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    Study links rising temperatures and declining moods

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    Rising global temperatures affect human activity in many ways. Now, a new study illuminates an important dimension of the problem: Very hot days are associated with more negative moods, as shown by a large-scale look at social media postings.Overall, the study examines 1.2 billion social media posts from 157 countries over the span of a year. The research finds that when the temperature rises above 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or 35 degrees Celsius, expressed sentiments become about 25 percent more negative in lower-income countries and about 8 percent more negative in better-off countries. Extreme heat affects people emotionally, not just physically.“Our study reveals that rising temperatures don’t just threaten physical health or economic productivity — they also affect how people feel, every day, all over the world,” says Siqi Zheng, a professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and Center for Real Estate (CRE), and co-author of a new paper detailing the results. “This work opens up a new frontier in understanding how climate stress is shaping human well-being at a planetary scale.”The paper, “Unequal Impacts of Rising Temperatures on Global Human Sentiment,” is published today in the journal One Earth. The authors are Jianghao Wang, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Nicolas Guetta-Jeanrenaud SM ’22, a graduate of MIT’s Technology and Policy Program (TPP) and Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; Juan Palacios, a visiting assistant professor at MIT’s Sustainable Urbanization Lab (SUL) and an assistant professor Maastricht University; Yichun Fan, of SUL and Duke University; Devika Kakkar, of Harvard University; Nick Obradovich, of SUL and the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa; and Zheng, who is the STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability at CRE and DUSP. Zheng is also the faculty director of CRE and founded the Sustainable Urbanization Lab in 2019.Social media as a windowTo conduct the study, the researchers evaluated 1.2 billion posts from the social media platforms Twitter and Weibo, all of which appeared in 2019. They used a natural language processing technique called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), to analyze 65 languages across the 157 countries in the study.Each social media post was given a sentiment rating from 0.0 (for very negative posts) to 1.0 (for very positive posts). The posts were then aggregated geographically to 2,988 locations and evaluated in correlation with area weather. From this method, the researchers could then deduce the connection between extreme temperatures and expressed sentiment.“Social media data provides us with an unprecedented window into human emotions across cultures and continents,” Wang says. “This approach allows us to measure emotional impacts of climate change at a scale that traditional surveys simply cannot achieve, giving us real-time insights into how temperature affects human sentiment worldwide.”To assess the effects of temperatures on sentiment in higher-income and middle-to-lower-income settings, the scholars also used a World Bank cutoff level of gross national income per-capita annual income of $13,845, finding that in places with incomes below that, the effects of heat on mood were triple those found in economically more robust settings.“Thanks to the global coverage of our data, we find that people in low- and middle-income countries experience sentiment declines from extreme heat that are three times greater than those in high-income countries,” Fan says. “This underscores the importance of incorporating adaptation into future climate impact projections.”In the long runUsing long-term global climate models, and expecting some adaptation to heat, the researchers also produced a long-range estimate of the effects of extreme temperatures on sentiment by the year 2100. Extending the current findings to that time frame, they project a 2.3 percent worsening of people’s emotional well-being based on high temperatures alone by then — although that is a far-range projection.“It’s clear now, with our present study adding to findings from prior studies, that weather alters sentiment on a global scale,” Obradovich says. “And as weather and climates change, helping individuals become more resilient to shocks to their emotional states will be an important component of overall societal adaptation.”The researchers note that there are many nuances to the subject, and room for continued research in this area. For one thing, social media users are not likely to be a perfectly representative portion of the population, with young children and the elderly almost certainly using social media less than other people. However, as the researchers observe in the paper, the very young and elderly are probably particularly vulnerable to heat shocks, making the response to hot weather possible even larger than their study can capture.The research is part of the Global Sentiment project led by the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, and the study’s dataset is publicly available. Zheng and other co-authors have previously investigated these dynamics using social media, although never before at this scale.“We hope this resource helps researchers, policymakers, and communities better prepare for a warming world,” Zheng says.The research was supported, in part, by Zheng’s chaired professorship research fund, and grants Wang received from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  More

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      in Energy

      Jessika Trancik named director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center

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      Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, has been named the new director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC), effective July 1. The SSRC convenes and supports researchers focused on problems and solutions at the intersection of technology and its societal impacts.Trancik conducts research on technology innovation and energy systems. At the Trancik Lab, she and her team develop methods drawing on engineering knowledge, data science, and policy analysis. Their work examines the pace and drivers of technological change, helping identify where innovation is occurring most rapidly, how emerging technologies stack up against existing systems, and which performance thresholds matter most for real-world impact. Her models have been used to inform government innovation policy and have been applied across a wide range of industries.“Professor Trancik’s deep expertise in the societal implications of technology, and her commitment to developing impactful solutions across industries, make her an excellent fit to lead SSRC,” says Maria C. Yang, interim dean of engineering and William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor of Mechanical Engineering.Much of Trancik’s research focuses on the domain of energy systems, and establishing methods for energy technology evaluation, including of their costs, performance, and environmental impacts. She covers a wide range of energy services — including electricity, transportation, heating, and industrial processes. Her research has applications in solar and wind energy, energy storage, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles, and nuclear fission. Trancik is also known for her research on extreme events in renewable energy availability.A prolific researcher, Trancik has helped measure progress and inform the development of solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and other low-carbon technologies — and anticipate future trends. One of her widely cited contributions includes quantifying learning rates and identifying where targeted investments can most effectively accelerate innovation. These tools have been used by U.S. federal agencies, international organizations, and the private sector to shape energy R&D portfolios, climate policy, and infrastructure planning.Trancik is committed to engaging and informing the public on energy consumption. She and her team developed the app carboncounter.com, which helps users choose cars with low costs and low environmental impacts.As an educator, Trancik teaches courses for students across MIT’s five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.“The question guiding my teaching and research is how do we solve big societal challenges with technology, and how can we be more deliberate in developing and supporting technologies to get us there?” Trancik said in an article about course IDS.521/IDS.065 (Energy Systems for Climate Change Mitigation).Trancik received her undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from Cornell University. As a Rhodes Scholar, she completed her PhD in materials science at the University of Oxford. She subsequently worked for the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. After serving as an Omidyar Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, she joined MIT in 2010 as a faculty member.Trancik succeeds Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science and director of IDSS, who previously served as director of SSRC. More

