BU undergraduate Nemai Anand developed an artificial intelligence program to identify frog species in India’s Western Ghats region by their calls. Photo via Pexels/Arunsankar S

Research News

Brink Bites: Tracking Endangered Frogs, Why Concentration Wanders, Studying Kids’ Beliefs

Other research news, stories, and tidbits from around BU, including an AI system for detecting frog calls, a study of disrupted attention, and a project to examine children’s belief formation

The Brink’s latest collection of news nuggets, short stories, and other thought-provoking snippets from the world of Boston University research—including a new theory of language, an undergraduate’s frog tracking software, a project examining how children’s beliefs form, and fresh insights on task concentration.

BU Undergrad Builds Machine Learning Tool to Track, Save More Frogs

India’s Western Ghats mountain range has been described as “frog heaven” due to the number and diversity of species that call it home—but the amphibians’ future is under threat as humans encroach on habitats. To help researchers there better detect and track frog populations, BU undergraduate Nemai Anand has developed an artificial intelligence program—known as a machine learning classifier—to identify frog species by their calls. A student in BU’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, Anand (CDS’28) started the work during high school in Irvine, Calif., and has just published a paper on training and testing his program in the Journal of Emerging Investigators. “Nemai’s work reflects not only technical skill but also a curiosity and drive that embody the spirit of CDS,” said Azer Bestavros, associate provost for computing and data sciences, in a CDS news story about the work. “We’re excited to support his continued journey and look forward to the contributions he’ll make in the years ahead.” Next, Anand plans to apply machine learning to immunology and bioinformatics research with John Connor, a BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine professor of virology, immunology, and microbiology. “I want to keep exploring how data science can be used across disciplines—from conservation biology to infectious disease,” said Anand in the CDS article. “There’s so much potential, and I’m just getting started.”

Wheelock Researcher Launches Global Study into How Kids’ Beliefs Evolve

A BU researcher is launching an international study of how children’s beliefs form and change with the goal of providing new insights into polarization—and, potentially, ways to mitigate it. Kathleen Corriveau, a BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development professor and associate dean for faculty affairs, will work with researchers across 19 countries on the 36-month longitudinal study. The project recently won support from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, which awarded Corriveau and her team close to $2 million. According to the foundation, researchers will “study mechanisms of polarization in children aged 8-12 about topics including religion, science, social justice, and morality.” Corriveau is also the lead principal investigator of the John Templeton Foundation–funded Developing Belief Network, a collaborative group of researchers studying beliefs in early childhood.

American Sign Language Study Shakes Up Theory of Words

A long-standing convention underpinning theories of language is that there’s often no real reason for certain words to become attached to certain objects—the word “dog,” for example, is just a sound given meaning. But a new BU study focused on American Sign Language (ASL) suggests that many words may not be as random as previously assumed and that their “appearance and sound reflect meaningful, non-arbitrary patterns,” according to a news story from the BU Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. The “researchers found that in ASL—and in the spoken languages of English and Spanish—words and signs that mean similar things often look or sound similar.” These clusters of words with close meanings and sounds—think “glitter,” “glimmer,” and “glisten”—are far more common that previous studies suggested: “researchers observed that 54 percent of ASL signs, 39 percent of English words, and 24 percent of Spanish words were systematically related to one another.” The researchers, who built a software system to collect, identify, and analyze ASL signs, concluded that a major factor was a phenomenon known as iconicity—when words or signs are connected to their meaning, like “buzz” in English evoking a vibration sound or the ASL sign for eating mimicking the act of bringing food to the mouth. “The research not only challenges fundamental language theory, but has practical applications,” said Naomi Caselli, a BU Wheelock associate professor of Deaf education and director of BU’s AI and Education Initiative. “It could improve how we teach language to children or new learners by highlighting word patterns rather than requiring memorization. It could help adults suffering from aphasia relearn language.”

Struggling to Concentrate? Blame Negative Distractions

Even when you’re trying really hard to concentrate on a task, your mind can sometimes refuse to cooperate, wandering at the slightest distraction. In a new study, researchers from BU and the VA Boston Healthcare System pinpoint what might be to blame for disrupting sustained attention, a problem that had previously proven difficult to examine under laboratory conditions. They gave participants a number of tasks, then scrolled a series of task-irrelevant images in the background—some pleasant (cute puppies and kittens), some neutral (a chair), some negative (a crying baby). According to the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine’s news team, the researchers found that “when people are sustaining attention, distractions that are upsetting or unpleasant are most likely to disrupt that focus.” The negative distractions also darkened their mood. The researchers hope the findings will inform anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder treatment. “We believe this study will help scientists measure how distractible a person is, what is most distracting to them, and whether those distractions intrude in their memories,” they said.

Solving the “Most Vexing Research Questions in Oral Health”

BU clinical psychologist and behavior change expert Belinda Borrelli has been appointed to the National Advisory Dental and Craniofacial Research Council. She’ll serve a three-year term on the body, which advises the director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and the US Department of Health & Human Services secretary on research, funding, and educational initiatives. Borrelli, a BU Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine professor of health policy and health services research, told the dental school’s communications team that her priorities would be to “maintain and continue scientifically rigorous methods, not only in terms of outcomes, but also mechanisms research, while thinking creatively and innovatively about how to solve the most vexing research questions in oral health to improve public health.” She also directs the BU Center for Behavioral Science Research.

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