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A boost for manufacturing

John Hart, a co-director of MIT’s Initiative for New ManufacturingM SCOTT BRAUER After all, Love and his colleagues created a new method for making batches of certain types of drugs. That’s manufacturing;... Read more »

Vine-inspired robot fingers can reach out and grab someone

The new bot consists of a pressurized box from which long, vine-like tubes inflate and grow. As they extend, the vines twist and coil around the object before continuing back toward the... Read more »

Reformulated antibodies could be injected for easier treatment

In 2023, Doyle’s lab developed a way to generated highly concentrated antibody formulations by encapsulating them into hydrogel particles. However, that requires centrifugation, a step that would be difficult to scale up... Read more »

A I-designed proteins may help spot cancer

Sangeeta Bhatia, SM ’93, PhD ’97, a senior author of a paper on the work with her former student Ava Amini ’16, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, led the MIT team... Read more »

A new way to rejuvenate the immune system

As people age, their immune function weakens. Owing to shrinkage of the thymus, where T cells normally mature and diversify, populations of these immune cells become smaller and can’t react to pathogens... Read more »

A retinal reboot for amblyopia

Bear’s team, which has been studying amblyopia for decades, had previously shown that this effect could be achieved by anesthetizing both eyes or the non-­amblyopic eye, analogous to having a child wear... Read more »

Just pull a string to turn these tile patterns into useful 3D structures

The algorithm uses a two-step method to find the optimal path through the tile pattern for a string that can be tightened to actuate the structure. It computes the minimum number of... Read more »

The Download: radioactive rhinos, and the rise and rise of peptides

Every year, poachers shoot hundreds of rhinos, fishing crews haul millions of sharks out of protected seas, and smugglers carry countless animals and plants across borders. This illegal activity is incredibly hard... Read more »

Why conservationists are making rhinos radioactive

But establishing these reserves is just one step. Enforcing their protection is another matter. And for many marine reserves—especially those in the Global South—there is no real way to do that, says... Read more »

We’re putting more stuff into space than ever. Here’s what’s up there.

Earth’s a medium-size rock with some water on top, enveloped by gases that keep everything that lives here alive. Just at the edge of that envelope begins a thin but dense layer... Read more »