It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 20, 2022
You are “what you eat”, but you are not “where you live”
IMAGE: FIGURE 1. GEOGRAPHICAL MAP OF THE SIX POPULATIONS ALONG THE SILK ROAD INVESTIGATED IN THE STUDY. COLORED DOTS REFER TO REAL GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATIONS, CARROTS AND DNA ICONS REPRESENT INSTEAD THE “FOOD” AND “GENETIC” COORDINATES. CREDITS: SERENA ANELIview more
CREDIT: SERENA ANELI
Genetic studies of the past 20 years have extensively shown how, across human populations worldwide, the majority of genetic differences are encountered at the individual rather than at the population level. Two random humans from a single group tend indeed to be more genetically different from each other than two different human populations on average.
Does this hold also when it comes to lifestyle and culture?
In a recently published article on PNAS from the Universities of Tartu, Turin, Trieste and Padova, the authors investigated the matter by taking dietary choices as a proxy for that and by examining food preferences over 79 different foods within six populations along the historical Silk Road route, spanning across the whole of Central Asia. “We found that preference for certain foods was informative of the preference of other foods, or that, in other words, the food likings could be combined to assemble a discrete number of ‘food signatures’ ” said Prof. Luca Pagani, senior author of the study.
Strikingly, these signatures or profiles were not typical of a given village or country. The food signatures hence identified were instead linked with other features of the queried individuals such as age, biological sex and other cultural choices. Nevertheless, some exceptions were represented by certain foods available only in specific countries. Among them, some typical products from regional cuisines stand out, such as the Georgian brined cheese “sulguni” and “kurut”, dried yogurt balls from Central Asian nomads.
The amount of dietary information that the researchers could link to the country of origin was as little as 20%, which is big if compared with its genetic counterpart (1%) but still not sufficient to explain the observed patterns, despite the thousands of kilometers separating the investigated individuals.
As differences in genetic makeup and food preference between countries could be translated into “genetic” and “food” distances, these were plotted on a geographic map for comparison with the actual geographic distances between sampling locations. The emerging map showed culture to be only slightly more comparable to geography than genetics for the analysed groups (Figure 1), consistently with what emerged from the rest of the results.
“No matter where you live or where you were born, it turns out that your choices (at least as far as food consumption is concerned) are more dependent on your sex and age and on other cultural features” concluded Dr. Serena Aneli, the first author of the study.
EAST LANSING, Mich. – Michigan State University’s Andrew Christlieb is leading a massive U.S. Department of Energy project to help deliver on the not-yet-realized promise of nuclear fusion. That promise? To create an unmatched source of affordable and sustainable energy.
Christlieb, an MSU Foundation Professor in the College of Natural Science, is now the director of a Mathematical Multifaceted Integrated Capability Center, or MMICC, supported by $15 million in funding from the DOE. He is joined by researchers at eight other universities and national labs across the country. Together, they’re developing new mathematical and computational tools to better model the physics needed to understand, control and sustain fusion.
The MSU-led center is one of four new MMICCs announced by the DOE.
“MMICCs enable applied mathematics researchers, working in large, collaborative teams, to take a broader view of a problem,” said Barbara Helland, DOE associate director of science for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program, in a recent news release. “As a result of this holistic view, the researchers devise solutions by building fundamental, multidisciplinary mathematical capabilities considering existing and emerging computing capabilities.”
In addition to MSU’s contingent of experts, the team includes collaborators from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Colorado-Boulder, the University of Delaware, the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and the University of Washington.
“We’re asking ourselves how do we engage with things like machine learning? How do we engage with bigger, more powerful computers? How do we engage with new mathematical algorithms?” Christlieb says. “We have this lofty goal of taking a bird’s-eye view, looking down on all these different pieces and understanding how they fit together to solve big problems.”
Michigan State University has been advancing the common good with uncommon will for more than 165 years. One of the world's leading research universities, MSU pushes the boundaries of discovery to make a better, safer, healthier world for all while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.
