February 11, 2025

The Download: offshore rocket launches, and how DOGE plans to use AI

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 dream of offshore rocket launches is finally blasting off Want to send something to space? Get in line. The demand for rides off Earth is skyrocketing, with launches more than doubling over…

Technology

Toys can change your life

June 26, 2024
In a November 1984 story for Technology Review, Carolyn Sumners, curator of astronomy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, described how toys, games, and even amusement park rides could change how young minds view science and math. “The Slinky,” Sumners noted, “has long served teachers as a medium for demonstrating longitudinal (soundlike) waves and…

Do you want to play a game?

June 26, 2024
For children, play comes so naturally. They don’t have to be encouraged to play. They don’t need equipment, or the latest graphics processors, or the perfect conditions—they just do it. What’s more, study after study has found that play has a crucial role in childhood growth and development. If you want to witness the absolute…

Puzzle Corner history

June 26, 2024
When Allan Gottlieb ’67 began editing the Puzzle Corner column in 1966, he was a junior at MIT, majoring in math. Little did he know then that he was undertaking a project that would last for nearly six decades. If you missed our previous celebrations of Allan, read our 2015 profile, “Puzzle Corner’s Keeper,” and…

Stress test

June 25, 2024
Elizabeth Sajdel-Sulkowska was just three months old when Nazi soldiers set fire to her family’s home in the midst of the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, as the Polish resistance attempted to seize control of the city from the Germans. When that revolt ultimately failed, the city was razed, and there was no time to…

Depression is different for women. One-size-fits-all drugs aren’t helping.

June 25, 2024
The trauma of an accident, an assault, abuse, or even simply losing someone we love can have long-term effects. For some, it can trigger mental illnesses. But what if, in the hours after the experience, you could take a pill that made you less likely to fall ill? And what if there were such a…

Fighting fatphobia

June 25, 2024
“I felt too fat to be a feminist in public.” The startling admission appears in the opening paragraph of Kate Manne’s new book, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia. With that single frank and sobering sentence, Manne, an associate professor of philosophy at Cornell, captures the pervasiveness of anti-fat bias—and its stifling impact.   Manne had…

SuperLimbs for astronauts

June 25, 2024
It’s hard not to laugh at NASA’s blooper reel of astronauts falling and bouncing in slow motion on the moon. But coping with inertia where gravity is one-sixth that of Earth is no laughing matter when you’re wearing a constricting space suit and need to finish an exhausting task. So mechanical engineering professor Harry Asada…

Waymo opens up San Francisco robotaxi service to everyone

June 25, 2024

Waymo no longer has a waitlist for its San Francisco robotaxi service, removing the final obstacle for customers keen to use the self-driving technology.  Waymo said Tuesday that anyone can download the app and then immediately hail one of its robotaxis in San Francisco — a move that mimics the Alphabet-owned company’s strategy in Phoenix, […]

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Driving sustainable water management

June 25, 2024
From semiconductor manufacturing to mining, water is an essential commodity for industry. It is also a precious and constrained resource. According to the UN, more than 2.3 billion people faced water stress in 2022. Drought has cost the United States $249 billion in economic losses since 1980.  Climate change is expected to worsen water problems…