The caution comes as President Donald Trump pulls the U.S. out of key global climate organizations.

Increasingly, manufacturers are making toilet paper from recycled paper products, which avoids material from freshly cut trees.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 12 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02542-4

The authors quantify long-term (2003–2024) changes in Northern Hemisphere mountain aspect asymmetry—the difference in vegetation density between polar-facing and equatorial-facing slopes. They show a weakening trend, linked to changing hydrothermal conditions.

Going to the moon was one thing; going to Mars will be quite another. The distance alone is intimidating. While the moon is 238,855 miles away, the distance to Mars is between 33 million and 249 million miles. The propulsion systems that got us to the moon just won’t work.

Taylor Hampson, a master’s student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), is well aware of the problem. It’s one of the many reasons he’s excited about his NASA-sponsored research into nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP).

The technique uses nuclear energy to heat a propellant, like hydrogen, to an extremely high temperature and expel it through a nozzle. The resultant thrust can significantly reduce travel times to Mars, compared to chemical rockets. “You can get double the efficiency, or more, from a nuclear propulsion engine with the same thrust. Besides, being in microgravity is not ideal for astronauts, so you want to get them there faster, which is a strong motivation for using nuclear propulsion over the chemical equivalents,” Hampson says.

Understanding nuclear thermal propulsion

It’s worth taking a quick survey of rocket propulsion techniques to understand where Hampson’s work fits.

There are three broad types of rocket propulsion: chemical, where thrust is achieved by the combustion of rocket propellants; electrical, where electric fields accelerate charged particles to high velocities to achieve thrust; and nuclear, where nuclear energy delivers needed propulsion.

Nuclear propulsion, which is only used in space, not to get to space, further falls into one of two categories: nuclear electric propulsion uses nuclear energy to generate electricity and accelerate the propellant. Nuclear thermal propulsion, which is what Hampson is researching, heats a propellant using nuclear power. A significant advantage of NTP is that it can deliver double the efficiency (or more) of the chemical equivalent for the same thrust. A disadvantage: cost and regulatory hurdles. “Sure, you can get double the efficiency or more from a nuclear propulsion engine, but there hasn’t been a mission case that has needed it enough to justify the higher cost,” Hampson says.

Until now.

With a human mission to Mars becoming a very real possibility — NASA plans on sending astronauts to Mars as early as the 2030s — NTP might soon come under the spotlight.

"It's almost futuristic"

Growing up on Florida’s Space Coast and watching space shuttle launches stoked Hampson’s early interest in science. Loving many other subjects, including history and math, it wasn’t until his senior year that Hampson cast his lot into the engineering category. While space exploration got him hooked on aerospace engineering, Hampson was also intrigued by the possibility of nuclear engineering as a way to a greener future.

Wracked by indecision, he applied to schools in both fields and completed his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech. It was here that a series of internships in space technology companies like Blue Origin and Stoke Space, and participation in Georgia Tech’s rocket team, cemented Hampson’s love for rocket propulsion.

Looking to pursue graduate studies, MIT seemed like the next logical step. “I think MIT has the best combination of nuclear and aerospace education, and is really strong in the field of testing nuclear fuels,” Hampson says. Facilities in the MIT Reactor enable testing of nuclear fuel under conditions they would see in a nuclear propulsion engine. It helped that Koroush Shirvan, associate professor of NSE and Atlantic Richfield Career Development Professor in Energy Studies, was working on nuclear thermal propulsion efforts with NASA while focusing most of his efforts on the testing of nuclear fuels.

At MIT, Hampson works under the advisement of Shirvan. Hampson has had the chance to pursue further research in a project he started with an internship at NASA: studies of a nuclear thermal propulsion engine. “Nuclear propulsion is itself advanced, and I’m working on what comes after that. It’s almost futuristic,” he says.

Modeling the effects of nuclear thermal propulsion

While the premise of NTP sounds promising, its execution will likely not be straightforward. For one thing, with NTP, the rocket engine won’t start up and shut down like simple combustion engines. The startup is complex because rapid increase in temperatures can cause material failures. And the engines can take longer to shut down because of heat from nuclear decay. As a result, the components have to continue to be cooled until enough fission products decay away so there isn’t a lot of heat left, Hampson says.

Hampson is modeling the entirety of the rocket engine system — the tank, the pump, and more — to understand how these and many other parameters work together. Evaluating the entire engine is important because different configurations of parts (and even the fuel) can affect performance. To simplify calculations and to have simulations run faster, he’s working with a relatively simple one-dimensional model. Using it, Hampson can follow the effects of variables on parameters like temperature and pressure on each of the components throughout the engine operation.

“The challenge is in coupling the thermodynamic effects with the neutronic effects,” he says.

