Changing Gears – Page 6 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Changing Gears

Tolerance of Toxicities of Oral Anticancer Agents among Older Adults with Advanced Cancers

This project is focused on older adults taking oral anticancer agents, OAA. Specifically, capecitabine, an oral chemotherapy, is studied for its use in older adults with advanced cancer. Potentially, older patients may less tolerate OAA toxicities, which will impact the treatment effects and their quality of life. The overarching purpose is to explore the occurrence and effects of OAA toxicity-related symptoms in older adults taking capecitabine using real-world patient data from EHR. We will examine the potential differences in side effects of patients aged more than 65 years and patients less than 65 years from the use of capecitabine. From this data analysis, we will identify determinants through demographics, clinical characteristics, performance status, and the impact of OAA toxicity on treatment plan and performance status changes.

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Vaxign 2: Web-based Rational Vaccine Design based on Reverse Vaccinology and Machine Learning

Reverse vaccinology (RV) is a technique that allows the prediction of vaccine candidates from a pathogen’s genome enabling the more efficient development of new vaccines and improvements on existing vaccines. Vaxign2 is the second generation of the first web-based vaccine design program leveraging reverse vaccinology with machine learning via Vaxign-ML. Validation benchmarking has shown Vaxign-ML’s superior prediction performance compared to other RV tools. Vaxign2 has also implemented predictive analyses workflows to empower users to quickly refine prediction results based on different vaccine design rationales. A use case is presented with the successful analysis of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

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Mid-Life Interventions to Reduce Age-Related Fragility Fractures

The average age of the general population is increasing with the number of positive correlations that showcase an increase in the number of fractures then an individual can experience with increased age. This review study aims to determine the interventions that should be implemented at the midlife or earlier in order to stabilize the bone mass density throughout the course of an individual’s lifetime. This study was conducted from the analysis of literature regarding a large depth of peer-review journal articles that have been conducted in an attempt to provide a clear picture to reduce the reduction of bone mass density later in life. We are able to see that continuous physical interventions as well as increased supplementation in key areas are able to hold the longevity of bone mass density. It is recommended that by using these techniques, we are able to accrue as much bone mass and then maintain the density to offset the likely-hood of a fracture occurring throughout a lifetime.

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Mรฉliรจs and the Modern World

This project looks in depth at the work of early filmmaker Georges Mรฉliรจs who was a pioneer of special effects and story films during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Furthermore, we are looking to highlight the importance of Madeleine Malthรชte-Mรฉliรจs, who had perhaps the longest active career of any film historian and whose main concentration was documenting her grandfather Georges Mรฉliรจs, including locating his many lost films. Our focus has been supporting the publication of a translation of a key historical source that has long been unavailable in English, the late Madeleine Malthรชte-Mรฉliรจs’ biography, Georges Mรฉliรจs, L’Enchanteur, which is under contract with the University of Michigan Press. This book will make Mรฉliรจs’ work better known to a wider audience including readers of English. We have worked to document the author’s work by arranging English subtitling of a video interview with Madeleine Malthรชte-Mรฉliรจs, and have compiled a complete bibliography of the research publication connected with the organization she founded, Les Amis de Georges Mรฉliรจs. We are summarizing relevant articles for discussion in the introduction to the biography and assisting in the publication of another book, Mรฉliรจs Boots: Material Contexts for Early Film Manufacturing (University of Michigan Press, under contract). To further show how Georges Mรฉliรจs has impacted the modern world, we are preparing a short film that will summarize research on Mรฉliรจs at the University of Michigan undertaken since 2011 told from the point-of-view of a new generation of media makers who draw continuing inspiration from learning about Mรฉliรจs and his work.

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Personality, Sexuality, & Externalizing: A Review of the Literature among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men (GBMSM)

Background: This literature review explores the publicly available scholarship relating to personality, the externalizing spectrum of psychopathology, and sex-related substance use in gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM). Method: Academic articles dating back to 1981 were identified using keyword searches on databases such as PsychInfo, Google Scholar, and JSTOR. Studies that exclusively utilized open-ended unstructured interviews or grouped GBMSM with women were excluded. Results: A general pattern across a majority of the identified scholarship on personality is that GBMSM men score equal to or slightly above heterosexual men on all of the Big Five Personality Domains. Literature also suggests that GBMSM males partake in specific maladaptive substance use, sexual, and suicidal behaviors at higher population levels than heterosexual men; these behaviors are correlated with particular personality domains. The two-factor Externalizing-Internalizing model offers one framework with which to understand these behaviors. Discussion: These findings have important implications for de-pathologizing and de-stigmatizing GBMSM men’s sexual and substance use behaviors and can increase clinicians’ understanding of the underlying pathways by which minority stress and stigmatization lead to potentially maladaptive behaviors.

