Voices of Hope: Designing Social Change

Proposal Abstract: If awarded this fellowship, I will devote my time to employ graphic design toward creating positive social change for youth living in the underprivileged neighborhoods of Providence, Rhode Island. The change my project will embody addresses a paradigm shift taking place in the graphic design community as the focus moves from design as a practice that fuels a market to the awareness that graphic design is a social practice and that it can be vehicle for powerful and sustainable social change. This effort will inform my teaching, resulting in a model for art and design education addressing social change, establish BSU in the region as a change agent for defining civically engaged design. This project embraces a culture of heightened social awareness and practical application of visual means to address real world problems. I will work within a regionally established network of after-school arts programs organized under a body called the Providence Youth Arts Collaborative (PYAC). This network of organizations is regarded as one of the top programs in the United States for their efforts in offering quality after-school arts education to urban youth. I have been active as a graphic designer in this network since 2003. My project would entail working with a team of youth from this network to investigate how graphic design can act as a tool of intervention directing youth away from negative life choices toward positive ones, such as the numerous after-school programs offered through the PYAC. I will investigate how graphic design can intervene at points in life where youth are confronted with important choices through mapping various social systems in the Providence community (education, social/peer groups, cultural, recreational, etc.) and identifying opportunities for intervention and persuasion. The results will yield a method and approach to graphic design as a civically engaged practice encapsulated in a process book or video and a visual outreach campaign that accomplishes the above mentioned interventions

Identification of cancer hallmarks in patients with non-metastatic colon cancer after surgical resection

Colon cancer is one of the most common cancers in the world, and the therapeutic workflow is dependent on the TNM staging system and the presence of clinical risk factors. However, in the case of patients with non-metastatic disease, evaluating the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy is a clinical challenge. Radiomics could be seen as a non-invasive novel imaging biomarker able to outline tumor phenotype and to predict patient prognosis by analyzing preoperative medical images. Radiomics might provide decisional support for oncologists with the goal to reduce the number of arbitrary decisions in the emerging era of personalized medicine. To date, much evidence highlights the strengths of radiomics in cancer workup, but several aspects limit the use of radiomics methods as routine. The study aimed to develop a radiomic model able to identify high-risk colon cancer by analyzing pre-operative CT scans. The study population comprised 148 patients: 108 with non-metastatic colon cancer were retrospectively enrolled from January 2015 to June 2020, and 40 patients were used as the external validation cohort. The population was divided into two groups—High-risk and No-risk—following the presence of at least one high-risk clinical factor. All patients had baseline CT scans, and 3D cancer segmentation was performed on the portal phase by two expert radiologists using open-source software (3DSlicer v4.10.2). Among the 107 radiomic features extracted, stable features were selected to evaluate the inter-class correlation (ICC) (cut-off ICC > 0.8). Stable features were compared between the two groups (T-test or Mann–Whitney), and the significant features were selected for univariate and multivariate logistic regression to build a predictive radiomic model. The radiomic model was then validated with an external cohort. In total, 58/108 were classified as High-risk and 50/108 as No-risk. A total of 35 radiomic features were stable (0.81 ≤ ICC <  0.92). Among these, 28 features were significantly different between the two groups (p < 0.05), and only 9 features were selected to build the radiomic model. The radiomic model yielded an AUC of 0.73 in the internal cohort and 0.75 in the external cohort. In conclusion, the radiomic model could be seen as a performant, non-invasive imaging tool to properly stratify colon cancers with high-risk diseas

Designing Social Change: Inquiry-Based Teaching in Graphic Design

This paper shares an exploratory and inquiry-based graphic design project and the resultant pedagogic approach that offers arts and design educators ideas on teaching to instigate positive social change. The author summarizes a year-long fellowship project where he worked as a change agent in service to a partnership of six non-profit, after-school arts programs in Providence, Rhode Island who are organized as the Providence Youth Arts Collaborative (PYAC). The intention of this project was two-fold. The primary effort was to investigate ways graphic design can be strategically used to seed interest and empower youth to make positive choices with how they spend their time after school, such as enrolling in a free PYAC member Arts program. The second aspect was to use design to strengthen the visual identity of PYAC in order to unify their voices and improve their offerings. The design process and the visual outputs are presented as a model for teaching at high school and college levels that cultivate awareness of the social power of visual communication and a civically engaged process. Systems thinking and theoretical models of social change are discussed in support of the project intentions

