Transistors, the building blocks of modern electronics, are typically made of silicon. Because it’s a semiconductor, this material can control the flow of electricity in a circuit. But silicon has fundamental physical limits that restrict how compact and energy-efficient a transistor can be.

MIT researchers have now replaced silicon with a magnetic semiconductor, creating a magnetic transistor that could enable smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient circuits. The material’s magnetism strongly influences its electronic behavior, leading to more efficient control of the flow of electricity. 

The team used a novel magnetic material and an optimization process that reduces the material’s defects, which boosts the transistor’s performance.

The material’s unique magnetic properties also allow for transistors with built-in memory, which would simplify circuit design and unlock new applications for high-performance electronics.

“People have known about magnets for thousands of years, but there are very limited ways to incorporate magnetism into electronics. We have shown a new way to efficiently utilize magnetism that opens up a lot of possibilities for future applications and research,” says Chung-Tao Chou, an MIT graduate student in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Physics, and co-lead author of a paper on this advance.

Chou is joined on the paper by co-lead author Eugene Park, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Julian Klein, a DMSE research scientist; Josep Ingla-Aynes, a postdoc in the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center; Jagadeesh S. Moodera, a senior research scientist in the Department of Physics; and senior authors Frances Ross, TDK Professor in DMSE; and Luqiao Liu, an associate professor in EECS, and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics; as well as others at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. The paper appears today in Physical Review Letters.

Overcoming the limits

In an electronic device, silicon semiconductor transistors act like tiny light switches that turn a circuit on and off, or amplify weak signals in a communication system. They do this using a small input voltage.

But a fundamental physical limit of silicon semiconductors prevents a transistor from operating below a certain voltage, which hinders its energy efficiency.

To make more efficient electronics, researchers have spent decades working toward magnetic transistors that utilize electron spin to control the flow of electricity. Electron spin is a fundamental property that enables electrons to behave like tiny magnets.

So far, scientists have mostly been limited to using certain magnetic materials. These lack the favorable electronic properties of semiconductors, constraining device performance.

“In this work, we combine magnetism and semiconductor physics to realize useful spintronic devices,” Liu says.

The researchers replace the silicon in the surface layer of a transistor with chromium sulfur bromide, a two-dimensional material that acts as a magnetic semiconductor.

Due to the material’s structure, researchers can switch between two magnetic states very cleanly. This makes it ideal for use in a transistor that smoothly switches between “on” and “off.”

“One of the biggest challenges we faced was finding the right material. We tried many other materials that didn’t work,” Chou says.

They discovered that changing these magnetic states modifies the material’s electronic properties, enabling low-energy operation. And unlike many other 2D materials, chromium sulfur bromide remains stable in air.

To make a transistor, the researchers pattern electrodes onto a silicon substrate, then carefully align and transfer the 2D material on top. They use tape to pick up a tiny piece of material, only a few tens of nanometers thick, and place it onto the substrate.

“A lot of researchers will use solvents or glue to do the transfer, but transistors require a very clean surface. We eliminate all those risks by simplifying this step,” Chou says.

Leveraging magnetism

This lack of contamination enables their device to outperform existing magnetic transistors. Most others can only create a weak magnetic effect, changing the flow of current by a few percent or less. Their new transistor can switch or amplify the electric current by a factor of 10.

They use an external magnetic field to change the magnetic state of the material, switching the transistor using significantly less energy than would usually be required.

The material also allows them to control the magnetic states with electric current. This is important because engineers cannot apply magnetic fields to individual transistors in an electronic device. They need to control each one electrically.

The material’s magnetic properties could also enable transistors with built-in memory, simplifying the design of logic or memory circuits.

A typical memory device has a magnetic cell to store information and a transistor to read it out. Their method can combine both into one magnetic transistor.

“Now, not only are transistors turning on and off, they are also remembering information. And because we can switch the transistor with greater magnitude, the signal is much stronger so we can read out the information faster, and in a much more reliable way,” Liu says.

Building on this demonstration, the researchers plan to further study the use of electrical current to control the device. They are also working to make their method scalable so they can fabricate arrays of transistors.

This research was supported, in part, by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports. The work was partially carried out at the MIT.nano facilities.

