Title
Topic
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‘Exploring the Indian Political YouTube Landscape: A Multimodal Multi-Task Approach’
“Social media profoundly influences all facets of our lives, including politics. Political parties, politicians, and media outlets have strategically cultivated their social media presence to engage with the public. However, with the advent of freely available Internet services in India, there has been a rising proliferation in the community of independent content creators on YouTube, with many getting millions of views per video. In this study, we present a novel multimodal dataset of videos, taken from 20 independent and influential content creators. … By introducing this novel dataset, we aim to stimulate further investigation within the domains of opinion dissemination…
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‘Deploying and Evaluating LLMs to Program Service Mobile Robots’
“Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have spurred interest in using them for generating robot programs from natural language, with promising initial results. We investigate the use of LLMs to generate programs for service mobile robots leveraging mobility, perception, and human interaction skills, and where accurate sequencing and ordering of actions is crucial for success. We contribute CodeBotler, an open-source robot-agnostic tool to program service mobile robots from natural language, and RoboEval, a benchmark for evaluating LLMs’ capabilities of generating programs to complete service robot tasks.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ArXiv.
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Ferrins receives NIH AViDD Center Development Grant
“There are two goals in this project, firstly, to continue to develop our advanced hit compound … to identify a lead suitable for in vivo proof of concept studies. Secondly, to develop novel methods to study the structural dynamics of both covalent inhibitors and PLpro active site structures enabling the development of more potent covalent inhibitors.”
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‘Interpretation Issues With “Genomic Vulnerability” Arise From Conceptual Issues in Local Adaptation and Maladaptation’
“As climate change causes the environment to shift away from the local optimum that populations have adapted to, fitness declines are predicted to occur. Recently, methods known as genomic offsets (GOs) have become a popular tool to predict population responses to climate change from landscape genomic data. Populations with a high GO have been interpreted to have a high ‘genomic vulnerability’ to climate change. … This study uses hypothetical and empirical data to explore situations in which different types of fitness offsets may or may not be correlated with each other or with a GO.”
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Meni Wanunu, developer of sensitive biological sensors, receives Northeastern University NAI Innovator of the Year Award
Professor of physics and chemistry and chemical biology Meni Wanunu develops “nanopores,” sensors composed of molecule-sized holes that stretch individual molecules for scientific observation. At this year’s annual gathering of the Northeastern chapter of the National Academy of Inventors, Wanunu received the Innovator of the Year Award.
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Dean Hazel Sive edits volume detailing African frog research and best practices that informed her ‘life’s work’
Dean of the College of Science and professor of biology at Northeastern University Hazel Sive has edited “Xenopus: A Laboratory Manual,” a new textbook that presents “a comprehensive collection of experimental procedures for research using Xenopus.”
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‘Inhalable Bottlebrush Polymer Bioconjugates as Vectors for Efficient Pulmonary Delivery of Oligonucleotides’
“Antisense oligonucleotides hold therapeutic promise for various lung disorders, but their efficacy is limited by suboptimal delivery. To address this challenge, we explored the use of inhaled bottlebrush polymer–DNA conjugates, named pacDNA, as a delivery strategy. Inhaled pacDNA exhibits superior mucus penetration, achieving a uniform and sustained lung distribution in mice.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ACS Nano.
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‘The Expressive Function of Public Policy: Renewable Energy Mandates Signal Social Norms’
“Addressing collective action problems requires individuals to engage in coordinated and cooperative behaviours. Existing research suggests that individuals’ propensity to work together depends in part on their belief that others support the cause in question. People form their expectations about prevalent beliefs and behaviours from many sources. To date, most of the literature has focussed on how social norm perceptions are inferred from peers or summary statistics. We explore an understudied source of norm information: the passage of policies by democratically elected institutions.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
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‘Local Adaptation in Trait-Mediated Trophic Cascades’
“Predator-induced changes in prey foraging can influence community dynamics by increasing the abundance of basal resources via a trait-mediated trophic cascade. The strength of these cascades may be altered by eco-evolutionary relationships between predators and prey, but the role of basal resources has received limited attention. We hypothesized that trait-mediated trophic cascade strength may be shaped by selection from trophic levels above and below prey. … We suggest that adaptation to basal resource availability may shape geographical variation in the strength of trait-mediated trophic cascades.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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‘Does More Advice Help? The Effects of Second Opinions in AI-Assisted Decision Making’
“AI assistance in decision-making has become popular, yet people’s inappropriate reliance on AI often leads to unsatisfactory human-AI collaboration performance. In this paper, through three pre-registered, randomized human subject experiments, we explore whether and how the provision of {second opinions} may affect decision-makers’ behavior and performance in AI-assisted decision-making. We find that if both the AI model’s decision recommendation and a second opinion are always presented together, decision-makers reduce their over-reliance on AI while increase their under-reliance on AI.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ArXiv.
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Dy elected as Fellow of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Professor Jennifer Dy, in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and in the department of electrical and computer engineering, was elected as a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) “For significant contributions to unsupervised and interpretable machine learning, advancing AI to address health care challenges and service to the AI community,” the organization wrote in its announcement.
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Cassella added to Fulbright Specialist Roster
“Electrical and computer engineering associate professor Cristian Cassella was recommended by a panel of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and World Learning to join the prestigious Fulbright Specialist Roster for a tenure of three years. The program, which is part of the larger Fulbright Program, pairs highly qualified U.S. academics and professionals with host institutions in over 150 countries to share their expertise, strengthen institutional linkages, hone their skills, gain international experience and learn about other cultures while building capacity at their overseas host institutions.”
