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Computer vision Eye robot Poor eyesight remains one of the main obstacles to letting robots loose among humans. But it is improving, in part by aping natural vision Oct 21st 2010 The Economist ROBOTS are getting smarter and more agile all the time. They disarm bombs, fly combat missions, put together complicated machines, even play football. Why, then, one might ask, are they nowhere to be seen, beyond war zones, factories and technology fairs? One reason is that they themselves cannot see very well. And people are understandably wary of purblind contraptions bumping into them willy-nilly in the street or at home. All that a camera-equipped computer “sees” is lots of picture elements, or pixels. A pixel is merely a number reflecting how much light has hit a particular part of a sensor. The challenge has been to devise algorithms that can interpret such numbers as scenes composed of different objects in space. This comes naturally to people and, barring certain optical illusions, takes no time at all as well as precious little conscious effort. Yet emulating this feat in computers has proved tough. In natural vision, after an image is formed in the retina it is sent to an area at the back of the brain, called the visual cortex, for processing. The first nerve cells it passes through react only to simple stimuli, such as edges slanting at particular angles. They fire up other cells, further into the visual cortex, which react to simple combinations of edges, such as corners. Cells in each subsequent area discern ever more complex features, with those at the top of the hierarchy responding to general categories like animals and faces, and to entire scenes comprising assorted objects. All this takes less than a tenth of a second. The outline of this process has been known for years and in the late 1980s Yann LeCun, now at New York University, pioneered an approach to computer vision that tries to mimic the hierarchical way the visual cortex is wired. He has been tweaking his “convolutional neural networks” (ConvNets) ever since.
A ConvNet begins by swiping a number of software filters, each several pixels across, over the image, pixel by pixel. Like the brain’s primary visual cortex, these filters look for simple features such as edges. The upshot is a set of feature maps, one for each filter, showing which patches of the original image contain the sought-after element. A series of transformations is then performed on each map in order to enhance it and improve the contrast. Next, the maps are swiped again, but this time rather than stopping at each pixel, the filter takes a snapshot every few pixels. That produces a new set of maps of lower resolution. These highlight the salient features while reining in computing power. The whole process is then repeated, with several hundred filters probing for more elaborate shapes rather than just a few scouring for simple ones. The resulting array of feature maps is run through one final set of filters. These classify objects into general categories, such as pedestrians or cars. Many state-of-the-art computer-vision systems work along similar lines. The uniqueness of ConvNets lies in where they get their filters. Traditionally, these were simply plugged in one by one, in a laborious manual process that required an expert human eye to tell the machine what features to look for, in future, at each level. That made systems which relied on them good at spotting narrow classes of objects but inept at discerning anything else. Dr LeCun’s artificial visual cortex, by contrast, lights on the appropriate filters automatically as it is taught to distinguish the different types of object. When an image is fed into the unprimed system and processed, the chances are it will not, at first, be assigned to the right category. But, shown the correct answer, the system can work its way back, modifying its own parameters so that the next time it sees a similar image it will respond appropriately. After enough trial runs, typically 10,000 or more, it makes a decent fist of recognising that class of objects in unlabelled images. This still requires human input, though. The next stage is “unsupervised” learning, in which instruction is entirely absent. Instead, the system is shown lots of pictures without being told what they depict. It knows it is on to a promising filter when the output image resembles the input. In a computing sense, resemblance is gauged by the extent to which the input image can be recreated from the lower-resolution output. When it can, the filters the system had used to get there are retained. In a tribute to nature’s nous, the lowest-level filters arrived at in this unaided process are edge-seeking ones, just as in the brain. The top-level filters are sensitive to all manner of complex shapes. Caltech-101, a database routinely used for vision research, consists of some 10,000 standardised images of 101 types of just such complex shapes, including faces, cars and watches. When a ConvNet with unsupervised