The conservative justice, who owns significant sums of oil and gas stock, has not recused himself from a major climate change case that could benefit the fossil fuel industry.

FEMA will no longer challenge court decisions that had invalidated its effort to force states to comply with immigration enforcement.

The Iran war is driving countries toward Chinese EVs, solar and batteries — strengthening China's hand as Trump seeks trade wins in Beijing.

A $100 million program approved by state lawmakers Wednesday will help thousands protect against roof damage from hail and wind.

The pushback from the Senate's top EPA appropriator follows similar skepticism of massive budget cuts from her House Republican counterparts.

The investments show growing confidence in a renewable energy that has roots in oil and gas fields.

The analysis determined that a quarter of games will likely be risky.

Intense, concentrated rainstorms have been on the rise for decades. And those bigger storms turn out to have a counterintuitive effect.

King Charles III has announced the government’s agenda for the next parliament.

The energy crisis is incentivizing ambitious solar power decisions across Southeast Asia.

Among the deals, Kenya Airways and Rubis Energy agreed to jointly develop Africa's first sustainable aviation fuel production facility in Kenya.

Since joining the faculty of MIT’s Department of Political Science in 2012, F. Daniel Hidalgo, known to many as “Danny,” has built a reputation as both a meticulous quantitative scholar and one of the department’s most generous and steadfast mentors.

A member of the 2025–27 Committed to Caring cohort, Hidalgo is recognized for a style of mentorship that combines intellectual intensity with humility, approachability, and a willingness to show up for students. A quantitative political scientist whose research focuses on elections, democratic accountability, and political behavior in Brazil and Latin America, his scholarship uses statistical and experimental methods to study how institutions shape political outcomes. According to his students, the rigor he brings to his research is matched by an equally strong commitment to the people he mentors.

Hidalgo’s reputation is illuminated repeatedly in nominations. One student, reflecting on years of mentorship, aptly summed this up by saying, “I have yet to meet a professor that cares more for their students.”

Showing the mess, not just the map

Most MIT political science PhD students encounter Hidalgo in their first year, when he teaches the department’s quantitative methods sequence. For many, the course is a turning point — an introduction to causal inference and the logic of experimentation that reshapes how they think about political science itself.

While the material is demanding, students describe a classroom that feels captivating, rather than intimidating. Even during the height of Covid-19-era Zoom courses, one student reflected on the ways in which Hidalgo “made the class engaging and interesting,” injecting energy into even the most complex statistical concepts. “It is no surprise that for many of us, the final papers we wrote for this class laid the foundation … for our subsequent research trajectories,” the student added.

Hidalgo’s approach to mentorship begins with demystifying research by exposing the process behind final products. If he had to articulate a guiding principle, he says, it would be this: “Show students the mess, not just the map.” Graduate students too often see only the polished journal article, not the abandoned drafts, failed models, or questions that had to be rebuilt from scratch. Hidalgo makes a point of bringing students into that disorganization early, normalizing uncertainty as part of scholarship.

That transparency reshapes both how students conceive of research, and how they intentionally practice it. As one student explained, Hidalgo’s mentorship creates “a space where we can share even our messiest ideas,” knowing they will be met with thoughtful feedback rather than judgment. His classroom and office are often described as rare environments where rigor and creativity coexist without fear.

A boundless capacity for mentorship

It is no secret within the department that Hidalgo advises a large number of students, providing one-on-one mentorship in addition to leading a growing research group. Despite this, students consistently describe weekly meetings where he gives their work his full attention. He reads drafts carefully and responds with detailed, constructive feedback, whether on a fellowship application, a conference paper, or a dissertation chapter.

Hidalgo’s mentorship is not confined to his formal advisees. Students who are not on his committee can still rely on him for advice on quantitative methods, knowing that he will make time for them. Over time, this has earned him a department-wide reputation as approachable, steady, and kind.

His advisees’ research spans the discipline: business politics in China, applied machine learning, nationalism in Europe, and electoral politics in Latin America. As one student put it, mentees are “united not by a single topic, but by [Hidalgo’s] generous and inclusive mentorship.” Although his own scholarship centers on Brazil and Latin America, students say he tackles every project with genuine curiosity and intellectual investment, connecting them to literature they might never have encountered and sharpening their arguments’ credibility.