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      in Energy

      Surprisingly diverse innovations led to dramatically cheaper solar panels

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      The cost of solar panels has dropped by more than 99 percent since the 1970s, enabling widespread adoption of photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into electricity.A new MIT study drills down on specific innovations that enabled such dramatic cost reductions, revealing that technical advances across a web of diverse research efforts and industries played a pivotal role.The findings could help renewable energy companies make more effective R&D investment decisions and aid policymakers in identifying areas to prioritize to spur growth in manufacturing and deployment.The researchers’ modeling approach shows that key innovations often originated outside the solar sector, including advances in semiconductor fabrication, metallurgy, glass manufacturing, oil and gas drilling, construction processes, and even legal domains.“Our results show just how intricate the process of cost improvement is, and how much scientific and engineering advances, often at a very basic level, are at the heart of these cost reductions. A lot of knowledge was drawn from different domains and industries, and this network of knowledge is what makes these technologies improve,” says study senior author Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.Trancik is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Goksin Kavlak, a former IDSS graduate student and postdoc who is now a senior energy associate at the Brattle Group; Magdalena Klemun, a former IDSS graduate student and postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University; former MIT postdoc Ajinkya Kamat; as well as Brittany Smith and Robert Margolis of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The research appears today in PLOS ONE.Identifying innovationsThis work builds on mathematical models that the researchers previously developed that tease out the effects of engineering technologies on the cost of photovoltaic (PV) modules and systems.In this study, the researchers aimed to dig even deeper into the scientific advances that drove those cost declines.They combined their quantitative cost model with a detailed, qualitative analysis of innovations that affected the costs of PV system materials, manufacturing steps, and deployment processes.“Our quantitative cost model guided the qualitative analysis, allowing us to look closely at innovations in areas that are hard to measure due to a lack of quantitative data,” Kavlak says.Building on earlier work identifying key cost drivers — such as the number of solar cells per module, wiring efficiency, and silicon wafer area — the researchers conducted a structured scan of the literature for innovations likely to affect these drivers. Next, they grouped these innovations to identify patterns, revealing clusters that reduced costs by improving materials or prefabricating components to streamline manufacturing and installation. Finally, the team tracked industry origins and timing for each innovation, and consulted domain experts to zero in on the most significant innovations.All told, they identified 81 unique innovations that affected PV system costs since 1970, from improvements in antireflective coated glass to the implementation of fully online permitting interfaces.“With innovations, you can always go to a deeper level, down to things like raw materials processing techniques, so it was challenging to know when to stop. Having that quantitative model to ground our qualitative analysis really helped,” Trancik says.They chose to separate PV module costs from so-called balance-of-system (BOS) costs, which cover things like mounting systems, inverters, and wiring.PV modules, which are wired together to form solar panels, are mass-produced and can be exported, while many BOS components are designed, built, and sold at the local level.“By examining innovations both at the BOS level and within the modules, we identify the different types of innovations that have emerged in these two parts of PV technology,” Kavlak says.BOS costs depend more on soft technologies, nonphysical elements such as permitting procedures, which have contributed significantly less to PV’s past cost improvement compared to hardware innovations.“Often, it comes down to delays. Time is money, and if you have delays on construction sites and unpredictable processes, that affects these balance-of-system costs,” Trancik says.Innovations such as automated permitting software, which flags code-compliant systems for fast-track approval, show promise. Though not yet quantified in this study, the team’s framework could support future analysis of their economic impact and similar innovations that streamline deployment processes.Interconnected industriesThe researchers found that innovations from the semiconductor, electronics, metallurgy, and petroleum industries played a major role in reducing both PV and BOS costs, but BOS costs were also impacted by innovations in software engineering and electric utilities.Noninnovation factors, like efficiency gains from bulk purchasing and the accumulation of knowledge in the solar power industry, also reduced some cost variables.In addition, while most PV panel innovations originated in research organizations or industry, many BOS innovations were developed by city governments, U.S. states, or professional associations.“I knew there was a lot going on with this technology, but the diversity of all these fields and how closely linked they are, and the fact that we can clearly see that network through this analysis, was interesting,” Trancik says.“PV was very well-positioned to absorb innovations from other industries — thanks to the right timing, physical compatibility, and supportive policies to adapt innovations for PV applications,” Klemun adds.The analysis also reveals the role greater computing power could play in reducing BOS costs through advances like automated engineering review systems and remote site assessment software.“In terms of knowledge spillovers, what we’ve seen so far in PV may really just be the beginning,” Klemun says, pointing to the expanding role of robotics and AI-driven digital tools in driving future cost reductions and quality improvements.In addition to their qualitative analysis, the researchers demonstrated how this methodology could be used to estimate the quantitative impact of a particular innovation if one has the numerical data to plug into the cost equation.For instance, using information about material prices and manufacturing procedures, they estimate that wire sawing, a technique which was introduced in the 1980s, led to an overall PV system cost decrease of $5 per watt by reducing silicon losses and increasing throughput during fabrication.“Through this retrospective analysis, you learn something valuable for future strategy because you can see what worked and what didn’t work, and the models can also be applied prospectively. It is also useful to know what adjacent sectors may help support improvement in a particular technology,” Trancik says.Moving forward, the researchers plan to apply this methodology to a wide range of technologies, including other renewable energy systems. They also want to further study soft technology to identify innovations or processes that could accelerate cost reductions.“Although the process of technological innovation may seem like a black box, we’ve shown that you can study it just like any other phenomena,” Trancik says.This research is funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energies Technology Office. More

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      in Environment

      Eco-driving measures could significantly reduce vehicle emissions

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      Any motorist who has ever waited through multiple cycles for a traffic light to turn green knows how annoying signalized intersections can be. But sitting at intersections isn’t just a drag on drivers’ patience — unproductive vehicle idling could contribute as much as 15 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. land transportation.A large-scale modeling study led by MIT researchers reveals that eco-driving measures, which can involve dynamically adjusting vehicle speeds to reduce stopping and excessive acceleration, could significantly reduce those CO2 emissions.Using a powerful artificial intelligence method called deep reinforcement learning, the researchers conducted an in-depth impact assessment of the factors affecting vehicle emissions in three major U.S. cities.Their analysis indicates that fully adopting eco-driving measures could cut annual city-wide intersection carbon emissions by 11 to 22 percent, without slowing traffic throughput or affecting vehicle and traffic safety.Even if only 10 percent of vehicles on the road employ eco-driving, it would result in 25 to 50 percent of the total reduction in CO2 emissions, the researchers found.In addition, dynamically optimizing speed limits at about 20 percent of intersections provides 70 percent of the total emission benefits. This indicates that eco-driving measures could be implemented gradually while still having measurable, positive impacts on mitigating climate change and improving public health.

