Healthcare Equity: Questions of Access and Security

Abstract The rapid growth of mobile technology to improve healthcare conditions, support patient engagement, and enhance patient education is expected to continue¬ its upward trend. Physicians feel that simplified access to health information is one of the greatest benefits of technology. This research connects the growth of patients’ healthcare data access via mobile applications and the growth of access to wireless communication. This article proposes the following questions to investigate potential healthcare equity barriers: “What is the available Wi-Fi coverage?” and “What types of security protocols are used in the wireless access points?” The results indicate that there is a difference in community access to available Wi-Fi coverage. This difference could influence healthcare equity barriers. In addition, communities had identical security protocol usage. This indicates an opportunity to improve knowledge of security protocols and maintenance of access points, as well as influences on health care equity barriers

Injury prevention in fitness and strength training.:Technology for musculoskeletal load optimization

Fitness and strength training form an increasingly popular sports domain, and participation in fitness activities brings along many positive health effects. However, fitness and strength training participants are dealing with a large amount of musculoskeletal injuries. To prevent fitness injuries, research on injury details, associated factors and potential prevention methods is needed. In the first part of this thesis, common fitness injuries and associated factors were identified. In addition, biomechanical factors that influence the joint and muscle loading of the shoulder during the injury-prone bench press exercise were investigated in a laboratory study. New technological developments provide the opportunity to monitor injury risk in the gym instead of in the lab. Therefore, in the second part of this thesis, technical solutions that could be used in the gym for injury prevention were explored. A combination of markerless motion capture with musculoskeletal modeling was explored for monitoring musculoskeletal loads in the gym. In addition, a mobile application that provides strength athletes with feedback on their personal muscle load during their workout was developed and tested. This application may contribute to the prevention of muscle overload injuries

A Glimpse into the Ecological Communities of Camp Greenwood

There is a Presbyterian summer camp near Greenville, Michigan that is home to beautiful wetlands with a variety of wildlife. This camp is nestled between multiple larger connected lakes and surrounded by many large waterfront properties. The number of campers has dwindled in recent years and the council in charge of the land is desperate to sell the most ecologically important sections of the camp, if not all of the land, to developers for multi-million dollar price tags. My dad is on the committee trying to convince the council and the community to save the camp from development. I surveyed the North Point area of the camp, the location where the watershed drains and the most ecological diversity is found. I took photographs of and catalogued most of the different plant species I could find, along with some species of lichen, frog, fungus, and insects. I used GIS mapping layers to introduce the land change of the surrounding area over time from mainly forested and wetland areas to commercially developed urban sections and agriculture, gradually encroaching around the camp. I pointed out areas that the DEQ states has the potential for wetland restoration and even touched on the trouble with invasive species in the area. My final product was a booklet that has been distributed amongst churches in the community and leaders who are determined to save the camp - both for its huge impact on children and the ecological importance. As of now, the committee to save the camp has a very short deadline by which they are supposed to raise millions of dollars to stop the council from selling to a developer. However, the final vote comes from the community and I am hoping that my contribution has made an impact in the hearts of those deciding the fate of this camp

Language and Music Perception Lab Projects

Organizing complex perceptual input in real time is crucial for our ability to interact with the world around us, and information received in the auditory modality in particular is central to many fundamental aspects of human behavior. In the Language and Music Perception Lab, we take an interdisciplinary approach to studying auditory perception. Our research encompasses cross-modal, music, and speech perception using a combination of behavioral, cognitive neuroscience, and computational modeling approaches. Our research focuses on the importance of interactions, including the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processing and interactions within and across modalities. Our current studies employ behavioral testing, qualitative data collection, and electroencephalogram (EEG) neuroimaging to further our understanding of auditory perception and higher cognitive processe

Symbolic Power Decompositions of Disjoint Cycle Graphs

We study the connection between the odd cycles of a finite, simple graph G and the symbolic powers of its edge ideal. When the odd cycles of G are disjoint, we give a decomposition of the symbolic powers of the edge ideal based on the number and size of the odd cycles of G. This shows that the symbolic powers of the edge ideal are completely dependent on the odd cycles of G. We then use this decomposition to develop formulae and bounds for invariants of symbolic powers

Everyday datafication and higher education: Student agency, trust and resignation

Datafication—the transformation of human life into quantifiable digital data—raises important questions for student agency in higher education. Student agency is central to learning and engagement within university, and the development of agentic selves in students forms a core purpose of higher education. Data-driven practices such as learning analytics promise to support the development of student agency in the context of learning, while at the same time introducing new information and power asymmetries into the relationship between students and the university. Critical research on datafication, meanwhile, has highlighted the threats to student agency posed by data-driven analytics practices that reinforce structural inequalities and depend on the surveillance of student behaviours and bodies. This paper explores student agency in relation to datafication through a discussion of the findings of ethnographic research with university students in Scotland. Drawing on literature from the field of critical data studies that focuses on people’s everyday experiences of datafication, the paper will highlight how students understand, feel about and respond to datafication in their everyday lives, and what this means for their relationship with the university. Students draw on a range of everyday data literacies developed through their experiences of datafied platforms and academic knowledge to make sense of university data practices. They employ diverse tactics for coping with datafication, including minimizing perceived risks by taking measures to protect their privacy and disconnecting from certain platforms. They tend to trust the university with their data, but this trust is conditional and closely related to their overall perception of the university. Above all, perhaps, students are resigned to datafication within and beyond the university. Thus, while students demonstrate agency with respect to datafication in a range of ways, data relations between the university and students are fundamentally top-down, reflecting wider societal dynamics whereby people routinely give up their data in exchange for access to digital services, with little ability to opt out or control what happens to it. Universities, it will be argued, have the potential to introduce participatory forms of data governance that reframe these relations, thus supporting the development of student agency over datafication within and beyond the university

How innovative are UK firms? Evidence from the Fourth UK Community Innovation Survey on synergies between technological and organizational innovations

Using data from the Fourth UK Community Innovation Survey this paper explores the diffusion of a range of innovative activities (encompassing process, product, machinery, marketing, organization, management and strategic innovations) across 16,383 British companies in 2004. Building upon a simple theoretical model it is shown that the use of each innovation is correlated with the use of all other innovations. It is shown that the range of innovations can be summarized by two multi-innovation factors, labelled here `organizational' and `technological', that are complements but not substitutes for each other. Three clusters of firms are identified where intensity of use of the two sets of innovations is below average (56.9% of the sample); intermediate but above average (23.7%); and highly above average (19.4%). Distinctive characteristics are found to be common to the companies in each cluster. Finally, it is shown that innovativeness tends to persist over time