Research & Development news

• Why airlines are warning over lithium-ion batteries

  07-08-2026 01:04 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The airline industry wants passengers to be careful when travelling with lithium ion batteries.
  
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• What’s behind this summer’s heat, and why 2027 could be worse

  13-08-2026 12:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  This summer has been a scorcher for much of the Northern Hemisphere. June and July marked the hottest two-month stretch in Europe since record-keeping began. The contiguous US endured its hottest month on record in July. South Korea saw its highest-ever recorded temperature.  The heat isn’t over yet, but some scientists are already looking ahead to 2027. Experts say the latest El Niño event is going to affect next year’s temperatures more than this year’s.So a
  
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• How kids feel about AI, in their own words

  13-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  When we set out to talk to kids about artificial intelligence, we thought we knew what we’d hear. We expected some to tell us they were using it to cheat a little, the way Millennials and Gen Xers opened up CliffsNotes or programmed formulas into their TI-82s, and others to share inspiring ways they were using it. We were also listening for concerns that were less kid-specific, like deepfakes or job destruction. But what we actually heard when we asked kids aged 10 to 18 about AI had tons
  
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• Scientists just created female clones of male mice

  12-08-2026 20:59 via technologyreview.com
  
  Scientists have deliberately turned male mouse embryos into females for the first time. A team based in Japan used a CRISPR-based approach to remove the Y chromosome from male cells and create female clones of male mice. “No one has done this before,” says Monika Ward, a reproductive biologist at the University of Hawaii, who was not involved in the research.The feat could change the way scientists think about reproduction, says Takashi Ishiuchi, a reproductive biologist at the
  
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• Scaling AI agents with trustworthy data

  12-08-2026 18:51 via technologyreview.com
  
  Business and technology leaders need no convincing that the time of agentic AI is here. Organizations are rapidly adopting agents, and few executives doubt the technology’s potential to transform work. But many organizations find that realizing the desired return on investment (ROI) from AI hinges on having the right foundation, with inadequate infrastructure and data being major blockers.Agentic AI places considerable new demands on enterprise data systems. The shift from answering questi
  
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• The Download: our 35 young innovators and the “censorship-industrial complex”

  12-08-2026 14:10 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  How we picked 35 of the world’s top young scientists and engineersOn September 8, MIT Technology Review will reveal its 2026 list of Innovators Under 35, recognizing 35 young people from around the world who are doing groundbreaking scientific work and building clever technical fixes for sticky problems.By finding the top young innovators glo
  
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• How we picked 35 of the world’s top young scientists and engineers

  12-08-2026 11:08 via technologyreview.com
  
  Next month, on September 8, MIT Technology Review will reveal its 2026 list of Innovators Under 35, recognizing 35 young people from around the world who are doing groundbreaking scientific work and building clever technical fixes for sticky problems. By finding the top young innovators globally and learning what they’re focused on in their work, we aim to give readers a sense of what advances to expect in the years to come. As a newsroom, we also use this exercise to help us spot ris
  
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• How the “censorship-industrial complex” is changing the Internet and US policy

  11-08-2026 19:58 via technologyreview.com
  
  I first heard the term “censorship-industrial complex” on April 15, 2025. That’s when I got the tip that a small office in the U.S. State Department, which focused on monitoring and countering foreign disinformation from the likes of Russia, Iran, and China, was facing imminent shutdown—the next day. And the reason? R/FIMI, as the office was called, was accused of serving as the State Department’s central hub in the so-called censorship-industrial complex&
  
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• Humans aren’t electronics

  11-08-2026 18:40 via technologyreview.com
  The following essay, originally titled “Guaranteeing Agency in the Age of Neural Prosthetics,” was selected as one of three finalists in MIT’s 2026 Envisioning the Future of Computing Prize. Its author, Strahinja  Janjušević, SM ’26, who studied computer science and cybersecurity at the US Naval Academy and just earned his master’s in the Technology and Policy Program of MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, now runs Refractal, an AI
  
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• The Download: the next big thing in LLMs and how AI academic research is shifting

  11-08-2026 14:10 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  These startups are chasing the next big thing in LLMsNine years after Google researchers introduced the transformer, this family of neural networks has become the engine inside every major large language model. But transformers are starting to show their age. As LLMs get bigger and better, transformers have become a bottleneck. Their dense att
  
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• AI agent hacks gym to get its user a spot in pilates class

  11-08-2026 14:09 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The incident is being seen as the latest example of the AI tools going to any lengths to complete their tasks.
  
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• Wall Street giants hand Nvidia $500bn to fund boom in AI projects

  11-08-2026 10:44 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The money will be used to develop new data centres to house, operate, and cool miles of stacked computer chips that process AI data and actions.
  