Chemical weapons may not protect Antarctic seafloor animals and their value for drug discovery
IMAGE: MARINE BENTHIC ORGANISMS FROM SHALLOW AREAS IN DECEPTION ISLAND, ANTARCTICA, INCLUDING RED SEASTAR (ODONTASTER VALIDUS), YELLOW SEASTAR (ODONTASTER MERIDIONALIS), SEA URCHINS (STERECHINUS NEUMAYERI), PHIURA (OPHIONOTUS VICTORIAE), SEA CUCUMBER (EKMOCUCUMIS STEINENI), SNAIL (AMAUROPSIS ROSSIANA), YELLOW SPONGE (MYCALE ACERATA), ANEMONE (ISOTEALIA SP.).view more
CREDIT: CONXITA AVILA
By Wynne Parry
Long-lived sponges, intestine-like worms, colonies of sea squirts and many other cold-loving animals populate the seafloor around Antarctica. But the arrival of outsiders — borne in ships’ ballast water, on plastic refuse or on floating kelp, or encouraged by warming temperature — threaten this menagerie.
Like their northern counterparts, benthic organisms in Antarctica make chemical compounds to defend themselves from local predators. Conxita Avila, an MBL Whitman Fellow from the University of Barcelona, wondered if these defenses might be enough to repel foreign invaders.
In aMarine Drugs paper she completed during her tenure at the MBL last summer, Avila and her colleagues put the chemical defenses of 29 Antarctic species to the test. To stand in for hungry alien species, the team used two types of predators collected from the Mediterranean: relatives of shrimp known as amphipods and hermit crabs.
The results, while not entirely negative, do not bode well. Most of the Antarctic compounds could repel the amphipods, but very few deterred the hermit crabs. These shelled crabs have diets similar to those of the larger king crabs that scientists know are encroaching on these communities from deeper waters.
“The Antarctic seafloor ecosystem is in danger for many reasons, and this is just one more,” Avila says. “If the king crabs come up, they are going to decimate these animals’ populations and completely change these communities.”
Challenges and Opportunities at the Antarctic Seafloor
Despite the cold, Antarctica’s large continental shelf is home to a diverse array of creatures, including sponges and branching moss animals that create a forest-like environment. Scientists know much less about the inhabitants of these communities, and the compounds they make, than about the marine animal forests further north. But, like chemical compounds from warmer waters, the products made by Antarctic animals have biological activity that can potentially provide the basis for therapeutic drugs.
For their experiments, the researchers extracted the Antarctic species’ defensive compounds and incorporated them into food for the amphipods and hermit crabs. These compounds were effective against the amphipods, for the most part, perhaps because cold-water amphipods already inhabit this ecosystem, Avila says. Crabs, however, are recent invaders to Antarctic shallow communities, and only extracts from two animals deterred the Mediterranean hermits.
Because hermits and many other crabs, most notably the invading kings, have similar diets and systems for detecting food, this result suggests many Antarctic animals would be vulnerable should these crustaceans become established in this new territory.
For Avila, this predation study is a piece of a much larger picture. Through the University of Barcelona’s Challenge project, which she leads, Avila is investigating natural and human-caused changes to the Antarctic seafloor, including to its biodiversity and to the chemical interactions between its marine organisms.
Long-Term Ecological Research at the MBL
Avila’s interest in ecology is tied to her long-running relationship with MBL. The latter goes back to 1988 when, after graduating from college, she took a summer ecology course in Woods Hole. Later, she returned to MBL as a postdoctoral scientist.
Ultimately, she aims to conduct long-term research on the Antarctic seafloor akin to that led by MBL Ecosystem Center scientists in the Arctic and at Plum Island in Massachusetts. Similar long-term research stations have been established on the southernmost continent, but so far none focus on the seafloor.
MBL has “a long, long history of very good work done in ecosystems,” Avila says. As a Whitman fellow, she took advantage of this expertise to learn about monitoring and studying these ecosystems. In addition, the fellowship gave her the time and space to reflect on her current projects.
