Boston Globe contributor Veronique Greenwood recounts her experience learning bell ringing after moving to England. Briefly returning to Boston, she joined the MIT Guild of Bellringers to ring at the Old North Church. Among many life lessons derived from ringing, she says “adulthood seems to be reached by a process of trial and error that allows us, in the end, if we are lucky, to maintain the illusion of constant balance.”
After meeting at MIT, alumni Honghao Deng and Jiani Zeng founded Butr, which makes anonymous people-detecting sensors to measure movement inside buildings, reports Zoya Hasan for Forbes. The sensors could help address staffing challenges in senior living communities, and alert staff of falls or other medical issues.
MIT ranked third in a list of "2025 Best Value Colleges in America" reports Aislinn Murphy for Fox Business. Education data website Niche compiled a list ranking more than 1,000 four-year colleges and universities using various economic metrics. It also named MIT as best in academics.
Writing for The Boston Globe, President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif makes the case that “without strong research universities and the scientific and technological advances they discover and invent, the United States could not possibly keep up with China.” He emphasizes that “punishing universities financially for their failings — real and imagined — would be counterproductive. If anything, the China challenge demands that universities do more than they are already doing — and that they have the resources to do so.”
Associated Press reporter Bernie Wilson spotlights Christina “Chris” Birch PhD '15 and her quest to reach outer space after conquering many miles as a competitive cyclist. “Birch’s resume is staggering,” Wilson notes. “In cycling, she has 11 national championships as well as multiple Pan American and World Cup medals. She has degrees in mathematics, biochemistry and molecular biophysics, and a doctorate in biological engineering from MIT.” Of her outer space aspirations, Birch explains: “While I would love to be a scientist on the moon, doing research, collecting samples, just to be a part of our return to the moon would be incredible, because we are asking such interesting scientific questions.”
Researchers at MIT have developed “a publicly available database, culled from reports, journals, and other documents to shed light on the risks AI experts are disclosing through paper, reports, and other documents,” reports Jon McKendrick for Forbes. “These benchmarked risks will help develop a greater understanding the risks versus rewards of this new force entering the business landscape,” writes McKendrick.
Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with Bloomberg reporters Jonnelle Marte and Reade Pickert about potential Fed rate cuts. “The last few years have been a wake-up call,” Forbes said. “You want to do a framework review that is robust to many different economic circumstances.”
Prof. William Deringer speaks with David Westin on Bloomberg’s Wall Street Week about the power of early spreadsheet programs in the 1980s financial services world. When asked to compare today’s AI in the context of workplace automation fears, he says “one thing we know from the history of technology - and certainly the history of calculation tools that I like to study – is that the automation of some of these calculations…doesn’t necessarily lead to less work.”
Writing for The Hill, graduate student Shomik Verma explores the potential impact of the Climate Superfund Act, a bill that would require “fossil fuel companies who have emitted more than 1 billion tons over the past 20 years to pay into a superfund for their climate damages.” “With the saturated field of climate policies nowadays, this unique bill has the potential to be truly impactful,” writes Verma. “We need to make sure it is.”
Researchers at MIT have found that the use of legalese in writing “to assert authority over those less versed in such language,” reports Noor Al-Sibai for Futurism. “By studying this cryptic take on the English language, the researchers are hoping to make legal documents much easier to read in the future,” explains Al-Sibai.
The New Yorker shares “The Books of Losing You,” a short story written by Prof. Junot Diaz in their Flash Fiction category.
A new study led by researchers at MIT suggests that fasting and then refeeding stimulates cell regeneration in the intestines, reports Katharine Lang for Medical News Today. However, notes Lang, researchers also found that fasting “carries the risk of stimulating the formation of intestinal tumors.”
Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with New York Times reporter Austyn Gaffney about new research detailing the true impact of climate policies designed to reduce emissions. “Many of the technological tools that are needed to address climate change are now available,” says Trancik. “And ready to be adopted at scale because of a host of different types of policies that came before.”
MIT researchers have discovered how fasting impacts the regenerative abilities of intestinal stem cells, reports Ed Cara for Gizmodo. “The major finding of our current study is that refeeding after fasting is a distinct state from fasting itself,” explain Prof. Ömer Yilmaz and postdocs Shinya Imada and Saleh Khawaled. “Post-fasting refeeding augments the ability of intestinal stem cells to, for example, repair the intestine after injury.”
Prof. Christoph Kehle and his colleagues have demonstrated “that there is nothing in our known laws of physics to prevent the formation of an extremal black hole,” reports Steve Nadis for Quanta Magazine. The mathematical proof is “beautiful, technically innovative and physically surprising,” says Princeton University Professor Mihalis Dafermos. It hints at a potentially richer and more varied universe in which “extremal black holes could be out there astrophysically.”