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• AI professors are negotiating the new realities of academic research

  10-08-2026 22:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.Last week, I headed 30 miles south of San Francisco to a hotel in Mountain View, California, to join some of the most accomplished, and some of the most promising, AI researchers in the world. I was hosting roundtable interviews and speaking at a media training for a convening of the Schmidt Sciences AI2050 program, an initiative funded by Eric and Wendy Schmid
  
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• The Download: AI agents for science, and the “censorship-industrial complex”

  10-08-2026 14:10 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  AI for science needs reasoning, not just data—Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and the cofounder of Schmidt Sciences, and Suhas Mahesh, who leads the AI for science work at the AI Center of Schmidt SciencesIn 2024, Google DeepMind scientists shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a neural network, AlphaFold, which predicts the structur
  
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• These startups are chasing the next big thing in LLMs

  10-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.Way back in the summer of 2017, AI researchers at Google put out a paper called “Attention Is All You Need,” in which they described a new type of neural network called a transformer. It proved to be very good at processing long sequences of data, especially text. Nine years on, transformers are
  
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• AI for science needs reasoning, not just data

  10-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  Every few decades, someone announces that science has reached its end. In 1903, the revered physicist Albert Michelson wrote that the “facts of physical science have all been discovered.” In the 1980s, Stephen Hawking predicted that theoretical physics might be finished by the end of the century. With the explosive arrival of artificial intelligence, the feeling is in the air again—this time accompanied by a Nobel Prize.In 2024, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind
  
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• Tech leaders say AI means less work - their staff say they work up to 90 hours a week

  10-08-2026 07:00 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Tech companies are not modelling their own claims of the technology giving people more free time.
  
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• The Download: a censorship conspiracy theory and the first virus created by AI

  07-08-2026 16:20 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policyFor years, narratives about a “censorship-industrial complex” spread in right-wing circles. The theory claimed that, under the guise of combating disinformation, a sprawling constellation of government agencies, academics, civil society groups, and Big Te
  
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• How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy

  07-08-2026 16:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations, with support from the Wayne Barrett Project.One morning in April 2025, employees of a small office in the US State Department got the email many of them had been dreading. For months, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had been cutting a wide swath through federal agencies, gutting teams that worked on everything from scientific research to Social Security to international aid. So when the employees of the
  
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• Meta fined $567m in largest child safety ruling against social media giant

  07-08-2026 11:22 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The ruling is in addition to $375m in fines Meta was already ordered to pay in the case, for a total of $942m.
  
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• First OpenAI, now Meta - why do AI hacks keep happening?

  06-08-2026 17:59 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A flood of companies are revealing AI models gained access to the internet - with real consequences.
  
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• Cashing in on SpaceX: 'Every chance I get, I'll sell a little more'

  06-08-2026 16:50 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Andre Lavoie joined SpaceX in 2009 as an engineer, now he's looking to cash in his shares in the company.
  
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• The Download: Google’s AI shake-up and Meta’s rogue model

  06-08-2026 14:10 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  Google’s AI empire is being reshaped. Here’s what’s changed.After a wave of painful losses in the tech talent wars, delays to its next flagship model, and murmurings of poor morale, Google has announced a major shake-up to its AI operations. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s happened and why it matters.DeepMind CEO Demi
  
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• AI or real? BBC analyses viral China disaster videos

  06-08-2026 00:00 via bbc.co.uk
  
  As weather events become more extreme, fake videos are being shared rapidly online, and it’s causing real world problems in China.
  
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• Puzzle Corner

  05-08-2026 16:56 via technologyreview.com
  
  Ready for a fresh set of puzzles? Click here for the September/October 2026 Puzzle Corner, brought to you by Michael S. Branicky, ScD ’95, of the Puzzle Corner Puzzle Crew (aka PC2), which also includes Edward Faulkner ’03, MEng ’04, and Abe Kunin ’03. This column includes solutions to the May/June issue.Send problems, solutions (by October 1), and comments to [email protected]. Editor emeritus Allan Gottlieb ’67 launched Puzzle Corner
  
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• SpaceX shares sink after first earnings report reveals huge AI spending plans

  05-08-2026 16:04 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Elon Musk told investors that people were "underestimating" his company.
  
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• Disney agrees deal to let TikTokers use its films and TV shows in videos

  05-08-2026 15:06 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A deal between will allow some creators to use clips from Disney films and TV shows in their videos.
  
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• The Download: NASA’s new telescope and Chinese tech import curbs

  05-08-2026 14:10 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  NASA’s new dark energy space telescope can also detect killer asteroids  At the end of August, NASA is set to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its quest is to help us better understand how the universe works, from the glue-like dark matter that keeps galaxies together to the elusive dark
  
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• The Sims and EA FC maker Electronic Arts sells for $55bn to Saudi-led group

  05-08-2026 12:29 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The deal takes the maker of titles including The Sims and EA FC into private ownership - and loads it with debt.
  
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• Anthropic AI used fake profiles to target people in hack then hid the evidence

  05-08-2026 11:24 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The UK's AI Safety Institute said recent behaviour from Anthropic and OpenAI models was malicious and unprecedented.
  
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