The Download: cancelling out noises, and tastes like (lab-grown) chicken

The news: A new system for noise-canceling headphones lets users opt back in to certain sounds they'd like to hear, such as babies crying, birds tweeting, or alarms ringing. How it works: The system, which is still in prototype, connects off-the-shelf headphones to a smartphone app. The microphones embedded in these headphones, which are used to cancel out noise, also detect the sounds in the world around the wearer. These sounds are then played back to a neural network, which has been trained to recognize 20 everyday noises; then certain sounds are boosted or suppressed in real time, depending on the user's preferences. Why it matters: Researchers have long tried to solve the "cocktail party problem"--that is, to get a computer to focus on a single voice in a crowded room, as humans are able to do.