Features

Researchers in Oxford's Department of Computer Science are developing software to tackle the tricky business of lip-reading. With even the best human lip-readers limited in their ability to accurately recognise speech, artificial intelligence and machine learning could hold the key to cracking this problem.

While the new software, known as LipNet, is still in the early stages of development, it has shown great potential, achieving a performance of 93% against an existing lip-reading dataset.

Yannis Assael, a DPhil candidate in Oxford's Department of Computer Science who worked on the project, said: 'LipNet aims to help those who are hard of hearing. Combined with a state-of-the-art speech model, it has the potential to revolutionise speech recognition.

'The implications for the future could be quite significant. As we said in our LipNet paper's introduction, machine lip-readers have enormous practical potential, with applications in improved hearing aids, silent dictation in public spaces, covert conversations, speech recognition in noisy environments, biometric identification, and silent-movie processing.

'So far, we have compared the 93% performance of LipNet against human lip-reading experts – 52% – using the largest publicly available sentence-level lip-reading dataset, called the GRID corpus. LipNet also outperforms the best previous automatic lip-reading system, which achieved 80% on this dataset. And that system, unlike LipNet, predicts only words, not complete sentences.'

Brendan Shillingford, another Computer Science doctoral candidate who worked on the project, added: 'The GRID corpus has a fixed grammar and limited vocabulary, which is why LipNet performs so well there. Nonetheless, there are no signs that LipNet wouldn't perform well when trained on larger amounts of more varied data, and this is what we are working on now.

'In the future, we hope to test LipNet in a real-world setting, and we believe that extending our results to a large dataset with greater variation will be an important step in this direction.'

The Gospels of Abba Garima were hidden for centuries in Abba Garima Monastery in the Ethiopian highlands. According to tradition, God miraculously stopped the sun in the sky to allow Saint Abba Garima to complete them in a single day.

Now, for the first time, a photographic exhibition in Oxford is displaying the illuminated pages of the books.

‘These are amongst the earliest and most important of the rare illustrated gospel books to have survived from antiquity,’ says Oxford University’s Judith McKenzie of the Classics Faculty and the Faculty of Oriental Studies.

‘They are the earliest testament of the lost art of the Christian Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia, which flourished around AD 350–650. Their vivid, finely painted illuminations are at once familiar but also entirely exotic, combining Ethiopian features with those seen elsewhere in Christendom. They include the earliest surviving set of portraits of the evangelists as frontispieces to their respective gospels.’

The exhibition coincides with the publication of a book about the gospels, ‘The Garima Gospels: Early Illuminated Gospel Books from Ethiopia’, which was co-authored by Judith McKenzie, with Francis Watson (Durham University).

The exhibition has been sponsored by the Classics Faculty, the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, and the ERC Advanced Project, ‘Monumental Art of the Christian and Early Islamic East’, directed by Judith McKenzie.

It was organised by Judith McKenzie, Miranda Williams, and Foteini Spingou (all from Oxford’s Classics Faculty) with photographs by Michael Gervers (University of Toronto)’ photographs.

It can be viewed from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, and 11am to 3pm on weekends, in the Outreach Room in the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies on St Giles’, Oxford, OX1 3LU. Admission is free and the exhibition’s last day is Friday 28 July 2017. Groups can be booked for private viewings until Easter - please phone 01865 610236 or email [email protected].

In a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications, Oxford DPhil student Suzanne Ford from the Department of Zoology shows how the use of ‘good bacteria’ – or defensive microbes – could help fight diseases.

Using a microscopic worm infected both with a host-protective microbe and a harmful pathogen, the study demonstrates that the presence of a defensive microbe can force a pathogen to become less virulent.

Defensive microbes can also ‘steal’ vital proteins from pathogens to make themselves stronger, causing the pathogens to evolve to produce fewer such proteins. This, in turn, makes the defensive microbes weaker – but enough damage has already been done to the pathogen to stifle its future growth and virulence.

In a video produced by fellow Oxford DPhil student Sally Le Page for her ‘Shed Science’ YouTube series, Suzanne explains how, in the era of antibiotic resistance, alternative strategies for disease control are of the utmost importance.

Scientists have identified the neural pathway in male fruit flies that allows them to perform their complex mating ritual, paving the way for deeper studies into sexual behaviour and how it can be modified by social experience.

A gene known as doublesex is responsible for the differences in anatomy and behaviour of males and females in many animal species. The male doublesex gene is active in around 650 neurons - specialised cells that transmit nerve impulses - with specific groups of cells controlling distinct steps in the courtship ritual. However, it was not known how these different steps are coordinated to ensure successful mating.

“Male fruit flies court females with a series of ‘hard-wired’ or genetically programmed behaviours, and failure during any part of the process may prevent reproduction,” says senior author and Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Stephen Goodwin, from the Centre for Neural Circuits & Behaviour at the University of Oxford.

In their study, Goodwin and his team identified a circuit of doublesex-expressing neurons in males that controls the act of sex itself. Located in the fruit fly’s equivalent of the spinal cord, this circuit is made up of three key types of neurons: motor neurons, inhibitory interneurons, and mechanosensory neurons.

