The Chinese Choral Society of Rochester performs in various languages. Previously, in order to display the translated lyrics in real time, a person very familiar with the songs would have to manually type the words during the live performance.

A concert by the choral society last month marked the launch of an automatic lyrics display system developed by Zhiyao Duan, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his PhD student, Bochen Li. The system displayed the lyrics — at the exact moment they were performed — in both Chinese and English to a multicultural audience of people with a variety of native languages.

“Musical performance is all about communication between musicians and the audience,” Duan says. “This system helps musicians convey ideas—in this case the lyrics—to the audience and helps the audience better appreciate the performance.”

Duan sings tenor with the Chinese Choral Society. He brainstormed with Youti Kuo, secretary of the choral society, and Ming-Lun Lee, an assistant professor of audio and music engineering and director of the choral society, about ways he could contribute his knowledge as a researcher in artificial intelligence and music.

Duan’s system uses a dynamic time warping algorithm, which reconciles differences between two sequences that may vary in speed. For the system to work, it needs a reference recording to compare with the live performance. The choral society taped a reference recording during a rehearsal and pre-aligned the lyrics to this recording. During the live performance, the algorithm aligned the live performance with the reference recording and displayed the lyrics in real time.

Although manual work is still required to add lyrics to the reference recording prior to the concert, it can be completed in a much more flexible fashion: it can be done any time before the concert and allows for revisions. In addition, once the lyrics alignment is completed, it can be used as a reference for any live performance of the same piece.

“We hope this will soon be available to choirs worldwide, either for commercial use or for free,” Duan says. “We are working on building a system and a repertoire that are scalable.”

Read more here.

Medical Center researchers have discovered that loss of muscle stem cells is the main driving force behind muscle decline in old age in mice. Their finding challenges the current prevailing theory that age-related muscle decline is primarily caused by loss of motor neurons. The study’s authors hope to develop a drug or therapy that can slow muscle stem cell loss and muscle decline in the future.

While the speed of decline varies from person to person and may be slowed by diet and exercise, virtually no one completely escapes the decline.

“Even an elite trained athlete who has high absolute muscle strength will still experience a decline with age,” said study author Joe Chakkalakal, assistant professor of orthopaedics in the Center for Musculoskeletal Research.

To better understand the role of stem cells in age-related muscle decline, Chakkalakal and his team, including lead author Wenxuan Liu, a recent graduate of the Department of Biomedical Genetics, depleted muscle stem cells in mice without disrupting motor neurons, nerve cells that control muscle. The loss of stem cells sped up muscle decline in the mice, starting in middle, rather than old age. Mice that were genetically altered to prevent muscle stem cell loss maintained healthier muscles at older ages than age-matched control mice.

At the same time, Chakkalakal and his team did not find evidence to support motor neuron loss in aging mice. Very few muscle fibers had completely lost connection with their corresponding motor neurons, which questions the long-held and popular “Denervation/Re-innervation” theory. According to the theory, age-related muscle decline is primarily driven by motor neurons dying or losing connection with the muscle, which then causes the muscle cells to atrophy and die.

Read more here.

A University start-up company, Science Take-Out, LLC, has been awarded a nearly $1 million, two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to further develop a line of hands-on environmental health science kits for use in community settings. The kits will help teachers and community educators increase the public’s understanding of how the environment can affect their health.

Since 2008, Science Take-Out kits have provided a convenient and cost-effective way for teachers to incorporate engaging environmental health science activities into their classrooms. Now the kits, which align with national and state science education standards, will undergo a second round of extensive field testing to ensure they are relevant and accessible to diverse community audiences.

“Educating students and the general public about the link between the environment and their health allows them to make informed decisions and change their behavior to protect themselves from environmental exposures,” said Dina Markowitz, professor of environmental medicine and director of the University’s Life Sciences Learning Center.

Markowitz and Katrina Korfmacher,  associate professor of environmental medicine and director of the Community Outreach and Engagement Core (COEC) at the Environmental Health Science Center, partnered to develop and test eight current environmental health kits, which range from lessons on breast cancer to lead poisoning prevention.

With the new award Markowitz and Korfmacher will collaborate with environmental health community outreach professionals from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill COEC, the University of Texas Medical Branch COEC, and West Harlem Environmental Action to adapt the kits for use outside of the classroom.

• Poet Jennifer Grotz, a professor of English, who has been named the next director of the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences. The first woman to hold the position, Grotz will be the seventh director of the oldest American conference for writers. Established in 1926, Bread Loaf was conceived of by poet Robert Frost and has expanded to encompass a cluster of related gatherings: the Translators’ Conference, the Orion Environmental Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf in Sicily Conference. Bread Loaf draws a diverse array of writers. Workshops in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction are its core, and participants also meet with visiting editors, literary agents, and publishers.  Read more here.
• Sharon Elad, professor of dentistry and chair of the Eastman Institute for Oral Health’s Oral Medicine Department, who has been recognized as an Honorary Diplomate by the American Board of Oral Medicine. Elad is among the inaugural class of Honorary Diplomates, a new designation to recognize those with outstanding contributions to the field who received their specialty training in an international academic institution, not an American Commission on Dental Accreditation certified institution. Elad is widely published and leads several international research collaborations. She specializes in treating people who have mouth issues because of chemotherapy and other cancer treatments.  Read more here.
• Ignacio Franco, assistant professor of chemistry and physics, who has been selected as a winner of the highly competitive OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award for Fall 2017 by the Division of Computers in Chemistry (COMP) of the American Chemical Society. The award, designed to give new faculty members visibility within the COMP community, will enable Franco to present his work at the American Chemical Society national meeting in Washington DC this fall. Franco was selected in recognition of theoretical and computational efforts by his group aimed at bringing theory and experiment closer together in molecular electronics, and at developing the capabilities to atomistically understand experiments that simultaneously measure the electric and mechanical properties of single molecules in the context of nanoscale junctions. Developing atomistic understanding through simulations is essential to advance this class of measurements into a highly discriminating multidimensional single-molecule spectroscopy. Read more here.
• Ching Tang,  professor of chemical engineering, has been awarded IEEE’s Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal in recognition of his “groundbreaking discoveries” in OLED technology. The medal, named in honor of the “Father of Japanese Microelectronics,” is given for outstanding contributions to material and device science and technology, including practical application. OLED technology, which has spawned a multi-billion industry for advanced lighting and displays, features a series of thin light-emitting fields to provide brighter light but with less energy compared to traditional LED bulbs and liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). Read more here.

