MIT News

Using a new sonification toolkit, designed but MIT's Digital Humanities Lab, senior Moises Trejo was able to turn a sunrise and a sunset into sound. What the toolkit does is convert the annual times of sunrises and sunsets in a particular location and turns them into a simple soundwork. Depending on the settings it either becomes a two-voice melody (in a strange tuning) or a gradual modification of an evolving sound, or somewhere in between. In this piece the lower tone of the chord is the sunrise time, and the higher tone is the sunset time. The time course of the piece represents the days in the year, as sunrise and sunset gradually move further apart from each other (as the days get longer) and then move towards each other (as the days get shorter).

Listen to the article: https://soundcloud.com/mitnewsoffice/audio-article-the-sound-of-a-sunset?si=76714eafe06742f698b283a79d713750&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/sound-sunset-sonification-toolkit-0209

MIT neuroscientists have identified a specific signal that young children and even babies can use to determine whether two people have a strong relationship and a mutual obligation to help each other: whether those two people kiss, share food, or have other interactions that involve sharing saliva.

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/babies-relationships-saliva-0120

A machine-learning expert from MIT and a psychology researcher/clinician from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have teamed up to develop tools for mental health care delivery. They hope that their algorithms will eventually equip physicians and patients with useful information about individual disease trajectory and effective treatment.

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/deploying-machine-learning-improve-mental-health-rosalind-picard-0126

Spoiler Alert, a company founded by two MIT alumni, is helping companies bridge the gap between food waste and food insecurity with a platform connecting major food and beverage brands with discount grocers, retailers, and nonprofits. The platform helps brands discount or donate excess and short-dated inventory days, weeks, and months before it expires.

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/spoiler-alert-food-waste-0105

A team of MIT scientists have generated a detailed, three-dimensional "atlas" of the largest oxygen-deficient zones (ODZ) in the tropical Pacific. And though these ODZs make up less than 1 percent of the ocean’s total volume, they are a significant source of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/oxygen-deficient-ocean-map-1227

A novel approach to testing for the presence of the virus that causes Covid-19 may lead to tests that are faster, less expensive, and potentially less prone to erroneous results than existing detection methods. Though the work, based on quantum effects, is still theoretical, these detectors could potentially be adapted to detect virtually any virus, the researchers say.

Read the article: http://news.mit.edu/2021/quantum-sensor-detect-covid-1220

Researchers at MIT have done a detailed analysis and created a set of computational tools to enable architects and engineers to design truss structures in a way that can minimize their embodied carbon while maintaining all needed properties for a given building application.

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/truss-structure-carbon-materials-1129

MIT researchers have now incorporated certain social interactions into a framework for robotics, enabling machines to understand what it means to help or hinder one another, and to learn to perform these social behaviors on their own.

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/robots-social-skills-1105

Good sleep can be hard to come by. But a new study by researchers at MIT and the University of São Paulo in Brazil finds that if you can make up for lost sleep, even for just a few weekend hours, the extra zzz’s could help reduce fatigue-induced clumsiness, at least in how you walk.

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/lack-sleep-walk-1026

As climate change brings greater threats to coastal ecosystems, new research can help planners leverage the wave-damping benefits of marsh plants.

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2021/how-marsh-grass-protects-shorelines-1018