If we lose these Antarctic communities, we lose many animals — and potentially useful molecules — that we don’t even know about yet, she says, noting that such a disappearance would affect the rest of the natural world.
“Everything is related,” Avila says. “If you make a hole in a spider web, the whole thing just breaks.”
Sea stars, urchins, sponges, anemones are among the marine organisms in this benthic community in shallow areas in Deception Island, Antarctica.
CREDIT
Conxita Avila
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.
Would Antarctic Marine Benthos Survive Alien Species Invasions? What Chemical Ecology May Tell Us
Perennial rice’s next steps: Large-scale localization to adapt across different climates
Perennial rice strains are sensitive to local climate conditions. High-throughput sequencing quickly identifies rice lines with the desired agronomic traits
The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, according to the UN's recently-released World Population Prospects 2022. Countries of sub-Saharan Africa are expected to continue growing through 2100 and to contribute more than half of the global population increase anticipated through 2050.
How can we continue to feed the world? Perhaps perennial rice, which doesn't have to be replanted every season, may be part of the answer. A new report in Nature Sustainabilityhighlights agronomic, economic, and environmental indicators of perennial rice cultivation across Yunnan Province, China. This report was also cited in Science, earning the distinction of being simultaneously featured on these distinguished scientific journals
"Our findings show perennial rice delivers significant labor and costs savings for farmers. But it needs to be done right – that's why we emphasize promoting perennial rice technology – not just passing farmers the seeds. Farmers need to master new cultivation techniques to maintain high yields in subsequent harvests," says Dr. Shilai Zhang, professor at Yunnan University's School of Agriculture and first author of this report. He is a pioneer team member who has worked on perennial rice research for the past 13 years.
Dr. Zhang shares that after every harvest, it is essential to water and fertilize perennial rice. This helps to maintain its roots which is vital as this crop relies on rhizomes as a means of vegetative reproduction. The team teaches farmers cultivation techniques accumulated through years of research.
The team hybridized annual rice with its perennial African relative Oryza longistaminata through its research and started large-scale field experiments in 2016, and released the first commercial perennial rice variety, PR23, in 2018. From next-generation sequencing, 16.16% of the PR23 genome consists of Oryza longistaminata.
Farmers growing perennial rice put in almost 60% less labor and spent nearly half on seed, fertilizer, and other inputs while enjoying similar yields to annual rice. This is why perennial rice adoption has been rapid in the past year, cultivation hit 15,533 hectares in 2021, including 44,752 smallholder farms.
"We promoted perennial rice across Yunnan and addressed the key issues that matter most to farmers: yields, costs, taste and stable production across multiple seasons. Many of these farmers grow rice as a staple food for their families so perennial rice must compete against other rice varieties," said Dr. Zhang.
Dr. Zhang highlights that perennial crops is gaining widespread international attention and that Jerry Glover, National Geographic Society Explorer and research pioneer in sustainable agriculture, described this report as "one of the most important research achievements in modern agriculture." Dr. Zhang comments that there remains much to do, noting that perennial rice strains are sensitive to local climate conditions-one strain may grow well in Guangxi and Guizhou which are close to Yunnan but don't do as well in other Chinese provinces.
Large-scale localization of perennial rice
In April this year, Yunnan University and BGI established a perennial rice joint venture. "Large-scale localization is the next step for perennial rice. By partnering BGI, our team may leverage on high-throughput sequencing to identify perennial rice lines more quickly with the desired agronomic traits that suits local climate conditions. In addition, BGI's network will help perennial rice go global with the right support," said Dr. Zhang.
Perennial rice has been promoted to many countries, including Uganda, Ivory Coast, Laos, Myanmar and Bangladesh. Uganda is a pioneer, starting perennial rice trials five years ago. Working with local partners, specific perennial rice varieties may be developed by Yunnan University and BGI to further raise farmers' incomes.
Dr. Zhang notes, "Taste and local climate adaptability are the top requests. For example, Myanmar consumers prefer a softer variety of rice. In areas where the average temperature is high, they seek a heat-resistant variety."
