UC Davis Robotics Team prepares for upcoming Micromouse competition

Psychologists once dropped mice in small mazes and measured the time it took for the rodents to reach the ends of the mazes. In the late 1970s, engineers took on a challenge to mirror this labyrinth experiment and construct the wandering mice as small, autonomous robots. Today, this challenge is known as Micromouse, a competitive event in which engineers design and program robotic mice to independently solve a 16 cm x 16 cm grid cell maze.

Micromouse competitions are held worldwide and welcome a variety of robot-enthusiasts that range from beginner programmers to expert engineers. New to the competition is the UC Davis Robotics Team, a diverse group of engineering students eager to apply their skills and learn more about competitive robotics. The team is currently preparing for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Micromouse competition this May, which will be held at UC San Diego.

“The Micromouse competition consists of an autonomous (i.e. pre-programmed) robot that is tasked with solving a maze,” said Braden Rhoads, a second-year electrical engineering major and the Robotics Team captain in an email interview. “The robot must find its way through a maze that is completely new to it, spending the first round solving the maze, and spending the second round going through it as fast as possible by mapping out the fastest route from beginning to end.”

To ensure that the UC Davis mouse has optimal support and successfully reaches the end of the maze, the team has split itself into three sub-teams: computer programming, electrical design and mechanical design.

Naveed Oroumchian, a second-year electrical engineering major, works with the electrical design sub-team to construct a solid foundation for the operating mouse.

“For our part of it, we’re responsible for finding a microcontroller and sensors, and making [the mouse] into one system,” Oroumchian said. “Then we tell the mechanical design team to construct [the exterior], and the computer programming team creates a program to work with it.”

Ben Hough, a third-year computer science and engineering major, described his duties as a computer programming sub-team member.

“As the programming team, our job is to connect the high-level mini-solving algorithms with the low-level motor control so that the mouse can successfully navigate the maze,” Hough said. “To do that, the mouse has several sensors that can help it gain information as to where it is. The mouse has encoders on its motors which measure how many times its wheels rotate, and from that we can get the distance. It also has infrared sensors, which can measure distance from walls.”

The mechanical design sub-team is working on reducing the weight of the mouse, which will ease rapid turning motions, according to Hough.

The IEEE competition will be the first Micromouse event for some Robotic Team members, including Oroumchian. He has so far enjoyed contributing to the team and looks forward to furthering his knowledge of electrical engineering through competitive robotics.

“As a second year, I’m still learning about all of the electrical systems,” Oroumchian said. “Hopefully this will help me gain some experience in the field and I can play a bigger part [on the team] in the future.”

For Hough, the IEEE competition provides an opportunity to improve his programming skills and collaborate with fellow engineers. He entered the competition with his junior college team in the past, but his previous team’s mouse encountered technical difficulties during its maze run.

“We never got it to complete an entire maze, so I’m really hoping that we can get to that stage,” Hough said. “There’s a lot that goes into finishing one maze, so if we could do that, I’d be really excited.”

As the UC Davis Team begins assembling its first robotic mouse, Rhoads has high hopes for the IEEE competition.

“Coordination is key, and thus along with each of [our] sub-teams working on their particular portion of the robot, we are preparing by making sure everything comes together perfectly,” Rhoads said. “Overall, I am very proud of my team and the work we have been contributing, and I believe we will be strong contenders in the upcoming competition.”

Written by: Emma Sadlowski — science@theaggie.org

Program offers academic means for medical students, support for mourning families

Although many people traditionally opt to cremate or bury their own and loved one’s bodies after death, the UC Davis Body Donation Program proves that giving back to society doesn’t have to stop post mortem. In donating one’s body to the program, the donor provides an educational resource for medical students and researchers.

Since 1968, the UC Davis Body Donation Program (BDP) has received thousands of donated bodies from all over Northern California. The donated cadavers are used at UC Davis, California State Universities and private undergraduate and medical school classes to enhance students’ understanding of anatomy.

“Our goal is to help train future doctors, orthopedics, physical therapists and surgeons,” said Aron Davis, the program’s director. “We help facilitate amazing things; it’s great to see the students grow from their experiences with the cadavers.”

Aside from supplying students and researchers with cadavers, the BDP also assists mourning families by filling out death certificates, tracking the locations of the cadavers and coordinating transportation services.

“Every family calls us during one of the worst times of their lives, when they have lost a loved one,” said Juliet Barbich, the BDP’s administrative assistant. “We’re here to honor the wishes of their loved one.”

A prospective donor can register for the program by filling out an online application, which is reviewed and verified by the BDP administrators. At the time of death, a team sets out to bring the body into the program’s care. Once the retrieved cadaver is evaluated, the staff members decide what plan of action the body will follow. BDP assistant director Kimberly Pipe explained that family members are not informed as to what the loved one’s body will be used for.

“This is our way of giving closure to the mourning families,” Pipe said.

The BDP hosts a memorial service every September at the UC Davis Mondavi Center to pay tribute to the donors, in which UC Davis medical students help to organize.

“At the end of the semester before we prepare the bodies for cremation, the medical students will leave cards and flowers for the cadavers,” Pipe said. “Everything is cremated with the cadaver.”

