Bloomberg News reporter Kelly Blessing writes about the final report produced by the Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education. “The Task Force encourages MIT to evaluate possibilities to achieve increases in undergraduate class size so that more students can experience the rich magic of an MIT residential education,” the Task Force wrote in their report.
“Researchers have developed an algorithm that can use visual signals from videos to reconstruct sound and have used it to recover intelligible speech from a video,” writes Katie Collins for Wired about an algorithm developed by a team of MIT researchers that can derive speech from material vibrations.
Lisa Kiplinger writes for USA Today about research from Dr. Joseph Coughlin, director of the the MIT AgeLab, that indicates that 85 percent of Millennials are open to having conversations about finances with their grandparents, but only 8 percent of grandparents are likely to initiate the conversation.
WBUR’s Bruce Gellerman reports on MIT.nano, the nanotechnology research facility that when completed will provide cutting-edge laboratory space for thousands of researchers. “The world is built on nanoscale and the 21st century will be defined by it,” says Prof. Vladimir Bulovic.
Rachel Feltman of The Washington Post examines the new MIT algorithm that can reconstruct sound by examining the visual vibrations of sound waves. “This is a new dimension to how you can image objects,” explains graduate student Abe Davis.
In a piece for Popular Science, Douglas Main writes on the new technique developed by MIT researchers that can reconstruct speech from visual information. The researchers showed that, “an impressive amount of information about the audio (although not its content) could also be recorded with a regular DSLR that films at 60 frames per second.”
Writing for Slate, Elliot Hannon reports on the new technology developed by MIT researchers that allows audio to be extracted from visual information by processing the vibrations of sound waves as they move through objects.
Cynthia Graber of Scientific American reports on the new MIT technique to use solar energy to generate steam. Graber reports that the new system reaches, “85 percent efficiency in converting the solar energy into steam."
Hal Hodson of New Scientist reports on the new algorithm developed by MIT researchers that can turn visual images into sound. "We were able to recover intelligible speech from maybe 15 feet away, from a bag of chips behind soundproof glass," explains Abe Davis, a graduate student at MIT.
Andrea Timpano writes for Boston Magazine about how students at the Open Style Lab are designing fashionable and functional clothing for people with disabilities. “What we’ve noticed is even if you have the best intentions, the best product, the most helpful technology, if it doesn’t look great, people don’t want to wear it,” explains MIT graduate Grace Teo.
In an interview with The Guardian, Professor Sara Seager speaks about the search for extra-terrestrial life. "Our own galaxy has 100bn stars and our universe has upwards of 100bn galaxies – making the chance for life elsewhere seem inevitable based on sheer probability," explains Seager.
Michael Morisy writes for BetaBoston about an algorithm developed by MIT researchers that can recreate speech by analyzing material vibrations. “The sound re-creation technique typically required cameras shooting at thousands of frames per second,” writes Morisy.
Laura Baverman of USA Today writes about the MIT Media Lab’s record as a launch pad for innovators and entrepreneurs. “More than 100 companies have sprung from the lab since its founding in 1985,” writes Baverman.
In a piece for Slate about using smart phone to diagnose medical conditions, Aimee Swartz writes about work by MIT Media Lab Fellow Max Little on algorithms that could help smart phones diagnose Parkinson’s disease. The algorithm “will detect specific variations in voice quality, such as tremors, breathlessness, and vocal weakness,” writes Swartz.
In a piece about potential global catastrophes, Sarah Gray of Salon highlights new research from Prof. Colette Heald that indicates future global food production is threatened by climate change and air pollution. The study found that the impacts of climate change and ozone pollution on crop production could cause malnutrition rates to rise significantly in developing countries in the coming decades.