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Newsweek
28-07-2025
- Science
- Newsweek
The Way People Walk in Cities Has Changed
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. City living has long been described as fast-paced. Now, there's data to prove just how much faster it has become. A new study out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reveals that pedestrians in three major northeastern U.S. cities—Boston, New York and Philadelphia —are moving 15 percent faster than they did in 1980. Newsweek discussed the findings with Ruth Conroy Dalton, a professor of Architecture at Northumbria University in the UK. She said: "A rise in walking speed shortens the average street journey by about 13 percent, which means fewer seconds in which passer‑by interactions, eye‑contact, or simply 'being present' can occur." The same study found that fewer people are lingering in public spaces, with the number dropping by 14 percent over the past three decades. A stock image of crowds of people walking across a busy crosswalk at the intersection of 23rd Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan New York City. A stock image of crowds of people walking across a busy crosswalk at the intersection of 23rd Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan New York City. deberarr/iStock / Getty Images Plus "Something has changed over the past 40 years," MIT professor of the practice Carlo Ratti, a co-author of the new study, said in a statement. "How fast we walk, how people meet in public space—what we're seeing here is that public spaces are working in somewhat different ways, more as a thoroughfare and less a space of encounter." Dalton, who was not involved in the MIT-led research, pointed to findings from her own work to illustrate similar trends. A national survey she co-authored of 2,029 UK adults found that more than half of respondents (54 percent) agreed that "walking around areas filled with boring buildings affects how I feel." She explained: "When the street itself gives you less to linger over, you tend to hurry through it even faster, creating a feedback loop of lower dwell-time and thinner social exchange. "The same study shows a parallel loss of community agency. A public that feels both rushed and powerless is, unsurprisingly, more detached from its streets." AI Meets Urban Design In the new study, the researchers used machine learning to analyze video footage taken by famed urbanist William Whyte between 1978 and 1980. These recordings—captured in now-iconic public spaces such as Bryant Park and the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—offered a snapshot of social behavior in late-20th-century city life. In 2010, a research team led by sociologist Keith Hampton recreated Whyte's filming conditions, shooting updated footage from the same locations at the same time of day. Using AI and computer vision, the team was able to quantify changes in pedestrian behavior over time. From Sidewalk Chats to Starbucks Among the most striking findings was a drop in the number of people who joined groups after entering public spaces. In 1980, 5.5 percent of individuals arriving at locations like Boston's Downtown Crossing or Philadelphia's Chestnut Street ended up socializing in a group. By 2010, that figure had plummeted to just 2 percent. "Perhaps there's a more transactional nature to public space today," Ratti said. The reasons for this shift appear to be multifaceted. The researchers point to the rise of smartphones, which allow people to coordinate plans digitally before stepping outside. Social interactions that might have once unfolded spontaneously on a street corner now happen through text messages or group chats. "When you look at the footage from William Whyte, people in public spaces were looking at each other more," said Ratti. "It was a place you could start a conversation or run into a friend. You couldn't do things online then." Coffee culture may also be playing a role. The proliferation of chain cafés and indoor meeting spaces may be drawing people away from sidewalks and into climate-controlled, Wi-Fi-equipped venues. Designing Better Public Spaces The researchers hope their work will inform how cities design and redesign public areas — especially at a time when digital polarization is reshaping how people connect in real life. "Public space is such an important element of civic life," said co-author Arianna Salazar-Miranda, an assistant professor at Yale. "The more we can keep improving public space, the more we can make our cities suited for convening." Looking Ahead Following the success of this U.S.-based analysis, the MIT team is now expanding its research to 40 urban squares across Europe. The goal is to better understand how people use public spaces across cultures — and how city design can encourage more meaningful human interaction. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about sea silk? Let us know via science@ Reference Salazar-Miranda, A., Fan, Z., Baick, M., Hampton, K. N., Duarte, F., Loo, B. P. Y., Glaeser, E., & Ratti, C. (2025). Exploring the social life of urban spaces through AI. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(30).
India Today
23-04-2025
- Science
- India Today
New planet is breaking apart, losing material equal to a Mount Everest per orbit
Astronomers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a new planet crumbling into pieces. The planet is losing material equal to one Mount Everest every time it completes an 140 light-years from Earth, the disintegrating world is about the mass of Mercury, although it circles about 20 times closer to its star than Mercury does to the sun, completing an orbit every 30.5 5,800 planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, have been discovered since the 1990s. Of those, only four have been observed disintegrating in orbit, as this one is. This planet is the closest to our solar system of the four, giving scientists a unique opportunity to learn about what happens to these doomed astronomers spotted the planet using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an MIT-led mission that monitors the nearest stars for transits, or periodic dips in starlight that could be signs of orbiting exoplanets. The disintegrating world is about the mass of Mercury. (Photo: Nasa) Its host star, a type called an orange dwarf, is smaller, cooler and dimmer than the sun, with about 70% of the sun's mass and diameter and about 20% of its luminosity. The planet orbits this star every 30.5 hours at a distance about 20 times closer than Mercury is to the planet's surface temperature is estimated at close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,600 degrees Celsius) thanks to its close proximity to its star. As a result, the planet's surface has probably been turned to magma - molten scientists confirmed that the signal is of a tightly orbiting rocky planet that is trailing a long, comet-like tail of debris.'The extent of the tail is gargantuan, stretching up to nine million kilometers long, or roughly half of the planet's entire orbit,' says Marc Hon, a postdoc in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space added that the planet is disintegrating at a dramatic rate, shedding an amount of material equivalent to one Mount Everest each time it orbits its star. At this pace, given its small mass, the researchers predict that the planet may completely disintegrate in about 1 million to 2 million years.'We got lucky with catching it exactly when it's really going away. It's like on its last breath,' Avi Shporer, a collaborator on the discovery Reel
South China Morning Post
24-03-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Lowering body temperature as when animals hibernate may help slow ageing, scientists say
Lowering our body temperature could help stall the signs of ageing, tests on mice suggest. Advertisement And entering a hibernation-like state could work better than anti-ageing creams and sweat-inducing workouts for older people who want to stay looking young for longer, the scientists who conducted the research believe. The research was carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Whitehead Institute and Harvard Medical School – both in the US state of Massachusetts. Published in the journal Nature Aging, the MIT-led team's research suggests that we may be able to slow down 'changes that accompany ageing' by simulating a prolonged state of torpor – a shorter alternative to hibernation, which is common in animals and in which body temperature and energy use drops. Ageing is a complex phenomenon that we're just starting to unravel Sinisa Hrvatin, researcher at MIT 'Although the full relationship between torpor and ageing remains unclear, our findings point to decreased body temperature as the central driver of this anti-ageing effect,' said MIT's Sinisa Hrvatin. Advertisement
