The first time I visited Japan, I couldn’t help noticing all of the things that it does better than the United States. I rode bullet trains that top out at 200 miles an hour and spotted vending machines that serve fresh fruits and vegetables. But the worst part was the car envy: Why are America’s city streets clogged with enormous SUVs and trucks when we could instead have the Suzuki Hustler? An adorably rugged little box of a car,……
“Jolly morning!” is a weird way to be greeted, no matter the context. But it rang out, like birdsong, from behind the counter of a fast-food joint I visited in the Los Angeles suburbs in May. Although the restaurant’s bright overhead lighting and giant menus suggested a typical American chain, something was a little off. Along one wall, a floor-to-ceiling mural depicted a cartoon bee in a chef’s hat demonstrating the dance steps of the twist. The bee is……
Google is celebrating the biggest surprises of 2025 and the ways people are rethinking what is possible with its 15th annual Year in Search campaign. The work continues last year’s theme by highlighting breakout searches that rose more than 5,000% in 2025 compared with 2024. The nearly four minute film, created by Google Brand Studio, moves through a wide range of moments from sports, pop culture, politics, and religion that caught the world off guard. These include Luka Dončić…
When it comes to brain function, neurons get a lot of the glory. But healthy brains depend on the cooperation of many kinds of cells. The most abundant of the brain’s non-neuronal cells are astrocytes, star-shaped cells with a lot of responsibilities. Astrocytes help shape neural circuits, participate in information processing, and provide nutrient and metabolic support to neurons. Individual cells can take on new roles throughout their lifetimes, and at any given time, the astrocytes in one part……
Two current MIT affiliates and seven additional alumni are among those named to the 2025 cohort of AI2050 Fellows. Zongyi Li, a postdoc in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and Tess Smidt ’12, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), were both named as AI2050 Early Career Fellows. Seven additional MIT alumni were also honored. AI2050 Early Career Fellows include Brian Hie SM ’19, PhD ’21; Natasha Mary Jaques PhD ’20; Martin Anton……
Listen−1.0x+ 0:0012:17 Listen to more stories on the Noa app. Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy reveals an administration that is preparing for the wrong dangers and in denial about genuine threats. What the White House presented on Friday as a hardheaded, realistic assessment of the geopolitical landscape more closely resembles France’s Maginot Line—a massive fortress built before World War II to stop a German attack that never came while failing to anticipate the one that did. The document……
Forget every notion you have about national parks. We are not trekking on dusty trails or climbing ancient granite cliffs. We are going to a place where the very earth is an illusion, a magnificent trick of nature. Welcome to Keibul Lamjao, the world’s only floating national park. This isn’t just a park; it’s a liquid dream, a sprawling phantasm of vegetation that dances on the water’s surface, and it guards a secret more precious than any treasure—the legendary dancing……
Listen−1.0x+ 0:0031:00 Listen to more stories on hark I. THE GAME In December 2011, the CIA lost control of a stealth drone near the Iranian city of Kashmar, about 140 miles from the Afghanistan border, and it wound up in the regime’s possession. On state television, the Iranian military displayed the boomerang-shaped craft like a trophy. Triumphant banners beneath its 30-foot wings said, in Farsi, THE US CAN’T MESS WITH US and WE’LL CRUSH AMERICA UNDERFOOT. The cause of……
For a decade after its discovery, CRISPR gene editing was stuck on the cusp of transforming medicine. Then, in 2023, scientists started using it on sickle-cell disease, and Victoria Gray, a patient who lived with constant pain—like lightning inside her body, she has said—got the first-ever FDA-approved CRISPR gene-editing treatment. Her symptoms vanished; so did virtually everyone else’s in the clinical trial she was a part of. This year, the technology has started to press beyond its next barrier…….
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame more than 17 years after his final game, Jeff Kent couldn’t control his emotions. “Absolutely unprepared. Emotionally unstable,” he said after Sunday’s vote announcement. “Thoughts are so far clouded.” Kent received 14 of 16 votes from the contemporary era committee, two more than the 12 ballots needed for the 75% minimum. Steroids-tainted stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were among seven players who fell short once again. Kent will…
A few days ago I called Oleksandr Abakumov, a senior detective at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. I wanted to ask him about his investigation into a kickback scheme in his country’s energy industry. While we were talking, I got interested in Abakumov himself. As he was explaining his motivations, I was struck by the surprising contrast between people like him—the Ukrainian civil servants and civil-society activists who have been demanding transparency from their leaders for two decades—and……
DETROIT (AP) — When Mayor Mike Duggan announced his plan to run for Michigan governor, he did so from a tower in the iconic but aging Renaissance Center overlooking Detroit. It’s not the same city that Duggan inherited in January 2014. No longer defined by blocks of vacant houses, empty downtown storefronts, rampant crime and scores of broken streetlights, many believe Detroit is finally experiencing its renaissance. “I wish he would stay,” 40-year-old plumber Thomas Millender said of Duggan,…
Dec. 7 1973 — Jerry West of Los Angeles sets an NBA record with 10 steals in the Lakers’ 115-111 loss to the Seattle Supersonics. 1985 — Auburn tailback Bo Jackson beats Iowa quarterback Chuck Long by 45 points in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy, the closest vote in the 51-year history of the trophy. 1991 — AJ Kitt becomes the first American in seven years to win a men’s World Cup race, taking the first downhill of…
Donald Trump still doesn’t seem to have learned a thing about the Russian dictator he calls a friend. He’s tried all kinds of contradictory gambits in pursuit of peace in Ukraine: welcoming Vladimir Putin in Alaska, helping Kyiv blow up Russian oil refineries, offering Russia land it hasn’t been able to acquire militarily. None seems to have had much effect. The Kremlin is holding the line, and Trump can’t get through. On Thursday, Putin said that parts of the……
A spray-on coating to keep power lines standing through an ice storm may not be the obvious fix for winter outages — but it’s exactly the kind of innovation that happens when MIT students tackle a sustainability challenge. “The big threat to the power line network is winter icing that causes huge amounts of downed lines every year,” says Trevor Bormann, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and member of MITten, the winning……
