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We finally know who’s legally running DOGE
The White House has named Amy Gleason as the acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The news, delivered by an unnamed White House official to CNBC and other media outlets, follows days of obfuscation in courtrooms, the press, and the pseudo-department itself. It designates Gleason a likely target for the nigh-continuous legal challenges…
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Studying the uninvited guests
Microbes that gobble up or break down environmental toxins can clean up oil spills, waste sites, and contaminated watersheds. But until his faculty mentor asked him for help with a project he was working on with doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2009, Eric Alm had not thought much about their role in a very…
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The poetry of data
Jane Muschenetz’s poems don’t look like the sonnets you remember studying in high school English. If anything, they’re more likely to call to mind your statistics class. Flip through the pages of her poetry chapbook Power Point and you’ll see charts, graphs, and citations galore. One poem visually documents maternal mortality rates and women’s unpaid…
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The man who reinvented the hammer
A trip to Walmart. An aging German shepherd. A cheap disposable camera. These are just a few of the seemingly mundane things that have sparked the relentlessly imaginative mind of Kurt Schroder ’90, leading to some of his groundbreaking inventions. “I just can’t stop doing it,” he says, with a chuckle and a tiny trace…
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An environmentally friendly alternative to plastic microbeads
The tiny beads added to some cleansers and cosmetics are one source of the long-lasting microplastics that threaten the environment. But MIT researchers have found a way to address the problem at its source: replacing them with polymers that break down into harmless sugars and amino acids. Particles of this polymer could also be used…
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A Nobel laureate on the economics of artificial intelligence
For all the talk about artificial intelligence upending the world, its economic effects remain uncertain. But Institute Professor and 2024 Nobel winner Daron Acemoglu has some insights. Despite some predictions that AI will double US GDP growth, Acemoglu expects it to increase GDP by 1.1% to 1.6% over the next 10 years, with a roughly…
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Tiny tubes wrap around brain cells
Wearable devices like smart watches and fitness trackers help us measure and learn from physical functions such as heart rates and sleep stages. Now MIT researchers have developed a tiny equivalent for individual brain cells. These soft, battery-free wireless devices, actuated with light, are designed to wrap around different parts of neurons, such as axons…
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This is your brain on movies
The cerebral cortex contains regions devoted to processing different types of sensory information, including visual and auditory input. Now researchers led by Robert Desimone, director of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and colleagues have developed the most comprehensive picture yet of what all these regions do. They achieved this by analyzing data collected as…
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From climate-warming pollutant to useful material
Although it is less abundant than carbon dioxide, methane gas contributes disproportionately to global warming. Its molecular structure of single carbon atoms bound to four hydrogen atoms makes it a potentially useful building block for products that could keep this carbon out of the atmosphere, but it’s hard to get it to react with other…
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Recent books from the MIT community
Differential PrivacyBy Simson L. Garfinkel ’87, PhD ’05 MIT PRESSS, 2025, $18.95 Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the US into a Manufacturing PowerhouseBy Colleen A. Dunlavy, PhD ’88 POLITY BOOKS, 2024, $29.95 The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature By Alan Lightman, professor of the practice of the humanities PANTHEON, 2024, $36 The Path…