Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Videos & Latest Coverage

Title: GelSight sensor gives robots touch
Runtime: 1:45
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Researchers at MIT and Northeastern University have equipped a robot with a novel tactile sensor that lets it grasp a USB cable and insert it into a USB port. (Learn more about the sensor: http://bit.ly/1uNmcft)

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Computer renderings courtesy of Rui Li

Title: Synthetic squid skin
Runtime: 1:42
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Cephalopods, which include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, are among nature’s most skillful camouflage artists, able to change both the color and texture of their skin within seconds to blend into their surroundings — a capability that engineers have long struggled to duplicate in synthetic materials. (Learn more: http://mitsha.re/1o3Ensl)

Now, a team of researchers has come closer than ever to achieving that goal, creating a flexible material that can change its color or fluorescence and its texture at the same time, on demand, under remote control.

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Synthetic skin simulations courtesy of the researchers

Title: MIT Robotic Cheetah
Runtime: 2:34
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: MIT researchers have developed an algorithm for bounding that they've successfully implemented in a robotic cheetah. (Learn more: http://mitsha.re/YCipV)

The MIT Cheetah 2 contains the custom electric motor designed by Jeffrey Lang, the Vitesse Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT and the amplifier designed by David Otten, a principal research engineer in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics.

This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT

Additional footage: Hae-Won Park and José-Luis Olivares
Stock media provided by Pond5.com
Music sampled from "Spooky" by Alastair Cameron
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ala...
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

Title: Wrinkles in time
Runtime: 0:33
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: MIT researchers have identified a mechanism by which tiny, millimeter-wide wrinkles embedded within ancient rocks may have formed. (Learn more about the mechanism:http://bit.ly/1wIwMaQ)

In this controlled experiment, you can see the formation of ridges. Wave conditions were kept constant during the experiment, and the view is centered in the middle of the tank where orbital amplitudes are about 10 mm. Microbial mat fragments were added to the tank approximately half an hour into the experiment. Note that sediments do not move in the absence of mat fragments, and that ridges form in about 1 hour.

Video courtesy of the researchers.

Title: Grabbing space debris
Runtime: 2:12
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: MIT researchers tested an algorithm for gauging the rotation of objects in zero gravity using only visual information, aboard the International Space Station (Learn more about the experiment: http://bit.ly/1osvusc)

Understanding how objects are spinning in space, where their centers of mass are, and how their mass is distributed is crucial to any space mission. From cleaning up debris to landing a demolition crew on a comet.

Here we see the tracked features and dense reconstructed model for three tests on the ISS where the object is spinning about the major, minor and intermediate axes respectively.

Video courtesy of the researchers.

Title: Corals as engineers
Runtime: 1:44
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Scientists at MIT and the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) in Israel have found that corals, long believed to be passive organisms relying entirely on ocean currents to deliver nutrients, are actually quite active, engineering their environment producing strong swirls of water that draw nutrients toward the coral, while driving potentially toxic waste products away. (Learn more: http://bit.ly/1ufbfTB)

Video produced and edited by Melanie Gonick, MIT News

Video clips in order of appearance: "Vortical ciliary flows actively enhance mass transport in reef corals",Orr H. Shapiro, Vicente I. Fernandez, Melissa S. Garren, Jeffrey S. Guasto, François P. Debaillon-Vesque, Esti Kramarski-Winter, Assaf Vardi, Roman Stocker, PNAS, 2014; DOI number 10.1073/pnas.1323094111

"Coral cilia", Orr Shapiro, Assaf Vardi, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel; Vicente Fernandez, Roman Stocker, MIT, USA.

"Vortical ciliary flows actively enhance mass tra...

Title: Sorting cells with sound waves
Runtime: 1:48
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Researchers from MIT, Pennsylvania State University, and Carnegie Mellon University have devised a new way to separate cells by exposing them to sound waves as they flow through a tiny channel. (Learn more about the device: http://bit.ly/1wwDlxV)

Their device, about the size of a dime, could be used to detect the extremely rare tumor cells that circulate in cancer patients’ blood, helping doctors predict whether a tumor is going to spread.