      An animated GIF compares what 20% eco-driving adoption looks like to 100% eco-driving adoption.Image: Courtesy of the researchers

      “Vehicle-based control strategies like eco-driving can move the needle on climate change reduction. We’ve shown here that modern machine-learning tools, like deep reinforcement learning, can accelerate the kinds of analysis that support sociotechnical decision making. This is just the tip of the iceberg,” says senior author Cathy Wu, the Class of 1954 Career Development Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) at MIT, and a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).She is joined on the paper by lead author Vindula Jayawardana, an MIT graduate student; as well as MIT graduate students Ao Qu, Cameron Hickert, and Edgar Sanchez; MIT undergraduate Catherine Tang; Baptiste Freydt, a graduate student at ETH Zurich; and Mark Taylor and Blaine Leonard of the Utah Department of Transportation. The research appears in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.A multi-part modeling studyTraffic control measures typically call to mind fixed infrastructure, like stop signs and traffic signals. But as vehicles become more technologically advanced, it presents an opportunity for eco-driving, which is a catch-all term for vehicle-based traffic control measures like the use of dynamic speeds to reduce energy consumption.In the near term, eco-driving could involve speed guidance in the form of vehicle dashboards or smartphone apps. In the longer term, eco-driving could involve intelligent speed commands that directly control the acceleration of semi-autonomous and fully autonomous vehicles through vehicle-to-infrastructure communication systems.“Most prior work has focused on how to implement eco-driving. We shifted the frame to consider the question of should we implement eco-driving. If we were to deploy this technology at scale, would it make a difference?” Wu says.To answer that question, the researchers embarked on a multifaceted modeling study that would take the better part of four years to complete.They began by identifying 33 factors that influence vehicle emissions, including temperature, road grade, intersection topology, age of the vehicle, traffic demand, vehicle types, driver behavior, traffic signal timing, road geometry, etc.“One of the biggest challenges was making sure we were diligent and didn’t leave out any major factors,” Wu says.Then they used data from OpenStreetMap, U.S. geological surveys, and other sources to create digital replicas of more than 6,000 signalized intersections in three cities — Atlanta, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — and simulated more than a million traffic scenarios.The researchers used deep reinforcement learning to optimize each scenario for eco-driving to achieve the maximum emissions benefits.Reinforcement learning optimizes the vehicles’ driving behavior through trial-and-error interactions with a high-fidelity traffic simulator, rewarding vehicle behaviors that are more energy-efficient while penalizing those that are not.The researchers cast the problem as a decentralized cooperative multi-agent control problem, where the vehicles cooperate to achieve overall energy efficiency, even among non-participating vehicles, and they act in a decentralized manner, avoiding the need for costly communication between vehicles.However, training vehicle behaviors that generalize across diverse intersection traffic scenarios was a major challenge. The researchers observed that some scenarios are more similar to one another than others, such as scenarios with the same number of lanes or the same number of traffic signal phases.As such, the researchers trained separate reinforcement learning models for different clusters of traffic scenarios, yielding better emission benefits overall.But even with the help of AI, analyzing citywide traffic at the network level would be so computationally intensive it could take another decade to unravel, Wu says.Instead, they broke the problem down and solved each eco-driving scenario at the individual intersection level.“We carefully constrained the impact of eco-driving control at each intersection on neighboring intersections. In this way, we dramatically simplified the problem, which enabled us to perform this analysis at scale, without introducing unknown network effects,” she says.Significant emissions benefitsWhen they analyzed the results, the researchers found that full adoption of eco-driving could result in intersection emissions reductions of between 11 and 22 percent.These benefits differ depending on the layout of a city’s streets. A denser city like San Francisco has less room to implement eco-driving between intersections, offering a possible explanation for reduced emission savings, while Atlanta could see greater benefits given its higher speed limits.Even if only 10 percent of vehicles employ eco-driving, a city could still realize 25 to 50 percent of the total emissions benefit because of car-following dynamics: Non-eco-driving vehicles would follow controlled eco-driving vehicles as they optimize speed to pass smoothly through intersections, reducing their carbon emissions as well.In some cases, eco-driving could also increase vehicle throughput by minimizing emissions. However, Wu cautions that increasing throughput could result in more drivers taking to the roads, reducing emissions benefits.And while their analysis of widely used safety metrics known as surrogate safety measures, such as time to collision, suggest that eco-driving is as safe as human driving, it could cause unexpected behavior in human drivers. More research is needed to fully understand potential safety impacts, Wu says.Their results also show that eco-driving could provide even greater benefits when combined with alternative transportation decarbonization solutions. For instance, 20 percent eco-driving adoption in San Francisco would cut emission levels by 7 percent, but when combined with the projected adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles, it would cut emissions by 17 percent.“This is a first attempt to systematically quantify network-wide environmental benefits of eco-driving. This is a great research effort that will serve as a key reference for others to build on in the assessment of eco-driving systems,” says Hesham Rakha, the Samuel L. Pritchard Professor of Engineering at Virginia Tech, who was not involved with this research.And while the researchers focus on carbon emissions, the benefits are highly correlated with improvements in fuel consumption, energy use, and air quality.“This is almost a free intervention. We already have smartphones in our cars, and we are rapidly adopting cars with more advanced automation features. For something to scale quickly in practice, it must be relatively simple to implement and shovel-ready. Eco-driving fits that bill,” Wu says.This work is funded, in part, by Amazon and the Utah Department of Transportation. More

