Interdisciplinary – Page 33 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Interdisciplinary

Using Interactive Ebooks to Mentor Underrepresented High School Students

The Advanced Placement Computer Science A (AP CSA) course is a college-level class that high school students can take, and by passing the AP exam, students can receive college credit and/or placement. Rise Up is a project that helps underrepresented students in Michigan pass the AP exam. It studies the effect on both student and mentor attitudes, knowledge, and interest in computing careers. Rise Up prepares mentors to be role models, to understand in depth the AP Computer Science A material through the use of interactive ebooks, and to guide the students to have a clear understanding of AP Computer Science A and Java in general. In the first cohort of Rise Up in Georgia (2013), 9 out of 13, 69%, students passed the exam compared to 22 out of 137 Black students passed in 2012, 22%, in Georgia . This shows that students in Rise Up did better than all students in Georgia, but that could also be due to self-selection. However, students do show statistically significant gains from pretest to post-test and several students have credited Rise Up with helping them pass the exam. Rise Up also conducted an alumni survey which indicated that 63% of the alumni in college reported majoring in computer science, 62% of high school students reported intending to major in Computer Science, 24% percent of the alumni indicated that “they changed their career plans to computing”. This data shows that mentoring can increase student interest in a career in computing.

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Design of an engaging fully-immersive virtual reality game to teach radiation protection principles

Virtual reality (VR) is a rapidly developing field with many applications as it progresses in accessibility. One such possibility is the idea of using VR as an immersive simulation for career exploration and training. This team aimed to create such an experience with the technology of a virtual reality headset, creating a game to teach radiation protection principles in a safe and controlled environment. Dealing first hand with radioactive materials requires many layers of paperwork and protection to show a live demonstration, while this technology gives a gateway to the next-best opportunity: an experience where one is able to move in a three-dimensional space and interact with objects on a semi-realistic scale. The game was developed in the Unity game engine, and produced for the Oculus Quest. Using the tenants of iterative game design, the team worked to produce a game that felt engaging, yet realistic to play. While the game is still in development, the project has still revealed many facets about the efficiency of modelling a game with these tools. While the Unity engine does have dedicated assets for VR game production, development with the quest can be arduous at times, requiring long wait times to build new iterations of the game. Along with this, the Quest is still an expensive technology that may not be accessible to all interested parties. Due to this, the team expects the game to be a valuable training asset, but still one that could be improved with different technology or implementation on a different platform.

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Cultural Cybernetics: Merging Artisanal Tradition with Digital Fabrication

Despite outlawing segregation in 1964, America is still a country that continues to struggle with equality. Minority groups are given unjustified stereotypes, putting them at a significant disadvantage in our society. This study attempts to spread awareness to Charles Darwin’s impact on the abolitionist movement through an adventure map game targeted at current students. The high school students would divide into two groups, with one group obtaining the information through a lecture format and a second group learning through the interactive game. Afterward, both groups are provided with the same assessment, determining whether technology is an effective learning technique. Through our findings, students would absorb more of the content when they are engaged in an interactive activity rather than being lectured. From such evidence, technological programs can be applied in future educational settings, ensuring a less divided society for upcoming generations. With a thorough understanding of various minority cultures, they can carry this idea onto their children, creating a snowball effect.

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Adding problems to interactive ebooks.

As many classes are moving away from paper textbooks and toward online ebooks, it is important to use principles from educational psychology to ensure that ebook readers are learning as efficiently as possible. Our research seeks to provide additional data about what types of interactive ebook questions are most effective for learning. We will then apply our findings and findings from prior educational psychology research to create a bank of questions that are proven to be effective. We will accomplish our research goals by writing a free, open-source computer science ebook that is used by tens of thousands of educators and students. We will then collect metadata on the users of the ebook, such as how many attempts it takes to solve a problem or how long they spend on each page. Because our research team is still authoring and revising the ebook, there are currently no results. However, we are expecting and hoping to find that practice with immediate feedback is the most effective for learning. We also hope and expect to find that low cognitive load questions, such as worked examples + practice and adaptive practice questions, will be most effective. Principles of educational psychology tell us that these types of questions will be best. If our findings are contradictory, further study will be needed on alternative, nontraditional educational methods for use in ebooks. The findings of our research will provide guidance to current and future ebook authors and increase the effectiveness of future ebooks in aiding student learning. Our research will also establish a bank of high quality questions that can be used in the classroom for lessons or examinations.

