Raman to go
“The problem with spectrometers is that they have this intrinsic trade-off,” Persits says. The more light that goes into the...
World
A walking antidote to political cynicism
He credits his success in part to being “really good at the boring technical stuff,” as he puts it. “I...
“I wanted to work on something that didn’t exist”
Mice “would normally eat ferociously” when given access to food after fasting. “But if you stimulate those cells in the...
A Grammy for Miguel Zenón
Nobel Prizes and other scientific honors are nearly routine at MIT, but a Grammy Award is something we don’t see...
The Download: saving seals with artificial snow, and AI’s effects on politics
For millennia, during Finland’s blistering winters, wind drove snow into meters-high snowbanks along Lake Saimaa’s shoreline, offering prime real estate...
These artificial snowdrifts protect seal pups from climate change
As ice and snow arrive, the teams spring into action, joined by groups run by the charity World Wildlife Fund...
The Download: Neuralink’s biggest rivals, and the case for phasing out the term “user”
In the world of brain-computer interfaces, it can seem as if one company sucks up all the oxygen in the...
Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces
“Paradromics actually has the highest-bandwidth interface, but they haven't demonstrated it in humans yet,” Robinson says. The electrodes sit on...
It’s time to retire the term “user”
A user is also, of course, someone who struggles with addiction. To be an addict is—at least partly—to live in...
Three ways the US could help universities compete with tech companies on AI innovation
Academia's greatest strength lies in its ability to pursue long-term research projects and fundamental studies that push the boundaries of...
The Download: American’s hydrogen train experiment, and why we need boring robots
Like a mirage speeding across the dusty desert outside Pueblo, Colorado, the first hydrogen-fuel-cell passenger train in the United States...
How to build a thermal battery
Step 2: Choose your storage material Next up: pick out a heat storage medium. These materials should probably be inexpensive...
Hydrogen trains could revolutionize how Americans get around
A group called Californians for Electric Rail also views hydrogen as an immature technology. “From an environmental as well as...
Researchers taught robots to run. Now they’re teaching them to walk
In previous projects, researchers from the University of Oregon had used the same reinforcement learning technique to teach a two-legged...
The Download: commercializing space, and China’s chip self-sufficiency efforts
NASA designed the International Space Station to fly for 20 years. It has lasted six years longer than that, though...
Why it’s so hard for China’s chip industry to become self-sufficient
But in the last few years, both the US and Chinese governments have changed that way of thinking. And new...
The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit
Other challenges include spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome, which is a change in the structure and function of the eye, something researchers...
Check your work
The latest iteration of a legacyFounded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1899, MIT Technology Review is a world-renowned,...
The Download: the problem with police bodycams, and how to make useful robots
When police departments first started buying and deploying bodycams in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown in...
Three reasons robots are about to become way more useful
And researchers at the Toyota Research Institute, Columbia University and MIT have been able to quickly teach robots to do...