Identifying a Cellular Mechanism of Cardiac Interventricular Septal Formation

Congenital heart disease (CHD), defined as any abnormality of the heart’s anatomical structure present at birth, comprises almost one third of all major abnormalities at birth with 1.35 million babies born worldwide with lethal CHD each year. One third of CDH cases involve ventricular defects, occurring when the interventricular septum (IVS) does not fully develop. The morphological events surrounding formation of the IVS are well known, as current evidence supports a model where a muscular septum grows up from the myocardial wall and involves the interactions between two populations of cells, called the first and second heart fields. However, the molecular processes governing the integration and contribution of these two populations of cells to the septum and the role of the transcription factor CASZ1 are unknown. The Cre Recombinase system, driven by heart field specific promoters, and a novel mechanism of cell fate mapping in a reporter mouse line were used to elucidate the location of second heart field cells in mice on day 13.5 of embryonic development. Analysis of confocal microscopy Z-stack images of immunostained and sectioned heart tissue revealed that in wild-type Casz1 mice, cells originating from the second heart field are found uniformly throughout the septum. In contrast, there is a marked reduction in the number of second heart field derived cells in the IVS of Casz1 heterozygous and null mice in addition to sequestering of those cells to the right half of the septum. Additionally, Casz1 knockout mice exhibit noticeably smaller hearts. Identifying contributing cells to the IVS and the impact that CASZ1 has on the integration of those cells will lead to a deeper understanding of the mechanism by which the IVS forms in the hopes that this could be manipulated in future treatment options for CHD.Bachelor of Scienc

Human-Mechanical system interaction in Virtual Reality

The present work aims to show the great potential of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Indeed, it is foreseeable that in not too distant future cooperating robots will be increasingly present in human environments. Many authors actually believe that after the current information revolution, we will witness the so-called "robotics revolution", with the spread of increasingly intelligent and autonomous robots capable of moving into our own environments. Since these machines must be able to interact with human beings in a safe way, new design tools for the study of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) are needed. The author believes that VR is an ideal design tool for the study of the interaction between humans and automatic machines, since it allows the designers to interact in real-time with virtual robotic systems and to evaluate different control algorithms, without the need of physical prototypes. This also shields the user from any risk related to the physical experimentation. However, VR technologies have also a more immediate application in the field of HRI, such as the study of usability of interfaces for real-time controlled robots. In fact, these robots, such as robots for microsurgery or even "teleoperated" robots working in a hostile environments, are already quite common. VR allows the designers to evaluate the usability of such interfaces by relating their physical input with a virtual output. In particular, the author has developed a new software application aimed at simulating automatic robots and, more generally, mechanical systems in a virtual environment. The user can interact with one or more virtual manipulators and also control them in real-time by means of several input devices. Finally, an innovative approach to the modeling and control of a humanoid robot with high degree of redundancy is discussed. VR implementation of a virtual humanoid is useful for the study of both humanoid robots and human beings

Exploration of the Role of a Foster Parent

One of the most damaged areas in American society today is the foster care system. There are many factors that contribute to the issues within the system, and change seems to occur very slowly for those who suffer the most. One of the key roles meant to uplift those in the foster care system is the role of the foster parent who is assigned to both provide and care for the children placed in their home. However, these responsibilities often prove much harder than many foster parents expect. As a result, some foster children fall even further behind. In order to understand the difficulties foster parents face within the foster care system, one must first know how the temporary parent role fits into the overall foster care structure. At that point, their responsibilities can be better understood and the challenges within their roles may be more effectively addressed

Designing Social Change: Inquiry-based Practice & Teaching

This paper shares an exploratory and inquiry-based graphic design project and the resultant pedagogic approach that offers arts and design educators ideas on teaching to instigate positive social change. The author summarizes a year-long fellowship project where he worked as a change agent in service to a partnership of six non-profit, after-school arts programs in Providence, Rhode Island who are organized as the Providence Youth Arts Collaborative (PYAC). The intention of this project was two-fold. The primary effort was to investigate ways graphic design can be strategically used to seed interest and empower youth to make positive choices with how they spend their time after school, such as enrolling in a free PYAC member Arts program. The second aspect was to use design to strengthen the visual identity of PYAC in order to unify their voices and improve their offerings. The design process and the visual outputs are presented as a model for teaching at high school and college levels that cultivate awareness of the social power of visual communication and a civically engaged process. Systems thinking and theoretical models of social change are discussed in support of the project intentions

Supracondylar fractures in children: Management and treatment

Supracondylar humeral fractures are widely considered the most common elbow fracture in children. Gartland classification plays a fundamental role in decision-making regarding management and prognosis. Recent literature recommends conservative management for non or minimally displaced fractures, whereas there seems to be a trend towards surgical treatment for all displaced fractures. The preferred treatment for displaced Gartland II and Gartland III fractures is closed reduction and percutaneous fixation with lateral pins. In particular patterns medial pin is recommended for obtain a stable construct. Neurovascular complications are mostly associated with Type III fractures and sometimes surgical exploration with fracture reduction is needed. Correct diagnosis and proper management protocol is mandatory for avoid early and late complications such as neurovascular impairment and malunion