Machine learning

How computers can learn betterWith a recently released programming framework, researchers show that a new machine-learning algorithm outperforms its predecessors.

Making sense of medical sensorsComputer scientists and electrical engineers are devising algorithms that look for useful new patterns in data produced by medical sensors.

Making cloud computing more efficientFor database-driven applications, new software could reduce hardware requirements by 95 percent while actually improving performance.

Mining physicians’ notes for medical insightsA new approach to algorithmically distinguishing words with multiple possible meanings could help find useful data in electronic medical records.

Excel programming for nonprogrammersA new system allows Excel users to create customized functions for their spreadsheets simply by offering a few examples of how data should be manipulated.

Data mining without prejudiceA new technique for finding relationships between variables in large datasets makes no prior assumptions about what those relationships might be.

Robots in realityNicholas Roy designs robots for real-world challenges.

Machines that learn betterNew math will make it much easier to build machine-learning systems that tackle a wider range of problems.

Drug discovery, Netflix style?MIT researchers apply ranking algorithms to pharmaceutical R&D.