Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects millions of Americans every year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 1 in 4 women and nearly 1 in 10 men have experienced some form of sexual or physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime. While both men and women can be victims of IPV, women are more likely to sustain serious injuries and be killed by men.

Often red flags appear well before the violence starts.

“I hear very rarely about incidents of physical and sexual violence where the exertion of power and control didn’t come first,” says Catherine Cerulli, director of both the Susan B. Anthony Center and the Laboratory of Interpersonal Violence and Victimization. “As the level of severity increases toward physical and sexual violence, it’s almost always accompanied or preceded by emotional abuse, where the abuser tries to control the victim’s time and resources.”

IPV may also manifest as economic abuse, which may include interfering with a person’s ability to earn an income or hold down a job. For example, a perpetrator may show up at the workplace to call, harass, annoy, or alarm—not just the victim but coworkers as well. Learn more in Cerulli’s Q&A with Sandra Knispel.

When we smell a rose, how does our brain process the essence of its fragrance? Is it like a painting – a momentary snapshot of the flickering activity of cells? Or more like a symphony, an evolving ensemble of different cells working together to capture the scent? New research suggests that our brain does both.

“These findings reveal a core principle of the nervous system, flexibility in the kinds of calculations the brain makes to represent aspects of the sensory world,” says Krishnan Padmanabhan, an associate professor of neuroscience and senior author of a study recently published in Cell Reports.

Employing computer simulations, researchers found a specific set of connections, called centrifugal fibers, which carry impulses from other parts of the central nervous system to the early sensory regions of the brain. The centrifugal fibers act as a switch, toggling between different strategies to efficiently represent smells.

Cells in the piriform cortex – where the perception of an odor forms – relied on the pattern of activity within a given instant in time.

Cells in the piriform cortex, which improve both the accuracy and the speed with which cells detected and classified the smell, rely on the patterns of brain activity across time. Learn more.

Petros Tzeferacos (left), director of the Flash Center for Computational Science, explains FLASH simulations to Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) colleagues. Tzeferacos is part of an international team that used FLASH code to design and interpret experiments to replicate for the first time in a laboratory setting conditions that exist within galaxy clusters. (University of Rochester photo / J. Adam Fenster)

In 2013, a team of American and Hungarian astronomers discovered the largest known structure in the observable universe: a supercluster of galaxies they named the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. The Great Wall is so wide that light would take 10 billion years to move across it.

How do superclusters evolve? Scientists need to understand the inner workings of the building blocks of superclusters—galaxy clusters, which are thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. For example, how is energy injected into the plasma that comprises galaxy clusters? How is this energy spread around to heat the entire enormous system?

An international team of scientists from Rochester, Oxford University, and the University of Chicago demonstrated in a laboratory setting for the first time how thermal conduction is suppressed in a plasma—causing galaxy clusters to be hotter than expected. The research, published in the journal Science Advances, provides insights into the complex physical processes at play within the building blocks of our universe.

“This work opens a new, experimental path to address a long-standing astrophysical question: Why are the cores of galaxy clusters so hot, despite the copious amounts of radiation they emit?” says Petros Tzeferacos, an associate professor of physics and astronomy and a senior scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE). Tzeferacos is also the director of the Flash Center for Computational Science, which recently moved to Rochester from Chicago, and contributed to the experiments. Learn more.

Jennifer Kyker, an associate professor in the School of Arts & Sciences’ Arthur Satz Department of Music and an associate professor of ethnomusicology at the Eastman School of Music, is this year’s recipient of the President’s Ferrari Humanities Research Award.

Endowed by University Trustee Bernard Ferrari ’70, ’74M (MD) and his wife, Linda Gaddis Ferrari, the award promotes and supports humanities research by a tenured or tenure-track faculty member in Arts, Sciences & Engineering who is affiliated with the University’s Humanities Center.

Kyker’s project, “Women in Mbira: Music, Gender, and Ritual in Zimbabwe,” will include a publicly accessible digital portal highlighting Kyker’s research and interpretation of the mbira musical tradition. The project may also culminate in a recording produced by the Smithsonian.

Kyker previously published a major digital humanities project, which features music from Zimbabwe. A SoundCloud playlist at the site includes several tracks available for online streaming. There is also a free, downloadable music album associated with the project at https://pamberiproject.bandcamp.com/album/sekurus-stories

Two speakers will address applications of deep learning to single cell analysis during a CTSI (Clinical and Translational Science Institute) Analytics colloquium from noon to 1 p.m. EST Monday, April 25 via zoom.

Qin Ma, an associate professor of biomedical informatics at Ohio State University, will present “Deep learning shapes single-cell data analysis.”

Fei Wu, a postdoctoral research fellow at The Buck Institute for Research on Aging, will present “The Application of Deep Learning in Aging Research and Single Cell Analysis.”

Registration is free and can be made in advance here.

Do you have experience with community-based participatory research?

Apply for up to $15,000 to support a planning grant or a pilot research project involving at least one faculty member from the University and at least one community partner from the greater Rochester area. Applicants must clearly demonstrate how the program or pilot generated from this award will be used to develop a pilot grant and/or a larger, independently-funded study. Apply by April 25. Learn more.

Writing a successful grant is critical to advancing your research career.

The AAMC Grant Writers Coaching Group for NIH Awards program, on June 16, supports underrepresented faculty in writing successful grants.

The program is designed for faculty who are actively working on an NIH Career Development (K or R) proposal. Apply now. Learn more.