After the cremation, the ashes of each body are scattered along the San Francisco coastline.

Families must also ensure that donors register in advance (that is, before death) and are committed to the program. The BDP does not accept unregistered donations as the facility does not have enough space for extra cadavers, according to Davis.

“With our current facilities, we’ve maxed out all that we can do,” Davis said.

There are currently 11,000 living people registered with the BDP, according to Pipe, with around 30 to 40 signing up per month. BDP staff believe they can extend their resources and, in turn, advance the program with more funding.

“Not only are we servicing our community, but we’re servicing future doctors and research programs,” Pipe said. “It’s the future of medicine.”

With empathy at its core, BDP’s work deeply affects all those involved and is a valuable resource for both the community and researchers.

“I didn’t realize the impact we have […],” Barbrich said. “It really shows when we get feedback from the families about how pleased they were with our services. They refer family and friends to us, and sometimes family members sign up themselves because of the work we do.”

Most of BDP’s outreach is through word of mouth, however, those who are interested in donating funds or registering as a body donor can find more information at ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/bodydonation/.

Written by: Emma Sadlowski and Ariel Robbins

Fourth-year doctoral student Sam Westreich to represent UC Davis in final round

UC Davis hosted its annual UC Grad Slam finalist round on April 14 at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, where 10 UC Davis graduate student finalists were given three minutes each to present their research in front of an audience. Sam Westreich, a fourth-year doctoral student in the Integrative Genetics and Genomics program, was crowned the event’s winner and will represent UC Davis in the UC Grad Slam Finals round on May 4.

The UC Grad Slam provides an opportunity for UC graduate students to share their research findings with the general public through brief but lively presentations.

“Grad Slam is a system-wide contest in which UC grad students compete to deliver the best three-minute, jargon-free TED-style talk about their research,” said Stephanie Beechum, a UC spokesperson, via email. “Each of UC’s ten campuses hold preliminary Grad Slam contests of their own, and the 10 campus winners — all PhD or master’s students in any subject — go on to compete for the system-wide title.”

The UC Davis Grad Slam drew over 80 proposals from interested graduate students, more than double last year’s number. A preliminary round in February narrowed the competitors down to the 10 finalists who competed on April 14.

Westreich presented “Understanding the Gut Microbiome with Metatranscriptomics,” in which he highlighted how to maintain a healthy immune system, as well as other disruptions that can occur in the microbiome.

“It’s very difficult to study this environment because it’s super complex and it’s inside of us, so it’s hard for us to reach and doesn’t adapt well to growing in labs,” Westreich said. “A lot of the approaches have been in recent years, and they’re big data approaches where the strategy is to sequence everything and sort it out once it’s all on a computer.”

Westreich’s research focuses on designing programs that help sort this data once it has been collected digitally.

With only three minutes to present, summarizing and simplifying years of research can be a challenging task for Grad Slam participants. Westreich attributes practice as a key factor for his success. Prior to presenting, he would give his pitch to anyone who would listen and revise parts that did not seem clear.

“Whenever anybody asked a question, it tells me that the part where they asked the question isn’t clear enough,” Westreich said. “So I would re-work that part and practice more.”

Carina Fish, a first-year geology Ph.D. student, took third-place at the event and a $250 prize for her presentation of “Surface-Deep Connections: Ocean Acidification.” Fish recalls the competition as an exciting experience that introduced her to new people and research

outside of her department.

“It was great meeting other graduate students who are passionate about their work and and communicating their science,” Fish said. “I think sometimes it can get lost in translation because you get so invested in your own work and you forget to zoom out and connect with other people

around you. It was really nice meeting people outside of my department […] who are doing great things in their fields.”

The UC Grad Slam Finals will take place on May 4 in San Francisco and can be live-streamed on the Grad Slam’s official website. UC President Janet Napolitano will emcee the competition, which will be judged by a panel of leaders in industry, media, government and higher education, according to Beechum. The winner of the final round will receive a grand prize of $5,000.

Westreich’s plan of action is to continue practicing and to revise parts of his pitch that did not seem to flow well during the UC Davis round. He looks forward to representing UC Davis and hopes to take home the event’s grand prize.

“It’s been a really great experience so far,” Westreich said. “I always love not just doing the work, which involves me sitting by myself in the lab, but getting out and sharing my research with people and hopefully encouraging them to get excited about it too.”
Written by: Emma Sadlowski – science@theaggie.org

Interactive game designed to engage people with depression

Flashing screens and the soft glow of computers and phones can now help address some of the problems that accompany depression, thanks to research being done in the UC Davis Department of Communication.

Through the partnership of technology and cognitive tests designed for depression, Jorge Peña, an associate professor of communication, and doctoral candidate Subuhi Khan are using a video game to help with depression.

The game takes cognitive tasks that have been previously associated with depression among other mental illness and puts them into a game platform. The video game focuses on tasks that help with the conflict resolution processing section of the brain.

“We tried to maintain everything about the tasks as pristine as possible,” Khan said. “We tried to adhere to the neurophysiological aspects of the tasks and made them games, something that is there on the platform for people to play with.”