pre-training is shown the images from this database it can learn to recognise the categories more than 70% of the time. This is just below what top-scoring hand-engineered systems are capable of—and those tend to be much slower. This approach (which Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto, a doyen of the field, has dubbed “deep learning”) need not be confined to computer-vision. In theory, it ought to work for any hierarchical system: language processing, for example. In that case individual sounds would be low-level features akin to edges, whereas the meanings of conversations would correspond to elaborate scenes. For now, though, ConvNet has proved its mettle in the visual domain. Google has been using it to blot out faces and licence plates in its Streetview application. It has also come to the attention of DARPA, the research arm of America’s Defence Department. This agency provided Dr LeCun and his team with a small roving robot which, equipped with their system, learned to detect large obstacles from afar and correct its path accordingly—a problem that lesser machines often, as it were, trip over. The scooter-sized robot was also rather good at not running into the researchers. In a selfless act of scientific bravery, they strode confidently in front of it as it rode towards them at a brisk walking pace, only to see it stop in its tracks and reverse. Such machines may not quite yet be ready to walk the streets alongside people, but the day they can is surely not far off. Science and Technology 100 UK university discoveries EurekaUK is a new report from Universities UK showcasing 50 years of research in UK universities. Here is its top 100 world-changing discoveries, innovations and research projects to come out of the UK universities in the last 50 years Wednesday July 5, 2006 Guardian Unlimited Section one: Healthy babies and birth control Producing the contraceptive pill In 1961 Herchel Smith, a researcher at the University of Manchester, developed an inexpensive way of producing chemicals that stop women ovulating during their monthly menstrual cycle. The first test tube baby Cambridge University embryologist, Robert Edwards and his colleague Patrick Steptoe, were the first to develop the IVF technique, to enable infertile women to have babies. Modern infertility treatment Medical scientists, led by Robert Winston at Imperial College London, have developed a number of tests that enable doctors to select newly created embryos that do not contain the genetic abnormalities. Scans during pregnancy: seeing babies through sound Ian Donald invented the use of ultrasound for unborn babies at the University of Glasgow 40 years ago. Babies should sleep on their backs Peter Fleming and Jem Berry at Bristol University uncovered a link between the sleeping position of babies and unexplained deaths (Sids). Spina bifida and folic acid In 1974, Nicholas Wald, then at Oxford University, discovered a way of predicting whether babies are likely to have debilitating paralysing conditions, such as spina bifida and anencephaly (where the brain is small, or missing altogether). Smoking harms babies During the 1970s Harvey Goldstein and Neville Butler, then based at the National Children's Bureau in London, studied 17,000 babies born in 1958 and discovered that babies with mothers who smoked were lower in weight by an average of 200g than other babies. Section two. Healthier and longer lives Ultrasound to detect weakened bones In the 1980s Chris Langton at Hull University was the first to develop an early detection system for osteoporosis utilising "ultrasonic" waves. Magnetic Resonance Imaging In 1976 Peter Mansfield at Nottingham University was the first to publish a successful MRI scan of a living human body part - a finger. Using light emitting chemicals to detect disease Scientists have exploited a phenomenon called "chemiluminescence" - where chemicals emit light during reactions - to develop faster and more accurate tests for allergies, anaemia, cancer and HIV. Seeing the light: inside the human body: keyhole surgery and the endoscope Harold Hopkins showed in 1954 how a bundle of tiny pin-like glass fibres allowed light and images to be transmitted along them even when they were curved- fibre optics. Pace of change; patient-controlled pacemakers Leon Abrams and Ray Lightwood at the University of Birmingham developed and implanted the first patient-controlled variable rate pacemaker. Fluoride and tooth decay Neil Jenkins, Andrew Rugg-Gunn and John Murray, based at Newcastle University, found that higher levels of fluoride in water were linked to fewer incidents of tooth decay among children. The Holy Grail of hip surgeons In 1961, John Charnley performed the first operations to replace whole hips at Wrightington hospital in Wigan. The portable defibrillator: saving lives wherever The portable defibrillator, developed in the early 1970s by Frank Pantridge at Queen's University Belfast, has saved thousands of lives. The needle-free injection In 1993 Brian Bellhouse at Oxford University invented a