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      in Environment

      Why animals are a critical part of forest carbon absorption

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      A lot of attention has been paid to how climate change can drive biodiversity loss. Now, MIT researchers have shown the reverse is also true: Reductions in biodiversity can jeopardize one of Earth’s most powerful levers for mitigating climate change.In a paper published in PNAS, the researchers showed that following deforestation, naturally-regrowing tropical forests, with healthy populations of seed-dispersing animals, can absorb up to four times more carbon than similar forests with fewer seed-dispersing animals.Because tropical forests are currently Earth’s largest land-based carbon sink, the findings improve our understanding of a potent tool to fight climate change.“The results underscore the importance of animals in maintaining healthy, carbon-rich tropical forests,” says Evan Fricke, a research scientist in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the lead author of the new study. “When seed-dispersing animals decline, we risk weakening the climate-mitigating power of tropical forests.”Fricke’s co-authors on the paper include César Terrer, the Tianfu Career Development Associate Professor at MIT; Charles Harvey, an MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering; and Susan Cook-Patton of The Nature Conservancy.The study combines a wide array of data on animal biodiversity, movement, and seed dispersal across thousands of animal species, along with carbon accumulation data from thousands of tropical forest sites.The researchers say the results are the clearest evidence yet that seed-dispersing animals play an important role in forests’ ability to absorb carbon, and that the findings underscore the need to address biodiversity loss and climate change as connected parts of a delicate ecosystem rather as separate problems in isolation.“It’s been clear that climate change threatens biodiversity, and now this study shows how biodiversity losses can exacerbate climate change,” Fricke says. “Understanding that two-way street helps us understand the connections between these challenges, and how we can address them. These are challenges we need to tackle in tandem, and the contribution of animals to tropical forest carbon shows that there are win-wins possible when supporting biodiversity and fighting climate change at the same time.”Putting the pieces togetherThe next time you see a video of a monkey or bird enjoying a piece of fruit, consider that the animals are actually playing an important role in their ecosystems. Research has shown that by digesting the seeds and defecating somewhere else, animals can help with the germination, growth, and long-term survival of the plant.Fricke has been studying animals that disperse seeds for nearly 15 years. His previous research has shown that without animal seed dispersal, trees have lower survival rates and a harder time keeping up with environmental changes.“We’re now thinking more about the roles that animals might play in affecting the climate through seed dispersal,” Fricke says. “We know that in tropical forests, where more than three-quarters of trees rely on animals for seed dispersal, the decline of seed dispersal could affect not just the biodiversity of forests, but how they bounce back from deforestation. We also know that all around the world, animal populations are declining.”Regrowing forests is an often-cited way to mitigate the effects of climate change, but the influence of biodiversity on forests’ ability to absorb carbon has not been fully quantified, especially at larger scales.For their study, the researchers combined data from thousands of separate studies and used new tools for quantifying disparate but interconnected ecological processes. After analyzing data from more than 17,000 vegetation plots, the researchers decided to focus on tropical regions, looking at data on where seed-dispersing animals live, how many seeds each animal disperses, and how they affect germination.The researchers then incorporated data showing how human activity impacts different seed-dispersing animals’ presence and movement. They found, for example, that animals move less when they consume seeds in areas with a bigger human footprint.Combining all that data, the researchers created an index of seed-dispersal disruption that revealed a link between human activities and declines in animal seed dispersal. They then analyzed the relationship between that index and records of carbon accumulation in naturally regrowing tropical forests over time, controlling for factors like drought conditions, the prevalence of fires, and the presence of grazing livestock.“It was a big task to bring data from thousands of field studies together into a map of the disruption of seed dispersal,” Fricke says. “But it lets us go beyond just asking what animals are there to actually quantifying the ecological roles those animals are playing and understanding how human pressures affect them.”The researchers acknowledged that the quality of animal biodiversity data could be improved and introduces uncertainty into their findings. They also note that other processes, such as pollination, seed predation, and competition influence seed dispersal and can constrain forest regrowth. Still, the findings were in line with recent estimates.“What’s particularly new about this study is we’re actually getting the numbers around these effects,” Fricke says. “Finding that seed dispersal disruption explains a fourfold difference in carbon absorption across the thousands of tropical regrowth sites included in the study points to seed dispersers as a major lever on tropical forest carbon.”Quantifying lost carbonIn forests identified as potential regrowth sites, the researchers found seed-dispersal declines were linked to reductions in carbon absorption each year averaging 1.8 metric tons per hectare, equal to a reduction in regrowth of 57 percent.The researchers say the results show natural regrowth projects will be more impactful in landscapes where seed-dispersing animals have been less disrupted, including areas that were recently deforested, are near high-integrity forests, or have higher tree cover.“In the discussion around planting trees versus allowing trees to regrow naturally, regrowth is basically free, whereas planting trees costs money, and it also leads to less diverse forests,” Terrer says. “With these results, now we can understand where natural regrowth can happen effectively because there are animals planting the seeds for free, and we also can identify areas where, because animals are affected, natural regrowth is not going to happen, and therefore planting trees actively is necessary.”To support seed-dispersing animals, the researchers encourage interventions that protect or improve their habitats and that reduce pressures on species, ranging from wildlife corridors to restrictions on wildlife trade. Restoring the ecological roles of seed dispersers is also possible by reintroducing seed-dispersing species where they’ve been lost or planting certain trees that attract those animals.The findings could also make modeling the climate impact of naturally regrowing forests more accurate.“Overlooking the impact of seed-dispersal disruption may overestimate natural regrowth potential in many areas and underestimate it in others,” the authors write.The researchers believe the findings open up new avenues of inquiry for the field.“Forests provide a huge climate subsidy by sequestering about a third of all human carbon emissions,” Terrer says. “Tropical forests are by far the most important carbon sink globally, but in the last few decades, their ability to sequester carbon has been declining. We will next explore how much of that decline is due to an increase in extreme droughts or fires versus declines in animal seed dispersal.”Overall, the researchers hope the study helps improves our understanding of the planet’s complex ecological processes.“When we lose our animals, we’re losing the ecological infrastructure that keeps our tropical forests healthy and resilient,” Fricke says.The research was supported by the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, the Government of Portugal, and the Bezos Earth Fund. More

