Interdisciplinary – Page 6 – UROP Summer Symposium 2021

Interdisciplinary

The Effect of Prosthetic Leg Length on Low Back Muscle Activity and Pain during Walking and Sit-to-Stand

People with lower limb amputation have a greater incidence of low back pain than the general population, with some estimates as high as 65%. One potential cause of pain in this population is leg length asymmetry as it can lead to altered trunk-pelvis movement, and subsequently altered low-back loading. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of changes in prosthetic leg length on low back muscle activity and self-reported low-back pain.

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Wicked Solutions Domain

Data visualizations such as the John Hopkins COVID-19 Map, has become an impactful way of presenting updated health information to stakeholders such as policy makers and the general public. This pandemic dashboard has become a precedent for developing platforms that help provide useful information for issues with which our society is struggling. Using design thinking and participatory mapping, the WISDOM research team led by University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor Audrey Bennett aims to create an equitably accessible Wicked Solutions Domain for networked collaboration and knowledge exchange of existing data and research resources in relation to wicked problems such as food, poverty, and sustainability.

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Analyzing Readability of COVID-19 Biomedical Literature

Reading scientific literature such as preprints and papers is different from reading ordinary English novels. The average American reads at the 7th- to 8th-grade level, according to the Literacy Project [1]. The COVID-19 pandemic is unique in a way that not only scientists but also the general public actively seek for scientific information that would help to understand the new viral infection and fight its spread. The COVID-19 related literature has been read by the public, government officials, and people who had no prior biomedical education but it is questionable how much was understood. The goal of this project is to understand how readable the COVID-19 biomedical articles are and whether they could be easily understood by an average American.

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Scaffolded Practice for Programming

Many students, especially those without any prior programming experience, find introductory programming courses difficult and time consuming. However, students need lots of practice to learn programming. Typically they practice by writing code from scratch. While this is an authentic task, it can overwhelm beginners. We have been creating and testing interactive ebooks with a variety of practice types including Parsons problems. A Parsons problem provides all the correct code to solve a problem, but the code is broken into code blocks and mixed-up. The learner must place the blocks in the correct order. Our research has shown that most students find solving Parsons problems useful for learning, but some students would rather write code from scratch. We have added the ability to switch to an equivalent write code problem when asked to solve a Parsons problem. We are modifying all the Parsons problems in an interactive ebook for C++ to include the equivalent write code problem. We plan to test this new type of problem in Engineering 101 in fall 2021.

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Cultural Cybernetics: Merging Artisanal Tradition with Digital Fabrication

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.

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A Virtual Reality Game for Radiation Protection

Background: Virtual Reality (VR) is largely the result of immersive game evolution, which strives to make players feel like they are really “in the game”. Many software and hardware companies have been creating the next best immersive experience to make the not real, very real. Despite this, many of the most popular games only serve the player as entertainment and don’t supply any additional value. Applying the VR gaming concept to education could encourage students to learn, create, and think critically while having fun. When VR is applied to radiation safety, the resulting accrued experiences could ultimately even save lives. Specialized software platforms, such as Unity and Unreal, allow individuals with only basic skills to create games. Three-dimensional (3D) object modeling tools like SolidWorks and Blender permit the creation of objects which may not already be readily available in digital libraries.

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MATLAB Programming for Data Packaging

Research is being conducted within the University of Michigan Direct Brain Interface (UM-DBI) Laboratory to develop an option for people with physical impairments to access communication devices without physical movement through brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Currently, the majority of the BCI data from the laboratory is stored in a BCI2000 file format which is raw data and cannot be edited or modified after it is obtained. The MATLAB Programming for Data Packaging Project focuses on improving the data storing and editing process for a custom Data Packaging Graphical User Interface (GUI) within MATLAB.

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Ontological Representation and Machine Learning Prediction of Drugs for COVID-19 Treatment

Background: SARS-CoV-2 is a human coronavirus that has caused COVID-19 and is able to rapidly mutate and spread throughout the world. While the usage of COVID-19 vaccines has drastically reduced illness, new variants of the virus continue to show up and reduce vaccination efficiency. Given the continuous spreading of the disease, effective drugs for treating COVID-19 are urgently needed; however, very effective drugs for COVID-19 have not yet been approved for public use. Drug repurposing is a strategy to discover new uses for thousands of approved drugs previously used for other illnesses. It is possible to use the drug repurposing strategy to find drugs for effective COVID-19 treatment. This study aims to analyze drugs and their effects on the human body to further predict effective drugs for COVID-19 using machine learning algorithms.

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Apoptotic Effect of Deoxycholic Acid and Ursodeoxycholic Acid on Human Colon Cancer Cells

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Current treatments for colorectal cancer include surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy; however, the five-year survival rate for distant CRC is 16%. Due to the ineffectiveness of standard treatments, especially at distant CRC, new therapeutics are needed to provide more effective treatment options at all stages.

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