At an institution where quantitative research is often the default, Hidalgo encourages methodological grounding that goes beyond the dataset. He pushes students to immerse themselves in the contexts they study: spend time in the field, talk to people, and absorb local political realities. Immersion, he argues, does not replace rigorous analysis — it sharpens it.

Building community in a solitary profession

Dissertation work can be isolating. In response, Hidalgo has launched a biweekly research group for his mentees. The group, now more than 10 students strong, meets throughout the semester to workshop ideas at any stage of development.

Students describe it as a rare low-stakes space where early drafts are welcome and half-formed ideas encouraged. Discussions are intellectually demanding, but never hostile. The diversity of projects — across regions, methods, and topics — broadens everyone’s perspective.

Hidalgo’s care for his students also emerges in small but meaningful ways. He brings snacks to meetings, organizes informal gatherings, and creates opportunities for connection beyond formal advising. During the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic, he engaged students through reading groups and small gatherings. When visiting scholars arrive, he folds them in. When global or personal events weigh heavily, he checks in.

One student recalled the morning after a deeply contentious U.S. presidential election. Rather than proceed as usual, Hidalgo canceled class and invited students to gather in his office. There were pastries and a space to talk — “a small, deeply touching gesture” that made an anxious day more bearable.

Standing by students in moments of uncertainty

Several nominations speak not only to academic mentorship, but to Hidalgo’s response during moments of personal and professional difficulty.

One advisee described hitting a breaking point in their fourth year: stalled research ideas, a failed fieldwork trip, deteriorating mental health, and a departmental warning about insufficient progress. Rather than stepping back, Hidalgo leaned in — helping generate new project ideas, structuring attainable plans, and encouraging another attempt at fieldwork, which ultimately proved successful.

Another student, pursuing an unconventional joint program bridging political science and statistics, described feeling academically isolated. Recognizing that need, Hidalgo helped create a reading group aligned with the student’s interests and encouraged collaboration across departments. As the student recalled, he “[put] the maximum trust in me to make decisions while always giving me the strong feeling that he [had] my back.”

When students choose paths outside academia, Hidalgo is equally supportive — encouraging them to align their research and professional development with their goals, without diminishing the value of their work.

His mentorship leaves a lasting imprint not only on students’ research, but on how they understand what it means to support others in turn. Across these experiences, a consistent theme emerges: Hidalgo challenges students to meet high standards while ensuring they never navigate those expectations alone. 

Elazer R. Edelman ’78, SM ’79, PhD ’84, an engineer and cardiologist who helped develop cardiovascular stents that have been used by more than 100 million people, has been named the recipient of the 2026-2027 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award.

The award committee recognized Edelman, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, for his work at the interface of engineering, science, and medicine. In addition to his work on stents, he has made significant contributions to tissue engineering and to deciphering the fundamental biological processes underling cardiovascular disease.

A member of the MIT faculty for more than 30 years, Edelman is renowned as a teacher and mentor. He is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a critical care cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and he served as director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science from 2018 to 2024.

“He is a clinician of the highest order who has touched the lives of many, a teacher of greatest passion who has mentored hundreds and taught thousands, and an engineer whose work has reached around the globe,” states the award citation, which was presented at today’s faculty meeting by Xuanhe Zhao, chair of the Killian Award Selection Committee and a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

The Killian Award was established in 1971 to recognize outstanding professional contributions by MIT faculty members. It is the highest honor that the faculty can give to one of its members.

“It’s deeply meaningful that your colleagues think enough of you to want to recognize your life’s work. This is an incredibly awe-inspiring group, and for them to feel that way is a truly special honor,” Edelman told MIT News after learning that he had been selected for the award.

Edelman, who grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, got his first MIT experience as a high school student, taking classes as part of the Institute’s High School Studies Program. That experience led him to apply to MIT, where he earned two bachelor’s degrees, in applied biology and electrical engineering and computer science, followed by a master’s in bioelectrical engineering and a PhD in medical engineering and medical physics. He also earned an MD from Harvard Medical School through the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

As a graduate student, Edelman was one of the first students to join the lab of Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT. Working with Langer, he developed mathematical approaches to guide the design of controlled drug-delivery systems.

“Bob opened my eyes to what it really means to use MIT science to make the world a better place,” Edelman says.

