Interdisciplinary – Page 30 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Interdisciplinary

Anti-AAPI Hate in the Coronavirus Pandemic: Which harassment incidents get the attention of American media?

As incidents of anti-Asian American hate have spiked since the beginning of the global coronavirus pandemic, leaders, advocates, and members of the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community feel there is not enough media attention given to this rise in racially-charged harassment (Marston). This project investigates the qualitative properties of the most frequently reported harassment incidents (FRHI). FRHIs are defined by appearing in American media at least ten times throughout 2020. FRHIs were compiled after analyzing a database composed of 2020 Newsbank and Proquest articles surrounding the issue of anti-AAPI hate.

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Virulent Hate: The Relationship between Anti-Asian Hate in the Covid-19 Pandemic and Population Proportion in California

In the United States, the start of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought an increase in racist incidents and attacks on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). Most recorded hate incidents have occurred in states with large populations of AAPIs like California and New York. This study investigates this relationship at the city level and considers the proportion of AAPIs in cities where hate incidents have occurred. Hate incidents are collected from news media reports and recorded in a database by a research team led by Dr. Melissa May Borja of the University of Michigan. The population of AAPIs in any given area in the United States is documented by the Census and American Community Surveys. This research study analyzes the AAPI population proportion in the areas where the most racist incidents have been reported and hypothesizes a direct relationship between the population of AAPIs and racist incidents.

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Lift Every Voice

The topic of my research is “lifting every voice”: a closer look at how individual voices can be amplified in local government to create widespread change. The project looks deeper at community organization at a local level using organizations aimed at reforming the idea of a town meeting on a national level. By examining different counties that these organizational programs have been implemented in, such as Surry County, Virginia, we are hoping to draw conclusions on the most effective way of community organizing at a local level to promote amplification of individual voices within low income communities. Through weekly meetings with my mentor, websites, databases, and books, I am piecing this information together in order to write a script for a video essay, which will be combined with photos, videos, and interviews. This video will be spread to promote the idea that this action must be taken at local levels with help from powerful individuals. I have found that the best way of amplifying individual voices is a reformed town meeting using electronic means, where people are divided into what Donald Anderson calls an Assembly, groups of 50 people with one leader and 7 subsections with their own leaders. Each group has individual advocates who come together and discuss changes that must be made in communities. These findings promote a coherent and concrete method of organizing people in low income areas. Although complex, these organizational structures must be implemented in order for people to participate directly in their government.

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Parent Support for Selective Admissions Applications

For my research I worked in Parent Support for Selective Admissions Applications, assisting my mentor in various projects such as market research, application translation, and writing admission and denial letters. The central objective of my work was to create a more equitable admissions process that would be accessible to all regardless of socioeconomic status or other identifiers.

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Detroit Contractor Ecosystem

Bridging Neighborhoods (BN) was formed to support the optional relocation or retrofitting of houses for the residents of the Del Ray neighborhood due to the construction of an international bridge between Canada and the United States. To conduct activities, BN relies upon attracting local contractors and subcontractors to the program so the residents can opt into the relocation or retrofitting process with confidence. My role is to research contractor programs and outreach strategies in thirty cities nationwide and assist in reaching out to contractors and subcontractors in Detroit. These tasks were achieved through internet research and calling 150+ potential contractors for the 2021 Construction Conference. The purpose of this research is to highlight contractor programs or outreach strategies that the City of Detroit can implement in the future, and the outreach calls have increased the number of contractor connections BN possesses.

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The Impact of COVID19 virtual learning in Children Literacy

Changes in the school environment drastically affect children’s ability to learn. In the middle of March 2020, there was a nationwide closure of all schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This specific event caused most children to have a reduction in their classwork to accommodate for the new virtual school format. The decrease in schoolwork and the unstructured learning format can be compared to a similar educational phenomenon known as “summer slump”. Summer slump is known as the loss of student knowledge caused by the long summer break in between school years. In this study we are trying to explore how effective virtual learning is for the development of children’s reading skills. We are also looking at the impact of learning in a home setting, which is full of distractions . In order to assess this, we compared the results of children’s reading abilities before the pandemic and throughout it. We analyze the data of 69 participants. The study’s participants are from different backgrounds and are between the ages of six to ten. Each participant was recruited from southern Michigan and began online school at the end of September 2020.They were previously enrolled in another study where they were tested on their reading skills using Woodcock-Johnson IV. The raw scores from each participant were standardized to accurately compare the progress of the participants over time. We predict that there would be no change of a decrease in the children’s ability to read.The main purpose of this study was to bring awareness in the school systems and to the parents about the students progress in reading.