way of giving vaccinations and other treatments without a needle. Smoking damages your health Austin Bradford Hill and Richard Doll published a study that found that 0.5% of men with lung cancer were life-long non-smokers compared with 5% of men of the same ages in the general population. Combating a world killer: the Hepatitis B vaccine Ken Murray's search for a vaccine for Hepatitis B was prompted following a 1969 outbreak in Edinburgh that claimed 11 lives. Eradicating the Tsetse fly Scientists from the University of Greenwich have been working to eradicate the Tsetse fly from Africa through the use of a novel artificial cow. Section three: Medicine under the microscope Revealing the recipe of life James Watson and the late Francis Crick unveiled the double helix structure of the deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA on February 28, 1953. How proteins work Max Perutz pioneered the study of how proteins, the essential constituents of all living beings, work, illuminating for the first time their complex molecular structures. The building blocks of insulin In the 1950s, at the University of Cambridge, Fred Sanger revealed the exact order of the 51 basic building blocks, or amino acids, that make up the insulin molecule. The body's feel-good hormone In 1975 Hans Kosterlitz and John Hughes at Aberdeen University were the first to show that the body produces endorphins naturally. Uncovering the body's defence mechanisms In 1967 Rodney Porter at Oxford University helped to uncover the secret to the body's defence mechanisms. Genetic fingerprinting In 1985 Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester developed a reliable way to detect differences in the DNA of individuals - a technique now known as genetic fingerprinting. Cancer and cell division In 1987 Paul Nurse and Tim Hunt at Cancer Research UK were the first to identify the key genes that govern and regulate the cell cycle and cell division, which paved the way for progress in treating cancer. Dolly the sheep- the first cloned adult animal Ian Wilmut, a scientist at the Roslin Institute (an associated institute of the University of Edinburgh) introduced the world to Dolly the sheep, the world's first animal cloned from a cell taken from an adult animal, in 1997. Stem cells Martin Evans' early research at Cambridge University led to his discovery of embryonic stem cells - cells so early in their development that they have the potential to grow into the different cells that make up the human body. Section four: Discoveries for the digital age Fibre optics: lighting up the world In the 1950s the "founding father of fibre optics" Narinder Kapany and Harold Hopkins at Imperial College London demonstrated that light could bend, given the right encouragement. Generating information for CDs, DVDs and the internet The internet, CDs and DVDs have all been made possible through a technology called strained quantum-well lasers, first proposed by Alf Adams at Surrey University. Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) George Gray and his colleagues at Hull University first created the first stable liquid crystals for use in LCDs. Holograms Dennis Gabor at Imperial College London, invented the method of producing holograms. Manchester: birth of the first working computer Two University of Manchester scientists, Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn, are credited with running the world's first stored program computer. The scanning electron microscope The scanning electron microscope allows researchers to peek inside materials, right down to the level of their most basic building blocks, atoms, and by so doing, to design materials that have the right properties to fit many different purposes. 3D modelling by hand "ModelMaker" is the world's first hand held 3D laser scanner that can accurately and quickly scan physical objects to make colour three-dimensional computer models. Using technology to assist disabled people Robotic Caterpillar developed by scientists at Staffordshire University allows people to perform basic day-to-day tasks by themselves. Glass, photocopiers and solar panels Nevill Mott researched into how materials conduct electricity and absorb light. Microscopic footballs Harry Kroto at Sussex University, and his US collaborators, revealed that carbon can exist as tiny spherical molecules, now known as fullerenes or buckyballs. Section five: Planes, trains and automobiles Improving engineering design The design and engineering of vehicles and buildings has been revolutionised by a technique called "finite element analysis", which was developed in part by UK academics. Motorway signs: the corporate identity of Britain The unique road signs that we see in the UK are all thanks to the work of Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert at the Royal College of Art. Seeing atomic scale defects in metals In 1956 Peter Hirsch and his collaborators at Oxford University observed for the first time the motion of tiny dislocations in the atomic structure of metals. The birth of "aeroacoustics" James Lighthill at the University of Manchester was the first to understand how to minimise sound created in jet engines. Magnetically levitated trains In the 1950s Eric Laithwaite at Imperial College London designed the world's first magnetically levitating train. Microcab Researchers from Coventry University have developed technology that does not give rise to harmful fumes generated by traditional petrol powered engines. Computerised train schedules British Rail introduced the world's first computerised train schedule in 1963 - designed by Tony Wren at the University of Leeds. Survival in plane accidents Aircraft interiors and flight procedures are designed differently today thanks to the work of Helen Muir, at Cranfield University. Cooling the tube Academics at London South Bank University have been working to develop a revolutionary cooling system for the underground utilising one of the capital's natural resources - rising underground water. Road bridges Researchers at the University of Teesside and the universities of Sheffield and Liverpool have been developing new techniques to reduce accidents by cars crashing through road bridges. Sirens using directional sound Deborah Withington's "localiser" siren, developed at the University of Leeds in 1994, uses directional sound. Section six: Ideas for ideals Helping the poor During the 1970s Richard Morris Titmuss at the London School of Economics and Political Science meanwhile found that poverty, not family circumstances, were behind the behavioural problems and learning difficulties in children from one-parent families. The causes of poverty in the developing world Arthur Lewis, at the London School of Economics and at the University of Manchester, led economists to study how relations between local agriculture and modern markets combined to create poverty. International accounts Richard Stone during the 1950s at Cambridge University, created the methods needed to produce national accounts. People do not suffer in famines because of food shortages In the 1980s, while at Oxford University, Amartya Sen was the first to conclude that people suffer in famines not because of food shortages, but because they lack the resources or other entitlements that are needed to obtain food. Slavery today Kevin Bales' work at the University of Roehampton identified that there are 27 million slaves in the world today. Language and learning In the 1960s and 1970s, Basil Bernstein, at the Institute of Education, University of London, showed how the design, organisation and control of school lessons should be tailored to suit particular children. Optimal taxation in an uncertain world In work begun in 1967, and continued at Oxford University from 1968, James Mirrlees found methods for analysing and calculating incentive systems when the behaviour to be affected cannot be directly observed. Improving the effectiveness of schools In 1979 Michael Rutter and fellow researchers at the Institute of Education, University of London showed that schools in poverty-ridden areas could be successful and revealed the secrets of their success. Pensions and old age Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Townsend from the London School of Economics and Political Science made the case for wage-related state pensions, changing the course of legislation in the UK such as the Pensions Act of 1959. The nature of law The work of Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart, one of the most important legal philosophers of the 20th century, changed the way that lawyers understand their world and their work. Hart argued that law and morality are independent but interconnected. Empowering the nations and regions Constitutional reforms in Scotland and Wales were greatly facilitated the groundwork of Robert Hazell and his team of researchers in the Constitution Unit at University College London. Voting trends and election swings The idea of election swing is an academic concept - created by David Butler of the University of Oxford and other researchers. Using the notion of swing it is much easier to understand why elections turn out the way they do. Section seven: Understanding ourselves The Third Way Anthony Giddens, former director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, argued that new political solutions were needed to respond to the modern globalised and constantly changing world we now inhabit. War crimes Alan John Percivale (A.J.P.) Taylor's seminal work, Origins of the Second World War (published in 1961), changed our perceptions of the war for ever. War and peace Michael Howard, who 40 years ago became the country's first professor of war studies at King's College London, continues to analyse the factors behind the latest wars around the world, asking whether peace will ever be possible. Sage of the ages Eric Hobsbawm, now professor emeritus at Birkbeck College, London, has charted the complex patterns and mechanisms that transformed the world during the 19th and 20th centuries. Cracking the ancient code Michael Ventris and John Chadwick had conquered what came to be known as "the Everest of Greek archaeology". Understanding the Celts Miranda Aldhouse-Green's work at the University of Wales, Newport has helped us understand the Celts to a much greater extent. Shaping politics and debunking science One of the great philosophers of the 20th century, Karl Popper helped to shape British politics in the 1980s and also changed our views of how science develops. Literal truths Richard Hoggart's 1957 work of literary sociology, The Uses of Literacy, stands as a pioneering study of what had been achieved, since the Universal Education Act of 1870, and the Butler Education Act of 1944, for the working classes of Britain. Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru In December 2001 the first standard historical Welsh dictionary, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, was complete. Pevsner architectural guides Created by the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, the guides were the first authoritative source of information on the architectural sites that populate the country, from ancient cathedrals, great country houses and their parks to Victorian public buildings and industrial monuments. Section eight: Understanding our environment Gaia: Earth as a living organism It was while studying the atmosphere on the planet Mars, that James Lovelock developed a new revolutionary way of thinking about the Earth. The "Gaia hypothesis" - the idea of the earth as a self-regulating living organism -- transformed public attitudes towards the environment. Detecting CFCs in the atmosphere James Lovelock discovered the electron capture detector in 1957 because of nuisance signals from a detector designed for someone else's scientific problem. Seafloor spreading and plate tectonics In 1963, two British marine geologists discovered huge matching magnetic 'stripes' in the rocks by ocean ridges. Understanding global warming The pioneering climatologist Hubert Lamb was instrumental in establishing the study of climate change as a serious research subject. Lasting impact of flooding Researchers at the University of Middlesex show that the immediate impact of flooding is just the start of the problems - with long term physical and psychological impacts. Section nine: Space exploration We are all made of stardust In 1957 Fred Hoyle and three fellow scientists at Cambridge University proposed a startling theory: the elements were created in the oldest chemical factories in the universe: stars. The discovery of Pulsars In 1965 postgraduate student Jocelyn Bell joined Anthony Hewish in the astronomy department of Cambridge University to look for quasars, certain types of galaxies. Big bangs and singularities Stephen Hawking as a graduate student at Cambridge University, working with the theoretical physicist, Roger Penrose at Oxford University in the 1960's proved that singularities exist. Black holes are common in space Research by Ken Pounds and his team at Leicester University helped to provide the best evidence so far that black holes are common in the universe. Seeing a postage stamp on the moon Martin Ryle, an astronomer at Cambridge University, knew that the development of more powerful telescopes would hold the key to many unanswered space questions. Sensing the weather In the 1970s Fred Taylor at the University of Oxford pioneered a technique that would be applied across the entire solar system called infrared remote sensing. Low-cost satellites Thanks to Martin Sweeting and fellow academics at the University of Surrey, low-cost satellites now exist to provide the crucial links for disaster relief all over the world. EducationGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 The MIT factor: celebrating 150 years of maverick genius The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has led the world into the future for 150 years with scientific innovations. Its brainwaves keep the US a superpower. But what makes the university such a fertile ground for brilliant ideas? 
Ed Pilkington The Guardian, Wednesday 18 May 2011 
MIT students at a physics class take measurements in 1957. Photograph: Andreas Feininger/Time & Life Pictures Yo-Yo Ma's cello may not be the obvious starting point for a journey into one of the world's great universities. But, as you quickly realise when you step inside the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), there's precious little about the place that is obvious. The cello is resting in a corner of MIT's celebrated media lab, a hub of techy creativity. There's a British red telephone kiosk standing in the middle of one of its laboratories, while another room is signposted: "Lego learning lab - Lifelong kindergarten." The cello is part of the Opera of the Future lab run by the infectiously energetic Tod Machover. A renaissance man for the 21st – or perhaps 22nd – century, Machover is a composer, inventor and teacher rolled into one. He sweeps into the office 10 minutes late, which is odd because his watch is permanently set 20 minutes ahead in a patently vain effort to be