Early in his career, Edelman brought a scientist’s eye to one of medicine’s most urgent clinical challenges: how to address diseased blood vessels without provoking further injury. His studies of the cellular and molecular mechanisms of atherosclerosis and vascular healing — work that continues to this day — coupled with fundamental insights from engineering and physics, helped enable the optimization of bare-metal stents and the development of drug-eluting stents. 

Roughly 90 percent of the more than 100 million stents implanted worldwide now release drugs through principles his work helped define and advance, saving countless lives and improving quality of life for patients around the globe.

Edelman’s work reflects a continuing cycle of discovery: Basic insights in biology shaped transformative medical technologies, and the challenges posed by those technologies, in turn, continue to push biology, science, technology, and engineering together toward new discoveries and clinical advances.

“His landmark work on the cellular mechanisms underlying atherosclerosis and on the biology of cell-material interfaces established the scientific foundations that transformed bare-metal cardiovascular stents from a promising mechanical concept into a biologically informed and clinically transformative therapy with enduring legacy — paving the way for a cascade of innovations that changed the landscape of medicine,” the award committee wrote.

More recently, Edelman’s lab has designed novel heart valves and other innovative approaches to mechanical organ support.

During his tenure as the director of IMES, he led an MIT-wide effort to provide personal protective equipment to health care workers and emergency responders in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

“One of the things I’m most proud of is working with many people at MIT in the Covid response. At the height of Covid, we were supplying 23 percent of all PPE throughout New England,” he says. “Every single person who could possibly contribute contributed.”

As director of MIT’s Center for Clinical Translational Research and faculty lead for the Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, he is now working to help clinical research thrive at MIT and to address the inequities in technology access for society’s most vulnerable population — children.

Throughout his career, Edelman has devoted himself to mentoring students and trainees.

“I’m really proud of what our students have accomplished, not only scientifically, but on a personal level, and not only with me, but everything they’ve done afterwards. The greatness of a place like MIT is that you enable people to grow beyond their potential. That’s really the extraordinary thing about our community,” he says.

In recognition of his scientific achievements, Edelman has been elected a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the Association of University Cardiologists, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Inventors, the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Engineering.

“The Selection Committee is delighted to have this opportunity to honor Professor Elazer Edelman for his exceptional contributions to medical engineering and science, to MIT, and to the world,” the award citation concludes.

Oxygen is a cornerstone of chemistry, largely because it is so good at building the organic molecules that make up our world. Some oxygen-based compounds, called peroxides, are famous for being highly reactive — they act like oxygen delivery trucks, transferring atoms to other molecules. This process is essential for everything from creating new medicines to industrial manufacturing.

In an open-access study published April 24 in Nature Chemistry, researchers from the labs of MIT professors Christopher C. Cummins and Robert J. Gilliard, Jr. have revealed a brand-new type of peroxide containing boron. This molecule, called a dioxaborirane, represents a major advance in a field where such structures were long-proposed, but considered too unstable to actually isolate.

Room-temperature breakthrough

Dioxaborirane forms when a specially engineered boron molecule reacts with oxygen gas. What makes this discovery remarkable is that the reaction happens almost instantly at room temperature. Usually, creating strained oxygen-containing rings like this requires extreme, “punishing” conditions — like freezing temperatures or high pressure — to keep the molecule from falling apart.

Using advanced tools such as crystallography and computational modeling, the team proved the existence of a highly strained, three-member ring made of one boron and two oxygen atoms.

A molecule with two personalities

The most exciting part of the discovery is how the molecule behaves. Depending on its electrical charge, it acts in two very different ways:

• The builder: It can donate oxygen atoms to help construct new chemical compounds.
• The trapper: It can react with carbon dioxide, potentially offering a new way to capture and transform greenhouse gases.

“By showing that these compounds can be generated under mild conditions, our work opens the door to entirely new types of chemistry,” says Chonghe Zhang, the first author of the paper and an MIT chemistry graduate student co-advised by Cummins and Gilliard. “In the long term, these findings could provide us with powerful new tools for oxidation reactions in synthesis and materials science.”

