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OpenMUSE: Integrating Open-Source Models into Music Creation Workflows
Get PDFThis master\u27s thesis introduces OpenMUSE (Open Multimodal Unified Sound Engine), a platform that demonstrates the potential of open-source AI music generation by integrating state-of-the-art deep learning models into a unified system. By unifying ten different open-source models, including MusicGen, AudioLDM2, and custom-trained text-to-symbolic music generation models, OpenMUSE aims to create a user-friendly interface that empowers artists to produce complex, adaptive musical compositions. The system enhances accessibility by providing a simple web interface and natural language controls, while improving controllability through features like melody conditioning and semantic audio editing. Specifically, OpenMUSE offers a digital audio workstation (DAW)-inspired interface that lowers the technical barriers to music production while providing AI-powered capabilities.Quantitative and qualitative evaluations demonstrate significant improvements in both objective audio quality metrics and user satisfaction compared to existing single-model approaches. Through user studies, the research validates that the integration of specialized models for different aspects of the music creation process—from melody generation to stem separation—enhances creative control without sacrificing ease of use. The system\u27s architecture demonstrates how thoughtful interface design and model integration can make sophisticated AI music tools accessible to users of varying technical expertise.Key contributions include: A web interface that integrates multiple open-source music generation models, providing intuitive controls for practical music creation workflows. A custom-trained text-to-symbolic music generation model that translates textual descriptions into symbolic musical representations in MIDI format. A unified system that bridges different modalities (text, audio, image) and distills the capabilities of various models into five core music creation tasks: accompaniment generation, text-to-music generation, audio editing, stem extraction, and text-to-MIDI generation. Detailed documentation of the attempts and challenges in integrating and optimizing various AI models for this music generation platform
The LC3-interacting region of NBR1 is a protein interaction hub enabling optimal flux
Get PDFAutophagy is a highly conserved pathway that maintains cell health by breaking down and recycling cellular components such as protein aggregates or damaged organelles. During autophagy, potentially toxic cargo is enveloped by a newly formed autophagosome and trafficked to the lysosome for degradation. Ubiquitinated protein aggregates, a key target for autophagy, are identified by multiple autophagy receptors. NBR1 is an archetypal autophagy receptor and an excellent model for deciphering the role of the multivalent, heterotypic interactions made by cargo-bound receptors. Using NBR1 as a model, we find that three critical binding partners—ATG8-family proteins, FIP200, and TAX1BP1—each bind to a short linear interaction motif (SLiM) within NBR1. Mutational peptide arrays indicate that these binding events are mediated by distinct overlapping determinants, rather than a single, convergent, SLiM. AlphaFold modeling underlines the need for conformational flexibility within the NBR1 SLiM, as distinct conformations mediate each binding event. To test the extent to which overlapping SLiMs exist beyond NBR1, we performed peptide binding arrays on \u3e100 established LC3-interacting regions (LIRs), revealing that FIP200 and/or TAX1BP1 binding to LIRs is a common phenomenon and suggesting LIRs as protein interaction hotspots. Comparative analysis of phosphomimetic peptides highlights that while FIP200 and Atg8-family binding are generally augmented by phosphorylation, TAX1BP1 binding is nonresponsive, suggesting differential regulation of these binding events. In vivo studies confirm that LIR-mediated interactions with TAX1BP1 enhance NBR1 activity, increasing autophagosomal delivery by leveraging additional functionalities from TAX1BP1. In sum, these results reveal a one-to-many binding modality in NBR1, providing key insights into the cooperative mechanisms among autophagy receptors. Furthermore, these findings underscore the pervasive role of multifunctional SLiMs in autophagy, offering substantial avenues for further exploration into their regulatory function
Human-Centered Engineering Design - Lesson 03 - Abductive Reasoning and Problem Definition
No full textPurpose and audience. This is the third lesson in a series, “Human-Centered Engineering Design.” These lessons are intended to be integrated into introductory courses on engineering design at the undergraduate level, across any engineering discipline. They are designed to function either as a sequence or as stand alone lessons to fill an existing gap in a course.
This third lesson, abductive reasoning and problem definition, is meant to be a first introduction to synthesizing qualitative research methods into potential needs and towards the definition of a problem that, if addressed, would meet identified needs. The lesson accomplishes this by moving quickly through the introduction of three methods: gallery tours, affinity mapping, and Point-of-View problem frame statements. As a whole, these methods serve as an experience of abductive reasoning the core logic with which designers reason about the world. This lesson is primarily experiential, with short slide presentations interspersed to introduce each technique as well as a closing lecturette that recaps the methods and introduces abductive reasoning.
This lesson is designed to follow the previous one on empathy and needfinding, but it can be used as a stand-alone lesson as the instructor chooses. The lesson begins with pre-prepared notes from observations and ethnographic interviews about carrying devices. Links to our materials are included here.
This lesson series was funded by a Dartmouth Library’s Open Education Initiative grant. All materials have a Creative Commons license–they are free to use and adapt for non-commercial purposes with attribution to the authors and Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College.