punctual. Then, with the urgency of the White Rabbit, he rushes me across the room to show me the cello. It looks like any other electric classical instrument, with a solid wood body and jack socket. But it is much more. Machover calls it a "hyperinstrument", a sort of thinking machine that allows Ma and his cello to interact with one another and make music together. "The aim is to build an instrument worthy of a great musician like Yo-Yo Ma that can understand what he is trying to do and respond to it," Machover says. The cello has numerous sensors across its body, fret and along the bow. By measuring the pressure, speed and angle of the virtuoso's performance it can interpret his mood and engage with it, producing extraordinary new sounds. The virtuoso cellist frequently performs on the instrument as he tours around the world. When Machover was developing the instrument, he found that the sound it made was distorted by Ma's hand as it absorbed electric current flowing from the bow. Machover had a eureka moment. What if you reversed that? What if you channelled the electricity flowing from the performer's body and turned it into music? Armed with that new idea, Machover designed an interactive system for Prince that the rock star deployed on stage at Wembley Stadium a few years ago, conjuring up haunting sounds through touch and gesture. Later, two of Machover's students at the media lab had the idea of devising an interactive game out of the technology. They went on to set up a company called Harmonix, based just down the road from MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from which they developed Rock Band and Guitar Hero. From Ma's cello, via Prince, to one of the most popular video games ever invented. And all stemming from Machover's passion for pushing at the boundaries of the existing world to extend and unleash human potential. That's not a bad description of MIT as a whole. This maverick community, on the other side of the Charles River from Boston, brings highly gifted, highly motivated individuals together from a vast range of disciplines but united by a common desire: to leap into the dark and reach for the unknown. The result of that single unifying ambition is visible all around us. For the past 150 years, MIT has been leading us into the future. The discoveries of its teachers and students have become the warp and weft of modernity, the stuff of daily life that we now all take for granted. The telephone, electromagnets, radars, high-speed photography, office photocopiers, cancer treatments, pocket calculators, computers, the internet, the decoding of the human genome, lasers, space travel . . . the list of innovations that involved essential contributions from MIT and its faculty goes on and on. And with that drive into modernity MIT has played no small part in building western, and particularly US, global dominance. Its explosive innovations have helped to secure America's military and cultural supremacy, and with it the country's status as the world's sole superpower.  A typical MIT student 'hack' or prank: a replica Apollo lunar module on top of the university's famous dome. Photograph: Erik Nygren
As the school marks its 150th anniversary this month, it seems the US has never needed MIT's help more than it does today. The voices of the nay-sayers are in the ascendancy, questioning the US's ability to reinvent itself, to heal its wounded economy and sustain its leadership in the face of a burgeoning China. Questions too, are increasingly being asked about the ability of science and technology to address the world's problems, as optimism about the future slides into doubt. "There is a profound cynicism around the role of science that is debilitating for those in the enterprise, and devastating for this country," says MIT's president, Susan Hockfield. "If we can't figure out how to make technological innovation the path to the future, then America is not going to have invented the future, some other country will have." She fears the US is increasingly suffering from what she calls a deficit of ambition. While 85% of MIT students are studying science and engineering, in the US as a whole the proportion is just 15%. That leaves the world's creative powerhouse vulnerable. "If you travel to Asia, to Shanghai or Bangalore, you feel the pulse of people racing to a future they are going to invent. You feel that rarely any more in the US." Which makes MIT's mission all the more essential. "MIT has an enormous responsibility right now," Hockfield says. "We feel that deeply. It needs to be a beacon of inspiration around the power of science and technology to create a brighter future for the world." No pressure, then. From the moment MIT was founded by William Barton Rogers in 1861 it was clear what it was not. It was not like the other school up the river. While Harvard stuck to the English model of an Oxbridge classical education, with its emphasis on Latin and Greek as befitted the landed aristocracy, MIT would look to the German system of learning based on research and hands-on