Additional co-authors on the paper are Noah D. McMillion and Chun-Lin Deng of MIT and Junyi Wang of Baylor University. The work was funded, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Millions of people around the world use EFF's Privacy Badger. This browser extension blocks the hidden trackers that twist your web browsing into a commodity for Big Tech, advertisers, scammers, and data brokers. But did you know that we’re trying to solve an issue that’s even bigger than creepy ads and user profiling? You can help.

JOIN EFF

Online tracking isn't just creepy and unethical. It also enables government surveillance. Widespread commercial surveillance and weak privacy laws allow data brokers to harvest your data and sell it to law enforcement agencies including the FBI, CBP, and ICE. The government exploits this system to buy sensitive information about you that they would ordinarily need a warrant to collect, like your location over time. 

With your help, EFF is fighting back. Our team is working to enact stronger laws to uphold your privacy. We’re advocating for consumer rights in the courts. We’re investigating how these technologies affect our communities. And we’re cutting off surveillance advertising at the source with tools like Privacy Badger for everyone. You can support this work as an EFF member.

End Mass Surveillance

Privacy is a human right because it gives you a fundamental measure of security and freedom. That is why we at EFF focus on your ability to have private conversations and interact with the world using technologies that you choose. But when tools that many of us must rely on serve corporate surveillance, they also feed government surveillance. We owe it to ourselves to fight the mass spying used to control and intimidate people. Let’s do this.

For a limited time, you can join EFF as a monthly or one-time donor and pick up a new Privacy Badger Crewneck sweatshirt. The embroidered Privacy Badger mascot appears above Traditional Chinese for "privacy” because human rights are universal.

You can also get a set of puffy stickers as a token of thanks. Our little Ghostie protects privacy in Arabic, English, Japanese, Persian, Russian, and Spanish.

Claw Back! This year’s member t-shirt is hot off the press featuring an orange cat swatting at the street-level surveillance equipment multiplying in our communities. You might empathize with him, but there’s a better way. Let’s end the law enforcement contracts, harmful practices, and twisted logic that enable mass spying in the first place.

You can support our mission for technology in the public interest today. Join the movement and become an EFF member.

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As statehouses ramp up for 2026, we’re seeing a familiar and concerning trend of lawmakers rushing to regulate the internet based on shockingly shaky science. From the California State Assembly to the Massachusetts and Minnesota legislatures, a wave of bills is crashing against the digital lives of young people, with proponents of these measures framing social media access as a "public health epidemic," or a "mental health crisis," even though we have yet to see any of the settled science that those labels usually invoke.

As a digital rights organization dedicated to the civil liberties of all users, EFF’s expertise lies in reminding lawmakers that young people enjoy largely the same free speech and privacy rights as adults. EFF is not a social science research shop, but we can read the emerging research. What that research shows is much more nuanced than what is claimed by those proposing to ban young people from social media, and it is clear that research and theories used to justify these sweeping bans is far from settled. The rush to ban access to digital platforms is being fueled by "pop psychology" narratives and a collection of statistically flawed studies that do not meet the rigorous standards required for such a massive infringement on youth autonomy and constitutional rights.

The Lie of A "Settled" Consensus

The current legislative push relies heavily on a specific, media-friendly narrative that the "great rewiring" of the adolescent brain is a proven fact. This theory suggests that smartphones and social media are the primary, if not sole, drivers of a global uptick in teen anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self harm, etc. While this narrative makes for a compelling airport-bookstore read, it quickly collapses under the scrutiny of the broader scientific community.

Independent researchers, including developmental psychologists from institutions like the University of California, Irvine, and Brown University, have repeatedly found that the evidence for such claims is mixed, blurry, and often contradictory. Large-scale meta-analyses covering dozens of countries have failed to show a consistent, measurable association between the rollout of social media and a decline in global well-being. In reality, we are seeing a classic case of what many of our middle school science teachers warned us about: "correlation" being sold as “causation."  

Additionally, the studies used to support these measures often fail to account for or exclude significant alternative explanations for rising teen anxiety and depression, such as the lasting impact of pandemic-era isolation, the persistent threat of school gun violence, and mounting economic or climate-related stress. By focusing narrowly on social media, these findings frequently overlook the broader societal factors that also impact youth mental health.

