In the latest episode of Curiosity Unbounded, President Sally Kornbluth spoke with DUSP’s Andres Sevtsuk. They discussed the complex forces that shape our cities and the effects of urban planning on sustainable mobility and quality of life.

Via @mitlibraries on Instagram: “Meet the latest member of the MIT Libraries staff. He blew in with the snowstorm over the weekend.”

Ammonia is the world’s most widely produced chemical, but its production is also a big source of greenhouse gas emissions. Engineers now say using the Earth itself as a chemical reactor could eliminate the need for fossil-fuel-powered ammonia plants.

For MIT-WHOI graduate student Faith Brooks, the sky’s the limit: She’s now researching ways of preventing and mitigating harmful algal blooms, and will report this fall to Naval Aviation Schools Command in Florida to begin flight training.

By studying the roundworm C. elegans, Steven Flavell explores how neural circuits yield behavior. “The C. elegans nervous system is mind-bogglingly simple,” he says. “You can really measure almost everything that the animal is doing and study it.”

Developing and deploying powerful generative AI models comes with significant environmental consequences. “It is not just the electricity you consume when you plug the computer in. There are much broader consequences that go out to a system level,” Elsa Olivetti says.