A new study co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott finds that musical preference may stem from cultural origins, writes Vivian Wang for The Boston Globe. “It raises the possibility that things vary a lot more from culture to culture than people might have wanted to accept,” says McDermott.
A paper co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott examines the musical preferences of a society with minimal exposure to Western culture, writes Chelsea Leu for Wired. “Maybe an innate bias for consonance exists, but that doesn’t mean every culture develops it,” Leu writes regarding the society’s lack of preference for consonant or dissonant sounds.
By studying how people from different cultures respond to consonant and dissonant chords, MIT researchers have found that musical tastes may be rooted in cultural origins, not biology, writes Sarah Kaplan for The Washington Post. The results “underscore the degree of variation that exists across cultures in terms of how people hear and evaluate music," explains Prof. Josh McDermott.
Atlantic reporter Ed Young writes about a study by MIT researchers that finds musical preferences may be cultural in origin. The researchers examined the musical preferences of remote Amazonian village and found they “don’t care about consonance or dissonance. They can tell the difference between the two kinds of sounds, but they rate both as being equally pleasant.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that culture and not biology may be responsible for our musical tastes, writes Amina Khan for The Los Angeles Times. The researchers found that “people who haven’t been exposed to Western music don’t find certain ‘discordant’ sounds unpleasant at all,” suggesting that musical preferences are not innate.
In an article for The Washington Post, Prof. M. Taylor Fravel examines why China is so inflexible when it comes to territorial disputes at sea. “Now that China is stronger,” Fravel writes, “many citizens believe it needs an unchallenged presence in the South China Sea that reflects its perceived status and capabilities.”
An image created by researchers at the Koch Institute that shows red nanoparticles carrying MicroRNAs to an aggressive breast tumor is featured in the National Cancer Institute Cancer Close Up project. Washington Post reporter Laurie McGinley explains that the photographs are intended to spark public interest and encourage young people to consider a career in microbiology.
CNN reporter Sara Ashley O’Brien writes that CSAIL researchers have demonstrated that a robot could help schedule tasks in a hospital’s labor and delivery unit. The researchers trained a robot to understand a nurse’s scheduling decisions and “90% of the time the Nao robot made suggestions that doctors and nurses carried out.”
Research Scientist Caleb Harper speaks with ABC News' Justine Quart about his work developing growing chambers that can be used to cultivate plants around the world. Harper explains that he wanted to “create a tool that other people could use to solve problems. I’m just a tool maker for the next generation of farmers.”
A study conducted by researchers with the Singaore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology examines how coal use could cause water strain in parts of Asia, writes Audrey Tan for The Straits Times. The study’s findings suggest that higher coal use “could suppress rainfall in China, India and across South-east Asia,” explains Tan.
In a Wall Street Journal series examining the roots of America’s current economic disillusionment and how it is impacting the presidential election, Jon Hilsenrath and Bob Davis highlight Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s work examining how technology impacts jobs, and Prof. David Autor’s research on how trade with China has affected the U.S. labor market.
Wall Street Journal reporter Adam Creighton writes about a study co-authored by MIT researchers that found taxing wealth leads to a decrease in declared wealth. The authors found “a 0.1 percentage point increase in the rate of wealth tax prompts a 4% jump in the probability of a taxpayer’s reported net wealth dropping below the wealth tax-free threshold.”
In an article for The Huffington Post, Prof. Georgia Perakis writes about her research on optimizing online retail bundle recommendations. Perakis explains that the model she developed with her colleagues uses optimization and machine learning to increase revenues and help customers "find more interesting and relevant items.”
In this SINC article (published in Spanish), Federico Kukso spotlights Prof. Alberto Rodriguez’s work developing robotic hands in an effort to provide robots with a better way to interact with the world. Rodriguez says that he was inspired to pursue a career in robotics as he wanted to do “something that had a real impact on the world."
A new study co-authored by Prof. Susan Solomon provides evidence that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is starting to heal, reports Pilita Clark for the Financial Times. Clark explains that the findings suggest that “more than half the shrinkage in the ozone hole is due to the reduction in atmospheric chlorine coming from CFCs.”