The US government is developing a solar geoengineering research planJames Temple
The White House is developing a research plan that would guide and set standards for how scientists study one of the more controversial ways of counteracting climate change: solar geoengineering. The basic idea is that we might be able to deliberately tweak the climate system in ways that release more heat into space, cooling an otherwise warming planet. The move, which has not been previously reported on, marks the first federally coordinated US effort of this kind. It could set the stage for more funding and research into the feasibility, benefits, and risks of such interventions. The effort may also […]
How to track your period safely post-RoeTanya Basu
As soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned on Friday, June 24, calls for people to delete their period-tracking apps were all over social media. These apps gather extremely personal data that could pinpoint a missed period. The fear is that in the hands of law enforcement, this data could be used to bolster a criminal case against a person who attempts to get an abortion in a state where it is restricted or banned. Right now, and I mean this instant, delete every digital trace of any menstrual tracking. Please. — Prof Gina Neff (@ginasue) June 24, 2022 Delete […]
Composable enterprise spurs innovationMIT Technology Review Insights
In March 2020, when corporate offices shuttered in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and employees began working from home, companies were forced to find more efficient ways to do business. Call it “The Great Digital Transformation.” Before the pandemic, the average company estimated that transitioning to remote work would take 454 days, according to the “McKinsey Global Surveys, 2021: A year in review.” Most companies accomplished the move in 11 days during the pandemic. Similarly, the average company estimated that migrating its assets to the cloud would take 547 days; in reality, shifting to that key component of digital […]
The US Supreme Court just gutted federal climate policyCasey Crownhart
The Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions was dealt a massive blow by the US Supreme Court today. Less than a week after overturning landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, the court’s latest decision in West Virginia v. EPA could have far-reaching results for US climate policy as the world continues to set new records for greenhouse gas emissions. What was the ruling? The decision states that the EPA’s actions in a 2015 rule, which included caps on emissions from power plants, overstepped the agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. “Capping carbon […]
The Download: Algorithms’ shame trap, and London’s safer road crossingsRhiannon Williams
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. How algorithms trap us in a cycle of shame Working in finance at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis, mathematician Cathy O’Neil got a firsthand look at how much people trusted algorithms—and how much destruction they were causing. Disheartened, she moved to the tech industry, but encountered the same blind faith. After leaving, she wrote a book in 2016 that dismantled the idea that algorithms are objective. O’Neil showed how every algorithm is trained on historical data […]
Kapow!Leigh Buchanan
Secreted beneath MIT’s Killian Court and accessible only through a subterranean labyrinth of tunnels, a clandestine lab conducts boundary-pushing research, fed by money siphoned from a Department of Defense grant. In these shadowed, high-tech halls, astrophysicist and astronaut Valentina Resnick-Baker, who is experiencing strange phenomena after an encounter with a planet-threatening asteroid, discovers she has the power of plasma fusion. Resnick-Baker is the buff and brainy heroine of Summit, a 15-issue comic series created and written by Amy Chu ’91. The situations may be fictional, but the science is—broadly—real. (Chu did background research on plasma physics for the series, and […]
How MIT ended up on Memorial DriveRobert Buderi
On March 23, 1912, the very day the subway connecting Boston and Cambridge opened to the public, another event took place that would change Kendall Square even more profoundly than the new, state-of-the-art transit system. As fate would have it, that was the day when a large swath of property adjacent to the square was formally conveyed to MIT, paving the way for the school’s move across the river from the Back Bay. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology today forms such an essential part of Kendall Square—intertwined with the very definition of what the square is—that it may seem surprising […]
Meet the president: Stephen Baker ’84, MArch ’88Julie Fox
On July 1, Stephen D. Baker ’84, MArch ’88, begins his one-year term as president of the MIT Alumni Association, succeeding Annalisa Weigel ’94, ’95, SM ’00, PhD ’02. Baker’s long history with MIT began with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture. He is currently president and senior principal of BWA Architecture, a 27-person firm he cofounded in Boston in 1994 with Margaret (Garet) Wohl, MArch ’86. A longtime volunteer, Baker is a 2017 recipient of the Bronze Beaver, the highest award bestowed by the MIT Alumni Association for service to the Institute and the Association. He also received a […]
Volunteer service, RV styleMark Wolverton
Joseph “Pepe” Fields ’67 has an MIT degree in chemistry, but he’s spent his career working all over the world in international management. And recently, he’s been driving a recreational vehicle around the US to build affordable housing with a Habitat for Humanity program called RV Care-A-Vanners. RV owners who join the program drive to where they’re needed and work as volunteer builders, constructing houses from scratch using all new materials, doing everything except licensed trade jobs. For Fields, it’s the latest expression of a passion for volunteer service that’s shaped his life. He discovered his zeal for volunteering at […]
Four decades on the front lines of environmental activismKen Shulman
“My focus has always been on social change,” says Steven Lewis Yaffee, PhD ’79, a professor of natural resources and environmental policy at the University of Michigan. “On training practitioners to go out and effect change in the real world.” Yaffee caught the eco bug in middle school in Maryland when he read Rachel Carson’s now seminal book Silent Spring. At the University of Michigan, he studied wildlife and aquatic science as an undergraduate and then earned a master’s degree in policy. At his first job, working on energy facility siting at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he met MIT professor […]