Dr. Zhang notes that Dr. Fengyi Hu, the university's research team leader, correctly forecasted that PR107 will do very well in Africa due to its' heat-resistant and blight-resistant properties, "Rice breeding is not mastered in one day. It requires a lot of experience and good understanding of local climate conditions. We look forward to working with new partners to promote perennial rice across the world to enhance global food security and farmers' incomes."
Number of perennial rice production locations
CREDIT
Nature Sustainability
Optimal ecological zoning of perennial rice
CREDIT
Nature Sustainability
Perennial rice in Menghai, Yunnan
CREDIT
University of Yunnan
About Yunnan University
Yunnan University consists of 26 schools, 10 research institutes, two independent schools and a graduate school. A total of 15 papers by its professors have been published in world-famous academic publications, like Nature and Science.
About BGI Genomics
BGI Genomics, headquartered in Shenzhen China, is the world's leading integrated solutions provider of precision medicine. In July of 2017, as a subsidiary of BGI Group, BGI Genomics (300676.SZ) was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. BGI has topped the Asia Pacific and China life science corporate institution ranking table for the seventh year running, released in the 2022 Nature Index Annual Tables.
World-renowned jazz musicians are often praised for their creative ingenuity. But how do they make up improvisations? And what makes artists’ solos more enticing than those of less skilled players? These questions continue to puzzle not only jazz aficionados, but also psychological researchers. Two leading theories have dominated so far: Either musicians learn to master rules telling them what they can and cannot play – a sort of “secret language of jazz.” Or, each musician builds up a personal library of melodic patterns – “licks” – that they can draw upon and recombine in new and interesting ways. Over the years, musical scholars have collected many such volumes of “licks” for learners to practice. Yet, the fact that a certain combination of notes recurs many times is no proof of an underlying movement pattern stored in the brains of musicians—it could just be a sheer coincidence.
The ‘library theory’ of jazz improvisation A new scientific study, just published in the journal Cognition, provides the first solid psychological evidence for the library theory of jazz improvisation. For the first time ever, researchers from Aarhus University and Georgia State University found that expert jazz musicians play certain note combinations with much more consistent timing and force than others. Regardless if these “licks” were played fast or slow, loud or soft, the relative rhythms and accents remained very similar. This strongly suggests that each player possesses a collection of patterns that are directly grounded in their own body and brain. Many jazz experts have called it their personal “vocabulary.” Interestingly, the new study found that these improvisation vocabularies vary between different players.
Martin Norgaard, born and raised in Denmark, now Associate Professor of Music Education at Geogia State University in Atlanta comments further: “It is fascinating that expert jazz musicians store linked audio and motor representations in the brain – that is both the sound of licks and information about how to play them. As a jazz violinist myself, I often hear licks I want to play while improvising but the motor representation is not complete so the lick doesn’t come out right. Based on our research, that should happen less as expertise develops.”
Stylistically appropriate and novel – hallmarks of creativity Using an advanced computer model, the researchers furthermore showed that “licks” tend to occur in relatively predictable contexts but simultaneously evoke greater surprise and uncertainty in the listener. This finding fits well with leading theories in psychology and neuroscience about human creativity and what makes certain types of music particularly enjoyable to listen to. Specifically, melodies in the personal vocabularies of jazz improvisers are typically both stylistically appropriate and novel—the two hallmarks of creativity according to scientists.
“The fact that the solos of jazz experts evoke strong expectations in listeners and simultaneously surprise them might be exactly what makes these melodies so catchy and memorable. This may ultimately help us understand why some musicians become famous while others don’t,” said senior author Niels Chr. Hansen, Assistant Professor at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark.
The research results – how did they do it?
The researchers analysed nearly 100,000 notes played on a MIDI keyboard by the artist-level jazz pianist Kevin Bales, during 11 live music gigs for audiences in the United States. This collection of solos was compared to recordings of 25 experienced jazz pianists taking part in a previous laboratory experiment.
For each recurring 5-note sequence, the durations of notes and the force with which they were played were compared across versions of the same pattern to find the set of licks that were played the most consistently across different tempi and loudness.
