A new advance in machine learning allows a computer program to recognize and draw handwritten characters based off a few examples, reports John Markoff for The New York Times. Markoff explains that the “improvements are noteworthy because so-called machine-vision systems are becoming commonplace in many aspects of life.”
Joel Achenbach reports for The Washington Post on the new program developed by researchers from MIT, NYU and the University of Toronto that can learn by example, a characteristic of human learning. Prof. Joshua Tenenbaum explains that the new system has made “a significant advance in capturing the way that people are thinking about these concepts.”
Los Angeles Times reporter Amina Khan writes that researchers have developed a program that learns to recognize and draw handwritten characters based off a few examples. Prof. Joshua Tenenbaum explains that the system, “can learn a large class of visual concepts in ways that are hard to distinguish from human learners.”
Kelly Servick writes for Science about Prof. Rosalind Picard’s work developing wearable technology that monitors and manages a user’s stress levels. “It’s one thing to study all this,” says Picard. “It’s another to build it into a form that people can start changing their lives around.”
Hilary Brueck writes for Fortune that researchers from MIT, NYU and the University of Toronto have developed a new technique that allows machines to learn in a more human-like manner. The new technique “comes one step closer to getting machines to learn new things in a one-shot manner, more like humans do.”
Researchers have developed a learning program that can recognize handwritten characters after seeing only a few examples, reports Emily Chung for CBC News. The program “could lead to computers that are much better at speech recognition — especially recognizing uncommon words — or classifying objects and behaviour for businesses or the military.”
BBC News reporter Michelle Roberts writes that MIT researchers have fine-tuned the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing system to make it safer and more accurate. This development is "vital if it [CRISPR] is to be used in humans to cure inherited diseases or inborn errors,” explains Roberts.
Postdoctoral fellow Steve Ramirez speaks with Bob Seay, host of WGBH’s Morning Edition, about his work with memory manipulation, which could be helpful for patients with PTSD or Alzheimer’s. Ramirex explains that his research shows the proof of principle “that we can go in and isolate one memory in the brain.”
Prof. Thomas Levenson writes for The Boston Globe about the MRI Prof. Rebecca Saxe’s created of herself and her infant son. “Art does many things, but certainly one of them is to give us images that confront us with shards of the strange experience of being human,” writes Levenson. “Science, an artful craft, can do the same — as it does here.”
Prof. Rebecca Saxe writes for Smithsonian about an MRI she created of herself and her infant son. Saxe writes that while maternal values are "venerated, they are usually viewed in opposition to other values: inquiry and intellect, progress and power. But I am a neuroscientist, and I worked to create this image; and I am also the mother in it.”
Prof. John Gabrieli speaks with WGBH’s Arun Rath about the effectiveness of standardized testing in the U.S. Gabrieli explains that researchers have, “consistently found academic achievement tests of the kind given by states in the United States correlate considerably with other independent measures of cognitive ability.”
STAT reporter Andrew Joseph writes about optogenetics and Prof. Edward Boyden’s work developing this technique for turning neurons on and off. “There are just huge frontiers out there for which optogenetics will be one of our most powerful tools,” said Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute.
Boston Globe reporter Felicia Gans writes that a number of MIT researchers have been honored “by the Breakthrough Prize organization, which honors scientists worldwide for their pioneering research.”
Prof. Edward Boyden has been honored as one of the recipients of the Breakthrough Prize, reports Sarah McBride for Reuters. Boyden is being recognized for his work “developing and implementing optogenetics,” writes McBride, which could open “a new path to treatments for Parkinson’s, depression, Alzheimer’s and blindness.”
Writing for Scientific American, Simon Makin explores the many applications of optogenetics, a tool developed by Prof. Edward Boyden, for which he was recently honored with a Breakthrough Prize. Makin explains that, “researchers have devised ways of broadening optogenetics to enter into a dynamic dialogue with the signals moving about inside functioning brains.”