The Cult of the "Anxious" Expert

The current push for blanket social media bans relies almost exclusively on the work of Jonathan Haidt, particularly his book The Anxious Generation. While Haidt is an amiable and brilliant storyteller, he is not a clinical psychologist or a specialist in child development. He is a social psychologist who writes about moral psychology at a business school. Nonetheless, the book has made it to every Best Seller list, and with Haidt revered as an expert on podcasts with massive reach, like Oprah, Joe Rogan, Michelle Obama, and Trevor Noah—his message has been heard by a large subset of society, which primarily relies on: no smartphones or social media before age 16, phone-free schools, and more “unsupervised, real-world independence.”

To highlight Haidt’s reach when it comes to legislation banning social media: the California committee analysis for the proposed California social media ban mentions Haidt 20 times; the Governor of Utah promoted the book as a “must-read” months before signing the nation’s first social media ban; Haidt is cited in bill analysis for the bill banning social media in Florida; his work is mentioned in a federal bill aiming to ban phones in schools; and he provided formal testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Technology, Privacy, and the Law) in May 2022. 

While Haidt’s research has been paramount to legislation stripping millions of young people of their rights to expression and connection, his conclusions are not without challenge, and many experts in the field argue that the evidence is less than ironclad. 

The “Bad Science” Fueling Social Media Bans

While we can admit that Jonathan Haidt’s "great rewiring" theory makes for a gripping narrative, we cannot ignore that independent researchers and statisticians have identified significant flaws in the data used to justify it. Which means we are currently watching policymakers legislate blanket bans based on evidence that would be rejected in almost any other field of public health.

The reality is that research has consistently disproven the oft-assumed link between social media use and poor mental health in youth, and actually indicates that moderate internet use is a net positive for teens’ development, and negative outcomes are usually due to either lack of access or excessive use. In one major study of 100,000 adolescents, a “U-shaped association emerged where moderate social media use was associated with the best well-being outcomes, while both no use and highest use were associated with poorer well-being.” We also know that young people’s relationship with social media is complex, as it provides them essential spaces for civic engagement, identity exploration, and community building—particularly for LGBTQ+ and marginalized youth who may lack support in their physical environments. 

But again, the image Haidt presents in his book is increasingly at odds with the broader academic consensus. As mentioned, critics argue that the evidence for the mental health impacts of social media is mixed, blurry, and often misinterpreted. NYU statistics expert Aaron Brown, writing for Reason, notes that many of the studies in Haidt’s exhaustive reference list are statistically unreliable or fail to show a strong causal link. Prof. Candace Odgers, a leading voice in psychological science, explains the "selection effect" that legislators often ignore:

“Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.”

This raises a fundamental question of legislative responsibility: If the science is not settled, how can legislators confidently declare a “public health crisis” to justify stripping away young people’s First Amendment rights? By bypassing the rigorous, nuanced findings of the scientific community in favor of a more convenient narrative, legislators are choosing emotion over evidence. Before imposing such draconian restrictions on young people’s access to information, policymakers have an obligation to do the heavy lifting: to dig into the actual research and listen to the experts who are sounding the alarm on oversimplified conclusions.

The Dangers of "Social Contagion" Narrative

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Haidt’s crusade is its overlap with ideological rhetoric that pathologizes the identities of marginalized youth, and how that makes its way through efforts to ban social media for youth. A recurring theme in the literature favored by proponents of social media bans is the idea of "social contagion"—specifically regarding the rise in young people identifying as transgender or non-binary. Haidt dedicates an entire chapter of his book to this (ch.6, pt 3, p. 165), talking about “Why Social Media Harms Girls More Than Boys,” stating that: 

“The recent growth in diagnoses of gender dysphoria may also be related in part to social media trends, [...] the fact that gender dysphoria is now being diagnosed among many adolescents who showed no signs of it as children all indicate the social influence and sociogenic transmission may be at work as well.”

These harmful theories suggesting that social media is "infecting" young people with gender dysphoria are false and not supported by peer-reviewed clinical research. But by legitimizing "experts" who promote these debunked theories, legislators—especially those in states like California who pride themselves on being a sanctuary for LGBTQ+ youth—are inadvertently platforming the same rhetoric used in other states to ban gender affirming care for youth. This "social contagion" narrative is a tool of exclusion, not a scientific reality, and we must be wary of any "public health" argument that treats community-building and self-discovery among marginalized young people as a "purported mental illness" spread via TikTok.

