Changing Gears – Page 7 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Changing Gears

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; Hernández, 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; García-Amaya, 2017). Recent research further shows that SA learners’ target-language use decreases over a six-week SA experience (García-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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Méliès and the Modern World

This project looks in depth at the work of early filmmaker Georges Méliès 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 Malthête-Méliès, who had perhaps the longest active career of any film historian and whose main concentration was documenting her grandfather Georges Méliès, 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 Malthête-Méliès’ biography, Georges Méliès, L’Enchanteur, which is under contract with the University of Michigan Press. This book will make Méliès’ 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 Malthête-Méliès, and have compiled a complete bibliography of the research publication connected with the organization she founded, Les Amis de Georges Méliès. We are summarizing relevant articles for discussion in the introduction to the biography and assisting in the publication of another book, Méliès Boots: Material Contexts for Early Film Manufacturing (University of Michigan Press, under contract). To further show how Georges Méliès has impacted the modern world, we are preparing a short film that will summarize research on Méliès 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 Méliès and his work.

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Data is asset – Evaluating the market value of databases

The topic of research concerns where SEC-licensed broker-dealers send their securities trades to be executed by financial services companies and if the payment for this order flow (PFOF) depends on the broker internalization’s market power and/or the broker-dealer’s trading volume. This research seeks to answer why certain broker-dealers send their trades to certain financial companies to execute their orders and if this reveals anything about trade practices. The SEC 606 reports that track this information are newly revised as of 2020 so this is fairly untouched public information that has had little-to-no analysis currently preformed on it. The main methodology used for data collection was simply searching through the broker-dealers websites for their 606 report which details where they send their trades to be executed and how much it costs to route orders to each firm. I tracked every broker-dealers information on an Excel spreadsheet and we will use this information to draw conclusions. We hope to find meaningful connections between broker-dealers order routing practices and the amount of market power they hold. We think there will be some connection between the amounts paid to certain companies and the amount of influence these firms have over the financial system. We don’t have any conclusions yet but we hope to start the data analysis soon. We hope to find patterns in our research that point to some conclusion on why certain companies behave the way they do with financial institutions and the implications that may have. This project hopes to shed some light on financial practices between institutions and to better explain how our financial system is structured as a whole and how much market power influences financial transactions. The results we find may help public policy makers, economists, politicians, etc., who all may use data such as this to have a basis for the functioning of our financial system.

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Data is asset – Evaluating the market value of databases

The project aims to evaluate how the market value reflects the value of the firms’ data accumulation. Traditionally, the market value can be estimated using the discounted cash flow (DCF) method. This approach is flawed because the prediction of future cash flow is always inaccurate. This project uses firms’ data accumulations as inputs. Regression models are fitted to quantify the results.

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What is on the table? Peer effects within A Large Canadian Restaurant Chain

Jianglai Zhang Pronouns: she/her/hers Research Mentor(s): Luchi He, Research Assistant of Dr. Yue Maggie Zhou Research Mentor School/College/Department: Strategy department, Ross School of Business Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021 Session: Session 1 (10am-10:50am) Breakout Room: Room 20 Presenter: 4 Event Link Abstract For privacy concerns this abstract cannot be published at this time. Authors:

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Methods of exploring the effects of verb causativity on reaction time

Our research focuses on methods of studying how causativity of verbs affect our processing of them and therefore our reaction time, and how these reaction time effects can be isolated from other sentence processing effects like general lexical prediction. In a previous study conducted by Dr. Levinson, it was found that there is an added level of complexity in transitive variants of causative verbs as compared to transitive variants of non-causative, or activity, verbs. This was concluded by measuring reaction times in self-paced reading tasks of sentences with verbs of transitive and intransitive, as well as causative and non-causative variants. For example, a causative transitive verb appears in the sentence “The sun melted the ice”, whereas an example of a causative intransitive verb appears in the sentence “The ice melted”, which differs from an activity verb, such as “ate”. The complexity of causative verbs vs. non-causative verbs is something that has long been debated, and helps to better understand linguistic processing. Our research mainly focused on using different methods of studying this causativity phenomenon other than self-paced reading tasks, as well as determining the best methods for disentangling verb representations from lexical confounds.

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Impact of School Policy Change on School Enrollment: Evidence from Mozambique

Enrollment in primary and secondary education in Sub Saharan Africa has lagged behind much of the rest of the world. Amongst numerous potential reasons, the fees to attend school is often considered a prohibitive barrier in accessing public education. In 2018, the government of Mozambique introduced legislation abolishing the fees for school enrollment in grades corresponding to the school-ages of 6 to 12. Previously on average, the fee for primary school is 21,410 meticas ($354 USD) per child per year for grades 1 to 5 and Mt 60,013 ($992 USD) per child per year for grades 6 and 7. This study explores the efficacy of this policy change and its external validity with respect to education in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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“What are you laughing at?” Cross cultural investigation into international Chinese students’ understanding of US minority group humor

Listening courses in graduate EAP curricula typically focus on academic listening, such as in lectures and seminars (Flowerdew 1995). However, much listening occurs outside of the classroom, with students frequently expressing frustration at not being able to understand or participate in peer conversations about cultural issues such as current topics and humor. To expose international students to diverse voices and content in a non-academic listening course, we utilized examples of US minority group humor, Key and Peele videos, from the Chinese media platform Bilibil. We present our first findings from small listening groups discussing one Key and Peele video, showing that students draw on home culture interpretations when encountering unfamiliar US culture and humor. Chinese students specifically are using an internet practice already familiar to them, live commenting (Danmu), as a tool to deepen their understanding of English, general US culture and minority group culture. We hope to create materials for the new culture class by evaluating students’ depth of understanding of important current aspects of US (minority) culture.

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Is sympatric speciation more important in the ocean?

In evolutionary biology, the importance of geographical isolation and allopatric speciation has been emphasized for several decades. However, different from the terrestrial environment, there is no such absolute geographical barrier in the ocean because most marine species, even larvae, can easily disperse great distances due to its mobility and the ocean current. More sympatric speciation is expected in marine species since allopatric speciation is hard to realize in the ocean. This project mainly focuses on evaluating the importance of sympatric speciation in the ocean through analyzing the dataset that we created. The sympatric speciation requires range overlap rather than isolation. The importance of sympatry is evaluated by examining the range overlap among sister species in the ocean. Phylogenetic trees are constructed based on both morphological (i.e. character matrix) and genetic information (e.g. DNA sequences) using the Principle of Parsimony. Complete phylogenies and evolutionary tree of marine species are useful to identify the existing sister species pairs. Additionally, phylogenies are collected from articles published on academic journals and are selected based on its consistency with WoRMS. (World Register of Marine Species) Biogeographic data records the living range of existing species. Combining that with identified sister species pairs, the range overlap of certain marine sister pairs can be determined, and the pattern of sympatry is expected to be recognized. The result are compared with the importance of sympatry of terrestrial organisms to emphasize the significant role of sympatry in the ocean.

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