Wireless Design and Development

Thanks to fruitful collaboration between language scholars and machine learning specialists, a new application developed by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland and Linnaeus University in Sweden can detect Twitter bots independent of the language used. In recent years, big data from various social media applications have turned the web into a user-generated repository of information…

Speculative memory side-channel attacks are security vulnerabilities in computers for which no efficient solutions have been found. Existing solutions only address specific security threats without solving the underlying issue. Speculative side-channel attacks exploit a fundamental functionality in microprocessors to expose security vulnerabilities. The first such security threats, Meltdown and Spectre, were announced last year, but…

A new energy-efficient data routing algorithm developed by an international team could keep unmanned aerial vehicle swarms flying — and helping — longer, report an international team of researchers this month in the journal Chaos, from AIP Publishing.  UAV swarms are cooperative, intercommunicating groups of UAVs used for a wide and growing variety of civilian and…

Previous research has shown that falcons intercept prey using the same guidance law as homing missiles, called proportional navigation. This guidance law is optimal against smoothly-manoeuvring aerial targets, but is prone to being thrown off by the zigzagging manoeuvres of terrestrial prey like hares or jackrabbits, and will not necessarily lead to a feasible flight…

How can you send documents, watch educational videos or work collaboratively in regions where there is no internet coverage or electricity? These were the challenging questions taken up by researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, who have developed a standalone box, known as the Beekee Box, that can generate a wireless network so…

Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have helped to overturn almost a century of galaxy classification, in a new study using data from the longstanding Galaxy Zoo project. The new investigation, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, uses classifications of over 6000 galaxies to reveal that “well known” correlations between different features are…

Uber and other companies have a new place to test their driverless—and pilotless—technology in Fort Worth. The well-known ride-sharing company—which aims to develop an Uber Elevate air taxi system at DFW Airport and Frisco by 2023—is among the key players in a new mobility innovation zone at Fort Worth’s Alliance Airport. Hillwood, the company that…

As driverless cars become more capable and more common, they will change people’s travel habits not only around their own communities but across much larger distances. Our research has revealed just how much people’s travel preferences could shift, and found a new potential challenge to the airline industry. Imagine someone who lives in Atlanta and needs…

The laser that zaps rocks on Mars is commanded by a talented group of engineers and scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory—who also happen to all be women, a rarity in the engineering field. “It’s unusual, simply because engineering still tends to be male-dominated,” said Nina Lanza, a planetary scientist on the team who has…

Sam Gikandi ’05 SM ’06 and Eston Kimani ’05 have always believed in the potential of Africa’s entrepreneurial community. Their years at MIT, beginning in 2001 when they left their home country of Kenya, only reinforced that belief. Through the MIT-Africa initiative and other campus programs that allowed them to work in regions across the…