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Modeling Depth of Interaction: A Neural Network Approach

One of the key elements underlying successful second language (L2) learning is the interaction with other language users in the target language (Gass & Varonis, 1985). While the expectation exists that learners will use their linguistic skills in theStudy Abroad (SA) context (e.g., Fraser 2002; Freed, 1990; 2000; Hernรกndez, 2010; Martinsen, 2011; Mendelson 2004; Vande Berg et al., 2009, Whitworth, 2006), it is also known that many SA learners interact substantially less with native speakers (NSs) than they initially anticipate (DeKeyser, 1986; Dewey et al., 2014; Rivers, 1998; Wilkinson, 1998a, 1998b; Garcรญa-Amaya, 2017). Recent research further shows that SA learners’ target-language use decreases over a six-week SA experience (Garcรญa-Amaya, 2017; forthcoming). While interaction in the L2 is essential for achieving L2 gains, research has found that learners must negotiate meaning to notice gaps in their acquisition and benefit from their interlocutor(s)’ efforts to adjust interaction and facilitate comprehension (Long 1981, 1983, 1986).

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Mapping Innovation Ecosystems in High-Tech US Metros

A study was undertaken to investigate the relationships between the U-M Business Engagement Center (BEC)’s relationships with societal and industrial organizations. The goal of this study is to analyze the varying relationships (units of analysis: hard ties, and soft ties) between U-M and innovation institutions within the modern high-technology sectors of the world-system. In order to operationalize the units of analysis (hard ties, and soft ties), we collected over 10,000 Twitter accounts in the social network of the U-M BEC, the U-M Office of Tech Transfer, and the U-M Office of Vice President for Research, and expanded the database with further meta-data. Thus, our units of observation were Twitter accounts and their associated primary and secondary meta-data. In the current phase of work, we aim to use these units of observation to analyze the institutional social network of the U-M through a focus on: industry, region, and human capital. After the analysis, we found that many of the connection’s affiliated institutions are established a long time ago and the main industry of U-M BEC’s connection is university institutions. The advice for U-M BEC is to connect with more startups as these companies which started their business need more resources to carry out research. U-M BEC can, therefore, connect and create cooperation opportunities with these institutions. In conclusion, this study helps U-M BEC to understand their own connections better in order to create more cooperation opportunities between the University of Michigan and other societal and industrial organizations.

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Mรฉliรจs and the Modern World

This project looks in depth at the work of early filmmaker Georges Mรฉliรจs who was a pioneer of special effects and story films during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Furthermore, we are looking to highlight the importance of Madeleine Malthรชte-Mรฉliรจs, who had perhaps the longest active career of any film historian and whose main concentration was documenting her grandfather Georges Mรฉliรจs, including locating his many lost films. Our focus has been supporting the publication of a translation of a key historical source that has long been unavailable in English, the late Madeleine Malthรชte-Mรฉliรจs’ biography, Georges Mรฉliรจs, L’Enchanteur, which is under contract with the University of Michigan Press. This book will make Mรฉliรจs’ work better known to a wider audience including readers of English. We have worked to document the author’s work by arranging English subtitling of a video interview with Madeleine Malthรชte-Mรฉliรจs, and have compiled a complete bibliography of the research publication connected with the organization she founded, Les Amis de Georges Mรฉliรจs. We are summarizing relevant articles for discussion in the introduction to the biography and assisting in the publication of another book, Mรฉliรจs Boots: Material Contexts for Early Film Manufacturing (University of Michigan Press, under contract). To further show how Georges Mรฉliรจs has impacted the modern world, we are preparing a short film that will summarize research on Mรฉliรจs at the University of Michigan undertaken since 2011 told from the point-of-view of a new generation of media makers who draw continuing inspiration from learning about Mรฉliรจs and his work.

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Vision Zero implementation and how to improve its effectiveness in underserved communities

The Center for Health Disparities Innovation and Studies (CHDIS) team at EMU has begun working with the city of Hamtramck, a predominately ethnic and minority city on the outskirts of Detroit, in a mission to address public health deficiencies and disparities in underserved communities through policy change, community outreach/education, and general health promotion.ย  A core part of their proposal to the city is the implementation of a Vision Zero (VZ) strategy to combat the growing numbers of traffic accidents that has disproportionately affected the pedestrians/civilians of Hamtramck. VZ requires a complete overhaul on the relationship shared between road/transportation infrastructure and pedestrians/.

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Wicked Solutions Domain: Building a Data Modeling and Visualization Tool

The solutions to the problems that plague our society today arguably are rooted in data. This research will go through the development of a platform that allows for the collection, analysis, and interactive display of data as it relates to societal issues, similar to the Hopkins Medicine COVID-19 platform. To do this, scholarly articles relating to similar projects were assessed to understand what frameworks to use/what functionalities were important and then replicated to match the problems being focused on by the WISDOM research team, which are sustainability, obesity, and poverty. As a result of this, a website-based platform was created where users could interact with data collected about these issues with the intent that it would inform users about the problem and provide insights to enable change. This allows for smarter problem-solving for issues that impact large groups of people and will be accessible to the masses. This will likely help make huge strides in solving problems because it will provide evidence to inform the methodology upon which users can act. The main purpose of the research project is to help users find interventions to wicked societal problems and in return enable them to add their interventions. A digital platform that enables participants to find the solution to their problem will also help designers refine the solution to wicked problems and implement it in the digital platform.

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