Video produced and edited by Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Video clips provided by Ming Dao

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: MIT President L. Rafael Reif

Title: ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: MIT President L. Rafael Reif
Runtime: 5:11
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: This morning, MIT President L. Rafael Reif accepted a double #IceBucketChallenge from Harvard President Drew Faust and the MIT Edgerton Center. The ice bucket challenge is raising funds to help scientists research the causes of and potential treatments for ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

President Reif invited the MIT community to participate, and he dedicated the event to Karolina Fraczkowska '01, whose husband recently died of the disease.

Reif now challenges Shruti Sharma, president of the MIT Undergraduate Association; Kendall Nowocin, president of the MIT Graduate Student Council; Thomas Rosenbaum, president of the California Institute of Technology; Christina Paxson, president of Brown University; and Nicholas Dirks, chancellor of UC Berkeley.

LLRISE: Building radars at Lincoln Laboratory

Title: LLRISE: Building radars at Lincoln Laboratory
Runtime: 4:21
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: The Lincoln Laboratory Radar Introduction for Student Engineers (LLRISE) program is a summer workshop teaching students how to build small radar systems. (Learn more about LLRISE and Lincoln Laboratory: http://goo.gl/Q52pGc)

This summer STEM program is a two-week residential project-based enrichment program for outstanding students going into their senior year of high school.

Throughout LLRISE students will be challenged to build a Doppler and range radar by using creative problem-solving strategies. This hands-on program allows students to work in a state-of-the-art laboratory with scientists and engineers who are experts in their field.

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Additional footage: Trevor Chamberlain, Lincoln Laboratory

Title: Magnetic Hair
Runtime: 1:29
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: MIT engineers have fabricated a new elastic material coated with microscopic, hairlike structures that tilt in response to a magnetic field. (Learn more about these structures: http://bit.ly/1y2E8SX)

Depending on the field's orientation, the microhairs can tilt to form a path through which fluid can flow; the material can even direct water upward, against gravity.

Video produced and edited by Melanie Gonick/MIT News
Video clips courtesy of the researchers

Title: Surfaces can control what's on them
Runtime: 0:44
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Researchers at MIT and in Saudi Arabia have developed a new way of making surfaces that can actively control how fluids or particles move across them. (Learn more about these "active" surfaces: http://bit.ly/1nOQzAD)

The work might enable new kinds of biomedical or microfluidic devices, or solar panels that could automatically clean themselves of dust and grit.

Video produced and edited by Melanie Gonick
Footage courtesy of the researchers

Music sampled from: "Light Thought var 2" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Title: Vision Correcting Displays
Runtime: 2:29
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Researchers at the MIT Media Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have developed a new display technology that automatically corrects for vision defects — no glasses (or contact lenses) required. (Learn more about the display: http://bit.ly/1s6xeuR)

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Additional footage and artist renderings courtesy of Gordon Wetzstein

Title: Bamboo Engineering
Runtime: 2:41
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: MIT scientists, along with architects and wood processors from England and Canada, are looking for ways to turn bamboo into a construction material more akin to wood composites, like plywood. (Learn more: http://bit.ly/WCNN7e)

Such bamboo products are currently being developed by several companies; the MIT project, lead by professor Lorna Gibson, intends to gain a better understanding of these materials, so that bamboo can be more effectively used.

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News

Additional footage courtesy of MyBoringChannel and Frank Ross
(http://myboringchannel.com/)

Music sampled from: Radio Silence
(http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Schemawound/TRANCOUNT/03_Radio_Silence)
Artist/Composer: Schemawound
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Schemawound/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode

Gold nanoparticles easily penetrate cells

Title: Gold nanoparticles easily penetrate cells
Runtime: 1:21
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: A new study from MIT materials scientists reveals that a special class of tiny gold particles can easily slip through cell membranes, making them good candidates to deliver drugs directly to target cells.

