Changing Gears – Page 2 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Changing Gears

Does the diagnosis of idiopathic Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder require an overnight sleep study?

In an integrated health care system, in what sort of clinical settings do people receive their initial diagnosis of iRBD? Idiopathic Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Disorder (iRBD) is a sleep disorder characterized by dream re-enactment. RBD is referred to as idiopathic when it occurs in isolation (i.e. without a co-existing neurodegenerative disease diagnosis). A majority of iRBD patients will go on to receive a diagnosis of an a-synucleinopathy, a family of neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB). A confirmed diagnosis of iRBD requires the use of video polysomnography (PSG), but screening surveys, such as the RBD Screening Questionnaire, have shown good comparative validity compared to PSG. In this project, we aim to test whether people who are diagnosed with RBD without a sleep study differ from those diagnosed after a sleep study.

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Analyzing how to redesign the University of Michigan website for the higher education of First Generation students

The First-Generation program has grown tremendously within the past few years. One of the key resources is the First Generation website that provides a plethora of information to University of Michigan first-generation students. Ideally, the website is designed for students to build connections and seek support. Our project explores if the website is performing to students’ standards and if the needs of University of Michigan first-generation students are being met. The overall purpose of this project is to improve the performance based on the feedback we get from our participants.

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COVID 19 Tracking and Modeling

To build the model for COVID-19 confirmed and death cases, our group used several approaches to predict the data. We first build the model by Ridge Regression and it turns out to be pretty good on ordinary input. However, for states like MI which have a large fluctuation in data, Ridge Regression performs poorly. Then, we start to use the Neural Network approach and it turns out to be better at unordinary data; however, it has the problem of overfitting. After discussion, we add the social mobility data into account and it greatly reduces the error. Currently, we are working on the approach to predict state-level and add all the models up to predict the whole US.

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The Politics of Eliminating Poverty: An Investigation of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs in Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa.

Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (CCT) are cutting edge welfare programs, as they aim to eliminate poverty through direct governmental payments, provided that the recipients abide by certain conditionalities. When analyzing the outcomes of these programs, it is essential to address their interplay with politics. However, current research does not fully take into account how political changes over time influence the impacts of CCT programs. Throughout my guided research, I have helped to strengthen this connection through a comparative CCT literature review, analyzing World Bank data, and tracing how CTT implementation has varied under various presidential administrations within Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa. As part of the literature review, I evaluated articles that compared Brazil and South Africa to strengthen our research’s transcontinental analysis. Then, I compiled and sorted World Bank data to identify CCT performance under a variety of conditions and helped identify data changes and inconsistencies among each country. Finally, I analyzed articles and reports that identify CCT implementation across various presidential administrations in Mexico and Brazil. My research of CCT programs in Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa is crucial to identify their relative effectiveness, in spite of political changes over time. Although CCTs are relatively new policies, their targeted approach shows that these middle-income countries are global trendsetters in successful poverty elimination.

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Mapping Prehistoric New World Hunter-Gatherers

This project aims to map hunter-gatherer sites in the Americas and compare them to environmental variables such as NPP. The goal is to see if there are areas where hunter-gatherer density appears inconsistent with environmental sustainability. The aim of this research is to determine if there are places researchers should look for hunter-gatherer sites currently being neglected, which would not be considered with current knowledge. My role in the project involves mapping hunter-gatherer sites starting in Peru, using previous databases and existing literature (via google scholar) about sites in Peru. This is what is ultimately compared to models of environmental sustainability. My research so far suggests there will likely be numerous hunter-gatherer sites near the Pacific coast of Peru. Whether this is based on environment or archaeological bias is uncertain. I hypothesize that there will be areas with environmental sustainability that have few hunter-gatherer sites and the same vice versa.

