Brian Chu, Professor of Art travels to Taiwan and China

Assistance from the CIE Major Grant helped me travel to Taiwan and China in summer 2015. In this 70-day trip I satisfied my three goals of research, teaching, and international education program development

Stepping Responses to Treadmill Perturbations vary with Severity of Motor Deficits in Human SCI

In this study, we investigated the responses to tread perturbations during human stepping on a treadmill. Our approach was to test the effects of perturbations to a single leg using a split-belt treadmill in healthy participants and in participants with varying severity of spinal cord injury (SCI). We recruited 11 people with incomplete SCI and 5 noninjured participants. As participants walked on an instrumented treadmill, the belt on one side was stopped or accelerated briefly during mid to late stance. A majority of participants initiated an unnecessary swing when the treadmill was stopped in mid stance, although the likelihood of initiating a step was decreased in participants with more severe SCI. Accelerating or decelerating one belt of the treadmill during stance altered the characteristics of swing. We observed delayed swing initiation when the belt was decelerated (i.e. the hip was in a more flexed position at time of swing) and advanced swing initiation with acceleration (i.e. hip extended at swing initiation). Further, the timing and leg posture of heel strike appeared to remain constant, reflected by a sagittal plane hip angle at heel strike that remained the same regardless of the perturbation. In summary, our results supported the current understanding of the role of sensory feedback and central drive in the control of stepping in participants with incomplete SCI and noninjured participants. In particular, the observation of unnecessary swing during a stop perturbation highlights the interdependence of central and sensory drive in walking control

Perception of Lower Extremity Loads in Stroke Survivors

Objective: This study aimed to improve our understanding of static and dynamic lower extremity sensory perception and the impact of sensory impairments on the control of walking in stroke survivors. Methods: Using a custom, real-time unloading system, we tested load perception at heel strike, mid stance and push off in 10 stroke survivors and compared their performance to 10 age-matched and 5 young adult control subjects. Dynamic load perception was based on a judgment of which leg was bearing more load, which was altered on a step by step basis. We also examined lower extremity static load perception, coordination, proprioception, balance, and gait symmetry. Results: The stroke survivors performed significantly worse than the control subjects in dynamic load perception, coordination, proprioception, balance and gait symmetry. Gait symmetry correlated with static and dynamic load perception measures but not with age, proprioception, coordination, and balance. Conclusions: Sensory deficits related to load detection in the impaired limb could result in an increased uncertainty of limb load and a gait strategy in which stroke survivors minimize loading of the impaired limb. Significance: This new method of measuring lower extremity dynamic load perception provides a framework for understanding gait-related sensory impairments in stroke survivors

Rendering the Social in the Architectural Scene: Digital Representation and Social Inclusion on Architectural Design, Thinking, and Education

The digital production of hyper-rendered scenes has come to dominate architectural practice. Jean Baudrillard's warning that simulation will replace the real is now obvious and ubiquitous in our wirelessly networked mediated lives. CAD monkeys, rendering farms, and out-sourcers form the cabal behind the global production of seductive computer generated imagery detached from real people and places. This paper builds on the premise that physical places, designed and marketed through digital imagery, set the stage for the "social scenes" of tourism, leisure and consumption, and that privatized public spaces become "images" in themselves. Providing a setting for ways of people seeing, and being seen by others, these images encourage us to mimic the poses and gestures of architectural renderings. Standing against our growing obsession with rendered architectural scenes suggests that, as digital modes of creation and representation increasingly become objectives in and of themselves, architectural practice is prone to blindness in the face of social developments which exist independently of architecture's digital turn. The paper highlights the possible integration of the social and the technological through documenting a series of design, professional, and pedagogical projects which have, during the thirty-year period of architecture's 'digital turn', increasingly incorporated 'the digital', but which have persistently continued to foreground the social

Molecular computations for reactions and phase transitions: applications to protein stabilization, hydrates and catalysis

In this work we have made significant contributions in three different areas of interest: therapeutic protein stabilization, thermodynamics of natural gas clathrate-hydrates, and zeolite catalysis. In all three fields, using our various computational techniques, we have been able to elucidate phenomena that are difficult or impossible to explain experimentally. More specifically, in mixed solvent systems for proteins we developed a statistical-mechanical method to model the thermodynamic effects of additives in molecular-level detail. It was the first method demonstrated to have truly predictive (no adjustable parameters) capability for real protein systems. We also describe a novel mechanism that slows protein association reactions, called the “gap effect.” We developed a comprehensive picture of methioine oxidation by hydrogen peroxide that allows for accurate prediction of protein oxidation and provides a rationale for developing strategies to control oxidation. The method of solvent accessible area (SAA) was shown not to correlate well with oxidation rates. A new property, averaged two-shell water coordination number (2SWCN) was identified and shown to correlate well with oxidation rates. Reference parameters for the van der Waals Platteeuw model of clathrate-hydrates were found for structure I and structure II. These reference parameters are independent of the potential form (unlike the commonly used parameters) and have been validated by calculating phase behavior and structural transitions for mixed hydrate systems. These calculations are validated with experimental data for both structures and for systems that undergo transitions from one structure to another. This is the first method of calculating hydrate thermodynamics to demonstrate predictive capability for phase equilibria, structural changes, and occupancy in pure and mixed hydrate systems. We have computed a new mechanism for the methanol coupling reaction to form ethanol and water in the zeolite chabazite. The mechanism at 400°C proceeds via stable intermediates of water, methane, and protonated formaldehyde.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA