When I picked up my daughter from summer camp, we settled in for an eight-hour drive through the Appalachian mountains, heading from North Carolina to her grandparents’ home in Kentucky. With little to no cell service for much of the…
When Jitender was a child in New Delhi, both his parents worked as manual scavengers—a job that involved clearing the city’s sewers of solid waste by hand. Now, he is among almost 200 contractors involved in the Delhi government’s effort…
Art restoration takes steady hands and a discerning eye. For centuries, conservators have identified areas needing repair and then mixed the exact shades needed to fill in one area at a time. Restoring a single painting can take anywhere from…
Textiles account for 5% of landfill space—and clothing made with polyester can take up to 200 years to decompose. Massachusetts tackled the problem by banning disposal of clothing and fabrics in 2022. And Infinite Threads, a spinoff of the Undergraduate…
As I write in late July, we’re contending with a major tax increase on the annual returns from MIT’s endowment as well as other investments and assets. This new tax burden will strain the resources we use to support research,…
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…