Amanda Davis, Physics, “Laser ablation and hydrodynamic coupling in direct-drive inertial-confinement-fusion experiments.” 2 p.m., June 9, 2017. Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) Seminar Room. Advisors: Dustin Froula and Tomline Michele.

Santiago Alonso-Diaz, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, “Number representation in perceptual decisions.” 10 a.m., June 20, 2017. 269 Meliora Hall. Advisor: Jessica Cantlon.

Boris Vaisband, Electrical Engineering, “3-D ICs as a Platform for Heterogeneous Systems Integration.” 11 a.m., June 20, 2017. Computer Studies Building Room 426. Advisor: Eby Friedman.

Zhengshan Liu, Biology, “The Contribution of Glial Molecular Pathology to Schizophrenia.” 2 p.m., June 20, 2017. Medical Center 2-6408. Advisor: Steve Goldman.

Amanda Maddox Shaw, Clinical Psychology, “The Longitudinal Effects of Solo and Joint Use of Sexually Explicit Material in Committed Relationships.” 2:30 p.m., June 21, 2017. Meliora 366. Advisor: Ronald Rogge.

Omid Bakhshandeh Babarsad, Computer Science, “Language Learning Through Comparison.” 11 a.m., June 22, 2017. Wegmans Hall 2506. Advisor: James Allen.

Joseph Bisson, Pharmacology, “The Role of Non-canonical Wnt Signaling in Heart Development and Repair.” 9:30 a.m., June 26, 2017. Adolph Auditorium (1-7619) Medical Center. Advisor: Ethan David Cohen.

Anna Bird, Microbiology and Immunology, “The Role of Neutrophils in the Pathogenesis of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.” Noon, June 26, 2017. Auditorium K-307 (3-6408) Medical Center. Advisor: Jennifer Anolik.

Shannon Lacy, Toxicology, “Human Lung Fibroblasts Produce and Respond to Pro-Resolving and Anti-Fibrotic Prostaglandins.” 1 p.m., June 28, 2017. Auditorium K-307 (3-6408) Medical Center. Advisor: Richard Phipps.

Today: “The future starts now” — a multi-disciplinary scientific symposium focusing on the future of dental and craniofacial research, dental education, and clinical and community care.  7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastman Institute of Oral Health. Read more here.

June 12: Pathology Research Day. Oral and poster presentations by residents and graduate research students in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and a keynote speech by Perry J. Blackshear, deputy chief of Signal Transduction Laboratory and head of the Post-Transcriptional Gene Expression Group for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.  8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Class of ’62 Auditorium (poster session in Flaum Atrium). Click here for the schedule.

June 12: “So you want to publish? Tips, tools and techniques for identifying and choosing the ‘right’ publication.” 2016-2017 Faculty Development Workshop Series. 4 to 5:30 p.m., CEL 2-7544. Faculty, students, residents, fellows, and staff are welcome to attend. To register, contact Nina Koski.

June 14: The Center for Oral Biology Research Day. “Precision Approaches in Periodontology” will be presented by Denis Kinane of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, 1:15 to 2:15 p.m. “Biting into Development and Regeneration: Insights into Odontogenesis and Dental Stem Cells” will be presented by Ophir Klein of the University of California, San Francisco, 2:15 to 3:15 p.m. Both lectures in Auditorium K-307 (3-6408), Medical Center. A poster session with refreshments will be in the LeChase Assembly Hall (G-9576), 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Presentations are open to the public.

June 14: First meeting of the Science, Technology, and Culture multidisciplinary reading group, discussing When Breath Becomes Air, the memoir of Paul Kalanithi — a neurosurgeon whose diagnosis with terminal lung cancer at the end of his residency drives him to examine the brain, the mind, and what makes us human.  5 p.m., Humanities Center at Rush Rhees Library. To learn more, email Emma_Grygotis@urmc.rochester.edu

June 16:  PONS Luncheon Roundtable Series: Vision and Retinal Disease. Noon to 1 p.m., Louise Slaughter Conference Room 1-9555.  Krystel Huxlin, Duje Tadin, Mina Chung, and Jennifer Hunter will discuss current vision and retinal research at the University of Rochester. Refreshments will be provided. Hosted by the Pre-doctoral Organization for the Neurosciences (PONS). For more information on upcoming Neuro-related events, visit http://blogs.rochester.edu/pons/upcoming.

July 14: UNYTE scientific session, “Collaborate to Innovate Maternal & Child Health Translational Research.” 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Helen Wood Hall. Panel presentations, a poster session, interactive break-out groups and a keynote address by Michele Caggana, deputy director of genetics and director of newborn screening at the Wadsworth School of Laboratory Sciences. For additional information and registration, go to UNYTE Scientific Session.