Engineers have invented a cheap and easy way of turning “dumb” headphones into smart ones.
The method transforms headphones into sensors that can be plugged into smartphones, identify their users, monitor their heart rates, and perform other services.
The researchers based their invention, called HeadFi, on a small plug-in adapter that turns a regular headphone into a sensing device. Unlike smart headphones, regular ones lack sensors. HeadFi would allow users to avoid having to buy a new smart pair with embedded sensors to enjoy sensing features.
“HeadFi could turn hundreds of millions of existing, regular headphones worldwide into intelligent ones with a simple upgrade,” says Xiaoran Fan, a HeadFi primary inventor and recent Rutgers University doctoral graduate who now works at Samsung Artificial Intelligence Center.
New Survey of Massachusetts City and Town Administrators Measures COVID Pandemic’s Impact on Municipalities UMass Amherst researchers find 60% are confident in their municipality’s vaccine preparedness, while similar percentage said businesses were significantly or severely impacted by the pandemic
March 11, 2021
Marta Vicarelli
Delivering COVID vaccinations to their residents has become a top priority among Massachusetts municipal administrators, and the majority surveyed by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst are confident in their towns’ and cities’ abilities to provide the potentially life-saving shots.
As outlined in an executive summary released today, a survey of the membership of the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic found 60% of cities and towns in the Bay State definitely have the ability to administer vaccines, and another 9% probably do. Only 8
A price tag on trauma? Massachusetts college town weighs Black reparations
A New England college town is among hundreds of communities nationwide weighing how to provide reparations to Black residents for slavery and systemic racism
By PHILIP MARCELOAssociated Press
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AMHERST, Mass. Professor Edwin Driver arrived in Amherst in 1948 as one of the first Black teachers hired at a flagship state university in the country.
But the 23-year-old sociology instructor at what would become the University of Massachusetts Amherst says he was denied pay raises for decades, despite being one of its most published professors.
Driver and his wife, who was from India, also encountered roadblocks trying to buy a house in the mostly white college town. Their three children faced racism from neighbors and school officials alike.
While Massachusetts has entered Phase Two of the COVID vaccination distribution plan, less than one-quarter of Bay State residents report receiving the potentially life-saving injection and more than 20% probably or definitely will not get the vaccine, according to a new University of Massachusetts Amherst / WCVB poll.