Interdisciplinary – Page 2 – UROP Summer Symposium 2021

Interdisciplinary

Black holes: Near & Far

4U 1755-388 and AT2020ocn, though these may seem like incongruous codes, they in fact mark the names of two differing, accreting black holes. 4U 1755-388 was discovered lying near the center of our Galaxy in 1971 as a stellar mass black hole and remained very active until 1995 when it entered a quiescent, or dormant, stage for 25 years until April of 2020 when a new X-ray outburst was recorded. On the other hand, AT2020ocn is a much more distant super massive black hole, and was discovered more recently in the same month that 4U 1755-338’s outburst occurred, and created an unexpected tidal disruption event, which occurs when a super massive black hole destroys a star that got too close for comfort due to incredible gravitational field of the black hole.

Student Parents in Postsecondary Education: Relevant Policies and Practices

Student parents are a growing percentage of the college student population (Roy et al., 2018). For this group of nontraditional students, resources such as on-campus childcare, lactation spaces, and family housing are pertinent to balancing the demands of parenthood and school. However, recent studies (e.g., Kensinger & Minnick, 2018) have alluded to student parent invisibility in institutional policy and practice. In this study I examined inclusion of student parents in official university statements (i.e., policy), and access to information about, and availability of, student parent resources (i.e., practice). The study addresses three research questions: 1. Do public four-year universities & colleges include student parents in their non-discrimination &/or diversity statements? 2. For students who are parents, how easy is it for prospective and new university students to identify relevant resources? 3. Is the number of relevant resources related to inclusion of student parents in non-discrimination &/or diversity statements?

The experiences of rheumatic disease patients when deciding to get the COVID-19 vaccine: a qualitative analysis

Background: Little is known about how the COVID-19 vaccine affects people with rheumatic diseases. Though rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) are relatively common, patients with RMDs were not included in randomized controlled trials for COVID-19 vaccines. People that live with rheumatic conditions must consider how to handle immunomodulatory medications during the vaccine cycle and the tradeoffs they may be making between their condition, immune response, and possible side effects. We aim to describe the factors considered by this population when deciding to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Assessing the Affective, Cognitive, and Behavioral Consequences of Men Recognizing Subtle Gender Bias Against Women in STEM

Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) frequently encounter gender bias (e.g., questioning of their STEM ability, assignment to secretarial roles). Given the subtle and ambiguous nature of contemporary sexism, people vary in their likelihood of recognizing subtly sexist interactions. Past research demonstrates that women are more sensitive to gender bias and more likely to perceive it. However, there remains a dearth of research related to men’s experiences in witnessing bias. In the present research, we ask: what are the (1) affective, (2) cognitive, and (3) behavioral consequences of perceiving subtle gender bias during group tasks?

Characterization of the Tumor Immune Microenvironment in Sarcoma

Intro: In recent years, the advancement of technology and science has led to better cancer treatments, which subsequently has resulted in increasing the chance of cancer patient survival. Immunotherapy, one of the more recent promising treatment options, works by enhancing one own’s immune system to fight cancer. Immunotherapy using anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA4 checkpoint blockade has been very successful in treating patients with some malignant tumors such as melanoma, which previously did not have a clear effective systemic treatment option. Sarcoma is an overarching category of rare tumors that originates from soft tissues or bones at various parts of the body. Liposarcoma is one of the most common types of sarcoma, with the most common biological type being well-differentiated and dedifferentiated liposarcoma (WDLPS and DDLPS respectively). WDLPS and DDLPS are most effectively treated by surgery, yet even after a complete resection of DDLPS, 60% of patients develop local recurrence and 25% develop distant metastasis (secondary phase of malignant growth) within 5 years of diagnosis. The response rate to conventional chemotherapy is low so that 60% of patients with DDLPS eventually die from the disease. Despite the promising developments in immunotherapy, research focusing on the immune biology of sarcoma has been slower than other tumor types. Recently, there have been some promising reports of response to immunotherapy in a small number of liposarcoma patients, hence, there is an unmet need to better understand the tumor immune microenvironment in liposarcoma.

