The Waterloo team analyzed a range of YouTube videos that focused on learning music by ear and identified four simple ways music learning technology can better aid prospective musicians — helping people improve recall while listening, limiting playback to small chunks, identifying musical subsequences to memorize, and replaying notes indefinitely.

“There are a lot of apps and electronic tools out there to help learn by ear from recorded music,” said Christopher Liscio, a recent Waterloo master’s graduate in computer science and the study’s lead author.

“But we see evidence that musicians don’t appear to use them very much, which makes us question whether these tools are truly well-suited to the task. By studying how people teach and learn how to play music by ear in YouTube videos, we can try to understand what might actually help these ear-learning musicians.”

The team studied 28 YouTube ear-learning lessons, breaking each down to examine how the instructors structured their teaching and how students would likely retain what they heard. Surprisingly, they found that very few creators or viewers were using existing digital learning tools to loop playback or manipulate playback speed despite their availability for over two decades.

“We started this research planning to build a specific tool for ear learners, but then we realized we might be reinforcing a negative pattern of building tools without knowing what users actually want,” said Dan Brown, professor of Computer Science at Waterloo. “Then we got excited when we realized YouTube could be a helpful resource for that research process.”

Electronic devices store data in memory units called ‘domains,’ whose minimum size limits the density of stored information. However, ferroelectric-based memory has been facing challenges in minimizing domain size due to the collective nature of atomic vibrations. The research team found inspiration to overcome these limitations in nature. They focused on Brownmillerite, a naturally occurring mineral characterized by its unique alternating layers of tetrahedral (FeO4) and octahedral (FeO6) iron-oxygen structures, resembling a sandwich with alternating layers of bread and ham.

Strikingly, Brownmillerite exhibits a special phenomenon known as ‘phonon decoupling.’ Phonons represent atomic vibrations; normally, when atoms vibrate, nearby atoms are also influenced, due to collective vibrations. However, in Brownmillerite, when the tetrahedral layers vibrate, the adjacent octahedral layers remain mostly unaffected. This unique property enables the selective formation of domains within the tetrahedral layers when an electric field is applied.

This phenomenon was confirmed in various types of Brownmillerite, such as thin films of SrFeO2.5 and CaFeO2.5. and a single crystalline CaFeO2.5. Their experiments demonstrated that the electric field influenced only the tetrahedral layers, altering the atomic positions while leaving the octahedral layers unchanged. The team further demonstrated the practicality of this phenomenon by successfully developing ferroelectric capacitors and thin-film transistor devices based on this structure.

If commercialized, this technology is expected to enable the development of memory devices that are tens of times smaller and faster than current models. Consequently, the storage capacity and processing speed of smartphones and computers could be significantly improved, accelerating advancements in high-speed data processing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles.

Prof. Si-Young Choi of POSTECH remarked, “This study exemplifies how wisdom derived from nature can provide critical solutions to technological limitations. Unlocking the secrets of still-unexplained natural phenomena could further enhance the applicability of various advanced technologies.”

This research was supported by the Core Facility Center Project (Materials Imaging and Analysis Center), the Researcher Program of the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Nano and Materials Technology Development Program, and the Next-generation Intelligent Semiconductor Technology Development Program.

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin condition that can have a significant impact on quality of life. Many individuals with psoriasis also have elevated levels of body fat. While it is well established that increasing levels of body fat raise the risk of developing psoriasis, the impact of specific fat distribution and genetics remains unclear.

Researchers of the current study analyzed data from over 330,000 participants with White British ancestry in the UK Biobank, including more than 9,000 people with psoriasis. They examined 25 different measures of body fat using both traditional methods and advanced imaging techniques, assessing how each was associated with psoriasis.

Lead investigator Ravi Ramessur, MD, St John’s Institute of Dermatology, King’s College London, explains, “Our research shows that where fat is stored in the body matters when it comes to psoriasis risk. Central fat — especially around the waist — seems to play a key role. This has important implications for how we identify individuals who may be more likely to develop psoriasis or experience more severe disease, and how we approach prevention and treatment strategies.”

Catherine H. Smith, MD, also at St John’s Institute of Dermatology, King’s College London, and senior author adds, “As rates of obesity continue to rise globally, understanding how different patterns of body fat influence chronic inflammatory conditions such as psoriasis is important. Our findings suggest that central body fat contributes to psoriasis risk irrespective of genetic predisposition and reinforces the importance of measuring waist circumference and pro-active healthy weight strategies in psoriasis care.”

Because this study only included individuals of White British ancestry from the UK Biobank, the generalizability of these findings to more diverse populations may be limited. Future studies incorporating datasets with dermatologist-confirmed diagnoses and broader ethnic representation will be important to further validate these associations and refine risk stratification approaches.

Dr. Ramessur notes, “We were surprised by how consistently strong the association was across different central fat measures and how much stronger the effect was in women. The observed links between central body fat and psoriasis suggest that there may be underlying biological mechanisms contributing to the disease that are not yet fully understood and which warrant further investigation.”

In an accompanying editorial Joel M. Gelfand, MD, MSCE, FAAD, Department of Dermatology and Center for Clinical Sciences in Dermatology, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, points to the potential of incretin therapy for psoriatic disease. Incretins are gut-derived hormones, principally glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP), that regulate glucose, digestion, and appetite, and are approved for treatment of diabetes, obesity, and obesity-associated obstructive sleep apnea.

Dr. Gelfand comments, “The strong relationship between psoriasis and obesity and the emerging promise of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP1RA) for reducing psoriasis morbidity is a call to action for large scale clinical trials of GLP1RA monotherapy for treatment of psoriasis. Our current paradigm of just focusing on the skin and joint manifestations when treating psoriasis is outdated in the context of our evolving understanding of the tight relationship of psoriasis, obesity, and cardiometabolic disease.”