Educational Games & Health Sciences

This webinar will begin with an overview of educational games and their benefits. Rina Wehbe, University of Waterloo, will speak about her research and recent game “Above Water” which informs people about strategies for coping with anxiety. Zeb Mathews, University of Tennessee, will speak about his game, “PubWizard” which quizzes graduate level informatics students\u27 knowledge of primary and secondary sources. This will be followed by an interactive exercise of exploring some of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) & National Library of Medicine (NLM) endorsed games. A Q&A session will follow. Are you interested in creating a game? We’ll have an exit survey to discuss hosting a game creation course. The learning objectives currently include the following: - Understand how educational games and gamification are unique - Learn about the possible benefits and advantages of learning with games - Better general understanding of the process of creating an educational game - Become acquainted with 2 educational games that intersect with the health sciences - Understand how basic game design elements are significant in educational games - Become familiar with some NIH & NLM endorsed games Outline:Introduction/Overview: 5-10 min.Rina Wehbe (Above Water): 20 min.Zeb Mathews (PubWizard): 20 min.Game Exercise: 15-20 min.Q&A & Survey: 5–10 min

DeepCOVID-Fuse: A Multi-modality Deep Learning Model Fusing Chest X-Radiographs and Clinical Variables to Predict COVID-19 Risk Levels

Propose: To present DeepCOVID-Fuse, a deep learning fusion model to predict risk levels in patients with confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and to evaluate the performance of pre-trained fusion models on full or partial combination of chest x-ray (CXRs) or chest radiograph and clinical variables. Materials and Methods: The initial CXRs, clinical variables and outcomes (i.e., mortality, intubation, hospital length of stay, ICU admission) were collected from February 2020 to April 2020 with reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test results as the reference standard. The risk level was determined by the outcome. The fusion model was trained on 1657 patients (Age: 58.30 +/- 17.74; Female: 807) and validated on 428 patients (56.41 +/- 17.03; 190) from Northwestern Memorial HealthCare system and was tested on 439 patients (56.51 +/- 17.78; 205) from a single holdout hospital. Performance of pre-trained fusion models on full or partial modalities were compared on the test set using the DeLong test for the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and the McNemar test for accuracy, precision, recall and F1. Results: The accuracy of DeepCOVID-Fuse trained on CXRs and clinical variables is 0.658, with an AUC of 0.842, which significantly outperformed (p < 0.05) models trained only on CXRs with an accuracy of 0.621 and AUC of 0.807 and only on clinical variables with an accuracy of 0.440 and AUC of 0.502. The pre-trained fusion model with only CXRs as input increases accuracy to 0.632 and AUC to 0.813 and with only clinical variables as input increases accuracy to 0.539 and AUC to 0.733. Conclusion: The fusion model learns better feature representations across different modalities during training and achieves good outcome predictions even when only some of the modalities are used in testing

ABOVE WATER: Extending the Play Space for Health

© Lennart Nacke, 2016. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ISS '16 Proceedings of the 2016 ACM on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1145/2992154.2996882ABOVE WATER is a game that disseminates information about Clinical Anxiety Disorders, particularly Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder. This game focuses on teaching players about treatments as well as providing a safe space for discussion of personal experiences. This game focuses on using the physical world (physical space, physical and tangible cards) and the digital world (accessible by any phone or tablet with a modern web browser) as part of its gameplay.Peer-reviewe

Increased optical pathlength through aqueous media for the infrared microanalysis of live cells

