Articles by Technology Review from February 2021

An advisory board to the US Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously in favor of the first single-shot covid-19 vaccine, clearing the path for the health agency to authorize its immediate use as...

Describing a decision-making system as an algorithm is often a way to deflect accountability for human decisions. For many, the term implies a set of rules based objectively on empirical evidence or d...

Counselors volunteering at the Trevor Project need to be prepared for their first conversation with an LGBTQ teen who may be thinking about suicide. So first, they practice. One of the ways they do it...

What do we mean when we talk about progress? In general terms, to make progress means to move toward something and away from something else. But where were headed and what were leaving behind are key ...

The morning my first child was born, I was mostly thinking of death. It was the week before Thanksgiving as my husband and I hunkered down with our newborn in Berkeley, California, learning from cable...

Back in the 1990s, Lee Hood, a technologist and immunologist famous for co-inventing the automated DNA sequencer, made a bold prediction. By 2016, he suggested, all Americans would carry a data card r...

“Progress. We take for granted that its a good thing. We constantly invoke it to justify change. But all the ways in which society is measuredfrom economic indicators to health and education met...

This list marks 20 years since we began compiling an annual selection of the years most important technologies. Some, such as mRNA vaccines, are already changing our lives, while others are still a fe...

In late 2012, AI scientists first figured out how to get neural networks to see. They proved that software designed to loosely mimic the human brain could dramatically improve existing computer-vision...

The conventional story of CRISPR genome editing is one of heroic power and promise with an element of peril. That peril became personified when MIT Technology Reviews Antonio Regalado revealed in Nove...

Deven Karpelman would never have joined TikTok if it hadnt been for the pandemic. And she certainly never expected to be famous on it. But the app has a way of rewarding good content with views, dropp...

If weve learned anything from covid-19, its the extent to which our lives are enmeshed with those of the people around us. We interact constantly, spreading our germs and picking up theirs. Thats why ...

Despite decades of warnings and increasingly devastating disasters, weve still made little progress in slowing climate change. Clean energy alternatives have secured just a fraction of the marketplace...

Despite decades of warnings and increasingly devastating disasters, weve still made little progress in slowing climate change. Clean energy alternatives have secured just a fraction of the marketplace...

From The Potential of Nations, December 1961: The national potential of a country includes more than its ability to produce raw materials and consumer goods, to provide and maintain public safety, and...

After months of social distancing, its not surprising that many people have felt starved for human companionship. Now a study from MIT has found that to our brains, the longings we feel during isolati...

After a worldwide search that turned up 60 candidates, the MIT Media Lab has announced that Dava Newman, SM 89, SM 89, PhD 92, an MIT professor of astronautics, will become its new director on July 1....

Robot design is usually a painstaking process, but MIT researchers have developed a system that helps automate the task. Once its told which parts you havesuch as wheels, joints, and body segmentsand ...

Scientists have known for decades that thunderstorms are often stronger where there are high concentrations of aerosolsairborne particles too small to see with the naked eye. Lightning flashes are mor...

Listening to Angelika Amon teach my cancer biology class in the spring of 2001 felt like diving into the depths of a vivid novel, with dramatic moments and elaborate bursts of detail. She somehow brou...

Diane Hoskins 79 grew up with plenty of exposure to beautiful, incredible buildings, both in Chicagos famously photogenic downtown and in the pages of Architectural Record, where her mother worked. It...

In the fall of 1951, about 20 MIT engineering students received a missive from a planet more than 30 light-years from Earth. Confidential documents and memos, printed on letterhead dated 1,000 years i...

Last March, Osie V. Combs Jr., OE 77, SM 77, called a meeting with his colleagues at Pacific Engineering Inc. (PEI), a small Nebraska-based defense contractor. We asked how we could use our knowledge ...

Sarah Low 03 studied architecture at MIT, but now she spends most days either in the operating room or outdoors as a veterinarian. Her area of interest is free-roaming horses, a population that is gro...

The deluge of news about covid-19 can be overwhelming, but chemical engineering professor Arup Chakraborty has written a guide to help: Viruses, Pandemics, and Immunity (MIT Press, 2021, $19.95), coau...