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Cultural Cybernetics: Merging Artisanal Tradition with Digital Fabrication

Before being subjected to the degrading system of slavery, sharecropping, and the Jim Crow era, early African countries had made countless contributions to the start of today’s science and technology thousands of years before the widely accredited European nations. However, very few of us are aware of these accomplishments, as African history, beyond ancient Egypt, rarely gains publicity. With Indigenous STEM being outwardly different from modern STEM, we find more difficulty in distinguishing it as easily as we do western STEM. Despite having various accomplishments and intricate developments of science and technology already woven through the history and culture of many non-European countries, STEM is still not typically equated to African or POC/Cultural communities. This Cultural Cybernetics study is conducted through a restorative justice approach to determine the best recuperative method to give back to the underrepresented communities by making sure these underserved communities maintain significance alongside advancing technology, by reducing the need for competition between skilled labor and machine fakes in the artisanal fabrication process through increasing the understandability of the user interface. After a thorough analysis of the methods of STEM utilized within certain cultures, a concept is developed and implemented through an educationally tailored online platform and are further introduced for approval from each of those specific groups of people, such as the digital cornrow designs software to African braiders, and later to the general public. This process effectively demonstrates an easy and convenient way modern technology can be integrated alongside cultural traditions without undermining or “stealing” from the communities while educating the public on these cultures through creative means.

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Wicked Solutions Domain – Sustainability

The Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Tracking Map has provided a way in which coronavirus statistics can be visualized and understood by researchers and individuals worldwide, allowing for across the board comprehension of the scope of the pandemic. This platform has proved that design thinking and mapping can be an effective way to convey data surrounding problems facing our society to be analyzed in many different ways. In our study, we are investigating the ways in which this model of design can be applied to other wicked problems, including sustainability, obesity, poverty, and food. A large portion of the project thus far has involved literature gathering in which the full extent of the wicked problems being studied are present in our society, within varying sectors including economic, social, and environmental. Annotated bibliographies of academic literature concerning each of the focused issues are being developed to evaluate existing design interventions that exist, which can be eventually compiled into the WISDOM Solutions Domain, to be accessed and interacted with by communities everywhere.

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Calibration of a system of measuring indoor radon concentrations using charcoal canisters.

Radon-222 is a radionuclide present in elevated concentrations in many indoor areas. Radon can pose a health risk to building inhabitants, so accurate and affordable radon screening is needed. Canisters filled with activated charcoal are a common and inexpensive method for testing, with different charcoal batches and canister designs requiring specific calibration. This is typically performed in large volume commercial environmental chambers with controlled and constant temperature, pressure, humidity, and radon concentration. If canisters could be calibrated in less controlled environments both calibration and quality control could be more accessible. The objective of this study was to compare calibrations of charcoal canisters from a controlled radon chamber and a less controlled basement storage room. A group of canisters was sent to a commercial environmental chamber with constant and known radon levels. Another group of canisters manufactured from the same charcoal batch was placed in a basement laboratory with high, naturally occurring radon concentration. Following exposure, each canister was counted using the same gamma-ray spectroscopy system. The data were processed in several different ways before being used to estimate the signal corresponding to a given radon concentration. Certain spectroscopic data processing techniques improved the accuracy of calibrations. Mathematical models were needed to account for radon uptake on the charcoal and the decay of radon and its decay products. Initial results suggest that commercial-grade chambers are not necessary to accurately calibrate charcoal canisters as long as the change in radon as a function of time in the calibration space is measured.

