian, associate professor in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), became intrigued by a technique developed by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory that uses a neutron beam to identify unknown materials. “They could look into a black box containing uranium and say what kind and how much,” says Danagoulian, […]

Trying to put the brakes on car ownership
To limit pollution and traffic congestion in Beijing, officials in 2011 imposed a citywide restriction on the number of automobiles residents can purchase annually. That policy has helped limit car sales and emissions. But the system has a loophole: Beijing residents have been going elsewhere in China to purchase cars, then bringing them home. As […]

Evaluating the competition between autonomous vehicles and public transit
The rapid advancement of autonomous vehicles technology in recent years has changed transport systems and consumer habits globally. As countries worldwide see a surge in the use of autonomous vehicles, the rise of shared autonomous mobility on demand (AMoD) service is likely to be next on the cards. Public transit, a critical component of urban […]

Study reveals a universal travel pattern across four continents
What explains how often people travel to a particular place? Your intuition might suggest that distance is a key factor, but empirical evidence can help urban studies researchers answer the question more definitively. A new paper by an MIT team, drawing on global data, finds that people visit places more frequently when they have to […]

Materials breakthrough enables twistronics for bulk systems
Researchers from the Low Energy Electronic Systems (LEES) interdisciplinary research group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, together with MIT and National University of Singapore (NUS), have discovered a new way to control light emission from materials. Controlling the properties of materials has been the driving force […]

Mobilizing the masses, one person at a time
Collective action can lead to fundamental change in societies, giving a voice to marginalized citizens and creating opportunities for greater political and economic equity. But for it to work, numbers matter. So Gabriel Nahmias is asking, “How do we get more people to engage in politics, and then how do we get those who are […]

SMART breakthrough uses artificial neural networks to enhance travel behavior research
Researchers at the Future Urban Mobility (FM) interdisciplinary research group at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, have created a synthetic framework known as theory-based residual neural network (TB-ResNet), which combines discrete choice models (DCMs) and deep neural networks (DNNs), also known as deep learning, to improve individual decision-making […]

China’s transition to electric vehicles
In recent decades, China’s rapid economic growth has enabled more and more consumers to buy their own cars. The result has been improved mobility and the largest automotive market in the world — but also serious urban air pollution, high greenhouse gas emissions, and growing dependence on oil imports. To counteract those troubling trends, the […]

SMART investigates the science behind varying performance of different colored LEDs
Researchers from the Low Energy Electronic Systems (LEES) interdisciplinary research group at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, together with MIT and National University of Singapore (NUS), have found a method to quantify the distribution of compositional fluctuations in the indium gallium nitride (InGaN) quantum wells at different indium […]