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Bronze Age Metallurgy in Ayia Irini, Kea, Greece and Dhaskalio-Kavos, Keros, Greece

During the Bronze Age much metallurgical activity and trade occurred throughout the Cycladic archipelago in the Aegean Sea. In this island cluster there is currently only a limited amount of knowledge of metallurgical activity. Overall this study aims to analyze how the Cycladic site Ayia Irini, Kea, Greece–which appears to be a major hub of metallurgical significance throughout much of the Bronze Age–compares with recently investigated sites. To test the hypothesis that Ayia Irini is a metallurgical output and trade hub, the site was compared with recent finds from other Cycladic sites. An extensive search of the last 20 years of Cycladic finds in the British School at Athens’ Archaeological Reports journal was conducted. Additionally a case study specifically comparing Ayia Irini with a well-known major site–Dhaskalio-Kavos, Keros, Greece–was undertaken. Ultimately the results show that Ayia Irini seems to be a major metallurgical site of the Cyclades archipelago, with both similarities to and differences from Dhaskalio-Kavos, which also preserves extensive evidence for metallurgical activities. Since metallurgy was of paramount social and economic importance in the Aegean region during the Bronze Age, Ayia Irini and other sites in the Cyclades should be further investigated.

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Offline complementors’ decision to join entrant platforms

Two-sided platforms, which rely on participants from the distinct network (users and complementors), heavily depend on the existence of complementors. For many platforms, like Lyft, the entrance of complementors brought benefit to the platform. There’s a great amount of research that already finds out the importance of complementors but they paid little emphasis on the complementors’ heterogenous decisions to collaborate with a particular platform. In the research, based on the food delivery platform data especially in LA from 2016 to 2017, we analyze the restaurants’ decision to join the food delivery platforms. Based on their decisions and the characteristics of the restaurants, we discuss how complementors’ organizational attributes influence their decisions to adopt an entrant platform. Our preliminary results show that restaurants which already entered some platforms will be more likely to join a new platform. This paper provides implications on how entrant platforms can establish an initial population of complementors, preparing the ground to compete with incumbent platforms. Keywords: Two-sided platforms; offline complementors; food delivery platforms; adjustment costs; inter-firm relationships

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Offline Complementors’ Decision to Join Entrant Platforms

Two-sided platforms, which rely on participants from the distinct network (users and complementors), heavily depend on the existence of complementors. For many platforms, like Lyft, the entrance of complementors brought benefit to the platform. There’s a great amount of research that already finds out the importance of complementors but they paid little emphasis on the complementors’ heterogenous decisions to collaborate with a particular platform. In the research, based on the food delivery platform data especially in LA from 2016 to 2017, we analyze the restaurants’ decision to join the food delivery platforms. Based on their decisions and the characteristics of the restaurants, we discuss how complementors’ organizational attributes influence their decisions to adopt an entrant platform. Our preliminary results show that restaurants which already entered some platforms will be more likely to join a new platform. This paper provides implications on how entrant platforms can establish an initial population of complementors, preparing the ground to compete with incumbent platforms. Keywords: Two-sided platforms; offline complementors; food delivery platforms; adjustment costs; inter-firm relationships

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Creative Writing & Publishing

My project is a creative writing mentorship. My mentor holds weekly workshops with me and my peers to help us improve our creative writing. Two of us, including me, focus on poetry, while the other two write fiction. In addition to workshops, the other side of the project involves researching literary journals and compiling them into a database to use as a reference for when we are ready to submit our finished works to them for potential publication. The purpose of the project is to improve my creative writing skills and potentially become a published writer.

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Changes in Health Behaviors After the Onset of Covid-19 and Differences Between Men and Women

With the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic, many people’s daily lives and routines changed dramatically. Several studies have looked at how these changes impact health behaviors but seldom have looked at how changes in health behavior differ by gender. This study aims to examine changes in health behavior and identify if there are differences between men and women. Health behaviors are defined as anything that could have a negative or positive impact on health, specifically we looked at sleep, diet, exercise, smoking and drinking. Participants completed a survey asking how their health behaviors have changed since the start of the Covid-19 Pandemic. SPSS was used to analyze the data. Research will still need to be done on how we can address these differences and why some populations are more likely to have changes in health behavior. However, these results will help guide public health efforts to target specific populations.

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