Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Junior Peña learned to keep his eyes down and his schedule full. In his neighborhood, a glance could invite trouble, and many kids—including his older brother—were pulled into gang culture. He knew early…
On a typical afternoon, MIT’s new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building hums with life. On the fourth floor, a jazz combo works through a set in a rehearsal suite as engineers adjust microphone levels in a nearby control booth.…
Environmental scientists are increasingly using enormous artificial intelligence models to make predictions about changes in weather and climate, but a new study by MIT researchers shows that bigger models are not always better. The team demonstrates that, in certain climate…
Cognitive readiness denotes a person’s ability to respond and adapt to the changes around them. This includes functions like keeping balance after tripping, or making the right decision in a challenging situation based on knowledge and past experiences. For military…
Back in the 17th century, German astronomer Johannes Kepler figured out the laws of motion that made it possible to accurately predict where our solar system’s planets would appear in the sky as they orbit the sun. But it wasn’t…
The wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County in January 2025 left an indelible mark on the Southern California landscape. The Eaton and Palisades fires raged for 24 days, killing 29 people and destroying 16,000 structures, with losses estimated at…
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. In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses Google has just…
In October, a new academic conference will debut that’s unlike any other. Agents4Science is a one-day online event that will encompass all areas of science, from physics to medicine. All of the work shared will have been researched, written, and…
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are bitter rivals in the commercial space race, but they agree on one thing: Settling space is an existential imperative. Space is the place. The final frontier. It is our human destiny to transcend our…
Last year, I added my DNA profile to a private genealogical database, FamilyTreeDNA, and clicked “Yes” to allow the police to search my genes. In 2018, police in California announced they’d caught the Golden State Killer, a man who had eluded…