MIT News: top stories

Alan Rogers of MIT's Haystack Observatory co-authored a study that identifies the earliest traces of hydrogen in the universe. The gas is “from 180 million years after the Big Bang,” writes Elise Takahama for The Boston Globe, which suggests that stars would have appeared around this time, creating a “cosmic dawn.”

MIT researchers have “discovered a slight difference in how humans produce the building blocks of DNA compared to how bacteria does it,” writes Fiona McMillan for Forbes. The comparison of human and bacterial enzymes “bodes well for the possible development of new antibiotics,” explains McMillan.

Veil, an incognito browsing system developed at CSAIL, can eliminate trace evidence of internet usage. “Veil takes things further than perhaps any other anonymous browsing method by masking the page you’re viewing not just from would-be attackers, but from your own operating system,” writes Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch.

Senior research scientist Roland Pellenq and his colleagues have found that the layout of a city’s streets and buildings impacts the way it heats up. “Scientists found cities with more geometric, grid-like layouts, such as New York and Chicago, had a greater heat island effect than cities with less uniformity, like London and Boston,” writes Brooks Hays for UPI.