experimentation, championing meritocracy and industry where Harvard preferred the privileges of birth. Knowledge was at a premium, yes, but it had to be useful. This gritty, down-to-earth quality, in keeping with the industrialisation that was spreading through the US at the time, was enshrined in the school motto, Mens et Manus – Mind and Hand – as well as its logo, which showed a gowned scholar standing beside an ironmonger bearing a hammer and anvil. That symbiosis of intellect and craftsmanship still suffuses the institute's classrooms, where students are not so much taught as engaged and inspired. There is a famous film of one of MIT's star professors, the physicist Walter Lewin, demonstrating the relationship between an oscillating metal ball and mass. Halfway through the experiment he climbs on to the ball and starts swinging himself around the lecture theatre in a huge oscillating arch as though he were appearing in Spider-Man on Broadway. When Emily Dunne, an 18-year-old mechanical engineering student from Bermuda, was taking a course in differential equations recently, she was startled when her professor started singing in the middle of the lecture. "He was trying to show us how to understand overtones. It was kind of weird, but then everyone here is a little quirky," she says. Mind and Hand applies too to MIT's belief that theory and practice go together; neither is superior to the other, and the two are stronger when combined. That conviction is as strongly held by the lowliest student as it is by its Nobel laureates (there have been 50 of them). Take Christopher Merrill, 21, a third-year undergraduate in computer science. He is spending most of his time on a competition set in his robotics class. The contest is to see which student can most effectively programme a robot to build a house out of blocks in under 10 minutes. Merrill says he could have gone for the easiest route – designing a simple robot that would build the house quickly. But he wanted to try to master an area of robotics that remains unconquered – adaptability, the ability of the robot to rethink its plans as the environment around it changes, as would a human. "I like to take on things that have never been done before rather than to work in an iterative way just making small steps forward," he explains. "It's much more exciting to go out into the unknown." Merrill is already planning the start-up he wants to set up when he graduates in a year's time. He has an idea for a new type of contact lens that would augment reality by allowing consumers to see additional visual information. He is fearful that he might be just too late in taking his concept to market, as he has heard that a Silicon Valley firm is already developing similar technology. As such, he might become one of many MIT graduates who go on to form companies that fail. Alternatively, he might become one of those who go on to succeed, in spectacular fashion. And there are many of them. A survey of living MIT alumni found that they have formed 25,800 companies, employing more than three million people including about a quarter of the workforce of Silicon Valley. Those firms between them generate global revenues of about $1.9tn (£1.2tn) a year. If MIT was a country, it would have the 11th highest GDP of any nation in the world. Ed Roberts, MIT's professor of technological innovation and entrepreneurship, says such figures belie the fact that the institute is actually quite small, with just 10,000 students and about 1,000 faculty. "That's not big. But when all those people sign up to a mission to forward entrepreneurship, you have a dramatically bigger impact. In MIT, people are encouraged not just to think bold, but to do it boldly. "If you come up with a brilliant idea, that's OK. If you win a Nobel prize for your research, that's fine. But if you take that idea and apply it and make something transformative happen, then in MIT that's deeply admired." Inevitably, perhaps, there is a nerdy quality to the place that is reflected in one of its much cherished traditions – the student "hack". Hack is a misleading word here, as it is less to do with cracking into computers than with hi-tech high-jinks. "Prank" is a better description. In the student canteen you can see two of the most famous MIT hacks preserved for prosperity – a police car that was balanced on top of the institute's great dome, and a functioning fire hydrant that was erected in one of the lobbies. The latter hack, dating from 1991, was a wry comment on a former president's remark that "getting an education from MIT is like taking a drink from a fire hose". Then there is the Baker House Piano Drop, an annual institution ever since students first dropped a stand-up piano from a sixth-storey dormitory in 1972, then measured the impact that it made when it crashed on the pavement below. Wacky, perhaps. Geeky, certainly. But also extraordinarily difficult technically and requiring great imagination and ingenuity. MIT in a nutshell.  MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky in his office in the Stata Centre. Photograph: Rick Friedman/Corbis