Structure at a glance:
Warm-up: “I see _______, which makes me wonder _______” - 5 minutes
Activity #1: Gallery Tours - 20 minutes
Activity #2: Affinity Maps - 10 minutes
Activity #3: Needs and POV Statements - 15 minutes
Presentation - 7 minutes
Questions and discussion - 3 minutes (or more if time allows in your class
DESIGNING ACCESSIBLE UI/UX FOR EPILEPTIC PATIENTS: A Scalable Solution for Music Therapy Delivery
Get PDFHow can we design an accessible, scalable UI/UX system tailored to the cognitive, visual, and motor impairments of epileptic patients, that ensures safe and effective interactions with music therapy applications? This research explores the intersection of accessibility, user-centred design, and digital health, using an iterative design process to develop and refine the SONATA app—a clinically deployable music therapy platform.
Through two prototype iterations, usability testing, and quantitative event logging, this study compares the effectiveness of structured versus flexible navigation in improving user experience. Key findings reveal that structured navigation reduces unintended detours, while progressive disclosure techniques enhance instructional clarity. Additionally, the final app iteration integrates scientifically backed accessibility principles, ensuring a functional and inclusive platform for epileptic patients.
The SONATA app, now deployed at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), represents a blueprint for future accessible UI/UX design in digital health. These findings contribute to the broader field of human-computer interaction (HCI) and accessibility research, demonstrating how inclusive design can improve engagement, usability, and clinical research integrity
Mountain Ninjas: Today\u27s Motorized Beasts of Burden
Get PDFMotorized equipment like snowcats and helicopters have become critical tools for effective recreation management in the modern era in the White Mountain National Forest of New Hampshire
Climate and Crop Modeling for New England Agricultural Climate Change Adaptation
Get PDFAs climate change brings increased temperatures and precipitation variability to New England, it is imperative to understand the ways that farmers make decisions about agricultural climate change adaptation for their corn farms. Dairy farming is the largest agricultural industry in New England, with corn being a primary crop to feed these cattle. This project seeks to understand how climate modeling and crop modeling are and are not useful for these corn farm decisions, and contributes research about what types of information are useful and available to farmers making adaptation decisions. Crop modeling over New England reveals that corn farming in southern parts of the region will benefit most from climate change adaptation as they experience warmer temperatures. However, interviews show that neither farmers nor agricultural advisors use modeling outputs often, if at all, in field-level decisions partially due to their spatial and temporal scale and inaccurate representations of adaptations. Additionally, we found that farmers currently make adaptation decisions primarily motivated by increasing soil health, reducing costs, and incentive programs, rather than global climate change mitigation or adaptation. Future modeling efforts should seek to incorporate farmer knowledge and adaptation strategies into future scenarios and produce smaller scale outputs so that models could become a tool for making future agricultural climate change adaptation decisions
Beyond was Blossom and Death : Speculative Futurities
Get PDFThis thesis offers a comparative analysis of Toni Morrison’s Paradise and K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary, exploring the relationship between the utopic impulse in art and the field of speculative fiction. I coin and propose the usage of the term “speculative gesture” as a conceptual tool to identify tactics, motifs, and impulses running throughout these two texts that gesture towards the potentialities for constructing alternative futurities. In Chapters 1 and 2, I identify speculative gestures in Paradise and Bestiary, respectively. In Chapter 3, I delve into a comparative analysis of six speculative gestures from these two novels. Building on the scholarship of Giorgio Agamben and José Esteban Muñoz, I argue that identifying speculative gestures is imperative to building a gestural politics of incommensurability. I conclude by advocating for a modality of reading speculative fiction through the lens of identifying speculative gestures in art and the quotidian. Such a modality of reading is central for building alternative futurities for minoritarian subjects, women of color, and diasporic people
Legal Geographies of Mapuche-Williche Ancestral Waters: Real Estate Development and Contested Jurisdiction in Riparian Areas
Get PDFIn the Wallmapu (ancestral Mapuche territory) of southern Chile, river and lakefront real estate development is often promoted by state institutions and developers as conservation or eco-tourism. However, these inmobiliaria projects are part of a longer trajectory of settler colonial jurisdiction, historically materialized through the dispossession of Mapuche-Williche territory. In the Maihue–Ranco subwatershed, this encroaching development are sparking increasing conflict with Mapuche-Williche lof (community), as developers and residents engage in extralegal practices—diverting waterways, denying access to lakefronts, surveilling mobility—that are fundamentally incompatible with Mapuche territorial order (Azmapu).
In this thesis I ask: (i) What spatial and legal strategies do riverfront developments and residents use to assert settler jurisdiction in the Maihue–Ranco watershed? (ii) What do the materializations of contested jurisdiction reveal about the structure and operation of settler colonialism? (iii) How do Mapuche-Williche lof contest settler jurisdiction through their ancestral waterways?
Through community-guided research methodologies—including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, walking and fluvial transects, and legal collaboration—this research identifies three key modes through which settler jurisdiction is enacted: (1) the commodification of land, water, and riparian life; (2) exclusionary property regimes enforced through fencing, surveillance, and access restrictions; and (3) violent spatial interventions that reshape rivers and shorelines. These settler practices align with historical strategies of land enclosure and “fence running,” a technique used to assert property expansion through physical boundaries and legal ambiguity (Di Giminiani, 2018; Klubock, 2014). Yet, these settler formations are not uncontested. Mapuche-Williche communities continue to assert their jurisdiction through Azmapu, Mapuche territorial order, particularly in defense of disrupted waterways
