tapping

As our alumni and friends know better than anyone, the intellectual excellence and bold ingenuity of the people of MIT are the Institute’s greatest strength. While IAP supplied its welcome respite, the first part of the year also offered inspiring reminders of MIT’s ability to make a powerful, positive difference in the world. Here are just two examples. The MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative In January, we engaged the MIT community with a day of fascinating panel discussions to launch the MIT Shaping…

Hot on the heels of the successful completion of its grid-connected geothermal power plant in Nevada, Fervo Energy is raising $221 million per SEC documents, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The Houston-based company is one of several enhanced geothermal startups that are racing to tap heat deep in the Earth’s crust. Previous geothermal plants have only scratched the surface by accessing hot springs or shallower rock formations. Fervo uses directional drilling techniques pioneered by the oil…

Black holes are powerful gravitational engines. So you might imagine that there must be a way to extract energy from them given the chance, and you'd be right.Certainly, we could tap into all the heat and kinetic energy of a black hole's accretion disk and jets, but even if all you had was a black hole in empty space, you could still extract energy from a trick known as the Penrose process.First proposed by Roger Penrose in 1971, it is a way to extract rotational energy from a black hole. It uses an effect known as…

On…

James Holden’s label Border Community introduced me to electronic music that I probably would never have listened to otherwise. Over the years, he seems to have moved away from club-based music in favour of a more organic, human sound. It’s been almost 20 years since the creation of Border Community and this album is a celebration of that. Each track feels like a nod to parts of his previous discography. The percussion on most tracks is very faint and makes the album feel like a lost memory. The only track where the beat…

WASHINGTON—President Biden is close to nominating Federal Reserve governor Philip Jefferson to serve as the central bank’s second-in-command and Adriana Kugler, an economist and top World Bank official, to fill a vacancy on the Fed’s board, according to people familiar with the matter. If confirmed, Ms. Kugler, a Colombian-American economist who now serves as the U.S. executive director at the World Bank, would be the first Latino to serve on the board. Mr. Jefferson would be the Fed’s second Black…

Although motorized inline skates are now becoming "a thing," most of them still require users to carry a handheld remote. The JoyErider skates are different, however, in that they're controlled by the user's foot-taps.Manufactured by Chinese tech company Passion Mobility, the JoyEriders were officially announced last month at the Taipei Cycle bicycle show. They're designed for urban commuting.Utilizing the adjustable bindings, users attach the skates to their existing footwear. From there, it's just a matter of tapping…

Mercury can definitely be harmful in large amounts, and detecting its presence in foods or liquids typically requires lab-based tests. A new nanosensor, however, can quickly detect even tiny concentrations of the heavy metal onsite, simply by tapping on samples.The prototype device is being developed by a team of scientists from Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University, led by Prof. Zong-Hong Lin.It utilizes a natural phenomenon called the triboelectric effect, in which certain materials become electrically charged as they…

Apple may look outside of Foxconn for the first time when it comes to the production of the iPhone.According to a new report from analytics firm TrendForce, Foxconn is currently experiencing major shortages in output for the iPhone 14 lineup. Due to COVID restrictions being relaxed and an ongoing labor shortage, the company is struggling to keep up with the demands of the iPhone 14 — especially the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.An outbreak in the city of Zhengzhou, where one of Foxconn's plants is located, has…

Oliver Blume had replaced Herbert Diess at the helm of the German giant in September, after problems dogged the development of a crucial automotive software and led to damaging vehicle recalls. Volkswagen's new boss Oliver Blume will seek to rally the board and shareholders at back-to-back meetings from Thursday to support his strategy on a crucial automotive software that felled his predecessor.…