NEWS RELEASES

MIT physicists captured the first images of individual atoms freely interacting in space. The pictures reveal correlations among the “free-range” particles that until now were predicted but never directly observed.

A new shortcut can help engineers design leak-proof magnetic confinement systems for fusion reactors 10 times as fast as the gold standard method, without sacrificing accuracy. While several other big challenges remain for all magnetic fusion designs, this advance addresses the biggest challenge that’s specific to a type of fusion reactor first proposed in the 1950s, called a stellarator.

By using antibodies from a human donor with a self-induced hyper-immunity to snake venom, scientists have developed the most broadly effective antivenom to date, which is protective against the likes of the black mamba, king cobra, and tiger snakes in mouse trials. Described May 2 in the Cell Press journal Cell, the antivenom combines protective antibodies and a small molecule inhibitor and opens a path toward a universal antiserum.

Scientists at Columbia Engineering have created a machine learning algorithm that can observe the pattern produced by nanocrystals to infer the material’s atomic structure, as described in a new study published in Nature Materials.