Nobel Prizes and other scientific honors are nearly routine at MIT, but a Grammy Award is something we don’t see every year. That’s what Miguel Zenón, an assistant professor of music and theater arts, has won: El Arte Del Bolero Vol. 2, which he recorded with the pianist and composer Luis Perdomo, received the Grammy…
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. These artificial snowdrifts protect seal pups from climate change For millennia, during Finland’s blistering winters, wind drove snow into meters-high snowbanks along Lake Saimaa’s shoreline, offering prime real estate from which seals carved…
Just before 10 a.m., hydrobiologist Jari Ilmonen and his team of six step out across a flat, half-mile-wide disk of snow and ice. For half the year this vast clearing is open water, the tip of one arm of the labyrinthine Lake Saimaa, Finland’s biggest lake, which reaches almost to Russia’s western border. As each…
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. Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces In the world of brain-computer interfaces, it can seem as if one company sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Last month, Neuralink…
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. In the world of brain-computer interfaces, it can seem as if one company sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Last month, Neuralink posted a video to…
Every Friday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri speaks to the people. He has made a habit of hosting weekly “ask me anything” sessions on Instagram, in which followers send him questions about the app, its parent company Meta, and his own (extremely public-facing) job. When I started watching these AMA videos years ago, I liked them.…
The ongoing revolution in artificial intelligence has the potential to dramatically improve our lives—from the way we work to what we do to stay healthy. Yet ensuring that America and other democracies can help shape the trajectory of this technology requires going beyond the tech development taking place at private companies. Research at universities drove…
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 Hydrogen trains could revolutionize how Americans get around Like a mirage speeding across the dusty desert outside Pueblo, Colorado, the first hydrogen-fuel-cell passenger train in the United States is getting warmed up on…
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The votes have been tallied, and the results are in. The winner of the 11th Breakthrough Technology, 2024 edition, is drumroll please thermal batteries! While the editors of MIT Technology…
Like a mirage speeding across the dusty desert outside Pueblo, Colorado, the first hydrogen-fuel-cell passenger train in the United States is getting warmed up on its test track. Made by the Swiss manufacturer Stadler and known as the FLIRT (for “Fast Light Intercity and Regional Train”), it will soon be shipped to Southern California, where…
We’ve all seen videos over the past few years demonstrating how agile humanoid robots have become, running and jumping with ease. We’re no longer surprised by this kind of agility—in fact, we’ve grown to expect it. The problem is, these shiny demos lack real-world applications. When it comes to creating robots that are useful and…
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 great commercial takeover of low-Earth orbit NASA designed the International Space Station to fly for 20 years. It has lasted six years longer than that, though it is showing its age, and…