A new study by MIT researchers shows that children as young as 15 months can learn tenacity from watching their parents, reports Dennis Thompson for U.S. News & World Report. Graduate student Julia Leonard explains that the study shows, "infants are watching your behavior intently and actually learning from what you do."
Scientific American reporter Yasemin Saplakoglu writes that MIT researchers have found that watching an adult struggle and then succeed can inspire infants to try harder at their own task. Saplakoglu explains that the study shows, “babies can also infer values—such as when it is worth it to keep trying—from adults’ behaviors.”
AP reporter Malcom Ritter writes that children as young as 15 months old can be inspired to try harder at a task when they see adults struggle before succeeding. Prof. Laura Schulz explained that the findings show young children, “can learn the value of effort from just a couple of examples.”
After studying more than 100 languages, Prof. Edward Gibson has “discovered a pattern in the way different cultures discern and label colors,” writes Ben Thompson for the Boston Globe.
A new study from Prof. Edward Gibson examines the way different languages describe colors. “If you were to take the spectrum of colors that are perceptibly different to humans and chop it in half, every language would have more words for describing the warm half than the cool half,” writes Rachel Gutman for The Atlantic.
A new study by MIT researchers examines how people who speak different languages describe colors, reports Zach Zorich for Science. The researchers found that, “the ability to describe colors isn’t as rooted in our biology as many scientists thought. And that means that language development may be far more rooted in our culture than in how we literally see the world.”
CSAIL researchers have developed an artificial neural network that generates recipes from pictures of food, reports Laurel Dalrymple for NPR. The researchers input recipes into an AI system, which learned patterns “connections between the ingredients in the recipes and the photos of food,” explains Dalrymple.
In this video for USA Today, Sean Dowling highlights Pic2Recipe, the artificial intelligence system developed by CSAIL researchers that can predict recipes based off images of food. The researchers hope the app could one day be used to help, “people track daily nutrition by seeing what’s in their food.”
Researchers at MIT have developed an algorithm that can identify recipes based on a photo, writes BBC News reporter Zoe Kleinman. The algorithm, which was trained using a database of over one million photos, could be developed to show “how a food is prepared and could also be adapted to provide nutritional information,” writes Kleinman.
MIT researchers have developed a new machine learning algorithm that can look at photos of food and suggest a recipe to create the pictured dish, reports Matt Reynolds for New Scientist. Reynolds explains that, “eventually people could use an improved version of the algorithm to help them track their diet throughout the day.”
CSAIL researchers have trained an AI system to look at images of food, predict the ingredients used, and even suggest recipes, writes Matt Burgess for Wired. The system could also analyze meals to determine their nutritional value or “manipulate an existing recipe to be healthier or to conform to certain dietary restrictions," explains graduate student Nick Hynes.
Tom Buerkle of Reuters writes about “Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought,” a new book written by Prof. Andrew Lo, which argues that it is possible for investors to beat the market. Markets seem unpredictable because traders are human and “make decisions using short cuts” rather than weighing all options, explains Buerkle.
In an article for Scientific American about the future of robotics, Prof. Emeritus Rodney Brooks highlights Prof. Dina Katabi’s work developing devices that use wireless signals to detect a person’s emotions.
Boston Magazine reporter Jamie Ducharme writes that CSAIL researchers have developed a device that can measure walking speed using wireless signals. The device can “also measure stride length, which may come in handy when studying conditions that are characterized by small steps, such as Parkinson’s disease.”
A report released by MIT startup Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) shows that one in four drivers were using a smartphone just before an accident occurred, reports The Boston Globe’s Matt Rocheleau. Prof. Samuel Madden, founder and chief scientist at CMT, explains that the study shows “people are using their phones a lot, and that’s playing a role in the accidents.”