A new study by MIT researchers finds that the growing practice of compiling massive, anonymized datasets about people’s movement patterns is a double-edged sword: While it can provide deep insights into human behavior for research, it could also put people’s private data at risk.

It's easy to take a lot for granted. Scientists do this when they study stress, the force per unit area on an object. Scientists handle stress mathematically by assuming it to have symmetry, but new supercomputer simulations show that at the atomic level, material stress doesn't behave symmetrically. The findings could help scientists design new materials such as glass or metal that doesn't ice up.