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      in Environment

      Study shows how a common fertilizer ingredient benefits plants

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      Lanthanides are a class of rare earth elements that in many countries are added to fertilizer as micronutrients to stimulate plant growth. But little is known about how they are absorbed by plants or influence photosynthesis, potentially leaving their benefits untapped.Now, researchers from MIT have shed light on how lanthanides move through and operate within plants. These insights could help farmers optimize their use to grow some of the world’s most popular crops.Published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the study shows that a single nanoscale dose of lanthanides applied to seeds can make some of the world’s most common crops more resilient to UV stress. The researchers also uncovered the chemical processes by which lanthanides interact with the chlorophyll pigments that drive photosynthesis, showing that different lanthanide elements strengthen chlorophyll by replacing the magnesium at its center.“This is a first step to better understand how these elements work in plants, and to provide an example of how they could be better delivered to plants, compared to simply applying them in the soil,” says Associate Professor Benedetto Marelli, who conducted the research with postdoc Giorgio Rizzo. “This is the first example of a thorough study showing the effects of lanthanides on chlorophyll, and their beneficial effects to protect plants from UV stress.”Inside plant connectionsCertain lanthanides are used as contrast agents in MRI and for applications including light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and lasers. Over the last 50 years, lanthanides have become increasingly used in agriculture to enhance crop yields, with China alone applying lanthanide-based fertilizers to nearly 4 million hectares of land each year.“Lanthanides have been considered for a long time to be biologically irrelevant, but that’s changed in agriculture, especially in China,” says Rizzo, the paper’s first author. “But we largely don’t know how lanthanides work to benefit plants — nor do we understand their uptake mechanisms from plant tissues.”Recent studies have shown that low concentrations of lanthanides can promote plant growth, root elongation, hormone synthesis, and stress tolerance, but higher doses can cause harm to plants. Striking the right balance has been hard because of our lack of understanding around how lanthanides are absorbed by plants or how they interact with root soil.For the study, the researchers leveraged seed coating and treatment technologies they previously developed to investigate the way the plant pigment chlorophyll interacts with lanthanides, both inside and outside of plants. Up until now, researchers haven’t been sure whether chlorophyll interacts with lanthanide ions at all.Chlorophyll drives photosynthesis, but the pigments lose their ability to efficiently absorb light when the magnesium ion at their core is removed. The researchers discovered that lanthanides can fill that void, helping chlorophyll pigments partially recover some of their optical properties in a process known as re-greening.“We found that lanthanides can boost several parameters of plant health,” Marelli says. “They mostly accumulate in the roots, but a small amount also makes its way to the leaves, and some of the new chlorophyll molecules made in leaves have lanthanides incorporated in their structure.”This study also offers the first experimental evidence that lanthanides can increase plant resilience to UV stress, something the researchers say was completely unexpected.“Chlorophylls are very sensitive pigments,” Rizzo says. “They can convert light to energy in plants, but when they are isolated from the cell structure, they rapidly hydrolyze and degrade. However, in the form with lanthanides at their center, they are pretty stable, even after extracting them from plant cells.”The researchers, using different spectroscopic techniques, found the benefits held across a range of staple crops, including chickpea, barley, corn, and soybeans.The findings could be used to boost crop yield and increase the resilience of some of the world’s most popular crops to extreme weather.“As we move into an environment where extreme heat and extreme climate events are more common, and particularly where we can have prolonged periods of sun in the field, we want to provide new ways to protect our plants,” Marelli says. “There are existing agrochemicals that can be applied to leaves for protecting plants from stressors such as UV, but they can be toxic, increase microplastics, and can require multiple applications. This could be a complementary way to protect plants from UV stress.”Identifying new applicationsThe researchers also found that larger lanthanide elements like lanthanum were more effective at strengthening chlorophyll pigments than smaller ones. Lanthanum is considered a low-value byproduct of rare earths mining, and can become a burden to the rare earth element (REE) supply chain due to the need to separate it from more desirable rare earths. Increasing the demand for lanthanum could diversify the economics of REEs and improve the stability of their supply chain, the scientists suggest.“This study shows what we could do with these lower-value metals,” Marelli says. “We know lanthanides are extremely useful in electronics, magnets, and energy. In the U.S., there’s a big push to recycle them. That’s why for the plant studies, we focused on lanthanum, being the most abundant, cheapest lanthanide ion.”Moving forward, the team plans to explore how lanthanides work with other biological molecules, including proteins in the human body.In agriculture, the team hopes to scale up its research to include field and greenhouse studies to continue testing the results of UV resilience on different crop types and in experimental farm conditions.“Lanthanides are already widely used in agriculture,” Rizzo says. “We hope this study provides evidence that allows more conscious use of them and also a new way to apply them through seed treatments.”The research was supported by the MIT Climate Grand Challenge and the Office for Naval Research. More

