MIT new 2016

Paragraph:

Blocks make programming more intuitive for people who don’t necessarily have the background. Some of the biggest issues the team has encountered are with interfaces that control zooming and scrolling. It’s easy to see that some of her inspiration comes from Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.

“Computer graphics is that in-between space,” she says. “You need to have some kind of aesthetic sensibility, since the whole point is still to tell a story, but you’re using computer science and math to do that.”

New Words:

more intuitive : Trực quan hơn

to complete a series of challenges:  hoàn thành chuỗi mục tiêu, thách thức

encounter : to have or experience (problems, difficulties, etc.) đương đầu,

interfaces: a connection between two pieces of electronic equipment, or between a person and a computer: giao tiếp

inspiration: a sudden good idea: cảm hứng

aesthetic sensibility: /esˈθet.ɪk/ nhạy cảm về thẩm mỹ

Paragraph:   http://news.mit.edu/2015/better-probabilistic-programming-0413

To make machine-learning applications easier to build, computer scientists have begun developing so-called probabilistic programming languages, which let researchers mix and match machine-learning techniques that have worked well in other contexts. In 2013, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an incubator of cutting-edge technology, launched a four-year program to fund probabilistic-programming research.

By the standards of conventional computer programs, those “models” can seem absurdly vague. One of the tasks that the researchers investigate, for instance, is constructing a 3-D model of a human face from 2-D images. Kulkarni and his colleagues considered four different problems in computer vision, each of which involves inferring the three-dimensional shape of an object from 2-D information.

New words:

an incubator of cutting-edge technology : vườn ươm công nghệ

probabilistic-programming: lập trình xác suất

pioneer: a person who is one of the first people to do something:  người tiên phong

By the standards of conventional computer programs: theo tiêu chuẩn của chương trình máy tính thông thường.

absurdly vague: vô lý mơ hồ

infer:  to form an opinion or guess that something is true because of the information that you have : suy luận

Example:

Everything will ultimately depend on what is said at the meeting with the directors next week.

Ultimately (adv) = the last but one:  /ˈʌl.tɪ.mət.li/ conclusion, finally