The games’ tasks involve looking at a screen with five arrows and determining which way the center arrow is pointing, or matching an emotion to a facial expression in a split second as it flashes on the screen.

“[The tasks] sound very simple to do but when it is adapted to the game it’s very quick, it’s flashing across the screen and people have very short reaction times to respond to so it becomes exciting,” Khan said. “Unlike the cognitive tasks themselves which are long, we adapted [the games] to be only one minute.”

Not only does the program have these tasks built in as a game for participants, but it also sends messages to the player that prompt them to be more inclined to play the game.

“What we were trying to do with this particular study is to get people to being more involved in playing these games,” Peña said.

While reviewing some of the literature surrounding these health video game interventions, Khan found a problem in that people may not choose to complete them.

“In this kind of study, you are showing the messages in the same medium in which they are seeking treatment,” Khan said.

According to Khan, this is different than getting reminded to go to a therapy session because the intervention to help with the depression is right there where the message is popping up.

The study has been over two years in the making and was motivated by the curiosity of Khan who wanted to see if this type of engagement of depression with technology was possible.

“Khan was really interested in the applications of new technologies and how to use new technology to persuade people, to nudge them to be healthier,” Peña said. “[…] We started on this project because I’m interested in the idea of technology and persuasion.”  

Khan and Peña use the Visual Interaction & Communication Technology Lab in the Department of Communication to complete their ongoing research. They are currently testing different interfaces, screen sizes and messages that participants see. Eventually, the team is hoping to get the game to clinical trials and beyond.

Recently, Khan and Peña have enlisted the help of computer science students on campus to help beautify the interface and make the tasks more game-like in nature. My Nguyen, a third-year computer science major who heard about Khan and Peña’s work through UC Davis’ Modlab, is helping with this project.

“I always think that technology can make your life better and I didn’t think that technology could help with depression in your brain,” Nguyen said. “But the researchers realize that technology is valuable, we just need to implement [it] to help make our lives not only get better [but] make it more comfortable, and you can use it to help more people with depression.”

The game is still in the beginning phases of development, but Khan and Peña are hopeful that it will help further the study of both technology and mental health. Khan designed the application and while she has nothing against the medicines used to treat depression, she thinks exploring other options is also important.

“The hope is that if nothing else it furthers knowledge about depression, the fact that depression doesn’t have to be thought of as an untreatable condition or something that cannot be addressed without taking medicines,” Khan said. “[…] I definitely want to promote the idea that there are options out there for people to explore and options that can be pretty accessible as well.”

Written by: Emma Askea – science@theaggie.org

UC Davis study reveals that romantic exes have matching physical, personality-based attributes

Ever had a new partner who is reminiscent of a former flame? A recent UC Davis study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that a glimpse into a person’s dating history can reveal both physical and personality-based similarities between one’s past partners.  

For similarities in physical attractiveness, the study revealed that people generally dated those who were about as attractive as themselves, thereby following the model of assortative mating and producing a history of exes with relatively the same level of attractiveness. Other physical attributes that showed a tendency to match between one’s past partners were masculinity, femininity and dominance.  

For qualities such as IQ, educational aspirations and religious preferences that are dependent on the social context (i.e. where one lives), a similar trend became apparent.  However, this similarity was attributed to the reasoning that most people dated those that they went to school with or lived near, not because they actively sought out and selected educated or religious people.

“The evidence was a little stronger for the physical than the personality similarities,” said Dr. Paul Eastwick, an associate professor of psychology at UC Davis and primary author on the study.  “But the main difference was that the personality similarities seemed to originate with the social context, a passive selection process, whereas the physical similarities were more likely to reflect an active selection process.”

The article, which is composed of three individual studies, utilizes data from social media sites such as Facebook, questionnaires and interviews of people in over 1000 past and present heterosexual relationships.

“It’s the first study to examine people’s multiple romantic partner choices over time,” Eastwick said. “I think it’s important to bear in mind that people’s romantic relationships don’t exist in a vacuum. They are preceded by other relationships and are often followed by other relationships, and what affects our choices in one relationship may have important impacts on the choices we make in other relationships.”

One of the studies showed that people’s romantic partners tend to “cluster” and show consistency around certain attributes that mirrored those of past partners, such as a great sense of humor and high attractiveness.

“My role was to conduct the initial simulation study,” said Dr. Samantha Joel, co-author on the paper and assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Utah. “We wanted to show that our clustering method was a valid way to detect stable mate preferences across time. We found that yes, if you simulate an environment in which people choose partners according to stable mate preferences, those preferences are revealed through clustering across their romantic partners.”

The studies are conducted and examined under the lens of researchers in specific fields of relationships science, sociology and evolutionary psychology.

“The take-home here goes above and beyond the results and implications of the studies,” said Jennifer Ann Shukusky, co-author on the study and graduate research assistant in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas. “It’s that there needs to be more communication between fields that take interest in similar topics, like the three blind men trying to identify an elephant, each has a different set of information that shapes his perspective, [and] when you pull it all together — when researchers from different disciplines collaborate —then you can get the full picture.”

Written by: Harnoor Gill – science@theaggie.org