Video produced and edited by Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Computer simulations courtesy of Reid Van Lehn

Title: 7 Finger Robot
Runtime: 2:44
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Researchers at MIT have developed a robot that enhances the grasping motion of the human hand. (Learn more: http://bit.ly/1tdPd2t)

The device, worn around one's wrist, works essentially like two extra fingers adjacent to the pinky and thumb. The robot, which the researchers have dubbed "supernumerary robotic fingers," or "SR fingers," consists of actuators linked together to exert forces as strong as those of human fingers during a grasping motion.

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Additional footage courtesy of Faye Wu

Title: Squishy Robots
Runtime: 2:39
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: A new phase-changing material built from wax and foam developed by researchers at MIT is capable of switching between hard and soft states. (Learn more: http://mitne.ws/1wlz4bn)

Robots built from this material would be able to operate more like biological systems with applications ranging from difficult search and rescue operations, squeezing through rubble looking for survivors, to deformable surgical robots that could move through the body to reach a particular point without damaging any of the organs or vessels along the way.

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Additional video clips courtesy of Nadia Cheng

Title: Oil and water
Runtime: 0:26
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Tiny droplets of water, colored blue, are suspended in oil on top of a membrane developed by the MIT team. (Full description at: http://mitne.ws/1lvM4F6)

Thanks to the membrane's tiny pores, with a special coating that attracts water and repels oil, the droplets shrink as they pass through the membrane, ultimately leaving just pure oil behind. A similar membrane with a different coating can do the reverse, allowing oil droplets to pass while blocking water.

Video courtesy of the researchers.

Title: Mathematics at MIT
Runtime: 4:43
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Mathematics has played an important part at MIT since the founding of the Institute. Mathematics occupies a core intellectual position at MIT, an institution that is well known for its leadership in Science and Engineering. (Learn more about the MIT Mathematics: http://math.mit.edu/index.php)

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News

Music sampled from: Her breath (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/arizono_kazuhiro/EPV_070/)
Artist/Composer: Arizono Kazuhiro
http://soundcloud.com/arizono-kazuhiro
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode

Title: Morphable surfaces at MIT
Runtime: 0:28
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: In the lab, the morphable surface developed by the team can have its surface texture changed at will simply by changing the pressure inside, using a pump. When the inside reassure is reduced, the flexible material shrinks, but the outer layer, being stiffer, gets wrinkled as it shrinks, just like a plum drying in the sun to become a prune. Unlike a prune, the material can immediately bounce back to a smooth state when the pressure increases, providing a fully controllable surface texture.

Read more: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/morphable-surfaces-could-cut-air-resistance
Video: Denis Terwagne and Pedro Reis, MIT

All in the Family: One family, eight employees, 85+ years of service

Title: All in the Family: One family, eight employees, 85+ years of service
Runtime: 4:05
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Beginning his career at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1959, Leon Belanger was the first of his family to work at MIT. Over years he has watched family member after family member after family member follow in his footsteps. Eight members of Leon's family have been employees by MIT in one capacity or another, totaling to almost a century of service between them.

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News

Still Images: Courtesy of MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Mark Belanger

Music: July.#4 (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/arizono_kazuhiro/EPV_070/)
Artist/Composer: Arizono Kazuhiro
http://soundcloud.com/arizono-kazuhiro
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode

African Darter Wing Feather Immersed in Water and Oil

Title: African Darter Wing Feather Immersed in Water and Oil
Runtime: 0:27
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Wing feather of an African Darter (Anhinga ruff) is immersed in water (dyed blue) and oil (dyed red). As the feather is pushed down into the liquids, it repels the water (as shown by the downward curve of the water surface), while its surface is wetted by the oil (as shown by the upward curvature).

Video: Justin Kleingarter and Siddarth Srinivasan

Thank you MIT: The Class of 2014 says goodbye

Title: Thank you MIT: The Class of 2014 says goodbye
Runtime: 7:23
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Over the 2013-14 academic year, MIT News profiled several graduating seniors. Here, watch as six of them discuss their time at MIT and what they look forward to in the future.

