Computer science and technology

3Q: Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper

Google experiments suggest that the D-Wave computer exploits quantum phenomena.

December 11, 2015

Gen9's BioFab process, now being used by dozens of researchers and companies, cuts costs and accelerates the creation and testing of genes.

Scaling up synthetic-biology innovation

MIT professor’s startup makes synthesizing genes many times more cost effective.

December 10, 2015

Humans and machines were given an image of a novel character (top) and asked to produce new versions. A machine generated the nine-character grid on the left.

Computer system passes “visual Turing test”

Character-drawing machines can fool human judges.

December 10, 2015

This self-folding microbot was among the many innovations that emerged from CSAIL in 2015.

Data, drones, and 3-D-printed hearts

Looking back on the year that was: Highlights from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab in 2015.

December 8, 2015

“Tor operates under the assumption that there’s not a global adversary that’s paying attention to every single link in the world,” Nickolai Zeldovich says. “Maybe these days this is not as good of an assumption.”

Untraceable communication — guaranteed

New untraceable text-messaging system comes with statistical guarantees.

December 7, 2015

New PBS KIDS ScratchJr app launches

Developed in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and Tufts University, the PBS KIDS ScratchJr app helps children ages 5-8 learn coding concepts.

December 3, 2015

By combining the information from the Kinect depth frame in (a) with polarized photographs, MIT researchers reconstructed the 3-D surface shown in (c). Polarization cues can allow coarse depth sensors like Kinect to achieve laser scan quality (b).

Making 3-D imaging 1,000 times better

Algorithms exploiting light’s polarization boost resolution of commercial depth sensors 1,000-fold.

December 1, 2015

MIT researchers have developed a new biomedical imaging system that harnesses an off-the-shelf depth sensor such as Microsoft’s Kinect. The coloration of these images depicts the phase information contained in six of the 50 light frequencies the system analyzes.

Biomedical imaging at one-thousandth the cost

Mathematical modeling enables $100 depth sensor to approximate the measurements of a $100,000 piece of lab equipment.

November 23, 2015

Powering science

The MIT High Performance Research Computing Facility powers MIT research behind the scenes.

November 20, 2015

MIT researchers have shown that some phone apps engage in “covert communication.” “There might be a very good reason for this covert communication. We are not trying to say that it has to be eliminated. We’re just saying the user needs to be informed,” says Julia Rubin, a postdoc in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

What are your apps hiding?

Half of the communication connections established by the top 500 Android apps have no effect on user experience.

November 19, 2015

Sixty-one women from 25 institutions attended the 2015 MIT Rising Stars in EECS workshop.

It takes a network

Rising Stars workshop helps female electrical engineers and computer scientists build a professional network, find jobs in academia.

November 18, 2015

Stills from the Weather Research and Forecasting Model.

“Shrinking bull’s-eye” algorithm speeds up complex modeling from days to hours

Algorithm may be applied to a broad range of complicated problems.

November 16, 2015

hand holding a smartphone with city lights on the screen

Streamlining mobile image processing

Technique for mobile image processing in the cloud cuts bandwidth use by more than 98 percent.

November 13, 2015

An example of the Non-Local Variations algorithm that automatically detects and visualizes small deformations between repeating structures in a single image. On the left is the original image. In the right image, the variability in the shape of the corn’s kernels is reduced, and the misalignment of rows is corrected.

Amplifying — or removing — visual variation

Algorithms could offer new tools for graphics software or reveal structural defects.

November 5, 2015

MIT CSAIL researchers found that pictograms, when employed appropriately, can dramatically improve information recall.

How to make better visualizations

Eye-tracking research reveals which types of visuals actually get the message across.