Joshua Bennett’s scholarship, poetry, and teaching help students address core questions about values and meaning in life. “They see it as an opportunity, and they’ve explicitly told me this, to talk about being human,” he says.

A new DUSP study finds significant variation in people’s exposure to air pollution. The study, based in the Bronx, used mobile data to examine where people go during a typical day, building a more thorough assessment of their pollution exposure.

The MIT spinout that brought the world no-stick toothpaste is moving into the medical space, starting with an ostomy pouch lubricant that could improve millions of lives. “Deploying this technology to solve difficult problems has been a dream,” Kripa Varanasi says.

A new method for producing hydrogen fuel uses recycled aluminum, saltwater, and coffee grounds. “This is very interesting for maritime applications like boats or underwater vehicles because you wouldn’t have to carry around seawater,” Aly Kombargi says.

Economics PhD student Aaron Berman studies how to balance economic development with the pressure it puts on natural resources. From scallop fishing in New Bedford to deforestation in the tropics, “our goal is to get some empirical traction on the problem,” he says.

The newly discovered planet TIC 241249530 b has the most highly elliptical orbit of any known planet, scientists report. It appears to be a juvenile planet in the midst of becoming a hot Jupiter, and its orbit is providing some answers to how such large, scorching planets evolve.