Read the full profiles:

Justin Bullock: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/student-profile-justin-bullock-0505
Aliya Dincer: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/aliya-dincer-profile-0303
Kate Koch: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/profile-koch-0207
Nathan Kipniss: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/embracing-complexity
Priyanka Saha: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/student-profile-priyanka-saha-0423
Suan Tuang: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/across-an-ocean-finding-his-dream-0221

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Still image of the Great Dome: Francisco Diez

Title: Bake your own robot
Runtime: 0:59
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Printable robots — those that can be assembled from parts produced by 3-D printers — have long been a topic of research in the lab of Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

At this year's IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Rus' group and its collaborators introduce a new wrinkle on the idea: bakable robots.

In two new papers, the researchers demonstrate the promise of printable robotic components that, when heated, automatically fold into prescribed three-dimensional configurations.

Read more: https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/bake-your-own-robot-0530

Video produced and edited by Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Footage courtesy of the researchers.

Title: Ballroom Dancing at MIT
Runtime: 3:32
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: A prominent activity amongst MIT community members is ballroom dancing. At the Institute there are two organizations that comprise ballroom. The MIT Ballroom Dance Club is a recognized student group focused on social dancing. The MIT Ballroom Dance Team focuses more on competitive ballroom dancing with MIT students, alums, and other MIT affiliates. Although they are separate entities on paper, there are a lot of overlap between the two.

MIT Ballroom Dance Team: http://ballroom.mit.edu/
MIT Ballroom Dance Club: http://web.mit.edu/bdclub/

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News

Title: Neuron Activity in 3-D
Runtime: 2:34
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Researchers at MIT and the University of Vienna have created an imaging system that reveals neural activity throughout the brains of living animals. This technique, the first that can generate 3-D movies of entire brains at the millisecond timescale, could help scientists discover how neuronal networks process sensory information and generate behavior.

The team used the new system to simultaneously image the activity of every neuron in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, as well as the entire brain of a zebrafish larva, offering a more complete picture of nervous system activity than has been previously possible.

The new approach, described May 18 in Nature Methods, could also help neuroscientists learn more about the biological basis of brain disorders. "We don't really know, for any brain disorder, the exact set of cells involved," Boyden says. "The ability to survey activity throughout a nervous system may help pinpoint the cells or networks that are involved ...

Floating nuclear plants could withstand earthquakes and tsunamis

Title: Floating nuclear plants could withstand earthquakes and tsunamis
Runtime: 3:11
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: When an earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant complex in 2011, neither the quake nor the inundation caused most of the damage and contamination. Rather, it was the aftereffects — specifically, the lack of cooling for the reactor cores and spent fuel, due to a shutdown of outside power — that caused most of the harm.

A new design for nuclear plants built on floating platforms, modeled after those used for offshore oil drilling, could help avoid such consequences in the future. Such floating plants would be designed to be automatically flooded by the surrounding seawater in a worst-case scenario, providing sufficient cooling to indefinitely prevent any melting of fuel rods, or escape of radioactive material.

The concept is being presented this week at the Small Modular Reactors Symposium, hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, by MIT associate professor of nuclear science and engineering (NSE) Jacopo Buongiorno al...

Smartphone-readable microparticles crack down on counterfeiting

Title: Smartphone-readable microparticles crack down on counterfeiting
Runtime: 3:46
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Some 2 to 5 percent of all international trade involves counterfeit goods, according to a 2013 United Nations report. These illicit products — which include electronics, automotive and aircraft parts, pharmaceuticals, and food — can pose safety risks and cost governments and private companies hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Many strategies have been developed to try to label legitimate products and prevent illegal trade — but these tags are often too easy to fake, are unreliable, or cost too much to implement, according to MIT researchers who have developed a new alternative.

Led by MIT chemical engineering professor Patrick Doyle and Lincoln Laboratory technical staff member Albert Swiston, the researchers have invented a new type of tiny, smartphone-readable particle that they believe could be deployed to help authenticate currency, electronic parts, and luxury goods, among other products. The particles, which are invisible to the naked eye,...

Title: How the brain pays attention
Runtime: 0:09
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Picking out a face in the crowd is a complicated task: Your brain has to retrieve the memory of the face you're seeking, then hold it in place while scanning the crowd, paying special attention to finding a match.