Ready for more challenges ahead

After years of indecision, delaying practically every academics-related decision to the last minute, Hampson seems to have zeroed in on what he expects to be his life’s work — inspired by the space shuttle launches many years ago — and hopes to pursue doctoral studies after graduation.

Hampson always welcomes a challenge, and it’s what motivates him to run. Training for the Boston Marathon, he fractured his leg, an injury that surfaced when he was running for yet another race, the Beantown Marathon. He’s not bowed by the incident. “I learned that you’re a lot more capable than you think,” Hampson says, “although you have to ask yourself about the cost,” he laughs. (He was in crutches for weeks after).

A thirst for a challenge is also one of the many reasons he chose to research thermal nuclear propulsion. It helps that the research indulges his love for the field. “Relatively speaking, it’s a field in need of much more advancement; there are many more unsolved problems,” he says. 

The latest article on this topic.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

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MIT is often recognized as one of the leading institutions of higher learning not only in the United States, but in the world, by several publications, including U.S. News & World Report, QS World University Rankings, Times Higher Education, and Forbes.

Now, MIT also has the distinction of being one of just 30 colleges and universities out of hundreds recognized by Princeton Review’s 2026 Mental Health Services Honor Roll for providing exemplary mental health and well-being services to its students. This is the second year in a row that MIT has received this honor.

The honor roll was created to be a resource for enrolled students and prospective students who may seek such services when applying to colleges. The survey asked more than a dozen questions about training for students, faculty, and staff; provisions for making new policies and procedures; peer-to-peer offerings; screenings and referral services available to all students; residence hall mental health resources; and other criteria, such as current online information that is updated and accessible.

Overall, the 2025 survey findings for all participating institutions are noteworthy, with Princeton Review reporting double-digit increases in campus counseling, wellness, and student support programs compared with its 2024 survey results. Earning a place on the honor roll underscores MIT’s commitment to providing exceptional services for graduate and undergraduate students alike.

Karen Singleton, deputy chief health officer and chief of mental health and counseling services at MIT Health, says, “This honor highlights the hard work and collaboration that we do here at MIT to support students in their well-being journey. This is a recognition of how we are doing those things effectively, and a recognition of MIT’s investment in these support services.”

MIT Health hosts 36 clinicians to meet the needs of the community, and it recently added an easy online scheduling system at the request of students.

Many mental health and well-being services are offered through several departments housed in the Division of Student Life (DSL). They often collaborate with MIT Health and partners across the Institute, including in the Division of Graduate and Undergraduate Education, to provide the best services for the best outcomes for MIT students. 

Support resources in DSL are highly utilized and valued by students. For instance, 82 percent of the Class of 2025 had visited Student Support Services (S3) at least once before graduating, and on a regular satisfaction survey, 91 percent of students who visited S3 said they would return if needed.

“Student Support Services supports over 80 percent of all undergraduates by the time they graduate, and over 60 percent each year. Our offices, including ORSEL, GradSupport, S3, SMHC, the CARE Team, and Residential and Community Life work incredibly well together to support our students,” says Kate McCarthy, senior associate dean of support, wellbeing, and belonging.

“The magic in our support system is the deeply collaborative nature of it. There are many different places students can enter the support network, and each of these teams works closely together to ensure students get connected to the help they need. We always say that students shouldn’t think too much about where they turn … if they get to one of us, they get to all of us,” says David Randall, dean of student life.

Division of Student Life Vice Chancellor Suzy Nelson adds, “It is an honor to see MIT included among colleges and universities recognized for excellent mental health services. Promoting student well-being is central to our mission and guides so much of what we do. This recognition reflects the work of many in our community who are dedicated to creating a campus environment where students can thrive academically and personally.”

Palo Alto’s crosswalk signals were hacked last year. Turns out the city never changed the default passwords.

Withdrawing from the world’s premier climate science organization supports the president’s views about global warming.

The prospect of ramping up the country’s heavy crude production goes against global efforts to phase down fossil fuels.

“We might as well focus on what we can control,” said Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.).

The justice holds stock in an oil company that withdrew from the lawsuit right before the high court took up the case.

Beset by crises in Ukraine and Greenland, leaders let the U.S. withdrawal from the world’s most important climate body pass with barely a mention.

Arizona Rep. Eli Crane has called efforts to limit planet-warming emissions "climate conspiracy nonsense."

“If someone did care about environment or climate change, one would have a hard time signing onto these new dietary guidelines,” a Harvard epidemiologist said.

“God only knows what the Trump administration will do” if the EU expands its aviation emissions scheme, an EU official says.

Temperatures rose above 113 degrees Fahrenheit in some places as the heat baked Adelaide and South Australia, before being driven east.