A computational model was trained on the Weimar Jazz Database consisting of more than 200,000 notes from 456 improvised songs by various jazz artists to estimate how much surprise and uncertainty each note in Kevin Bales’ improvised solos would evoke in an average jazz listener.
Citation: Norgaard, M., Bales, K., & Hansen, N.C. (2023). Linked auditory and motor patterns in the improvisation vocabulary of an artist-level jazz pianist. Cognition, 230. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105308
Funding
The study has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 754513 and The Aarhus University Research Foundation.
(Washington, Nov. 18, 2022) – November is Caregiver Awareness Month, and timely findings from a study published in Blood Advances suggest that, among caregivers of patients undergoing a stem cell transplant, how someone approaches coping can influence their levels of anxiety, depression, and poor quality of life (QOL) they experience. In particular, problem-solving and acceptance coping strategies seemed more helpful.
“This study highlights that the psychological distress caregivers experience is real, and how caregivers cope with the challenges they face in supporting their loved one affects their level of distress and their quality of life. We also know from prior research that caregivers’ psychological well-being affects patient outcomes,” said Hermioni Amonoo, MD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Carol C. Nadelson, MD, Distinguished Chair in Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and the study’s principal investigator.
Most stem cell transplant centers require people preparing to undergo a transplant to designate a primary caregiver – someone who will support them during the first 100 days after their transplant. In addition, before undergoing a stem-cell transplant for a blood cancer, most patients receive induction chemotherapy, which effectively wipes out their immune system, leaving them highly vulnerable to infection and other medical complications.
Caregivers have many responsibilities, Dr. Amonoo said, including taking steps to protect patients from infection due to their highly immunocompromised state, supporting patients to properly take numerous medications every day, helping patients prepare meals that adhere to post-transplant guidelines, and coordinating communication between patients and their health care teams.
“Our study underscores an urgent need for resources to help those caring for patients develop and use coping strategies that protect their mental health and quality of life and enable them to successfully fulfill this important role,” she said.
Previous studies have shown that caregivers of patients with cancer experience distress, loneliness, fatigue, sleep disturbance, financial worry, and poor QOL, and that fatigue among caregivers of patients undergoing a stem cell transplant is associated with slower growth of healthy new blood cells and poorer sleep quality for the patient. Dr. Amonoo took this research a step further by specifically studying the effects of different types of coping on caregivers and their loved ones.
“This is the largest study to date to examine caregiver coping strategies,” Dr. Amonoo said. “The whole field of caregiver research is very new,” she said.
Researchers in this field classify caregiver coping strategies into two broad categories called “avoidant” and “approach-oriented.” Avoidant coping strategies include denial of the reality of the situation, and self-blame, in which the caregiver blames themselves if the patient misses a medication dose or is late for an appointment. By contrast, approach-oriented coping strategies include active problem solving, finding sources of emotional support, and using “positive reframing” to think about their situation in a different way.
For this study, Dr. Amonoo and her colleagues enrolled 170 primary caregivers of people with a blood cancer who were undergoing a stem cell transplant. A caregiver could be a spouse, relative, or friend whom the patient identified as their primary caregiver. Most caregivers were female (130, or 76.5%) and white (147, or 86.5%); their median age was 53. Shortly after the patient’s admission to the hospital for their stem cell transplant, caregivers completed questionnaires that asked about their use of different coping strategies, symptoms of anxiety or depression, and QOL. The researchers also looked at caregivers’ reliance on religious beliefs as a coping strategy.
A significant number of caregivers reported high use of acceptance (55.9%), positive reframing (45.9%), and religious (44.1%) coping strategies. Caregivers who relied on approach-oriented coping strategies such as these (49.4%) had fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression and better QOL compared with those who relied on avoidant coping strategies (32.9%).
“Strategies such as active problem-solving and positive reframing seemed to be more helpful for caregivers than strategies such as denial and self-blame,” Dr. Amonoo said. “In this study, we didn’t find an association between religious coping strategies and caregiver distress or QOL, although some previous smaller studies have found such an association.”
