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MIT students advance solutions for water and food with the help of J-WAFS
For the past decade, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has been instrumental in promoting student engagement across the Institute to help solve the world’s most pressing water and food system challenges. As part of J-WAFS’ central mission of securing the world’s water and food supply, J-WAFS aims to cultivate the […]
A new method to detect dehydration in plants
Have you ever wondered if your plants were dry and dehydrated, or if you’re not watering them enough? Farmers and green-fingered enthusiasts alike may soon have a way to find this out in real-time. Over the past decade, researchers have been working on sensors to detect a wide range of chemical compounds, and a critical […]
Dancing with currents and waves in the Maldives
Any child who’s spent a morning building sandcastles only to watch the afternoon tide ruin them in minutes knows the ocean always wins. Yet, coastal protection strategies have historically focused on battling the sea — attempting to hold back tides and fighting waves and currents by armoring coastlines with jetties and seawalls and taking sand […]
Startup turns mining waste into critical metals for the U.S.
At the heart of the energy transition is a metal transition. Wind farms, solar panels, and electric cars require many times more copper, zinc, and nickel than their gas-powered alternatives. They also require more exotic metals with unique properties, known as rare earth elements, which are essential for the magnets that go into things like […]
Aspiring to sustainable development
In a first for both universities, MIT undergraduates are engaged in research projects at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG), while MIT scholars are collaborating with UVG undergraduates on in-depth field studies in Guatemala. These pilot projects are part of a larger enterprise, called ASPIRE (Achieving Sustainable Partnerships for Innovation, Research, and Entrepreneurship). Funded […]
Atmospheric observations in China show rise in emissions of a potent greenhouse gas
To achieve the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change — limiting the increase in global average surface temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — will require its 196 signatories to dramatically reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Those greenhouse gases differ widely in their global warming potential (GWP), or ability […]
Lessons from Fukushima: Prepare for the unlikely
When a devastating earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the protective systems at the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant complex in Japan in March 2011, it triggered a sequence of events leading to one of the worst releases of radioactive materials in the world to date. Although nuclear energy is having a revival as a low-emissions energy […]
3 Questions: The Climate Project at MIT
MIT is preparing a major campus-wide effort to develop technological, behavioral, and policy solutions to some of the toughest problems now impeding an effective global climate response. The Climate Project at MIT, as the new enterprise is known, includes new arrangements for promoting cross-Institute collaborations and new mechanisms for engaging with outside partners to speed […]
Satellite-based method measures carbon in peat bogs
Peat bogs in the tropics store vast amounts of carbon, but logging, plantations, road building, and other activities have destroyed large swaths of these ecosystems in places like Indonesia and Malaysia. Peat formations are essentially permanently flooded forestland, where dead leaves and branches accumulate because the water table prevents their decomposition. The pileup of organic […]
The City Science Network empowers local communities to collaborate globally
The City Science group at the MIT Media Lab, directed by Principal Research Scientist Kent Larson, launched the City Science Network nine years ago to create sister labs around the world that could share data, code, design ideas, and systems for analysis, simulation, and community engagement. Today, 10 affiliated City Science labs are operating in […]