mit-tech

Tomás Villalón Jr. ’14 was raised in San Antonio, Texas, but vividly remembers smog hanging over the city his family came from—Monterrey, Mexico, a steel manufacturing and metal fabrication hub. Even as a child, he realized it was problematic to breathe that air.  “I’m motivated because I’ve seen what metal-making Read more

Given that water is 1,000 times denser than air, moving through those two mediums requires very different mechanics—or so one might assume. Yet birds like gulls and puffins can plunge into the sea, swim underwater, and leap back into the air to fly away. And now engineers at MIT and Read more

When Tristan Brown, an associate professor of history at MIT, first examined a Chinese tea chest label displayed at Old South Meeting House, he had no reason to doubt its story. Descendants of the Boston blacksmith Thomas Wells had donated the label in 1987, saying it had been recovered after Read more

The average American throws out around 81 pounds of clothing each year, and there are few options for recycling it. MIT engineers hope to cut down on that textile waste with a new type of yarn.  The thermoplastic yarn mimics the properties of conventional elastic yarns, which typically combine spandex Read more

A high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet can help some people lose weight, and some research has shown that it may protect against colon cancer. But a new study suggests that such a ketogenic diet may also increase the risk of cancer in the small intestine. This type of diet forces the body Read more

Strokes leave 5 million people with long-term impairments each year, and a growing shortage of physical therapists makes it hard for them to get the care they need. A new approach tries to solve that problem by combining artificial intelligence and human therapy.  Johannes Lachner, a former MIT postdoc who Read more

Large language models are set to go lunar. A computer capable of running AI software is one of the payloads aboard Astrolab’s FLIP lunar rover, which is slated to head to Earth’s celestial companion as early as November 2026. The 480-kilogram FLIP rover, short for “FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform,” is Read more

Imagine your company just discovered electricity. At first only a few machines run on it, and nobody worries about efficiency — consumption is low and the value is obvious. But once electricity becomes infrastructure, every process depends on it, and the question changes from “can we use it?” to “how Read more

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. “We were looking at it wrong”: The explosive claim that’s upended the AI world “I think I have good news about the nature of neural networks.” Read more

The current narrative around artificial intelligence in the workplace is largely driven by Silicon Valley. But treating the tech sector as an island misses the actual trends in technology adoption–tech is just the first industry in line. As generative AI and automation tools mature, the shifts currently reshaping software engineering Read more