A Better Path: Digital Wellness, Not Bans

Fortunately, there is a measured, evidence-based alternative already emerging. California's A.B. 2071, for instance, is a student-authored "digital wellness" bill that offers a measured, evidence-based alternative rather than prohibition. The bill advocates for a curriculum that teaches students how to manage algorithms, recognize cyberbullying, and regulate their own relationship with technology. Instead of trying to completely shield young people from social media, education-based approaches empower young people and have the benefit of providing skills that stay with a young person long after they leave the classroom. 

JustLeadershipUSA, a criminal justice organization, has a slogan that rings true in this instance too: “Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.” So let’s start listening to what our young people are asking us for—more education—instead of imposing paternalistic, disempowering bans.

Legislating With Precision instead of Emotion 

Adolescent mental health struggles are a complex, multifaceted crisis. It is a crisis that has existed for as long as time, and has been driven by economic instability, the opioid epidemic, the threat of school violence, amongst other issues. To pin all of society's woes on a smartphone app is not just a scientific error; it is a policy failure that ignores the real, material needs of young people both online and off.

Legislators must stop legislating as "anxious parents" and start acting as measured policymakers. Because for some youth, social media platforms are a lifeline. UNICEF and other global human rights organizations have warned that age-related restrictions and blanket bans can backfire in three critical ways: isolating marginalized youth (like LGBTQ+ youth, students in rural areas, foster youth, or those with disabilities) who social media is often the only place they can find a supportive community; necessitating invasive mass collection of biometric data or government-issued IDs from all users, including adults; and pushing young people toward less-regulated, "darker" corners of the web where content moderation is non-existent and the risks of actual exploitation are significantly higher.

Legislators have a valid interest in protecting children, but that interest must be pursued through tailored, measured approaches. We cannot allow emotions or a collection of flawed data sets to justify a historic rollback of digital rights. 

It’s been 37 years since scientists first demonstrated the ability to move single atoms, suggesting the possibility of designing materials atom by atom to customize their properties. Today there are several techniques that allow researchers to move individual atoms in order to give materials exotic quantum properties and improve our understanding of quantum behavior.

But existing techniques can only move atoms across the surface of materials in two dimensions. Most also require painstakingly slow processes and high-vacuum, ultracold lab conditions.

Now a team of researchers at MIT, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and other institutions has created a way to precisely move tens of thousands of individual atoms within a material in minutes at room temperature. The approach uses a set of algorithms to carefully position an electron beam at specific locations of a material, then scan the beam to drive atomic motions.

“The results demonstrate the ability to deterministically move atoms repeatedly within a material’s 3D atomic lattice,” says MIT Research Scientist Julian Klein, who conceived of and directed the project. “We can reprogram materials to create defects at will, realizing entirely artificial states of matter not found in nature with a wide range of potential applications, including sensing, optical, and magnetic technologies. There are so many opportunities enabled by these techniques.”

“It’s like a photocopier that can create columns of identical atomic defects,” says Frances Ross, MIT’s TDK Professor in Materials Science and Engineering. “It’s especially useful because you can move a few atoms to form defects, and do it again and again to build atomic arrangements in three dimensions that have tunable functions in a system that is more robust because the defects exist beneath the surface.”

In a Nature paper appearing today, the researchers described their approach and how they used it to create more than 40,000 quantum defects in a crystalline semiconductor material.

The researchers say the approach offers a new way to study quantum behavior in materials. It could also one day lead to improvements in systems that leverage quantum defects, like quantum computers, dense magnetic memory, atomic-scale logic devices, and more.

Joining Klein and Ross on the paper are Kevin Roccapriore and Andrew Lupini, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Mads Weile, a former MIT visiting student; Sergii Grytsiuk, a former Radbound University researcher; Malte Rösner, a professor at Bielefeld University in Germany; Zdenek Sofer, a professor at the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague in the Czeck Republic; Dimitar Pashov, a research associate at King’s College London; and Mark van Schilfgaarde and Swagata Acharya, researchers at the National Laboratory of the Rockies.

