It’s an old joke that many fusion scientists have grown tired of hearing: Practical nuclear fusion power plants are just 30 years away - and always will be. But now, finally, the joke may no longer be true: Advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak fusion reactor - and it’s one that might be realized in as little as a decade, they say.

Equipped with large pincers or claws, robots on a factory floor are designed to perform simple manoeuvres, such as grabbing an object, and placing it somewhere else in an assembly line. More complex movements, such as adjusting the grasp on an object, are still out of reach for many industrial robots.

In the battle against cancer, which kills nearly 8 million people worldwide each year, doctors have in their arsenal many powerful weapons, including various forms of chemotherapy and radiation. What they lack, however, is good reconnaissance, a reliable way to obtain real-time data about how well a particular therapy is working for any given patient.

One big problem faced by electrodes in rechargeable batteries, as they go through repeated cycles of charging and discharging, is that they must expand and shrink during each cycle, sometimes doubling in volume, and then shrinking back. This can lead to repeated shedding and reformation of its ‘skin’ layer that consumes lithium irreversibly, degrading the battery’s performance over time.

Part of a 1929 prediction by physicist Hermann Weyl - of a kind of massless particle that features a singular point in its energy spectrum called the ‘Weyl point’ - has finally been confirmed by direct observation for the first time, says an international team of physicists led by researchers at MIT. The finding could lead to new kinds of high-power single-mode lasers and other optical devices, the team says.

For several years now, the research groups of MIT professors of computer science and engineering William Freeman and Frédo Durand have been investigating techniques for amplifying movements captured by video but indiscernible to the human eye. Versions of their algorithms can make the human pulse visible and even recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of objects filmed through soundproof glass.

At the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, MIT researchers presented a printable origami robot, which can fold itself up from a flat sheet of plastic when heated. Weighing only a third of a gram, the robot can swim, climb an incline, traverse rough terrain, as well as carry a load twice its weight. Other than the self-folding plastic sheet, the robot’s only component is a permanent magnet affixed to its back. Its motions ar...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) chemists have developed nanoparticles that can simultaneously perform Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and fluorescent imaging in living animals. Such particles could help scientists to track specific molecules produced in the body, monitor a tumor’s environment, or determine whether drugs have successfully reached their targets.

At the Association for Computing Machinery’s Programming Language Design and Implementation conference this month, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers presented a new system that repairs dangerous software bugs by automatically importing functionality from other, more secure applications.

The days of wasting condiments - and other products - that stick stubbornly to the sides of their bottles may be gone, thanks to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spinout LiquiGlide, which has licensed its nonstick coating to a major company. Developed in 2009 by MIT’s Kripa Varanasi and David Smith, LiquiGlide is a liquid-impregnated coating that acts as a slippery barrier between a surface and a viscous liquid.

Instruments that measure the properties of light, known as spectrometers, are widely used in physical, chemical, and biological research. These devices are usually too large to be portable, but Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists have now shown they can create spectrometers small enough to fit inside a smartphone camera, using tiny semiconductor nanoparticles called quantum dots.

Physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an experimental technique to simulate friction at the nanoscale. Using their technique, the researchers are able to directly observe individual atoms at the interface of two surfaces and manipulate their arrangement, tuning the amount of friction between the surfaces. By changing the spacing of atoms on one surface, they observed a point at which friction disappears.

More than 100 drugs are approved for cancer treatment, but predicting which ones will help a particular patient is an inexact science at best. A device developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may change that. The implantable device, about the size of the grain of rice, can carry small doses of up to 30 different drugs. After implanting it in a tumour and letting the drugs diffuse into the tissue, researchers can measure ...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) chemists have devised an inexpensive, portable sensor that can detect gases emitted by rotting meat, allowing consumers to determine whether the meat in their grocery store or refrigerator is safe to eat. According to Institute of Mechanical Engineers research published in the Guardian, a staggering 30-50% of the world's food (1.2-2bn tonnes) is thrown away without ever reaching a plate.

In a broad assessment of the status and prospects of solar photovoltaic technology, MIT researchers say that it is ‘one of the few renewable resources with both the scalability and the technological maturity to meet growing global demand for energy.’ Use of solar photovoltaics has been growing at a phenomenal rate: worldwide installed capacity has seen sustained growth averaging 43% per year since 2000.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University have developed a type of solar cell that combines two different layers of sunlight-absorbing material in order to harvest a broader range of the sun’s energy. The development could lead to photovoltaic cells that are more efficient than those currently used in solar-power installations, the researchers say.

Silicon’s crown is under threat: the semiconductor’s days as the king of microchips for computers and smart devices could be numbered, thanks to the development of the smallest transistor ever to be built from a rival material, indium gallium arsenide. The compound transistor, built by a team in MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories, performs well despite being just 22 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in length.

Films made of semiconductor nanocrystals — tiny crystals measuring just a few billionths of a meter across — are seen as a promising new material for a wide range of applications. Nanocrystals could be used in electronic or photonic circuits, detectors for biomolecules, or the glowing pixels on high-resolution display screens. They also hold promise for more efficient solar cells.

Researchers at MIT have found a new way of making complex three-dimensional structures using self-assembling polymer materials that form tiny wires and junctions. The work has the potential to usher in a new generation of microchips and other devices made up of submicroscopic features. The research is published this week in the journal Science.