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      in Environment

      VAMO proposes an alternative to architectural permanence

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      The International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia holds up a mirror to the industry — not only reflecting current priorities and preoccupations, but also projecting an agenda for what might be possible. Curated by Carlo Ratti, MIT professor of practice of urban technologies and planning, this year’s exhibition (“Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective”) proposes a “Circular Economy Manifesto” with the goal to support the “development and production of projects that utilize natural, artificial, and collective intelligence to combat the climate crisis.” Designers and architects will quickly recognize the paradox of this year’s theme. Global architecture festivals have historically had a high carbon footprint, using vast amounts of energy, resources, and materials to build and transport temporary structures that are later discarded. This year’s unprecedented emphasis on waste elimination and carbon neutrality challenges participants to reframe apparent limitations into creative constraints. In this way, the Biennale acts as a microcosm of current planetary conditions — a staging ground to envision and practice adaptive strategies.VAMO (Vegetal, Animal, Mineral, Other)When Ratti approached John Ochsendorf, MIT professor and founding director of MIT Morningside Academy of Design (MAD), with the invitation to interpret the theme of circularity, the project became the premise for a convergence of ideas, tools, and know-how from multiple teams at MIT and the wider MIT community. The Digital Structures research group, directed by Professor Caitlin Mueller, applied expertise in designing efficient structures of tension and compression. The Circular Engineering for Architecture research group, led by MIT alumna Catherine De Wolf at ETH Zurich, explored how digital technologies and traditional woodworking techniques could make optimal use of reclaimed timber. Early-stage startups — including companies launched by the venture accelerator MITdesignX — contributed innovative materials harnessing natural byproducts from vegetal, animal, mineral, and other sources. The result is VAMO (Vegetal, Animal, Mineral, Other), an ultra-lightweight, biodegradable, and transportable canopy designed to circle around a brick column in the Corderie of the Venice Arsenale — a historic space originally used to manufacture ropes for the city’s naval fleet. “This year’s Biennale marks a new radicalism in approaches to architecture,” says Ochsendorf. “It’s no longer sufficient to propose an exciting idea or present a stylish installation. The conversation on material reuse must have relevance beyond the exhibition space, and we’re seeing a hunger among students and emerging practices to have a tangible impact. VAMO isn’t just a temporary shelter for new thinking. It’s a material and structural prototype that will evolve into multiple different forms after the Biennale.”Tension and compressionThe choice to build the support structure from reclaimed timber and hemp rope called for a highly efficient design to maximize the inherent potential of comparatively humble materials. Working purely in tension (the spliced cable net) or compression (the oblique timber rings), the structure appears to float — yet is capable of supporting substantial loads across large distances. The canopy weighs less than 200 kilograms and covers over 6 meters in diameter, highlighting the incredible lightness that equilibrium forms can achieve. VAMO simultaneously showcases a series of sustainable claddings and finishes made from surprising upcycled materials — from coconut husks, spent coffee grounds, and pineapple peel to wool, glass, and scraps of leather. The Digital Structures research group led the design of structural geometries conditioned by materiality and gravity. “We knew we wanted to make a very large canopy,” says Mueller. “We wanted it to have anticlastic curvature suggestive of naturalistic forms. We wanted it to tilt up to one side to welcome people walking from the central corridor into the space. However, these effects are almost impossible to achieve with today’s computational tools that are mostly focused on drawing rigid materials.”In response, the team applied two custom digital tools, Ariadne and Theseus, developed in-house to enable a process of inverse form-finding: a way of discovering forms that achieve the experiential qualities of an architectural project based on the mechanical properties of the materials. These tools allowed the team to model three-dimensional design concepts and automatically adjust geometries to ensure that all elements were held in pure tension or compression.“Using digital tools enhances our creativity by allowing us to choose between multiple different options and short-circuit a process that would have otherwise taken months,” says Mueller. “However, our process is also generative of conceptual thinking that extends beyond the tool — we’re constantly thinking about the natural and historic precedents that demonstrate the potential of these equilibrium structures.”Digital efficiency and human creativity Lightweight enough to be carried as standard luggage, the hemp rope structure was spliced by hand and transported from Massachusetts to Venice. Meanwhile, the heavier timber structure was constructed in Zurich, where it could be transported by train — thereby significantly reducing the project’s overall carbon footprint. The wooden rings were fabricated using salvaged beams and boards from two temporary buildings in Switzerland — the Huber and Music Pavilions — following a pedagogical approach that De Wolf has developed for the Digital Creativity for Circular Construction course at ETH Zurich. Each year, her students are tasked with disassembling a building due for demolition and using the materials to design a new structure. In the case of VAMO, the goal was to upcycle the wood while avoiding the use of chemicals, high-energy methods, or non-biodegradable components (such as metal screws or plastics). “Our process embraces all three types of intelligence celebrated by the exhibition,” says De Wolf. “The natural intelligence of the materials selected for the structure and cladding; the artificial intelligence of digital tools empowering us to upcycle, design, and fabricate with these natural materials; and the crucial collective intelligence that unlocks possibilities of newly developed reused materials, made possible by the contributions of many hands and minds.”For De Wolf, true creativity in digital design and construction requires a context-sensitive approach to identifying when and how such tools are best applied in relation to hands-on craftsmanship. Through a process of collective evaluation, it was decided that the 20-foot lower ring would be assembled with eight scarf joints using wedges and wooden pegs, thereby removing the need for metal screws. The scarf joints were crafted through five-axis CNC milling; the smaller, dual-jointed upper ring was shaped and assembled by hand by Nicolas Petit-Barreau, founder of the Swiss woodwork company Anku, who applied his expertise in designing and building yurts, domes, and furniture to the VAMO project. “While digital tools suited the repetitive joints of the lower ring, the upper ring’s two unique joints were more efficiently crafted by hand,” says Petit-Barreau. “When it comes to designing for circularity, we can learn a lot from time-honored building traditions. These methods were refined long before we had access to energy-intensive technologies — they also allow for the level of subtlety and responsiveness necessary when adapting to the irregularities of reused wood.”A material palette for circularityThe structural system of a building is often the most energy-intensive; an impact dramatically mitigated by the collaborative design and fabrication process developed by MIT Digital Structures and ETH Circular Engineering for Architecture. The structure also serves to showcase panels made of biodegradable and low-energy materials — many of which were advanced through ventures supported by MITdesignX, a program dedicated to design innovation and entrepreneurship at MAD. “In recent years, several MITdesignX teams have proposed ideas for new sustainable materials that might at first seem far-fetched,” says Gilad Rosenzweig, executive director of MITdesignX. “For instance, using spent coffee grounds to create a leather-like material (Cortado), or creating compostable acoustic panels from coconut husks and reclaimed wool (Kokus). This reflects a major cultural shift in the architecture profession toward rethinking the way we build, but it’s not enough just to have an inventive idea. To achieve impact — to convert invention into innovation — teams have to prove that their concept is cost-effective, viable as a business, and scalable.”Aligned with the ethos of MAD, MITdesignX assesses profit and productivity in terms of environmental and social sustainability. In addition to presenting the work of R&D teams involved in MITdesignX, VAMO also exhibits materials produced by collaborating teams at University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design, Politecnico di Milano, and other partners, such as Manteco. The result is a composite structure that encapsulates multiple life spans within a diverse material palette of waste materials from vegetal, animal, and mineral forms. Panels of Ananasse, a material made from pineapple peels developed by Vérabuccia, preserve the fruit’s natural texture as a surface pattern, while rehub repurposes fragments of multicolored Murano glass into a flexible terrazzo-like material; COBI creates breathable shingles from coarse wool and beeswax, and DumoLab produces fuel-free 3D-printable wood panels. A purpose beyond permanence Adriana Giorgis, a designer and teaching fellow in architecture at MIT, played a crucial role in bringing the parts of the project together. Her research explores the diverse network of factors that influence whether a building stands the test of time, and her insights helped to shape the collective understanding of long-term design thinking.“As a point of connection between all the teams, helping to guide the design as well as serving as a project manager, I had the chance to see how my research applied at each level of the project,” Giorgis reflects. “Braiding these different strands of thinking and ultimately helping to install the canopy on site brought forth a stronger idea about what it really means for a structure to have longevity. VAMO isn’t limited to its current form — it’s a way of carrying forward a powerful idea into contemporary and future practice.”What’s next for VAMO? Neither the attempt at architectural permanence associated with built projects, nor the relegation to waste common to temporary installations. After the Biennale, VAMO will be disassembled, possibly reused for further exhibitions, and finally relocated to a natural reserve in Switzerland, where the parts will be researched as they biodegrade. In this way, the lifespan of the project is extended beyond its initial purpose for human habitation and architectural experimentation, revealing the gradual material transformations constantly taking place in our built environment.To quote Carlo Ratti’s Circular Economy Manifesto, the “lasting legacy” of VAMO is to “harness nature’s intelligence, where nothing is wasted.” Through a regenerative symbiosis of natural, artificial, and collective intelligence, could architectural thinking and practice expand to planetary proportions? More

