A study by researchers at MIT has found that high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere is impacting the satellite orbits that typically force objects back to Earth, leading to an increased amount of space junk, reports Sachi Kitajima Mulkey for The New York Times. “[W]e’re losing this cleaning force that we rely on” says William Parker PhD '25.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with WBUR Here & Now host Scott Tong about the impact of AI on the white-collar job market and the economy. “The advances in AI models have been pretty impressive,” says Acemoglu. “But right now, much of this is still in the lab, so to speak, meaning it has not spread to the productive sector of the economy. We are not seeing massive job losses…but of course we should be planning for how these models will be used and what their impact should be.”
Prof. Christpher Knittel speaks with WBUR reporter Miriam Wasser about the benefits and risks associated with moving powerlines underground. " We don't have to necessarily move to a system where everything is underground," says Knittel. "What we really need to do is do a more targeted approach, which is identify the most critical lines in the network and do the cost-benefit test on undergrounding those."
Associated Press reporter Kyle Hightower spotlights the 20th MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference which will take place in early March. “At a time when all the world’s digital data is believed to double every two years, it’s made the annual assemblage even more essential in a sports world driven by numbers,” explains Hightower.
Profs. Robert Langer, Giovanni Traverso and former postdoctoral fellow Thomas von Erlach have founded Vivtex, a biotechnology startup specializing in “oral alternatives to drugs administered by injections,” reports Jonathan Satlzman for The Boston Globe. Vivtex, now working in collaboration with Novo Nordisk, is looking to develop a new class of “pills to treat obesity and diabetes,” explains Saltzman.
Mirchi, MIT’s competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team, will participate in the 17th annual South Asian Showdown on Saturday, February 28, reports Shira Laucharoen for WBUR. The Bollywood-fusion dance competition features “teams from across North America and Canada [who will put their] best moves on display, electrifying the audience with hip-hop, Bhangra, contemporary styles and more,” explains Laucharoen.
Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto spotlights the MIT Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship’s delta v startup accelerator program, which is designed to help early-stage startups find success in the Boston area. With financial support from Klaviyo co-founders Ed Hallen MBA ’12, and Andrew Bialecki, the program will “help support more customizing, to better tailor the program for each entrepreneur, as well as a broadening of its professional network, to support mentorship from industry veterans for the participating startups,” writes Chesto.
Writing for The Washington Post, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen explores the economic implications of blocking the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which links Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. “The new bridge is essential to modernizing the Michigan-Canada trade corridor,” writes Pozen. “It will create a second freeway-to-freeway link, thereby relieving bottlenecks and congestion on the old bridge.”
MIT has been named the No. 1 university for engineering in the United States, according to the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings, reports Ben Kesslen for Quartz.
Boston Globe reporter Annie Sarlin spotlights the MIT Museum’s digital collection “dedicated to the life and work of Harold ‘Doc’ Edgerton.” The collection is available for viewing online and “includes digitized copies of his notebooks, historical photographs, and informational text and videos about his industry-shaping role in the evolution of high-speed, flash photography,” explains Sarlin.
MIT researchers have built “the first complete model of pedestrian activity in New York City,” a template that could be applied to any U.S. city, reports Elissaveta M. Brandon for Fast Company. “The model, which maps foot traffic across all sidewalks, crosswalks and footpaths in NYC during peak periods, reveals surprising patterns about the way people move around the city, as well as where they are most vulnerable to vehicle crashes,” explains Brandon. “It could have tremendous benefits for city planners.”
Guide Labs, co-founded by Julius Adebayo SM ’15, SM ’16, PhD ’22, has debuted a large language model designed to make “its actions easily interpretable,” reports Tim Fernholz for Tech Crunch. “Every token produced by the model can be traced back to its origins in the LLM’s training data,” explains Fernholz.
A paper by Prof. Christopher Knittel and his colleagues explores the impact of climate change on inflation, reports Lydia DePillis for The New York Times. “We’re likely at this inflection point where costs are going to start growing more rapidly,” says Knittel. “The observed costs have been fairly linear so far. Going forward, that’s going to start increasing at an increasing rate.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a new 3D printing platform that can “produce a fully functioning linear motor in about three hours,” reports Justin Caffier for Gizmodo. The research team “explained how by retrofitting a printer with enough extruders to handle the various materials needed to make a working motor, they decimated the usual production time for such a device and brought the material costs down to around $0.50,” writes Caffier.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Fortune reporter Jake Angelo about his work studying the “origins of economic and political decay,” and the need for the U.S. to crack down “on economic inequality and tempering with job destruction.” “If we go down this path of destroying jobs [and] creating more inequality, U.S. democracy is not going to survive,” says Acemoglu.