MIT Tech News
2 days 14 hours ago
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The US Supreme Court just gutted the EPA’s power to regulate emissions The news: The Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions has been dealt a massive blow…
Rhiannon Williams
2 days 18 hours ago
The White House is developing a research plan that would guide and set standards for how scientists study one of the more controversial ways of counteracting climate change: solar geoengineering. The basic idea is that we might be able to deliberately tweak the climate system in ways that release more heat into space, cooling an…
James Temple
3 days 9 hours ago
As soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned on Friday, June 24, calls for people to delete their period-tracking apps were all over social media. These apps gather extremely personal data that could pinpoint a missed period. The fear is that in the hands of law enforcement, this data could be used to bolster a…
Tanya Basu
3 days 12 hours ago
In March 2020, when corporate offices shuttered in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and employees began working from home, companies were forced to find more efficient ways to do business. Call it “The Great Digital Transformation.” Before the pandemic, the average company estimated that transitioning to remote work would take 454 days, according to…
MIT Technology Review Insights
3 days 12 hours ago
The Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions was dealt a massive blow by the US Supreme Court today. Coming less than a week after it overturned the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, the court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA could have far-reaching results for US climate policy…
Casey Crownhart
3 days 14 hours ago
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How algorithms trap us in a cycle of shame Working in finance at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis, mathematician Cathy O’Neil got a firsthand look at how much people trusted algorithms—and…
Rhiannon Williams
4 days 13 hours ago
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing: Our TR35 list of innovators for 2022 Spoiler alert: our annual Innovators Under 35 list isn’t actually about what a small group of smart young people have been up to (although that’s…
Rhiannon Williams
4 days 16 hours ago
Secreted beneath MIT’s Killian Court and accessible only through a subterranean labyrinth of tunnels, a clandestine lab conducts boundary-pushing research, fed by money siphoned from a Department of Defense grant. In these shadowed, high-tech halls, astrophysicist and astronaut Valentina Resnick-Baker, who is experiencing strange phenomena after an encounter with a planet-threatening asteroid, discovers she has…
Leigh Buchanan
4 days 16 hours ago
On March 23, 1912, the very day the subway connecting Boston and Cambridge opened to the public, another event took place that would change Kendall Square even more profoundly than the new, state-of-the-art transit system. As fate would have it, that was the day when a large swath of property adjacent to the square was…
Robert Buderi
4 days 16 hours ago
On July 1, Stephen D. Baker ’84, MArch ’88, begins his one-year term as president of the MIT Alumni Association, succeeding Annalisa Weigel ’94, ’95, SM ’00, PhD ’02. Baker’s long history with MIT began with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture. He is currently president and senior principal of BWA Architecture, a 27-person firm…
Julie Fox
4 days 16 hours ago
Joseph “Pepe” Fields ’67 has an MIT degree in chemistry, but he’s spent his career working all over the world in international management. And recently, he’s been driving a recreational vehicle around the US to build affordable housing with a Habitat for Humanity program called RV Care-A-Vanners. RV owners who join the program drive to…
Mark Wolverton
4 days 16 hours ago
“My focus has always been on social change,” says Steven Lewis Yaffee, PhD ’79, a professor of natural resources and environmental policy at the University of Michigan. “On training practitioners to go out and effect change in the real world.” Yaffee caught the eco bug in middle school in Maryland when he read Rachel Carson’s…
Ken Shulman
4 days 16 hours ago
Especially for people of color, the road to MIT often begins with advice and encouragement from a teacher or guidance counselor. That was the case for Michael Dixon ’88, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago. He’d long been interested in outer space, reading science texts and science fiction as well as watching…
Angie Chatman, SM ’88
4 days 16 hours ago
All too often, the work of developing global disaster and climate resiliency happens when disaster—such as a hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami—has already ravaged entire cities and torn communities apart. But Elizabeth Petheo, MBA ’14, says that recently her work has been focused on preparedness. It’s hard to get attention for preparedness efforts, explains Petheo, a…
Julie Fox
4 days 16 hours ago
Lisa Burton O’Toole, SM ’09, PhD ’13, was born on a cattle farm outside of Fort Worth, Texas, the daughter of a horseshoer and an administrative assistant. Raised by a single mom who had three jobs and urged her two daughters to reach for the stars, she grew up determined to work hard to land…
Liz Karagianis
4 days 16 hours ago
Don Mattes started giving to the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT before he himself was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Since his death in 2020, his wife, Glenda, has carried forward Don’s passion for its work. “My wish is that no one ever has to go through the horrors of Alzheimer’s disease ever…
MIT News Staff
4 days 16 hours ago
MIT will be taking several new measures to support its Indigenous community and advance scholarship on the history of Native Americans and the Institute, President L. Rafael Reif announced in April. In the spring of 2021, the Institute launched 21H.283 (The Indigenous History of MIT), a class that explores the ways MIT’s history intersects with the…
Peter Dizikes
4 days 16 hours ago
The MIT Morningside Academy for Design, an interdisciplinary center that aims to build on the Institute’s leadership in design-focused education and become a global hub for design research, thinking, and entrepreneurship, will launch in September 2022, President L. Rafael Reif announced in March. The academy, which will be housed in the Metropolitan Warehouse with the…
Peter Dizikes
4 days 18 hours ago
In February, the city of Toronto announced plans for a new development along its waterfront. They read like a wish list for any passionate urbanist: 800 affordable apartments, a two-acre forest, a rooftop farm, a new arts venue focused on indigenous culture, and a pledge to be zero-carbon. The idea of an affordable, off-the-grid Eden…
Karrie Jacobs
4 days 18 hours ago
One evening last summer, my family was enjoying a picnic in the park near our house in London when two dogs attacked our blind 15-year-old Jack Russell terrier, Zoey. They pounced on her, locking their jaws. As my husband threw himself on the dogs, I begged the owner to intervene. He refused—until he realized I…
Sonia Faleiro
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1 hour 35 minutes ago
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