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Simulation of intracardiac electrograms to aid in the study of cardiac arrhythmias

The main task of my project is to study the electrocardiogram(ECG) of human hearts, by building a model that can simulate the heart beats and then train it to be able to read in data from patients in real-life and give a diagnose through machine learning. The human heart Myocytes beats under the flow of ions(in-and-out and among cells) causing changes in voltages on cell membranes, which can be measured(through ECG). Under abnormal conditions, these regular changes will be disrupted, causing chaos in the electric flows in certain pattern(based on the specific illness). The change of voltage based on time can be expressed in mathematical ways using a set of differential equations. The features of the cells can be captured through object oriented programming: they all have periodic pulses but in different patterns due to their specific role in heart. After building such model, we can train it with data from real patients so that it will give a primary judgement on new patients. This tool is meant to help doctors, especially who works in emergency, with a relatively reliable suggestion which may improve the efficiency of giving a medical diagnose.

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The Effect of Uncertainty on Competitive Behavior

How does cosmic uncertainty “” the general feeling that the world lacks a higher power, order, or meaning “” affect social decision-making? Some prior studies suggest that whether conditions are certain or uncertain, people default to cooperative behavior (Zuckerman 1975; Torii & Hidaka, 2015); yet, there too exists research which suggests that uncertainty leads to more competitive behavior (Burleigh & Meegan, 2017). These conflicting findings create a gap in our understanding of how circumstances of uncertainty impact competitive behavior. In order to resolve this conflict, we will conduct two studies wherein we differentiate between task uncertainty and a more global (cosmic) sense of uncertainty. The first study will examine the relationship between two dispositional forms of (un)certainty “” belief in a just world and ambiguity tolerance “” and competitive behavior. We have already recruited data from participants (N = 153) who engaged in a prisoner’s dilemma task; data will be analyzed in a multiple logistic regression predicting a person’s decision to cooperate/compete from each individual difference measure. Following data analysis, we will follow this exploratory study with a confirmatory study in which we experimentally manipulate belief in a just world and/or outcome ambiguity to test the effect more rigorously. In sum, we aim to shed light on how people’s beliefs about the world drive their decisions to compete or cooperate.

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Competition and Competitors in the Workplace

Managers often galvanize employees with brief competitions (Grote, 2005; Hazels & Sasse, 2008; Johnson & Dickinson, 2010). For instance, the sales manager at a car dealership – seeking to start the year strong – may offer a bonus to the top salesperson in January. Yet, competition stems not only from organizational structures, but also from the personalities of employees (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Structural and dispositional sources of competition have both been shown to individually improve productivity (Garcia et al., 2013), but do they have an additive or interactive effect? That is, do highly competitive employees behave any differently when a competitive incentive is introduced? Research on person-organization fit suggests that people thrive best in organizations that are compatible with their personalities; thus, competitive people will excel in competitive environments (Fletcher et al., 2008).

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Competition and Competitors in the Workplace

Managers often galvanize employees with brief competitions (Grote, 2005; Hazels & Sasse, 2008; Johnson & Dickinson, 2010). For instance, the sales manager at a car dealership – seeking to start the year strong – may offer a bonus to the top salesperson in January. Yet, competition stems not only from organizational structures, but also from the personalities of employees (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Structural and dispositional sources of competition have both been shown to individually improve productivity (Garcia et al., 2013), but do they have an additive or interactive effect? That is, do highly competitive employees behave any differently when a competitive incentive is introduced? Research on person-organization fit suggests that people thrive best in organizations that are compatible with their personalities; thus, competitive people will excel in competitive environments (Fletcher et al., 2008). Yet, research on the strong situation hypothesis (Cooper & Withey, 2009; Mischel, 1977) tells a different story: personality is only relevant in situations where the “correct” course of action is ambiguous; so competitive people will receive no added benefit from structural competition. Perhaps more troubling, research on the overjustification effect (Deci & Ryan, 1989) suggests that introducing and subsequently removing an extrinsic incentive will undermine intrinsic motivation – harming the long-term performance of competitive employees. Thus, it remains unclear how introducing a competitive incentive will impact the short- and long-term productivity of employees from various dispositional and professional backgrounds. We will address this gap in the literature with two studies – one exploratory and one confirmatory – wherein participants reflect on their experiences in their own workplace. We will also collect information on participants’ professional backgrounds and trait competitiveness. This research will shed light on best practices for motivating employees and potentially reveal a common yet misguided practice in management.

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