“Coping strategies aren’t good or bad – you have to meet people where they are,” she added. “And caregivers can be taught to use coping strategies that may be more helpful and may enable them to feel less anxious, depressed, or overwhelmed. So if a caregiver is thinking, ‘My life will never be the same again,’ we can help them reframe that in a more positive way – for example, ‘I know there will be a lot of uncertainty as my loved one recovers from their stem cell transplant, but I’m not in this alone – I can talk to the care team when questions come up or when I feel inadequate about something I need to do.’”
Dr. Amonoo said that her research group is working on developing a variety of interventions and resources for caregivers. “Our goal is to create resources that help caregivers be successful while also enabling them to take care of their own mental health,” she said.
The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
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Blood Advances is a peer-reviewed, online only, open access journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), the world’s largest professional society concerned with the causes and treatment of blood disorders.
Blood Advances® is a registered trademark of the American Society of Hematology.
IMAGE: PURDUE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR BRAD DUERSTOCK LEVERAGES HIS OWN EXPERIENCES AS A WHEELCHAIR USER IN HIS RESEARCH ON IMPROVING ACCESSIBILITY TO TRANSPORTATION.view more
CREDIT: PURDUE UNIVERSITY PHOTO/JOHN UNDERWOOD
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – When Brad Duerstock was 18, a spinal cord injury paralyzed his arms and legs, requiring him to use what control he had left in his hands to operate a power wheelchair.
Throughout the more than 30 years since, Duerstock has seen smartphones, tablets and other types of technology get developed but not become usable for him or others with disabilities until years later.
“It’s always been a retroactive accommodation,” he said.
Duerstock, a professor of practice in industrial engineering and biomedical engineering at Purdue University, is working to change that for autonomous vehicles while the technology is still in its early days. The goal is that when these vehicles start to hit the road everywhere, they will be able to accommodate anyone who wants to use them.
“It’s really the wrong way to go to figure out how to adapt technology for a wheelchair user after already developing the technology,” he said. “But if, instead, we consider, ‘Hey, these are all the needs,’ and then create some standards based on the minimum requirements of what the entire population needs, we can design the vehicle around those minimum standards.”
Helping to establish standards on accessibility for autonomous vehicles
Duerstock and Brandon Pitts, a Purdue assistant professor of industrial engineering, have worked together for four years on topics related to technology accessibility and inclusive design and have constantly sought opportunities to contribute their ideas to help shape the future of transportation.
These ideas are already becoming part of a major national conversation on how to make autonomous transportation more inclusive.
Duerstock shared how he and Pitts co-led a team to develop a design concept for helping the industry make autonomous vehicles accessible to people with disabilities. Their team’s design concept won first place in a U.S. Department of Transportation competition this summer. The goal of the competition, called the Inclusive Design Challenge, is to spur the innovation needed to ensure that when autonomous transportation becomes widespread, it can accommodate people with any travel-limiting disability or mobility challenge.
The winning design not only took into consideration the transportation challenges that people with disabilities face but also built on years of ideas generated among Duerstock, Pitts and BraunAbility, an Indiana-based company that has been designing and manufacturing vehicle accessibility solutions since 1972. Duerstock is among the first wheelchair users to have provided feedback on new product designs at the recently opened BraunAbility Global Innovation Lab in the Indianapolis area.
“We’ve had the steady benefit of Professor Duerstock’s expertise over the years,” said Phill Bell, senior director of global corporate strategy for BraunAbility. “It’s always good to have users come in and say, ‘I don’t like this interface’ or ‘I can’t see where I’m backing up in my wheelchair.’ As an engineer, Professor Duerstock can help steer us into the direction we should be headed.”
By the time Duerstock, Pitts and Bell had heard about the Inclusive Design Challenge, they had already identified autonomous vehicles as an opportunity to change the lives of people with disabilities and were working toward design solutions.
“BraunAbility, with Purdue, thinks about accessibility from the get-go, and we can bring those considerations to the original equipment manufacturers while they’re early in their design work,” Bell said.