A new study by MIT neuroscientists reveals how the brain achieves this type of focused attention on faces or other objects: A part of the prefrontal cortex known as the inferior frontal junction (IFJ) controls visual processing areas that are tuned to recognize a specific category of objects, the researchers report in the April 10 online edition of Science.

Scientists know much less about this type of attention, known as object-based attention, than spatial attention, which involves focusing on what's happening in a particular location. However, the new findings suggest that these two types of attention have similar mechanisms involving related brain regions, says Robert Desimone, the Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience, director of MIT's...

Coughs and sneezes travel farther than you think

Title: Coughs and sneezes travel farther than you think
Runtime: 0:04
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: High-speed imaging has helped MIT researchers determine that some droplets from coughs and sneezes may carry much farther than previous studies had estimated. (Learn more: http://news.mit.edu/2014/coughs-and-sneezes-float-farther-you-think).

High speed footage courtesy of Lydia Bourouiba

Autonomous, self-contained soft robotic fish at MIT

Title: Autonomous, self-contained soft robotic fish at MIT
Runtime: 3:11
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Soft robots — which don't just have soft exteriors but are also powered by fluid flowing through flexible channels — have become a sufficiently popular research topic that they now have their own journal, Soft Robotics. In the first issue of that journal, out this month, MIT researchers report the first self-contained autonomous soft robot, a "fish" that can execute an escape maneuver, convulsing its body to change direction, in just 100 milliseconds, or as quickly as a real fish can.

"We're excited about soft robots for a variety of reasons," says Daniela Rus, a professor of computer science and engineering, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and one of the researchers who designed and built the fish. "As robots penetrate the physical world and start interacting with people more and more, it's much easier to make robots safe if their bodies are so wonderfully soft that there's no danger if they whack you."

The robo...

Measuring the migration of river networks

Title: Measuring the migration of river networks
Runtime: 1:48
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Large river networks — such as those that funnel into the Colorado and Mississippi rivers — may seem to be permanent features of a landscape. In fact, many rivers define political boundaries that have been in place for centuries.

But scientists have long suspected that river networks are not as static as they may appear, and have gathered geologic and biological evidence that suggest many rivers have been "rewired," shifting and moving across a landscape over millions of years.

Now researchers at MIT and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) have developed a mapping technique that measures how much a river network is changing, and in what direction it may be moving. Their results are published in this week's issue of Science.

Read more: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/measuring-the-migration-of-a-river-0306.html

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Images and simulations courtesy of Chia-Yu Chen, Liran Gor...

Title: The Foundry at MIT
Runtime: 4:04
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Within the Department of Materials Science and Engineering lives a place where students can come and put their materials knowledge into practice. The Foundry at MIT provides a space for students, faculty and staff to come innovate, create and get their hands dirty in the process.

The Foundry and Forge: http://dmse.mit.edu/resources/foundry-and-forge

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Still images courtesy of Mert C. Flemings

Title: Transparent Displays at MIT
Runtime: 2:44
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Transparent displays have a variety of potential applications — such as the ability to see navigation or dashboard information while looking through the windshield of a car or plane, or to project video onto a window or a pair of eyeglasses. A number of technologies have been developed for such displays, but all have limitations.

Now, researchers at MIT have come up with a new approach that can have significant advantages over existing systems, at least for certain kinds of applications: a wide viewing angle, simplicity of manufacture, and potentially low cost and scalability.

The innovative system is described in a paper published this week in the journal Nature Communications, co-authored by MIT professors Marin Soljačić and John Joannopoulos, graduate student Chia Wei Hsu, and four others.

Read more: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/seeing-things-a-new-transparent-display-system-could-provide-heads-up-data-0121.html

Video: Me...

Title: Internal waves
Runtime: 0:42
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: This animation shows density layers in the South China Sea being perturbed by the regular back-and-forth tidal flow through the Luzon Strait. These leads to large amplitude internal waves (shown in red underwater, and in white when seen from above), being radiated west to the Chinese continental shelf.

Animation courtesy of the researchers.