S.T.E.A.M. Education

Introduced in 2016, STEAM is a new pedagogical approach that has been on the rise in many different countries. STEAM is the abbreviation for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. The integration of “Arts” within STEM has shown a significant increase in the motivation of children’s ability to be creative, problem solvers, and critical thinkers. Throughout the process of this literature review my goal was to answer the research question “How do STEAM, in contrast to STEM, approaches develop creativity, critical thinking, and agency among children?” To answer this question I reviewed 40 sources of qualitative and quantitative literature and of those, more than half provided strong support to the view that STEAM is very effective in developing 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking and problem solving. According to Hadinugrahaningsiha, “the term 21st-century skills is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in globalisation world” (Hadinugrahaningsiha, 2017, p.1). STEAM effectiveness is measured by the behaviors of students after the curriculum is implemented. Studies indicate that even children at an early age demonstrated interest and academic growth (Awang, 2020). Considering this pedagogy is fairly new, there remains much ambiguity on the teaching styles, definition of “art”, and how the arts in STEAM will be implemented in lesson plans.

Progression of Cancers Driven by Liver Metastasis

Adedoyin Adebayo Pronouns: She/Her/Hers UROP Fellowship: CCSFP, Oakland Community College Research Mentor(s): Michael Green, MD, PhD and Amanda Huber, PhD Research Mentor Institution/Department: Michigan Medicine and Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs, Department of Radiation Oncology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology Department of Radiation Oncology Presentation Date: Wednesday, August 4th Session: Session 2 (4pm-4:50pm EDT) Breakout Room: …

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African Futurist Greenhouse

Colonialism may be in the past, but its legacies live on today, with populations still marginalized by income and still “primitivized” by the colonial view. New movements like AfroFuturism resist these stereotypes by combining technological sophistication with an anti-primitivist view of Black culture. In the book African Fractals, Dr. Eglash makes the case for scaling geometries–the nonlinear shapes found in nature–as a tradition in African design. Together with professor Audrey Bennett at UM’s Stamps School of Art and Design, and Olayami Dabls, the owner of Dabls’ MBAD African Bead Museum, they have developed a proposal to create an African Futurist greenhouse that will utilize the scaling geometry traditional to African homes, jewelry, and sculptures. Funded by Stamps and Poverty Solutions, this greenhouse will grow plants that furnish seeds for Dabls’s beadwork, food for local consumption, and more generally embody a decolonial approach that combines the circular economy of Indigenous traditions with the beauty and utility of culture-technology hybrids.

African Futurist Greenhouse

Colonialism may be in the past, but its legacies live on today, with populations still marginalized by income and still “primitivized” by the colonial view. New movements like AfroFuturism resist these stereotypes by combining technological sophistication with an anti-primitivist view of Black culture. In the book African Fractals, Dr. Eglash makes the case for scaling geometries–the nonlinear shapes found in nature–as a tradition in African design. Together with professor Audrey Bennett at UM’s Stamps School of Art and Design, and Olayami Dabls, the owner of Dabls’ MBAD African Bead Museum, they have developed a proposal to create an African Futurist greenhouse that will utilize the scaling geometry traditional to African homes, jewelry, and sculptures. Funded by Stamps and Poverty Solutions, this greenhouse will grow plants that furnish seeds for Dabls’s beadwork, food for local consumption, and more generally embody a decolonial approach that combines the circular economy of Indigenous traditions with the beauty and utility of culture-technology hybrids.

Great Lakes Water Policy

As climate conditions worsen, natural freshwater supplies of ground and surface water are depleted for a variety of uses and water becomes an increasingly sought-after resource. Policymakers have responded to this situation with several documents that govern how water can be withdrawn, diverted, distributed, and reallocated to different basins. This research compares the strengths and weaknesses of two different water resource management agreements: the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact that governs the eight Great Lakes states and two provinces of Canada and the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act which was recently passed in California. Both documents aim to disarm future water controversies, but they deal with seemingly polarized water supply scenarios. The research brings together several different sources of information about water policy and identifies gaps between the policy and its application. The contexts and purposes of these documents hint at how they will hold up to debate in terms of environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

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