Discover

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: brain-melting heatwaves and unprecedented OpenAI restrictions

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. Heat waves mess with your brain. Scientists are trying to figure out why. —Jessica Hamzelou It’s been hot in London this week. Really hot. A dangerous...

Thomas Macaulay 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Heat waves mess with your brain. Scientists are trying to figure out why.

It’s been hot in London this week. Really hot. A dangerous heat wave has hit Western Europe. Yesterday, the UK recorded its highest ever June temperature at 36.1 °C (about 97 °F). But as the weather app on my phone confirmed, it felt like 39 °C. It’s frightening that we are seeing such temperatures...

Jessica Hamzelou 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Repositioning retail for the AI era

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping retail, but not in the ways consumers might immediately notice. The biggest transformation may not be flashy virtual try-ons or chatbot shopping assistants, but in how decisions are made behind the scenes: how products surface in search results, how inven...

MIT Technology Review Insights 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: Europe’s heat wave hits the grid, and IBM’s chip targets Moore’s Law

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. Europe’s extreme heat is shutting down power plants Europe is in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave, and the grid is being pushed to its limits...

Thomas Macaulay 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

IBM has unveiled chip technology that could help extend Moore’s Law another decade

IBM has built a new prototype chip with around 100 billion transistors on an area the size of a fingernail, which is twice the density of the company’s previous state-of-the-art technology announced in 2021. The design could pave the way for faster and more energy efficient computers for years to co...

Sophia Chen 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

What Europe’s heat wave means for the power grid

It’s been hard to look away from headlines about the European heat wave this week. Temperatures are breaking records across the continent, and the weather is threatening lives, shutting down schools, and in one particularly ironic case, forcing the cancellation of a London Climate Action Week event...

Casey Crownhart 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Europe’s extreme heat is shutting down power plants

Europe is in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave, and the grid is being pushed to its limits as people turn to fans and air-conditioning to try to stay cool. Some power plants won’t be online to help handle the load. On June 23, France saw its hottest day since record-keeping began in 1947.&#8...

Casey Crownhart 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: introducing the Engineering issue

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: the Engineering issue We can’t fix everything, but we can be ambitious. We can take on the challenge of making the world better through h...

Thomas Macaulay 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Stripe, Anthropic and OpenAI are backing an effort to stop respiratory infections

The common cold comes for us all—often more than once a year. And there is no way to prevent it. The best you can do is take vitamin C and stay away from people with the sniffles. Now, the payment company Stripe, founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, says it will fund a new…

Antonio Regalado 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

The emergence of the web data infrastructure layer for AI

AI is booming. New use cases are emerging each day. To capitalize on the technology’s potential, enterprises require data at scale. In many cases, though, the relevant information is blocked or unstructured, which limits its use by AI models.  To understand this challenge, consider the foundati...

MIT Technology Review Insights 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

All challenges big and small

When I was 18, I skipped my high school graduation and headed to Kuwait. It was 1991, the first Gulf War had just ended, and the country was in complete chaos. There was little to no electricity, aside from generator power. Rubble and unexploded ordnance were everywhere. Massive oil fires lit up the...

Mat Honan 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

This flying solar-powered platform could deliver better internet from the air

As soon as August, a giant silver bullet will cut its way through the dry air of the southwestern US and cross the Pacific to reach the coast of Japan.  Once there, the roughly 200-foot-long craft, built by the New Mexico–based company Sceye, will park some 18 kilometers above the ocean’s surfa...

Rachel Courtland 1 month ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

A breath test could diagnose pneumonia in minutes

With a test being developed at MIT, diagnosing pneumonia and other lung conditions could someday be as easy as breathing into a tube.  The test, dubbed PlasmoSniff, is a portable, chip-scale sensor that traps and detects biomarkers, synthetic compounds indicating disease. The idea is that a per...

Jennifer Chu 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Plants appear to detect the patter of falling rain

MIT engineers have found the first direct evidence that plant seeds can sense sounds in nature: Rice submerged in shallow water germinated 30% to 40% more quickly when exposed to vibrations from water dripping on the surface. They think other types of seeds may respond similarly. When a raindrop hit...

Jennifer Chu 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Engineered “mini livers” could be injected as an alternative to transplantation

A technology developed by Professor Sangeeta Bhatia, SM ’93, PhD ’97, and colleagues could offer new hope to the thousands of Americans with chronic liver disease who are waiting for an organ transplant or not strong enough to tolerate one. The liver is involved in regulating blood clotting, removin...

Anne Trafton 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Reinventing the zipper

With an adaptable fastener designed at CSAIL, pitching a tent or adjusting the cast for a broken bone could be almost as easy as zipping your coat. The researchers, led by associate professor Stefanie Mueller, were inspired by an abandoned prototype for a three-sided zipper that William Freeman, PhD...

Alex Shipps 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Ultrasound imaging turns a robot hand into a skillful mimic

Our hands are the nimblest parts of our bodies, coordinating 34 muscles, 27 joints, and over 100 tendons and ligaments to perform countless nuanced movements and gestures. So far, robots have been notoriously bad at mimicking that dexterity, in part because researchers struggle to capture what is ac...

Jennifer Chu 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Stand Up for Research, Innovation, and Education

Right now, MIT alumni and friends are voicing their support for: America’s scientific and technological leadership Merit-based admissions and affordable education Advances that increase US health, security, and prosperity Our community is standing up for MIT and its mission to serve the nation and t...

the MIT Alumni Association 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Sharing a love for calculus

The national conversation about the value of education is currently dominated by speculation about the risks and positive potential of AI.  Whatever your own perspective on that debate, I hope you’ll be glad to know that MIT is also working on a deeply important but comparatively old-fashioned...

Sally Kornbluth 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

A man of many words

Brian Sietsema has a favorite word. It’s somewhat surprising that he can choose just one. He’s the person spellers rely on to confirm pronunciations and answer questions about the roots of the words they’re given at the Scripps National Spelling Bee—arguably the world’s most prestigious competition...

Alice Dragoon 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Super Mario is mathier than you think

Here’s a problem you probably didn’t solve in school: You’re an ambitious young plumber from Brooklyn in a world inhabited by violent human-size mushrooms called Goombas. The love of your life has been kidnapped, so you embark on a quest to rescue her, venturing through stretches of pipe-filled and...

Veronika Moroz ’28 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Heads in the game

The Argentina v. France final of the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar was shaping up to be one of the most epic games in soccer history. With just 12 minutes remaining in the extra time added to the game to break a tie, the referee had a critical decision to make—and fast. Lionel Messi,…

Emiko Pope ’25 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

Opening a door to mental-health help online

Rob Morris, SM ’09, PhD ’15, didn’t know where to turn when he first felt symptoms of depression as a teenager: “I had no exposure to healthy coping strategies. I had no vocabulary for what was happening to me.”  That experience, he says, has driven his work on Koko, a tech nonprofit that...

Sara Shay 2 months ago

Read

M

MIT Technology Review · Science

The Download: the future of chipmaking and Anthropic’s government clash

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 $400 million machine powering the future of chipmaking It’s a bit of a schlep to get to the top of ASML’s newest machine. It’s about the size of a...

Thomas Macaulay 2 months ago

Read