Early in the pandemic, some headlines argued that covid-19 was the great equalizerbecause anyone, no matter their circumstance, could catch it. In reality, it was clear that the virus was affecting so...

Early this winter, I took a long walk in the Salt Lake City park in which I had been arrested for bathing in a river when I was homeless. About 30 minutes into that walk, I stood across from the parks...

NASA has just released the first videos and images taken by the Perseverance rover as it landedas well as the first sounds ever recorded from the surface of Mars. What happened: On February 18, NASAs ...

Democracies around the world are all mired in one crisis or another, which is why measures of their health are trending in the wrong direction. Many look at the decline of the news industry as one con...

A leaked scientific report jointly prepared by Israel’s health ministry and Pfizer claims that the companys covid-19 vaccine is stopping nine out of 10 infections and the country could approach ...

On Valentines Day, Texas plunged into a polar vortex the likes of which hadnt been seen since 1899. Freezing temperatures led to widespread power outages. Homes more used to the swampy heat were usele...

Trapped inside a long glass tube in a ground-floor lab at Harvard University is a miniature copy of the stratosphere. When I visited Frank Keutsch in the fall of 2019, he walked me down to the lab, wh...

NASAs Perseverance rover has landed safely on Mars. The spacecraft survived its journey through the Martian atmosphere and made a soft touchdown at Jezero crater. What happened: Perseverance began its...

NASAs Perseverance rover has landed safely on Mars. The spacecraft survived its journey through the Martian atmosphere and made a soft touchdown at Jezero crater.Shortly after landing, it sent back th...

Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes when he published his theory of general relativity in 1916, describing how gravity shapes the fabric of spacetime. But astronomers didnt spot one ...

The popularity of the design, build, and test approach to engineering is fast-waning as todays engineers face unprecedented pressure to innovate, keep pace with the latest technologies, and design cre...

NASA officials have an expression for what its like to land a rover on Mars: seven minutes of terror. A million things could go wrong as the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere and attempts to ma...

Valerie Moreno laughed out loud when I asked if her family received regular medical checkups. Oh my gosh, no! she said. We have to be dying before we see a doctor.  The reason why wasnt a mystery...

In his  new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates takes a technology-centered approach to understanding the climate crisis. Gates begins with the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases t...

In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates lays out what it will really take to eliminate the greenhouse-gas emissions driving climate change. The Microsoft cofounder, who is now coc...

Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer currently works remotely from Colombia. As an epidemiologist, she has been watching from afar as her colleagues back at the University of California, San Francisco, hav...

On Sunday, January 24, with Southern Californias intensive-care units (ICUs) at full capacity, a shuttle bus made its way from the beachfront Hotel Casa del Mar in Santa Monica to the office of the XP...

Helen Mort couldn’t believe what she was hearing. There were naked photos of her plastered on a porn site, an acquaintance told her. But never in her life had she taken or shared intimate photos...

Helen Mort couldn’t believe what she was hearing. There were naked photos of her plastered on a porn site, an acquaintance told her. But never in her life had she taken or shared intimate photos...

During the first week of February, a winter storm blew through Chicago, leaving piles of snow before subzero temperatures set in. Eve Bloomgarden, an endocrinologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital,...

The Biden administration announced its third major climate effort on Thursday, February 11, rolling out initiatives to accelerate innovation in clean energy and climate technology. The White House has...

The news: Researchers in the UK have calculated that its contact tracing app may have prevented around 600,000 cases of covid-19. The announcement is good news for the systemwhich underwent serious te...

Im at home playing a video game on my computer. My job is to pump up one balloon at a time and earn as much money as possible. Every time I click Pump, the balloon expands and I receive five virtual c...

Im at home playing a video game on my computer. My job is to pump up one balloon at a time and earn as much money as possible. Every time I click Pump, the balloon expands and I receive five virtual c...

An international team of astronomers has found signs that a habitable planet may be lurking in Alpha Centauri, a binary star system a mere 4.37 light-years away. It could be one of the closest habitab...

On January 28, a physician at a hospital in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad received an SMS with the date and time for his first shot of a covid-19 vaccine. Hed been toiling away in the covid wa...