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      in Energy

      Evelyn Wang: A new energy source at MIT

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      Evelyn Wang ’00 knows a few things about engineering solutions to hard problems. After all, she invented a way to pull water out of thin air.Now, Wang is applying that problem-solving experience — and a deep, enduring sense of optimism — toward the critical issue of climate change, to strengthen the American energy economy and ensure resilience for all.Wang, a mechanical engineering professor by trade, began work this spring as MIT’s first vice president for energy and climate, overseeing the Institute’s expanding work on climate change. That means broadening the Institute’s already-wide research portfolio, scaling up existing innovations, seeking new breakthroughs, and channeling campus community input to drive work forward.“MIT has the potential to do so much, when we know that climate, energy, and resilience are paramount to events happening around us every day,” says Wang, who is also the Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT. “There’s no better place than MIT to come up with the transformational solutions that can help shape our world.”That also means developing partnerships with corporate allies, startups, government, communities, and other organizations. Tackling climate change, Wang says, “requires a lot of partnerships. It’s not an MIT-only endeavor. We’re going to have to collaborate with other institutions and think about where industry can help us deploy and scale so the impact can be greater.”She adds: “The more partnerships we have, the more understanding we have of the best pathways to make progress in difficult areas.”From MIT to ARPA-EAn MIT faculty member since 2007, Wang leads the Device Research Lab. Along with collaborators, she identifies new materials and optimizations based on heat and mass transport processes that unlock the creation of leading-edge innovations. Her development of the device that extracts water from even very dry air led Foreign Policy Magazine to name her its 2017 Global ReThinker, and she won the 2018 Eighth Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water.Her research also extends to other areas such as energy and desalination research. In 2016, Wang and several colleagues announced a device based on nanophotonic crystals with the potential to double the amount of power produced by a given area of solar panels, which led to one of her graduate researchers on the project to co-found the startup Antora Energy. More recently, Wang and colleagues developed an aerogel that improves window insulation, now being commercialized through her former graduate students in a startup, AeroShield.Wang also spent two years recently as director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which supports early-stage R&D on energy generation, storage, and use.  Returning to MIT, she began her work as vice president for energy and climate in April, engaging with researchers, holding community workshops, and planning to build partnerships.“I’ve been energized coming back to the Institute, given the talented students, the faculty, the staff. It’s invigorating to be back in this community,” Wang says. “People are passionate, excited, and mission-driven, and that’s the energy we need to make a big impact in the world.”Wang is also working to help align the Institute’s many existing climate efforts. This includes the Climate Project at MIT, an Institute-wide presidential initiative announced in 2024, which aims to accelerate and scale up climate solutions while generating new tools and policy proposals. All told, about 300 MIT faculty conduct research related to climate issues in one form or another.“The fact that there are so many faculty working on climate is astounding,” Wang says. “Everyone’s doing exciting work, but how can we leverage our unique strengths to create something bigger than the sum of its parts? That’s what I’m working toward. We’ve spun out so many technologies. How do we do more of that? How do we do that faster, and in a way so the world will feel the impact?”A deep connection to campus — and strong sense of optimismUnderstanding MIT is one of Wang’s strengths, given that she has spent over two decades at the Institute.Wang earned her undergraduate degree from MIT in mechanical engineering, and her MS and PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. She has held several chaired faculty positions at MIT. In 2008, Wang was named the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor; in 2015, she was named the Gail E. Kendall Professor; and in 2021, she became the Ford Professor of Engineering. Wang served as head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 2018 through 2022.As it happens, Wang’s parents, Kang and Edith, met as graduate students at the Institute. Her father, an electrical engineer, became a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Wang also met her husband at MIT, and both of her brothers graduated from the Institute.Along with her deep institutional knowledge, administrative experience, and track record as an innovator, Wang is bringing several other things to her new role as vice president for climate: a sense of urgency about the issue, coupled with a continual sense of optimism that innovators can meet society’s needs.“I think optimism can make a difference, and is great to have in the midst of collective challenge,” Wang says. “We’re such a mission-driven university, and people come here to solve real-world problems.”That hopeful approach is why Wang describes the work as not only as a challenge but also a generational opportunity. “We have the chance to design the world we want,” she says, “one that’s cleaner, more sustainable and more resilient. This future is ours to shape and build together.”Wang thinks MIT contains many examples of world-shaping progress, She cites MIT’s announcement this month of the creation of the Schmidt Laboratory for Materials in Nuclear Technologies, at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion center, to conduct research on next-generation materials that could help enable the construction of fusion power plants. Another example Wang references is MIT research earlier this year on developing clean ammonia, a way to make the world’s most widely-produced chemical with drastically-reduced greenhouse gas emissions.“Those solutions could be breakthroughs,” Wang says. “Those are the kinds of things that give us optimism. There’s still a lot of research to be done, but it suggests the potential of what our world can be.”Optimism: There’s that word again.“Optimism is the only way to go,” Wang says. “Yes, the world is challenged. But this is where MIT’s strengths — in research, innovation, and education — can bring optimism to the table.” More

