MIT welcomes David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91 as its next Innovation Fellow
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David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91, a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, will serve as the next MIT Innovation Fellow during the 2026-27 academic year. Working with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, Siegel will explore how artificial intelligence can accelerate scientific discovery at the Institute and beyond. “From the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing […]
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The promise and peril of using visual AI to study cities
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A few months ago, researchers from the MIT Senseable City Lab published a study about pollution in New York City featuring some new methods. For instance: With machine learning, they identified the types of vehicles appearing in 331 traffic cameras in the city, and estimated the emissions coming from each automobile. Given enough cameras, these […]
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Substation-based drones to trial automated power-line inspections
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Four remotely operated drones are to be stationed at electricity substations in the Lake District as part of a 12-month trial of automated fault detection and power-line condition monitoring. SP Electricity North West (SP ENW) is working with Skyports Drone Services and eSmart Systems on Project VOLT (Visual Overhead Line Tracking), which will use “drone-in-a-box” […]
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Concrete recycling system recovers aggregates and fines at Greenwich plant
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A recycling system installed at Heidelberg Materials’ Greenwich concrete plant is recovering aggregates and cementitious fines* from returned concrete for use in new materials, as well as recycling water used to wash concrete trucks. Heidelberg Materials UK says the installation has enabled the London site, at Victoria Deep Water on the River Thames, to achieve […]
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Marine habitats to be incorporated into Southampton waterfront repairs
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Mayflower Park on Southampton’s waterfront. Repairs to an ageing waterfront revetment in Southampton will combine new coastal protection infrastructure with artificial rock pools designed to provide habitat for marine life.1 Southampton City Council has given final approval for work on the Mayflower Park revetment, which protects the city-centre park from erosion and damage associated with […]
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Researchers recover reusable fluorine from PFAS and fluoropolymer waste
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Professor Norio Shibata. A team of scientists led by the Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan has developed a rapid new way to recycle PFAS, recovering valuable fluorine from so-called ‘forever chemicals’ for use in medicines, electronics and refrigeration technologies. The approach, which has won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Organic Chemistry Horizon Prize 2026, […]
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Analysis: Nepal’s $20m ‘loss-and-damage’ claim only covers 0.7% of flood costs
Print article Share Article Contents Expand menu Close Nepal’s needs Requests vs pledges ‘Rapid response’ The Nepali government has requested $20m from the UN fund for “loss and damage”, following the devastating floods that hit the country in late August. This amounts to just 0.7% of the $2.7bn it has estimated in “physical damage” to […]
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Explainer: How sea level rise poses an ‘existential threat’ to humans, heritage and nature
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Poitras Center to fuel early careers of 50 young scientists dedicated to psychiatric disorders research
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Patricia and James Poitras ’63, longtime MIT supporters, have launched a fellowship program for graduate students and postdocs studying major mental illness, expanding their MIT philanthropy to directly support early-career scientists. The commitment establishes 50 two-year fellowships through the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Five fellowships will be awarded every […]
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Contrail avoidance could delay aviation warming by a decade, says study
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Aircraft contrails spread and mingle with high-altitude cloud. The report says a relatively small proportion of flights accounts for most contrail-related warming. Targeted changes to aircraft flight paths to prevent warming contrails could effectively delay aviation-related global warming by around a decade, according to a new scientific review commissioned by campaign group Transport & Environment […]
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Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ reaches ‘remarkable’ all-time record
Print article Share This year’s so-called “super El Niño” is entering into record-breaking territory. Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific now equal the previous daily record set in 2015 and will likely keep rising in the days ahead. El Niño is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon in the Pacific that reshapes weather patterns around […]
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United Nations May Soon Affirm Statehood of Island States After Sea Level Rise
The United Nations General Assembly appears about to resolve one of the prominent legal issues caused by the sea level rise that is occurring mostly because of climate change: whether an island state that is no longer habitable because of sea level rise maintains its statehood and its UN membership. The answer is expected […]
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New method enables AI for safety-critical situations
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MIT researchers have developed a new technique that helps generative artificial intelligence models find solutions to high-stakes problems. In these settings, a plausible answer is not enough: The output often must also satisfy nonnegotiable safety, physical, or task-specific requirements, known as hard constraints. The researchers developed a method that helps generative models meet these strict […]
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MIT spinout turns plastic waste into resilient building materials
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The world needs more homes. The world also has too much plastic. Perhaps the only thing those two problems have in common is that they’re hard to solve. Atlas Building Composites, a spinout of MIT, is on a mission to address both problems with a single solution. The company has developed an AI-powered robotic manufacturing […]
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New AI technique could make minimally invasive surgeries safer and more precise
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Researchers created a new technique that accurately and rapidly matches X-rays captured during surgery with a patient’s preoperative 3D medical scan. This method could make it easier for clinicians to precisely pilot minimally invasive surgical tools, leading to faster and safer procedures. Clinicians perform many minimally invasive surgeries using real-time X-rays to help them steer […]
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A new chapter for MIT Reads
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As it marks its 10-year anniversary, MIT Reads is being reimagined for the age of artificial intelligence. Recognizing the need to foster social connection and a sense of our shared humanity, the popular MIT Libraries’ program will turn its focus to fiction and memoir, and to the particular power of stories to help us understand ourselves […]
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What Is Prompt Injection? The Security Flaw Every AI User Should Understand
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Prompt injection is an attack or failure mode in which untrusted content changes an AI system’s behavior by supplying instructions that compete with the intended task. This guide explains the mechanism, trade-offs, evaluation, and controls that matter in practice.
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What Is AI Agent Memory? Short-Term, Long-Term, Episodic, and Semantic Memory Explained
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Agent memory is not one database or an endlessly growing prompt. It is a designed system for retaining working context, episodes, facts, and learned procedures—and retrieving the right information at the right time.