The study of live cells using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and FTIR microspectroscopy (FT-IRMS) intrinsically yields more information about cell metabolism than comparable experiments using dried or chemically fixed samples. There are, however, a number of barriers to obtaining high-quality vibrational spectra of live cells, including correction for the significant contributions of water bands to the spectra, and the physical stresses placed upon cells by compression in short pathlength sample holders. In this study, we present a water correction method that is able to result in good-quality cell spectra from water layers of 10 and 12 μm and demonstrate that sufficient biological detail is retained to separate spectra of live cells based upon their exposure to different novel anti-cancer agents. The IR brilliance of a synchrotron radiation (SR) source overcomes the problem of the strong water absorption and provides cell spectra with good signal-to-noise ratio for further analysis. Supervised multivariate analysis (MVA) and investigation of average spectra have shown significant separation between control cells and cells treated with the DNA cross-linker PL63 on the basis of phosphate and DNA-related signatures. Meanwhile, the same control cells can be significantly distinguished from cells treated with the protein kinase inhibitor YA1 based on changes in the amide II region. Each of these separations can be linked directly to the known biochemical mode of action of each agent. Keywords: Synchrotron radiation (SR), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Infrared microspectroscopy (IRMS), Cancer, Single cell, Drug-cell interaction

ABOVE WATER: An Educational Game for Anxiety

© Lennart Nacke, 2016. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in CHI PLAY Companion '16 Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts, https://doi.org/10.1145/2968120.2971804We present Above Water - a digital/physical hybrid game to inform people about the available strategies to cope with two types of Anxiety Disorders - Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder. The game teaches players about existing treatments. This hybrid game is designed to inspire players to share their experiences and develop their own personal narrative. The document also outlines an assessment strategy to study the game and determine its effectiveness as a game for health. The game is designed to educate non-institutionalized individuals with clinical anxiety and panic disorder. Potential players may be diagnosed, seeking intervention information, or a supportive friend.Peer-reviewe

Charakterisierung hybrider Komposit-Metall-Strukturen: Ermittlung einer Prüfmethode

Politische Anforderungen an striktere Abgasemissionen und der Elektrifizierungswille im Mobilitätssektor treiben das Bestreben nach Leichtbaustrukturen weiter an. Eine Möglichkeit, Leichtbau zu betreiben, ist das Anbringen von sogenannten Patches aus faserverstärktem Kunststoff (FVK) zur lokalen Verstärkung des Metalls. Dabei wird ein FVK-Tape aus thermoplastischer Matrix und kontinuierlichen, unidirektionalen Fasern mit entsprechender Faserorientierung durch das wärmeunterstützte Pressfügen mit dem Metall vereint. Potenzielle Einsatzgebiete derartiger Hybridstrukturen sind die B-Säule als Strukturelement oder Beplankungselemente (Motorhaube etc.) als semi-strukturelle Bauteile, für welche die Biegung auslegungskritisch ist. Allerdings existieren keine genormten Prüfmethoden für die neu geschaffene Material-klasse, womit sich die Vergleichbarkeit verschiedener Materialien und die Vorausle-gung schwierig gestaltet. Ferner liegen keine charakteristischen Kennwerte vor, die den hybriden Verbund beschreiben. Das Anwenden von bekannten Prüfmethoden zur Kenn-wertermittlung ist aufgrund der Anisotropie und der Asymmetrie des Probenaufbaus möglich, schränkt aber die Interpretation der Ergebnisse ein. Um das Verständnis der hybriden Strukturen zu erweitern und einen ersten Schritt in Richtung eines standardi-sierten Prüfprozesses zu veranlassen, wird die Dreipunkt-Biegeprüfung als Referenz-versuch herangezogen. Zunächst werden sowohl unterschiedliche Probendicken als auch verschiedene Probenpositionen untersucht und deren Auswirkungen auf die Bie-gesteifigkeit und -festigkeit beurteilt

Label-free characterization of biochemical changes within human cells under parasite attack using synchrotron based micro-FTIR

