February 16, 2026

Tuning into the future of collaboration 

When work went remote, the sound of business changed. What began as a scramble to make home offices functional has evolved into a revolution in how people hear and are heard. From education to enterprises, companies across industries have reimagined what clear, reliable communication can mean in a hybrid world. For major audio and communications…

Twitch starts testing a TikTok-like clips feed to boost discovery

August 22, 2023
Twitch’s previously-announced Discovery Feed is now out in the wild as a live test following the feature’s announcement back in July. The new feed will surface short clips from streams in a TikTok-like area within the Twitch app, giving offline creators a way to connect with new viewers without staying live for hours on end. […]

Weak links make strong polymers

August 22, 2023
Chemists from MIT and Duke University have discovered a counterintuitive way to make polymers stronger. Working with polyacrylate elastomers, which are polymer networks made from strands of acrylate held together by linking molecules, the researchers found that they could increase the materials’ resistance to tearing up to nearly tenfold by using a weaker type of…

Diaper genius

August 22, 2023
By infusing a salt into a material used in disposable diapers, MIT engineers have synthesized a superabsorbent gel that can soak up a record amount of moisture from even the driest air, offering a possible way to harvest drinkable water. The transparent, rubbery material combines the advantages of lithium chloride, a salt that can absorb…

Smart sutures for better healing

August 22, 2023
Inspired by a technology developed thousands of years ago, MIT engineers have designed “smart” sutures that can not only hold tissue in place but also detect inflammation and release drugs. The new sutures are derived from animal tissue, similar to the “catgut” sutures first used by the ancient Romans. Catgut—which is made from strands of…

Large language models may speed drug discovery

August 22, 2023
Computational models have been a major time saver when it comes to predicting which protein molecules could make effective drugs, but many of those methods themselves take a lot of time and computing power.  Now researchers at MIT and Tufts have devised an alternative approach based on an algorithm known as a large language model,…

Like palm oil, but better for the planet

August 22, 2023
Palm oil is used in everything from soaps and cosmetics to sauces and crackers, but its production can be environmentally devastating. Producers burn down rainforests and swamps to make way for plantations, decimating wildlife habitats and producing staggering greenhouse-gas emissions. A company started by MIT classmates has used synthetic biology to develop an alternative. David…