Hania Pavlou, lead author of the study and MRC Career Development Postdoctoral Fellow in Computational Genomics, added: “We found the exact motor neurons that control the male penis and enable sex to take place, in addition to a second group of inhibitory neurons that oppose the motor neurons and are involved in the uncoupling following sex.

“Using sophisticated genetics, we are able to perturb the activity of these neurons and stop males from mating. We also show that the mechanosensory neurons on the genitals feedback and potentially coordinate the activity of the other neurons to generate the correct balance of excitation and inhibition that is needed for copulation.”

The results suggest the doublesex gene configures a circuit specific to males, which allows them to successfully execute the correct action sequence for both the initiation and termination of sex.


The findings also indicate that the mechanics of copulation are separate from those of reproduction.

It has previously been shown that sperm transfer in fruit flies is controlled by a group of neurons that supply the reproductive glands with nerves and promote ejaculation. The new study reveals that the circuit controlling the act of sex is distinct from that involved in sperm transfer, although it may still help to modulate it. This suggests a mechanism for separating the pleasant sensation of sex from reproductive function.

Identifying the neural circuits that drive behaviours in fruit flies can provide scientists with an insight into the universal principles of how a nervous system can coordinate complex motor behaviours, such as walking, flying and sex.

The full study, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust, can be read in eLife Sciences.

After a dramatic result in last week's US election, Dr Tom Packer of the Rothermere American Institute looks back at what the result means, and what we should look out for in the next few months:

A sensational election night capped a sensational election. As the dust settles, what are some of the key points to be borne in mind?

Firstly and perhaps above all else: this is an election that speaks to the power of opposition to high levels of immigration and related concerns of culture, race and nationality. Remember Donald Trump had a host of liabilities in both the primary and general election — not least the fact that consistently more voters disapproved of Trump and thought he was not qualified to be President.

One issue he monopolised in both the primary and the general election, however, was immigration and related considerations. He was the first presidential nominee since before World War II to run on a platform of restricting legal immigration. And he outperformed among voters who were concerned with these themes, along with related considerations such as fears of terrorism and opposition to free trade.

In the primary, voters concerned about immigration and related cultural concerns were the core of his support; in Florida, for example, voters who cared about immigration outscored others by 38 points. In the general election he outperformed among white voters with no college degree; it was a huge turnout among white voters with no college degree that won him the presidency and it was in the rural and working-class areas of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that he secured his victory.

And his victory underscores another broad pattern that extends beyond American politics. When combined with the polls for other electoral decisions such as Brexit, it strongly suggests that polling tends to underrate the power of positions that are nationalist, culturally conservative or which favour immigration restrictions. It’s not simply the case that polling suggests the public is more socially conservative than its elites, but also that polls underrate that difference.

Secondly, it’s time to dismiss the idea that the Republican party is in a state of collapse. This is a narrative that has been remarkably resistant to evidence. The GOP now dominates every level of elected government in the US: not just the presidency, but Congress, state governors and state legislatures to an extent unseen since the 1920s.

The only level of US government where Democrats tie or dominate is its least democratic branch — the federal courts. And that is unlikely to stick for long. Nor can one make this a simple Trump effect — the GOP did better in 2014 and Senate candidates this election cycle seem to have run ahead of Trump as much as behind. The strong vote by practising Christians for the GOP this election speaks to the electoral advantage the GOP has gained by Democrats’ embrace of a strongly liberal ‘moral’ (but secular) agenda.

This does not mean the GOP is invincible. Mr Trump is at minimum a highly unorthodox figure in whom a party should be wary of placing their future. But at this moment if there is a majority party in America it is the Republican party — for the first time since the 1930s. It is the Democrats who’ve been in denial.

Thirdly, the infrastructure of campaigns and party establishment should be regarded much more sceptically. There was a huge emphasis by commentator and political operatives on how much better organised the Clinton campaign was than Trump’s, which was possibly the least well-organised and run of any major party candidate for decades.

Trump got less formal campaign support at both elite and popular level than any Republican major party nominee since at least 1964: neither of the living Republican presidents voted for him or supported him, while the Clinton campaign mobilised everyone from President Obama to previously non-political celebrities like LeBron James to thousands of volunteer advance organisers across the country. The fact Trump won doesn’t mean it didn’t matter — he might have won by much more otherwise. But it does suggest its impact is limited.

Finally, the massive shock to world politics has opportunities for the UK as well as disadvantages. One factor that has been neglected is the impact on the UK’s Brexit negotiations. Mr Trump has talked up the positive side of Brexit, effectively endorsed it and talked about a potential ‘great deal’ between Britain and the US. His closest ally in UK politics is Nigel Farage.

This suggests that as the UK leaves the EU he could potentially be helpful. The possibility he will be less ready to underwrite Europe’s defence also makes those European countries with a powerful military much more important — a category that very much includes the UK.

Mr Trump has revolutionised US politics it remains to be seen what will follow next.

More Oxford academics gave their take on the election here.