The current president offers two other important clues to MIT's success as a cauldron of innovation. The first is meritocracy. Hockfield is MIT's first female president, which is significant for an institution that since the 1990s has been battling against its own in-built discrimination against women. Women still make up only 21% of the faculty. But the gender balance of its students is almost 50:50, and about 40% of its staff members were born outside the US, underlying how MIT remains a huge magnet for talented individuals around the world. "It's one thing to talk about fostering creativity, but unless you strive for a true meritocracy you are driving away the best people, and what would be the point of that?" Hockfield says. MIT delights in taking brilliant minds in vastly diverse disciplines and flinging them together. You can see that in its sparkling new David Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, which brings scientists, engineers and clinicians under one roof. Or in its Energy Initiative, which acts as a bridge for MIT's combined firepower across all its five schools, channelling huge resources into the search for a solution to global warming. It works to improve the efficiency of existing energy sources, including nuclear power as it has its own nuclear reactor, a lesser-known fact that MIT prefers not to brag about. It is also forging ahead with alternative energies from solar to wind and geothermal, and has recently developed the use of viruses to synthesise batteries that could prove crucial in the advancement of electric cars. Before my tour of MIT ends I am given a taste of what this astonishing abundance of riches means in practice. In the space of half an hour I enjoy the company – in the flesh and spacially – of three of the towering figures of the modern age. I begin by dragging Tim Berners-Lee away from his computer screen to talk to me about how he ended up here. The Briton who invented the world wide web is part of the global brain drain to MIT. He created the web by linking hypertext with the internet in 1989 while he was at Cern in Geneva, but then felt he had no option but to cross the Atlantic. "There were a couple of reasons I had to come – one was because the web spread much faster in America than it did in Europe and the other was because there was no MIT over there." What is it about MIT that Europe could not offer him? "It's not just another university, it has this pre-eminent reputation and that in turn sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy: as soon as it becomes seen as the cool place to go for technology, then people will head there as I did. Even though I spend my time with my head buried in the details of web technology, or travelling the world, the nice thing is that when I do walk the corridors I bump into people who are working in other fields that are fascinating, and that keeps me intellectually alive." Berners-Lee offers to take me to my next appointment, and in so doing makes his point about MIT's self-fulfilling prophecy even more eloquently. We walk along the squiggly corridors of MIT's Stata Centre, which was designed by Frank Gehry. It is a classic Gehry structure, formed from undulating polished steel and tumbling blocks of brushed aluminium that reminds Berners-Lee, he tells me, of the higgledy-piggledy Italian village one of his relatives grew up in. After negotiating a maze of passageways Berners-Lee delivers me at the door of Noam Chomsky. It sums up this wild place: the inventor of the web leads me through the work of a titan of modern architecture to one of the world's foremost linguists and anti-war activists. Chomsky is in a hurry. On the night of our meeting he will appear on stage alongside the Kronos Quartet at the world premiere of a new piece of music dedicated to him. The composer? Tod Machover, he of the Yo-Yo Ma cello. I put it to Chomsky that it's a revealing paradox that he, as a leading critic of the US's overweening military might, has been based, since the 1950s, at an institution that was centrally involved in erecting the burgeoning military-industrial complex he so incisively opposes. After all, MIT has long been a leader in military research and development, receiving huge sums in grants from the Pentagon. It was core to America's prosecution of the cold war, developing ever more sophisticated guidance systems for ballistic missiles trained on Moscow. "What people don't understand is that the role of the Pentagon," Chomsky says, "to a large extent was developing the technology of the future. There were some odd things about it. This building was also one of the centres of the antiwar resistance, and it was right in there, 100% funded by the Pentagon. But they didn't care." What does that tell us about MIT? "I was just left alone to my own devices. Other people took days off to run their businesses; I went off as an antiwar activist. But no one ever objected. MIT is a very free and open place."
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