The FreeD: MIT 'smart tools' meld personal technique with computerized controls

Title: The FreeD: MIT 'smart tools' meld personal technique with computerized controls
Runtime: 2:10
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: It's often easy to tell at a glance the difference between a mass-produced object and one that has been handcrafted: The handmade item is likely to have distinctive imperfections and clear signs of an individual's technique and style.

Now, some researchers at MIT are finding ways to blur those distinctions, making it possible, for example, to sculpt items with those distinctive signs of handicraft, while controlling the outcome so that the object doesn't stray too far from the desired form. They described their work at the recent Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.

Read more:

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Additional footage courtesy of Amit Zoran

Droplets break a theoretical time barrier on bouncing

Title: Droplets break a theoretical time barrier on bouncing
Runtime: 2:35
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Those who study hydrophobic materials — water-shedding surfaces such as those found in nature and created in the laboratory — are familiar with a theoretical limit on the time it takes for a water droplet to bounce away from such a surface. But MIT researchers have now found a way to burst through that perceived barrier, reducing the contact time by at least 40 percent.

Their finding is reported in a paper in the journal Nature co-authored by Kripa Varanasi, the Doherty Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, along with James Bird, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Boston University, former MIT postdoc Rajeev Dhiman, and recent MIT PhD recipient Hyukmin Kwon.

Video clips courtesy of Kripa Varanasi

Title: MIT Community Service Fund
Runtime: 4:31
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: The MIT Community Service Fund (CSF) was established in 1968 by a vote of the faculty to provide financial assistance to support MIT students, faculty, and staff volunteers in community service initiatives. Over 45 years later CSF continues to support existing service projects and allocate funding to new ones.

To make a donation: http://web.mit.edu/community-giving/index.html
For more information: http://csf.mit.edu/

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News

Title: Better batteries through biology
Runtime: 1:25
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Lithium-air batteries have become a hot research area in recent years: They hold the promise of drastically increasing power per battery weight, which could lead, for example, to electric cars with a much greater driving range. But bringing that promise to reality has faced a number of challenges, including the need to develop better, more durable materials for the batteries' electrodes and improving the number of charging-discharging cycles the batteries can withstand.

Now, MIT researchers have found that adding genetically modified viruses to the production of nanowires — wires that are about the width of a red blood cell, and which can serve as one of a battery's electrodes — could help solve some of these problems.

The new work is described in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, co-authored by graduate student Dahyun Oh, professors Angela Belcher and Yang Shao-Horn, and three others. The key to their work was to increase the surface...

Title: Self-steering particles
Runtime: 0:43
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: MIT chemical engineers have designed tiny particles that can "steer" themselves along preprogrammed trajectories and align themselves to flow through the center of a microchannel, making it possible to control the particles' flow through microfluidic devices without applying any external forces.

Such particles could make it more feasible to design lab-on-a-chip devices, which hold potential as portable diagnostic devices for cancer and other diseases. These devices consist of microfluidic channels engraved on tiny chips, but current versions usually require a great deal of extra instrumentation attached to the chip, limiting their portability.

Much of that extra instrumentation is needed to keep the particles flowing single file through the center of the channel, where they can be analyzed. This can be done by applying a magnetic or electric field, or by flowing two streams of liquid along the outer edges of the channel, forcing the particles to stay in the c...

Moon's craters may overstate the intensity of early asteroid impacts

Title: Moon's craters may overstate the intensity of early asteroid impacts
Runtime: 1:29
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Scientists have long thought that such lunar craters arose during a period called the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), about 4 billion years ago. During that time, a hailstorm of giant asteroids pummeled the solar system, slamming into the moon, along with young planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

Evidence for this theoretical period comes mostly from the moon itself. While most traces of Earth's early history have been wiped away by erosion and tectonic activity, the moon remains as a nearby, relatively untouched, and easily observable relic of the early solar system. In particular, scientists have based most of their theories of that period on the impact basins found on the moon's near side — the side always facing the Earth — assuming, from the size of its craters and basins, that the moon and other planets endured impacts from massive asteroids.