© 2019 The Royal Society of Chemistry. The protozoan Toxoplasma gondii is responsible for severe, potentially life-threatening, infection in immunocompromised individuals and when acquired during pregnancy. In the meantime, there is no available vaccine and the anti-T. gondii drug arsenal is limited. An important challenge to improve antiparasitic therapy is to understand chemical changes that occur during infection. Here, we used Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to investigate the effect of T. gondii infection on the chemical composition of human brain microvascular endothelial cells (hBMECs) at 3, 6, 24 and 48 hours postinfection (hpi). Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the best separation and largest difference between infected and uninfected hBMECs was detected at 24 hpi and within the 3400-2800 cm-1 region. At 48 hpi, although the difference between samples was obvious within the 3400-2800 cm-1 region, more differences were detected in the fingerprint region. These findings indicate that infected and control cells can be easily distinguished. Although differences between the spectra varied, the separation was most clear at 24 hpi. T. gondii increased signals for lipids (2853 cm-1) and nucleic acids (976 cm-1, 1097 cm-1 and 1245 cm-1), and decreased signals for proteins (3289 cm-1, 2963 cm-1, 2875 cm-1) in infected cells compared to controls. These results, supported by amino acid levels in culture media, and global metabolomic and gene expression analyses of hBMECs, suggest that T. gondii parasite exploits a wide range of host-derived chemical compounds and signaling pathways for its own survival and proliferation within host cells. Our data demonstrate that FTIR combined with chemometric analysis is a valuable approach to elucidate the temporal, infection-specific, chemical alterations in host cells at a single cell resolution

Effects of nilotinib on leukaemia cells using vibrational microspectroscopy and cell cloning

Over the last few years, both synchrotron-based FTIR (S-FTIR) and Raman microspectroscopies have helped to better understand the effects of drugs on cancer cells. However, cancer is a mixture of cells with different sensitivity/resistance to drugs. Furthermore, the effects of drugs on cells produce both chemical and morphological changes, the latter could affect the spectra of cells incubated with drugs. Here, we successfully cloned sensitive and resistant leukaemia cells to nilotinib, a drug used in the management of leukaemia. This allowed both the study of a more uniform population and the study of sensitive and resistant cells prior to the addition of the drug with both S-FTIR and Raman microspectroscopies. The incubation with nilotinib produced changes in the S-FTIR and Raman spectra of both sensitive and resistant clones to nilotinib. Principal component analysis was able to distinguish between cells incubated in the absence or presence of the drug, even in the case of resistant clones. The latter would confirm that the spectral differences between the so-called resistant clonal cells prior to and after adding a drug might reside on those more or less sensitive cells that have been able to remain alive when they were collected to be studied with S-FTIR or Raman microspectroscopies. The data presented here indicate that the methodology of cell cloning can be applied to different types of malignant cells. This should facilitate the identification of spectral biomarkers of sensitivity/resistance to drugs. The next step would be a better assessment of sensitivity/resistance of leukaemia cells from patients which could guide clinicians to better tailor treatments to each individual patient

Discrimination between two different grades of human glioma based on blood vessel infrared spectral imaging

Gliomas are brain tumours classified into four grades with increasing malignancy from I to IV. The development and the progression of malignant glioma largely depend on the tumour vascularization. Due to their tissue heterogeneity, glioma cases can be difficult to classify into a specific grade using the gold standard of histological observation, hence the need to base classification on a quantitative and reliable analytical method for accurately grading the disease. Previous works focused specifically on vascularization study by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, proving this method to be a way forward to detect biochemical changes in the tumour tissue not detectable by visual techniques. In this project, we employed FTIR imaging using a focal plane array (FPA) detector and globar source to analyse large areas of glioma tumour tissue sections via molecular fingerprinting in view of helping to define markers of the tumour grade. Unsupervised multivariate analysis (hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis) of blood vessel spectral data, retrieved from the FPA images, revealed the fine structure of the borderline between two areas identified by a pathologist as grades III and IV. Spectroscopic indicators are found capable of discriminating different areas in the tumour tissue and are proposed as biomolecular markers for potential future use of grading gliomas. Graphical Abstract Infrared imaging of glioma blood vessels provides a means to revise the pathologists' line of demarcation separating grade III (GIII) from grade IV (GIV) parts