The race to produce rare earth materials
Rivalia prefers to work with existing waste products as opposed to coal that has not yet been burned. This approach...
World
Irene T. Cheng, SM ’78
“Thinking big, aiming high, and making a difference were rules of the road embedded during my time at MIT,” says...
The art of unearthing history
“I’ll scratch film or cut it up or reassemble it or add things like saffron leaves and petals or tree...
Can AI provide better customer service?
Taking on big challenges is nothing new for Tsai, who was just 15 when she arrived at MIT. And while...
Calculating the costs of war
To fuel such change, Crawford works to make clear the full cost of military activity, providing data on dollars spent,...
“Every project is a new adventure,” says architectural shape-shifter
Samyn grew up in the Belgian countryside, where his father was a mechanical engineer and his mother was a painter....
The Download: greener cement, and the biggest tech stories of 2023
+ The worst technology failures of 2023. The Titan submersible, lab-grown chicken, and GM’s wayward Cruise robotaxis all made our...
The race is on to save coral reefs—by freezing them
Hagedorn and her collaborators have been able to cryopreserve larvae since 2018, but the process was finicky, and thawing them...
How electricity could help tackle a surprising climate villain
To be on track for net-zero goals, the cement industry would need to add carbon capture facilities to between 33...
The Download: solving the mystery of hunger, and the climate-tech boom
When you’re starving, hunger is like a demon. It awakens the most ancient and primitive parts of the brain, then...
We’ve never understood how hunger works. That might be about to change.
“Sure, we managed to have the brain say ‘Go eat,’” he says. “But that’s not really an explanation. How does...
How machine learning might unlock earthquake prediction
Instances of regular intervals between earthquakes of similar magnitudes have been noted in other places, including Hawaii, but these are...
We need a moonshot for computing
None of these potential technologies are new: researchers have been working on them for many years, and quantum computing is...
Six takeaways from a climate-tech boom
But the optimism comes with a warning. As a journalist who wrote extensively about cleantech 1.0, which began around 2006...
A high-tech mouthguard that might help prevent concussions
Appreciation of the real risks of head injuries has been a long time coming. “Even 10 years ago, if someone...
Meet the economist who wants the field to account for nature
In a recent project undertaken for the Colombian government, for instance, the Natural Capital Project assisted in establishing a conservation...
This vibrating weight-loss pill seems to work—in pigs
So far this “electroceutical” has only been tested in a handful of young Yorkshire pigs, but with promising results. According...
The Download: 2023’s worst tech failures, and the end of online anonymity in China
2 What we learn about wars on TikTokThe videos that do well tend to be apocalyptic, alarmist, and full of...
Gene editing had a banner year in 2023
It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Perhaps no technology has more power to transform medicine, and its vast...
How 2023 marked the death of anonymity online in China
In reality, it’s already impossible to be fully anonymous online in China. Over the years, to implement a stricter regime...