But now scientists from MIT, the University of Paris, and elsewhere have found that craters on the n...

Title: Solving chromosomes' structure
Runtime: 1:10
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Scientists first discovered chromosomes in the late 1800s, after the light microscope was invented. Using these microscopes, biologist Walter Flemming observed many tightly wound, elongated structures in cell nuclei. Later, it was found that chromosomes are made from DNA, the cell's genetic material.

Since then, scientists have proposed many possible ways that DNA molecules might fold into 3-D condensed chromosomes. Now, researchers at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Medical School have obtained novel data on the 3-D organization of condensed human chromosomes and
built the first comprehensive model of such chromosomes.

In this model, DNA forms loops that emanate from a flexible scaffold; the loops are tightly compressed along the scaffold. "This is a very efficient way of packing DNA material," says Leonid Mirny, an associate professor of health sciences and technology and physics at MIT and a senior author of a paper describing the findings ...

Title: Explained: Quantum Computing
Runtime: 5:05
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Scott Aaronson explains quantum computing.

Video: Emily Heusted

Title: Explained: Photovoltaics
Runtime: 4:28
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Jeff Grossman explains photovoltaics/solar cells.

Video: Emily Heusted

Title: Explained: Optogenetics
Runtime: 3:52
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Associate Professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences Ed Boyden explains optogenetics and how it is used in neurological research.

Video: Emily Heusted

Title: Self-healing metal
Runtime: 0:08
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: A computer simulation of the molecular stucture of a metal alloy, showing the boundaries between microcystalline grains (white lines forming hexagons), shows a small crack (dark horizontal bar just right of bottom center) that mends itself as the metal is put under stress. This simulation was one of several the MIT researchers used to uncover this new self-healing phenomenon.

Read more: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/tension-can-fuse-metal-1009.html

Simulation courtesy of Guoqiang Xu and Michael Demkowicz

Title: TIM the Beaver: MIT's mascot since 1914
Runtime: 5:26
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: The beaver was chosen as the mascot of Technology because of its remarkable engineering and mechanical skill and its habits of industry. The proposal that the beaver be adapted as the mascot of the Institute was made at the annual dinner of the Technology Club of New York on January 17, 1914. The late President Richard Maclaurin formally accepted the proposal, and at this dinner a group of beavers shown in natural surroundings was presented to the Institute.

Since then TIM has affectionately been accepted as a pillar in the MIT community, showing up at all sorts of events.

Learn more about TIM: http://studentlife.mit.edu/cac/services/mascot-history

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Additional images courtesy of the MIT Museum

Title: Small cubes that self-assemble
Runtime: 4:12
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Known as M-Blocks, the robots are cubes with no external moving parts. Nonetheless, they're able to climb over and around one another, leap through the air, roll across the ground, and even move while suspended upside down from metallic surfaces.

Inside each M-Block is a flywheel that can reach speeds of 20,000 revolutions per minute; when the flywheel is braked, it imparts its angular momentum to the cube. On each edge of an M-Block, and on every face, are cleverly arranged permanent magnets that allow any two cubes to attach to each other.

Read more: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/simple-scheme-for-self-assembling-robots-1004.html

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News

Title: Explained: Exoplanets
Runtime: 3:46
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Researchers at MIT explain what exactly an exoplanet or extrasolar planet is, why we study them and how you can detect them.

Video/animation: Emily Heusted

Title: Charged droplets
Runtime: 0:22
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Droplets falling from a superhydrophobic surface are drawn toward an electrically charged wire, bottom center, demonstrating that they carry an electric charge.

Read more: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/droplets-get-a-charge-out-of-jumping-1002.html

Video courtesy of Nenad Miljkovic

MIT students can fly (in reduced gravity)

Title: MIT students can fly (in reduced gravity)
Runtime: 6:29
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: A team of four undergraduates from MIT were one of six teams who got to fly on NASA's Reduced Gravity Aircraft and test their model spacecraft in microgravity.

Please visit www.nasa.gov to explore other educational opportunities.

Video: Melanie Gonick
Additional footage courtesy of: NASA/JPL

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