The Download: computing’s next leap and permafrost’s climate threat
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in...
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Making the case for context-aware AI
Devavrat: It's a fantastic question. And as you correctly noted, we're at the cusp of becoming experimental to mainstream as...
Three things you should know about permafrost
The great news for both of us is that my colleague James Temple just published two in-depth stories about permafrost....
AI’s hidden storage bill: What inference leaves behind
As inference scales, the data footprint grows with it Traditionally, AI infrastructure conversations have centered on the compute-intensive process of...
We can do impossible things
My brain, throughout my 20-plus-year career as a science and tech journalist, has played host to a near constant tug-of-war...
Nuclear-powered spaceships | MIT Technology Review
Still, developing space propulsion using reactors has been slow going. The US has started—and terminated—several programs looking into it over...
Exercise in a pill | MIT Technology Review
There are regulatory hurdles too. The FDA approves medications to treat diseases, not to enhance wellness, says Thomas Burris, a...
Interspecies communication | MIT Technology Review
There are other hurdles. Many animals communicate not just through sound but through visual cues, touch, pheromones, or a combination...
Cleaning up PFAS | MIT Technology Review
The PFAS monster is also a moving target. New compounds are still being created and used. There are more than...
Eliminating traffic deaths | MIT Technology Review
Cheap and proven traffic-calming opportunities abound—from using planters to tighten intersections to lowering speed limits—but government logjams and red tape...
The Download: introducing the Impossible issue
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in...
Solid-state batteries | MIT Technology Review
Then there’s the problem of manufacturing at scale. Mass production requires large quantities of defect-free sheets of ceramic-like material to...
It’s a bird, it’s a plane … it’s a robo-puffin?
Given that water is 1,000 times denser than air, moving through those two mediums requires very different mechanics—or so one...
Here’s the tea
When Tristan Brown, an associate professor of history at MIT, first examined a Chinese tea chest label displayed at Old...
Melt it, spin it, use it again
The average American throws out around 81 pounds of clothing each year, and there are few options for recycling it....
A reason to eat carbs
A high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet can help some people lose weight, and some research has shown that it may protect against...
Robotic therapy for stroke patients
Strokes leave 5 million people with long-term impairments each year, and a growing shortage of physical therapists makes it hard...
A good TA: priceless
These are images of quizzes I took in 3.091, Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry, in the fall of 1980. One is...
Taking a swing at a pickleball startup
“I spent my early years trying not to get recruited into gangs, getting shot at, watching my friends get murdered,...
A champion for brain injury patients
Alissa Totman ’13 was a sophomore when she joined MIT BrainTrust, a student-run organization that connects Institute undergraduates and people...
Nebraska native explores galaxies far, far away
Now a professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University, she researches galaxy clusters and baryonic matter (matter made...