There were no immediate reports of major injuries or deaths.

Artificial intelligence has captured headlines recently for its rapidly growing energy demands, and particularly the surging electricity usage of data centers that enable the training and deployment of the latest generative AI models. But it’s not all bad news — some AI tools have the potential to reduce some forms of energy consumption and enable cleaner grids.

One of the most promising applications is using AI to optimize the power grid, which would improve efficiency, increase resilience to extreme weather, and enable the integration of more renewable energy. To learn more, MIT News spoke with Priya Donti, the Silverman Family Career Development Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a principal investigator at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), whose work focuses on applying machine learning to optimize the power grid.

Q: Why does the power grid need to be optimized in the first place?

A: We need to maintain an exact balance between the amount of power that is put into the grid and the amount that comes out at every moment in time. But on the demand side, we have some uncertainty. Power companies don’t ask customers to pre-register the amount of energy they are going to use ahead of time, so some estimation and prediction must be done.

Then, on the supply side, there is typically some variation in costs and fuel availability that grid managers need to be responsive to. That has become an even bigger issue because of the integration of energy from time-varying renewable sources, like solar and wind, where uncertainty in the weather can have a major impact on how much power is available. Then, at the same time, depending on how power is flowing in the grid, there is some power lost through resistive heat on the power lines. So, as a grid operator, how do you make sure all that is working all the time? That is where optimization comes in.

Q: How can AI be most useful in power grid optimization?

A: One way AI can be helpful is to use a combination of historical and real-time data to make more precise predictions about how much renewable energy will be available at a certain time. This could lead to a cleaner power grid by allowing us to handle and better utilize these resources.

AI could also help tackle the complex optimization problems that power grid operators must solve to balance supply and demand in a way that also reduces costs. These optimization problems are used to determine which power generators should produce power, how much they should produce, and when they should produce it, as well as when batteries should be charged and discharged, and whether we can leverage flexibility in power loads. These optimization problems are so computationally expensive that operators use approximations so they can solve them in a feasible amount of time. But these approximations are often wrong, and when we integrate more renewable energy into the grid, they are thrown off even farther. AI can help by providing more accurate approximations in a faster manner, which can be deployed in real-time to help grid operators responsively and proactively manage the grid.

AI could also be useful in the planning of next-generation power grids. Planning for power grids requires one to use huge simulation models, so AI can play a big role in running those models more efficiently. The technology can also help with predictive maintenance by detecting where anomalous behavior on the grid is likely to happen, reducing inefficiencies that come from outages. More broadly, AI could also be applied to accelerate experimentation aimed at creating better batteries, which would allow the integration of more energy from renewable sources into the grid.

Q: How should we think about the pros and cons of AI, from an energy sector perspective?

A: One important thing to remember is that AI refers to a heterogeneous set of technologies. There are different types and sizes of models that are used, and different ways that models are used. If you are using a model that is trained on a smaller amount of data with a smaller number of parameters, that is going to consume much less energy than a large, general-purpose model.

In the context of the energy sector, there are a lot of places where, if you use these application-specific AI models for the applications they are intended for, the cost-benefit tradeoff works out in your favor. In these cases, the applications are enabling benefits from a sustainability perspective — like incorporating more renewables into the grid and supporting decarbonization strategies.

Overall, it’s important to think about whether the types of investments we are making into AI are actually matched with the benefits we want from AI. On a societal level, I think the answer to that question right now is “no.” There is a lot of development and expansion of a particular subset of AI technologies, and these are not the technologies that will have the biggest benefits across energy and climate applications. I’m not saying these technologies are useless, but they are incredibly resource-intensive, while also not being responsible for the lion’s share of the benefits that could be felt in the energy sector.

I’m excited to develop AI algorithms that respect the physical constraints of the power grid so that we can credibly deploy them. This is a hard problem to solve. If an LLM says something that is slightly incorrect, as humans, we can usually correct for that in our heads. But if you make the same magnitude of a mistake when you are optimizing a power grid, that can cause a large-scale blackout. We need to build models differently, but this also provides an opportunity to benefit from our knowledge of how the physics of the power grid works.

And more broadly, I think it’s critical that those of us in the technical community put our efforts toward fostering a more democratized system of AI development and deployment, and that it’s done in a way that is aligned with the needs of on-the-ground applications.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 09 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02534-4

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation threatens human health, and its impacts are likely to intensify under climate change. This research examines how historical El Niño–Southern Oscillation events have caused life expectancy and economic losses across the Pacific Rim and projects future impacts and vulnerable groups.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 09 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02537-1

Channelized subsurface melting is an important process in the dynamics of ice shelves. Here the authors present observational data from Antarctic ice shelves and show that their basal melt is up to 50% higher than previously assumed.