When acting Danish finance minister Morten Bdskov announced last week that Denmark would soon launch a digital corona passport, the news spread rapidly around the world. For many, the promise of an ap...

Fewer than half of all the spacecraft that have been sent to Mars have actually made it. For every celebrated mission like NASAs Curiosity Rover, theres a story of failure like the European Space Agen...

Update 11:20 a.m. Eastern: The Hope probe is officially in orbit around Mars. Fewer than half of all the spacecraft that have been sent to Mars have actually made it. For every celebrated mission like...

If we ever start an extraterrestrial colony on Mars, well need water for a host of essential services, and most obviously for something to drink. But while theres plenty of water ice at the planets po...

A hyper-transmissible form of the coronavirus that causes covid-19 has been found in US sewer systems in California and Florida, confirming its widening presence in the US. Buckets of dirty water draw...

Over the last few years, Section 230 of the 1996 US Communications Decency Act has metamorphosed from a little-known subset of regulations about the internet into a major rallying point for both the r...

Over the last few years, Section 230 of the 1996 US Communications Decency Act has metamorphosed from a little-known subset of regulations about the internet into a major rallying point for both the r...

While much of the world is engaged in a frantic scramble to get vaccinated against covid-19, theres one group noticeably absent from the queues of people at vaccine clinics: children. The Pfizer-BioNT...

Our dependency on tech has soared during the pandemic. The app analytics company App Annie found that people spent around 4 hours and 18 minutes per day on mobile devices in April 2020. Thats a 20% in...

As machine-learning applications move into the mainstream, a new era of cyber threat is emergingone that uses offensive artificial intelligence (AI) to supercharge attack campaigns. Offensive AI allow...

Its no secret that predictive policing tools are racially biased. A number of studies have shown that racist feedback loops can arise if algorithms are trained on police data, such as arrests. But new...

In 1964, mathematician and computer scientist Woodrow Bledsoe first attempted the task of matching suspects faces to mugshots. He measured out the distances between different facial features in printe...

On December 23, as part of a publicity push to encourage people to get vaccinated against covid-19, the University of Pennsylvania released footage of two researchers who developed the science behind ...

Most image-recognition systems are trained using large databases that contain millions of photos of everyday objects, from snakes to shakes to shoes. With repeated exposure, AIs learn to tell one type...

Most image-recognition systems are trained using large databases that contain millions of photos of everyday objects, from snakes to shakes to shoes. With repeated exposure, AIs learn to tell one type...

On Tuesday, February 2, Jeff Bezos announced that he would be stepping down as Amazons CEO later this year (though he will stay with the company as he transitions into a role as executive chairman of ...

Before his 190-square-foot apartment in San Franciscos Tenderloin district was connected to the internet, Marvis Phillips depended on a friend with a laptop for his prolific letter-writing campaigns.&...

Before his 190-square-foot apartment in San Franciscos Tenderloin district was connected to the internet, Marvis Phillips depended on a friend with a laptop for his prolific letter-writing campaigns.&...

SpaceX weathered through the onset of the covid-19 pandemic last year to become the first private company to launch astronauts into space using a commercial spacecraft. Its poised to build on that suc...

In December 2018, researchers at Google detected a group of hackers with their sights set on Microsofts Internet Explorer. Even though new development was shut down two years earlier its such a common...

Sebastin De Toma joined Pfizers clinical trial last year, getting his shots in August and September. The Argentinian journalist still doesnt know if he got the real covid-19 vaccine or the placebo, bu...

Observing space rocks from afar is all very well, but sometimes you need to get up close. The biggest questions in space sciencehow the solar system formed, how it led to life on Earth, and whether th...

Around 10 p.m. last Thursday, I received a call from a friend. The two of us primarily text, so a call was out of the ordinary. I picked up immediately, assuming it was an emergency.  She told me...

Corporate planning is difficult in the best of times, let alone in the middle of a global health crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has made strategic planning harder because of economic upheaval, perso...

Across the US, people are clamoring to get the hottest ticket of the season: an appointment for a covid-19 vaccination. The recommended method is to visit a local hospital website or call a hotline. B...