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Comparing Tuberculosis’ and Pneumonia’s Seasonal Dynamics in Thailand from 1980-2020

Infectious disease seasonality is important for informing public health policy and vaccine distribution. Tuberculosis and pneumonia morbidity and mortality in Thailand are high relative to the rest of the world, and to date, these data have not been sufficiently studied. Tuberculosis incidence at the country level in Thailand exhibits a bi-enniel pattern, though the results have not been examined at the province level. Other research suggests that pneumonia seasonality follows influenza’s bi-enniel patterns in Thailand, however the seasonality of pneumonia has not been analyzed on its own. Here, we examine both tuberculosis and pneumonia monthly case reports from Thailand to identify seasonal patterns at the provincial level (71 provinces) for both pneumonia and tuberculosis from 1980-2020. After digitizing and organizing the data using optical character recognition software, we analyzed the data in R Studio. We will use wavelet analyses and general additive models to reveal the seasonal patterns for each pathogen in each province. Annual seasonality with distinct peaks is expected for both tuberculosis and pneumonia at regional levels. Uncovering seasonal patterns would inform public health officials on when to distribute the corresponding vaccines. If similarities between the two pathogens are found, public health professionals in Thailand will be more informed on their relation (such as in what conditions they are spread). Finally, if no seasonality is found in the data, there will be further evidence supporting the hypothesis that the seasons do not affect the incidence of diseases in Thailand.

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Glow Curve Analysis Software with Background Removal, Data Smoothing, and Automated Peak Identification for Thermoluminescent Dosimeter Data

Thermoluminescent dosimeters integrate incoming ionizing radiation dose and release photons proportional to it. When heat is applied to the material, peaks in the emitted light occur at different temperatures corresponding to characteristic quantum states. Separating these peaks may be done through fitting the data to thermoluminescence models, in a process called glow curve analysis. This analysis reveals information about signal fading and has the potential to improve dose quantitation. Dosimeter readings can have discontinuities due to experimental phenomena such as incineration of dust particles, which can result in imprecise glow curve fits. Additionally, the light emitted as a result of the readout process makes the initial fit inaccurate. As manual removal of the noise and the curve fitting process itself is time-consuming, an automated program is more efficient. This research creates software using C++ that automatically subtracts the background noise from raw data, removes any discontinuous spikes, and further smoothes the data. Peaks are identified by implementing custom functions and existing algorithms such as the Savitzky-Golay algorithm and the method of gradient descent. The final software fits the approximate curve for each peak according to first-order kinetic physics and outputs a figure of merit for the fit. An executable compatible with different computer systems allows greater portability. The software can help other researchers clean raw data and analyze peaks with efficiency and accuracy. The resulting software should result not only in greater insights into the thermoluminescent process and better radiation dosimetry, but may lend itself to applications to other fields.

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Mapping Ptolemy’s Star Catalogue

Almagest is the most important and complete text of Astronomy of antiquity, written by the Greek mathematician and astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD. Although the book served as an important guide for astronomers for centuries and even today, there are still some uncertainties regarding how Ptolemy mapped the constellations mentioned in his book into the sky. In this project, we reconstruct Ptolemy’s constellations according to his descriptions and also as seen in the sky during the time the book was being written. We work using Toomer’s English translation of Almagest as a basis and create digital drawings of all 48 of Ptolemy’s constellations with computer graphic programs; these reconstructions will be displayed on a free website to be easily accessible to the public. Ptolemy’s account of astronomy and mathematics in his book provide a deep insight into ancient Greek astronomy. These constellations are also a product of human imagination when people connect the stars in the sky to form shapes and figures that may or may not have been real. Comprehending the meaning behind these descriptions of constellations also allow us to look into their lives through a different perspective and the visual reconstructions also aid us to better understand them.

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