What an inclusive autonomous vehicle could look like
For the Inclusive Design Challenge, the team built an automated, vehiclelike prototype that demonstrates the features autonomous transportation would need to serve people with a range of disabilities. The researchers call the prototype EASI RIDER, which stands for “Efficient, Accessible and Safe Interaction in a Real Integrated Design Environment for Riders with disabilities.”
Even though EASI RIDER isn’t meant to be driven (it doesn’t have a motor), the researchers showed that whether a person’s disability is physical or sensory, they can successfully operate the vehicle’s different controls all by themselves.
EASI RIDER not only has a voice-activated, wheelchair-accessible ramp but also uses sensors to prevent inadvertent deployment of the ramp into obstacles when parked. A mechanism within EASI RIDER helps secure a wheelchair into the safest position during a ride. The prototype can accommodate up to two wheelchair users at once and has reconfigurable seats for riders who don’t use wheelchairs. Cameras and sensors help passengers to better understand their surroundings in the vehicle and allow a remote operator to communicate with them in the case of emergency situations where the passengers might need assistance.
Using their personal mobile phone or tablet, a traveler can control the vehicle’s features such as interior lighting, the horn, headlights and entertainment. A screen inside of the vehicle would help a rider see the operator or access a map of their route if they are hearing-impaired or aren’t able to use their hands to press buttons.
“A lot of the features we included in the vehicle were intended to enable what we call a ‘seamless travel experience,’ which means that interacting with the vehicle is so natural that a person doesn’t know they’re interacting with it,” said Pitts, who conducts research on how older adult populations interact with various autonomous systems.
Pitts’ research influenced the design of EASI RIDER’s features. “Many of the same design solutions tested in my lab that aim to help aging adults better use digital technologies can also be used to support individuals with a range of disabilities,” Pitts said.
The EASI RIDER prototype also incorporated input from people with disabilities, including BraunAbility’s Driving Force, through surveys, interviews and interactive demonstration sessions. EASI RIDER was built using parts and expertise from three other companies in addition to BraunAbility: Local Motors, Schaeffler, and Prehensile Technologies, a startup run by Duerstock and Purdue alumnus Jeffrey Ackerman. Prehensile Technologies specializes in using robotics and power sensor systems for wheelchair users, building on robotic desk and table concepts co-invented by Duerstock and patented through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization. Prehensile Technologies is a client of the Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization hub whose professionals help Purdue innovators create startups.
Even though EASI RIDER’s parts are technology that has already been serving people with disabilities in different settings – the automotive controls that Schaeffler contributed, for example, enable wheelchair users to drive cars – how these parts were integrated together is what makes the design so innovative.
“As we were finishing up the process of building EASI RIDER, I stepped inside of it and felt like I was standing in the future,” Bell said. “I hadn’t seen this sort of integration anywhere. This is the first iteration of what’s coming down the line.”
Thinking ahead on the future of transportation
The EASI RIDER team was awarded $1 million with its Inclusive Design Challenge win. Duerstock and Pitts will be using the prize money to establish a center at Purdue on accessible design for transportation. Through this center, Purdue researchers will engage with industry partners and governmental bodies to keep working toward inclusive vehicle design standards.
“We envision that our work will help build a more equitable transportation future and, in turn, promote a higher quality of life for people at different points along the ability spectrum,” Pitts said.
The team will also continue researching ways to develop technology that is universal for a wide range of disabilities. “Even though I have my own unique perspective, it’s not everyone’s perspective,” Duerstock said. “It takes some depth in understanding of what are everyone’s needs.”
Purdue University researchers and their collaborators developed a realistic demonstration of an accessible design concept that industry could incorporate into its development of autonomous vehicles.
Brad Duerstock and Phill Bell (right) have been collaborating for eight years on how to improve the design of vehicles for people with disabilities
Brandon Pitts sits in the seat of an advanced driving simulator in his lab at Purdue University, where he studies how autonomous vehicles could accommodate older adult travelers who may want to use them in the future.