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‘Native Capillary Electrophoresis–Mass Spectrometry of Near 1 MDa Non-Covalent GroEL/GroES/Substrate Protein Complexes’
“Protein complexes are essential for proteins’ folding and biological function. Currently, native analysis of large multimeric protein complexes remains challenging. Structural biology techniques are time-consuming and often cannot monitor the proteins’ dynamics in solution. Here, a capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE–MS) method is reported to characterize, under near-physiological conditions, the conformational rearrangements of ∽1 MDa GroEL upon complexation with binding partners involved in a protein folding cycle.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Advanced Science.
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‘Emotion Regulation Convoys: Individual and Age Differences in the Hierarchical Configuration of Emotion Regulation Behaviors in Everyday Life’
“A key limitation of studying emotion regulation behavior is that there is currently no way to describe individual differences in use across a range of tactics, which could lead to investigations of intraindividual changes over time or interindividual differences as a function of personality, age, culture, or psychopathology diagnosis. We, therefore, introduce emotion regulation convoys. This research tool provides a snapshot of the hierarchy of emotion regulation tactics an individual favors across everyday life situations and how effective they are at regulating moods.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Research Gate.
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AI-driven testing for cellular networks
“Electrical and computer engineering assistant research professor Michele Polese is leading a $2 million project awarded by the Wireless Innovation Fund for ‘AutoRAN: Automated End-to-End Continuous Testing for Open and Disaggregated Cellular Systems.’ … The project will explore the use of AI and large language models to streamline the process of testing the performance of multi-vendor Open RAN networks. Electrical and computer engineering assistant research professor Salvatore D’Oro, associate research scientist Leonardo Bonati, principal research scientist Pedram Johari and professor Tommaso Melodia will also be collaborating on this project.”
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‘Linear Extension and Calcification Rates in a Cold-Water, Crustose Coralline Alga are Modulated by Temperature, Light and Salinity’
“Long-lived crustose coralline algae are important ecosystem engineers and environmental archives in regions where observations of climate variability are sparse. … Here, we present the results of the first, to-our-knowledge, controlled laboratory experiment isolating the effects of light, temperature, and salinity on calcification rates of C. compactum. Algal calcification rates were modulated by a combination of light exposure, salinity, and temperature, where temperature and salinity were positively correlated, and light level was negatively correlated with calcification rate.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Limnology and Oceanography.
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Karma receives NASA grant to study alloy solidification in space
The COMPASS project — “Computational Modeling of Columnar‐Equiaxed Alloy Solidification Micro‐Structures” — “uses computational modeling and space experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station to develop a fundamental understanding of the alloy solidification process used to make a wide range of technological materials.”
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Jaeggi and Seitz receive DoD grant to develop attention-measuring tools in high performers
“In this collaborative project that involves groups from Washington University (St. Louis), Brown University, University of California, Irvine, as well as several groups in Australia, we develop tools / apps to assess attention control in high-performing adults (e.g., pilots or air-traffic controllers) using computational modeling as well as behavioral and neuroimaging methods. Furthermore, we build evidence-based interventions to maximize and improve attention control functions in various [stressful] environments … The outcome of our project will provide a better understanding of the human attention system and the interventions will enable individuals to maintain high levels of focus and concentration even in…
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‘Enabling Rotation Over Electrophoretic Motion in Janus Particles Under Applied Electric Field’
“Janus particles (JPs) comprising metal and dielectric halves are capable of propulsion perpendicular to an applied electric field, with promising applications in targeted drug delivery and microrobotics. Yet, not all JP geometries behave the same when activated. We explore hemispherical, snowman and matchstick-like particle dynamics and evaluate threshold values for which electric torque can overcome induced charge electrophoresis. We define conditions where JPs are more likely to undergo rotation in place rather than linear motion, highlighting design features which should be considered when using these particles as materials.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Applied Physics Letters.
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‘The Effects of Lithium Chloride Exposure on the Reproduction of Caenorhabditis elegans’
“Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) are model organisms that share similar anatomical structures to humans. By exploring the effects of lithium chloride (LiCl) on C. elegans, we can collect crucial data regarding the compound’s impact on patients taking psychiatric medications containing LiCl. Here we performed an egg retention assay on nematode populations to explore how LiCl can influence reproduction. We found a statistically significant difference in eggs retained between control and experimental groups, suggesting that LiCl has negative effects on reproductive health.” Find the paper and full list of authors at MicroPublication Biology.
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Ionescu receives NSF CAREER award to study ‘molecular mechanisms of skeletal growth’
“This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award will focus on elucidating the molecular mechanisms of skeletal growth. … Estrogen plays a vital role in growth plate closure for both sexes [of mammals] by converting androgens to estrogens through aromatase in growth plate cartilage. Deficiency or resistance to estrogen leads to growth plate fusion failure and ongoing height increase in adulthood. However, the exact mechanism by which estrogen regulates growth plate closure is still unknown. Understanding this mechanism may clarify species-specific skeletal differences or variations between bones from different anatomical locations.”
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Two members of the Northeastern community elected ACM Fellows for contributions to artificial intelligence and advances in computer science
Professor of the practice at Northeastern University Kenneth Church and Northeastern graduate Natasha Noy have been elected 2023 ACM Fellows. Both Church and Noy have advanced research in artificial intelligence, and both have worked on tools to support other researchers’ efforts.
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For teaching computers to see, Northeastern professor receives eminent achievement award
A leading researcher in the field of computer vision — which uses artificial intelligence to process images received from cameras that “mimic human eyes” — Yun Raymond Fu, distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, has received the 2024 Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award for making “impactful contributions” over a nearly 20-year career.