Designing matter

In a now-famous 1989 demonstration, IBM researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope to arrange 35 atoms on the surface of a chilled crystal to spell out “IBM.” It was the first time atoms had been precisely positioned, and an important milestone. The approach enabled scientists to engineer specific defects, such as atom-sized vacancies and surface atoms in crystalline materials, leading to major advances in quantum science. But placing those 35 atoms had taken researchers many hours, if not days.

In parallel with those developments, researchers also developed two additional approaches for manipulating atoms in a vacuum, using optical tweezers to trap neutral atoms and oscillating electric fields to trap ions.

While those approaches have enabled remarkable progress, they remain limited to either surfaces or highly controlled experimental systems. Another factor limiting the design of materials for applications such as quantum computers is the inability of atomic manipulation techniques to move atoms in three dimensions: The patterns are created on the surface of a material, where they are exposed to the environment and cannot survive outside tightly controlled laboratory settings.

Engineering usable materials with custom quantum properties would require researchers to rearrange many more atoms, preferably on the interior of materials. The MIT researchers demonstrated that capability in their Nature study.

“We were trying to improve the number of atoms we could move in a reasonable length of time,” Ross explains. “You want to place the atoms close to each other so they can interact, and you want to have a lot of them arranged as you’d like — thousands or millions of atoms in specific locations you’ve chosen. That’s been challenging with existing techniques.”

The researchers used high-performance microscopes at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory for their work. Their new technique uses a sophisticated set of algorithms to direct an electron beam at a target atom with a precision of a few picometers (one trillionth of a meter). The beam does a tight loop to help zero in on its target, then sends a beam of electrons through the material in a carefully designed oscillating path, spending about a second at each location. 

“We developed algorithms that allow us to quickly obtain information on where the beam is in the material,” Klein explains. “The trick is to use very few electrons in the process of getting that information, so the whole process is fast and does not unintentionally damage your crystal. It took many years to develop these algorithms and determine the minimum required information needed to infer where the atoms are located with the highest precision.”

The motion of the beam as it delivers electrons, an oscillating path devised by the researchers, pushes entire columns of atoms to new locations the way you might swipe a screen on your phone.

In their experiments, the researchers used this approach to direct the movement of columns of chromium atoms in a stable semiconductor material, chromium sulfide bromide, using a crystal about 13 nanometers thick. The beam created atom-sized vacancies in the material, each vacancy paired with the displaced atom, that they calculated would give the crystal exotic quantum properties.

To show how well their approach scaled, the researchers created over 40,000 defects in about 40 minutes, creating vacancies and interstitials across different distances and in different patterns, calculating that different atomic arrangements should give rise to different quantum mechanical properties.

“Each of these defects has certain ways to interact with its neighbors,” Ross says. “If you place them in a pattern, you could essentially simulate the interactions between the electrons within a molecule, so the whole electronic structure of that molecule can, in a sense, be mapped onto a pattern that you can write into a solid material.”

Probing quantum systems

The success of the approach was likely aided by the way chromium binds within the semiconductor, which has a unique electronic structure. The researchers are further investigating other crystals in which this might work, though they suspect it will be applicable to a diverse range of materials. 

In the materials where it works, the approach has several advantages over existing techniques.

“Moving atoms within solids enables the creation of quantum properties in materials that are stable in the air outside of vacuum conditions,” Klein explains. “And this approach is also scalable to many atomic manipulations, so moving thousands or millions of atoms to create artificial structures would represent completely new physics. We’d like to study those systems.”

The researchers say their technique lays the foundation for a new class of programable matter, which could aid the development of a range of stable quantum devices.

“This is a way of accessing physical phenomena that involve a lot of atoms placed in a certain specified arrangement, and can’t be done by self-assembly,” Ross says. “You can create individually tuned atomic arrangements, and you can have so many of them, each arranged exactly how you like over areas that are tens and hundreds of nanometers. That leads to collective physics we are excited to explore.”

The work was supported, in part, by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

The UK’s AI Security Institute evaluated GPT-5.5’s ability to find security vulnerabilities, and found that it is comparable to Claude Mythos. Note that the OpenAI model is generally available.

Here is the Institute’s evaluation of Mythos.

And here is an analysis of a smaller, cheaper model. It requires more scaffolding from the prompter, but it is also just as good.

The two countries are headed in different directions on energy.