Man, MIT is making all of these other places of higher learning look silly. For what seems like the fortieth time this month , scientists at the university have revealed yet another breakthrough that might just change the way we compute in the future. Polyethylene, which is about as common a polymer as they come, could very well become a vital part of the way your next processor is cooled, as MIT boffins have figured out how to cause said polymer to “conduct heat very efficiently in just one direction, unlike metals, which conduct equally well in all directions.” If you’re still struggling to figure out why this matters, have a listen at this: “this may make the new material especially useful for applications where it is important to draw heat away from an object, such as a computer processor chip.” In fact, even Intel is taking notice of the development, though no one’s saying outright when exactly this stuff will leave the lab and hit Dell’s supply chain. There’s no time like the present, guys. [Thanks, Kevin] MIT gurus use polyethylene to suck heat away from your next CPU originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds .

Johnny Cash can’t have known about carbon nanotubes when he sang about rings of fire, but MIT scientists have shown how they can create electrical current—about 100 times as much energy per unit of weight as lithium-ion batteries. The new experiments involved nanotubes, or submicroscopic structures just a few billionths of a meter in diameter, that can conduct both electricity and heat. Engineers coated the nanotubes with reactive fuel that produces heat by decomposing, and then ignited it with laser beams or high-voltage sparks. That set off a fast-moving heat wave that traveled through the nanotube’s hollow cylinder 10,000 times faster than in the reactive fuel itself, and reached a temperature of 4,940 degrees F (3,000 Kelvin).

Members of MIT’s Bits and Atoms lab visited Afghanistan some time ago. While there, they showed locals how to turn pieces of board, wire, a plastic tub and some cans into reflectors for a wireless network. The result? Fab Fi. The project resulted in 25 simultaneous live nodes being up in the city of Jalalabad and residents being able to enjoy a stable connection all over the place. Locals are even expanding the network by adding more reflectors and routers.

The compound sketched here is acetaminophen. Most wouldn’t know that offhand and might struggle through messy Google searches in an attempt to find out. But what if our computers understood the sketch and we just had to voice our question? Some folks at MIT figured out a way to turn what sounds like a sci-fi fantasy setup into reality. You grab a tablet computer, a smart whiteboard , or another device which allows for stylus-based input and draw out a molecule, a compound, or a circuit design. Then you ask your computer whether such an object exists anywhere in a database or on the Internet and if so, to identify it.

A gaggle of MIT inventors are presently working to create a swarm of micro LED-equipped heli-robots that would hover autonomously in the sky and create massive works of floating 3D artwork. The coming apocalypse, it just got prettier! The program, called Flyfire, would sync up hundreds (and thousands?) of tiny helicopter robots to create, say, that mysterious Mona Lisa smile in the dark night air. Like in this concept video: Then, the little guys would descend on our villages like medieval locusts and consume us for the organic, energy food that we are. Luckily for humanity, MIT could only manage to get a few Flyfire robots aloft at any one time. Only in simulations are they able to produce works of art, like the Mona Lisa, that would require thousands of these little buggers. Eventually, they hope to scale up

Wireless power ? Nothing new. It’s been around for at least 100 years, although only recently has it reached the point where a truly wireless future was believed possible. Now, an update of sorts from MIT WiTricity means it’s even closer. Previously, an MIT WiTricity team, led by physicist Marin Soljacic, powered a 60-watt light bulb from across the room using a magnetic coil. That was 2007.

Sure, this ain’t the first time that Seagate’s allegedly run afoul of the law , but this tale will definitely have you breathlessly demanding more (you know, if patent infringement is exciting to you — which would actually be pretty weird). Way back in July 2000, Convolve (an M.I.T. spin-off formed to market the school’s hard drive noise reduction research) sued Seagate for using patented tech in its Sound Barrier Technology — with the end result being that Seagate drives no longer support automatic acoustic management. But that isn’t the exciting part. In a dramatic turn reported by The New York Times , a former Seagate employee named Paul A. Galloway has apparently provided “an eyewitness account” of what went down, including the theft of info obtained in a meeting between the two companies held in 1998 and 1999 and the destruction of blueprints relating to Convolve’s technology.

Today at the COP 15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, M.I.T. students introduced the technologically advanced Copenhagen Wheel . In addition to including various sensors and Bluetooth capability, the tire stores kinetic energy from braking for a later burst of speed. The makers of the Copenhagen Wheel from M.I.T.’s SENSEable City Laboratory claim that the new features mark the advent of “Biking 2.0,” a new era based on smarter bikes and easier rides. The wheel is certainly a step in that direction; it includes sensors for detecting distance, speed, direction, all of which are beamed via Bluetooth to the rider’s iPhone

Forget multitouch; it’s for grandmas and Luddites. The MIT Media Lab’s new bi-directional (BIDI) display that reads your gestures with embedded optical sensors ? That’s how we roll now. The technology might seem similar to Project Natal , since it gives you control over objects on a display based on your movements. It differs, though, in that the optical sensors are actually tracking what you’re doing through the LCD, which alternates between the image you see on the screen and a pattern of black and white squares that allow light through, providing BIDI information about what’s physically happening in front of it. It’s the first display that’s able to look at you at the same time you look at it, which means the whole system could also be turned into a high-resolution camera

After 50 years and countless dead ends, incremental progress, and modest breakthroughs, artificial intelligence researchers are asking for a do-over. The $5 million Mind Machine Project (MMP), a patchwork team of two dozen academics, students and researchers, intends to go back to the discipline’s beginnings, rebuilding the field from the ground up. With 20/20 hindsight, a few generations worth of experience, and better, faster technology, this time researchers in AI — an ambiguous field to begin with — plan to get things right. The study of AI is a half a century old, beginning with lofty expectations at a 1956 conference but quickly fragmenting into different specializations and sub-fields. The MMP wants to roll back the clock, fixing early assumptions that are now foundations of the field and redefining what the objectives of AI research should be. The fundamental problem, it seems, is that the mind, memory and body function both together and separately to solve any number of problems, and the way they work together (and alone) varies from problem to problem