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      in Environment

      A journey of resilience, fueled by learning

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      In 2021, Hilal Mohammadzai was set to begin his senior year at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), where he was working toward a bachelor’s degree in computer science. However, that August, the Taliban seized control of the Afghani government, and Mohammadzai’s education — along with that of thousands of other students — was put on hold. “It was an uncertain future for all of the students,” says Mohammadzai.Mohammadzai ultimately did receive his undergraduate degree from AUAF in May 2023 after months of disruption, and after transferring and studying for one semester at the American University of Bulgaria. As he was considering where to take his studies next, Mohammadzai heard about the MIT Emerging Talent Certificate in Computer and Data Science. His friend graduated from the program in early 2023 and had only positive things to say about the education, community, and network. Creating opportunities to learn data sciencePart of MIT Open Learning, Emerging Talent develops global education programs for talented individuals from challenging economic and social circumstances, equipping them with the knowledge and tools to advance their education and careers.The Certificate in Computer and Data Science is a year-long online learning program for talented learners including refugees, migrants, and first-generation low-income students from historically marginalized backgrounds and underserved communities worldwide. The curriculum incorporates computer science and data analysis coursework from MITx, professional skill building, capstone projects, mentorship and internship options, and opportunities for networking with MIT’s global community. Throughout his undergraduate coursework, Mohammadzai discovered an affinity for data visualization, and decided that he wanted to pursue a career in data science. The opportunity with the Emerging Talent program presented itself at the perfect time. Mohammadzai applied and was accepted into the 2023-24 cohort, earning a spot out of a pool of over 2,000 applicants. “I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn more data science to build up on my existing knowledge,” he says.Expanding and deepening his data science knowledgeMohammadzai’s acceptance to the Emerging Talent program came around the same time that he began an MBA program at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan. For him, the two programs made for a perfect pairing. “When you have data science knowledge, you usually also require domain knowledge — whether it’s in business or economics — to help with interpreting data and making decisions,” he says. “Analyzing the data is one piece, but understanding how to interpret that data and make a decision usually requires domain knowledge.”Although Mohammadzai had some data science experience from his undergraduate coursework, he learned new skills and new approaches to familiar knowledge in the Emerging Talent program.“Data structures were covered at university, but I found it much more in-depth in the MIT courses,” said Mohammadzai. “I liked the way it was explained with real-life examples.” He worked with students from different backgrounds, and used Github for group projects. Mohammadzai also took advantage of personal agency and job-readiness workshops provided by the Emerging Talent team, such as how to pursue freelancing and build a mentorship network — skills that he has taken forward in life.“I found it an exceptional opportunity,” he says. “The courses, the level of education, and the quality of education that was provided by MIT was really inspiring to me.”Applying data skills to real-world situationsAfter graduating with his Certificate in Computer and Data Science, Mohammadzai began a paid internship with TomorrowNow, which was facilitated by introductions from the Emerging Talent team. Mohammadzai’s resume and experience stood out to the hiring team, and he was selected for the internship program.TomorrowNow is a climate-tech nonprofit that works with philanthropic partners, commercial markets, R&D organizations, and local climate adaptation efforts to localize and open source weather data for smallholder farmers in Africa. The organization builds public capacity and facilitates partnerships to deploy and sustain next-generation weather services for vulnerable communities facing climate change, while also enabling equitable access to these services so that African farmers can optimize scarce resources such as water and farm inputs. Leveraging philanthropy as seed capital, TomorrowNow aims to de-risk weather and climate technologies to make high-quality data and products available for the public good, ultimately incentivizing the private sector to develop products that reach last-mile communities often excluded from advancements in weather technology.For his internship, Mohammadzai worked with TomorrowNow climatologist John Corbett to understand the weather data, and ultimately learn how to analyze it to make recommendations on what information to share with customers. “We challenged Hilal to create a library of training materials leveraging his knowledge of Python and targeting utilization of meteorological data,” says Corbett. “For Hilal, the meteorological data was a new type of data and he jumped right in, working to create training materials for Python users that not only manipulated weather data, but also helped make clear patterns and challenges useful for agricultural interpretation of these data. The training tools he built helped to visualize — and quantify — agricultural meteorological thresholds and their risk and potential impact on crops.” Although he had previously worked with real-world data, working with TomorrowNow marked Mohammadzai’s first experience in the domain of climate data. This area presented a unique set of challenges and insights that broadened his perspective. It not only solidified his desire to continue on a data science path, but also sparked a new interest in working with mission-focused organizations. Both TomorrowNow and Mohammadzai would like to continue working together, but he first needs to secure a work visa.Without a visa, Mohammadzai cannot work for more than three to four hours a day, which makes securing a full-time job impossible. Back in 2021, the American University of Afghanistan filed a P-1 (priority one) asylum case for their students to seek resettlement in the United States because of the potential threat posed to them by the Taliban.Mohammadzai’s hearing was scheduled for Feb. 1, but it was postponed after the program was suspended early this year. As Mohammadzai looks to the end of his MBA program, his future feels uncertain. He has lived abroad since 2021 thanks to student visas and scholarships, but until he can secure a work visa he has limited options. He is considering pursuing a PhD program in order to keep his student visa status, while he waits on news about a more permanent option. “I just want to find a place where I can work and contribute to the community.” More