Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 30 of 30
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Evaluating Digital Creativity Support For Children: A Systematic Literature Review, Marte Hoff Hagen, Daniela Soares Cruzes, Letizia Jaccheri, Jerry Alan Fails
Evaluating Digital Creativity Support For Children: A Systematic Literature Review, Marte Hoff Hagen, Daniela Soares Cruzes, Letizia Jaccheri, Jerry Alan Fails
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Creativity, the process of creating something new and valuable, benefits children by improving their skills and development, encouraging interaction and engagement, and enabling the generation and expression of novel ideas. In recent years, interactive digital tools have emerged to support the user’s creativity in the open-ended creation of new artifacts. However, the question of evaluating the creativity happening in the interplay between children, digital tools, and products is still open. This systematic literature review investigated the evaluations of digital creativity support tools for children and identified 81 peer-reviewed relevant articles from the last 10 years. This research contributes to practitioners …
Ethics Of Emerging Communication And Collaboration Technologies For Children, Juan Pablo Hourcade, Elizabeth Bonsignore, Tamara Clegg, Flannery Currin, Jerry A. Fails, Georgie Qiao Jin, Summer R. Schmuecker, Lana Yarosh
Ethics Of Emerging Communication And Collaboration Technologies For Children, Juan Pablo Hourcade, Elizabeth Bonsignore, Tamara Clegg, Flannery Currin, Jerry A. Fails, Georgie Qiao Jin, Summer R. Schmuecker, Lana Yarosh
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
This SIG will provide child-computer interaction researchers and practitioners, as well as other interested CSCW attendees, an opportunity to discuss topics related to the ethics of emerging communication and collaboration technologies for children. The child-computer interaction community has conducted many discussions on ethical issues, including a recent SIG at CHI 2023. However, the angle of communication and collaboration has not been a focus, even though emerging technologies could affect these aspects in significant ways. Hence, there is a need to consider emerging technologies, such as extended reality, and how they may impact the way children communicate and collaborate in face-to-face, …
Ethical Implications For Children’S Use Of Search Tools In An Educational Setting, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Emiliana Murgia, Maria Soledad Pera
Ethical Implications For Children’S Use Of Search Tools In An Educational Setting, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Emiliana Murgia, Maria Soledad Pera
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
In the classroom, search tools enable students to access online resources. While these tools have many benefits in theory, in practice there are also ethical issues to consider. In this article, we discuss a number of ethics-related problems teachers are faced with and they need to find solutions for. Based on our own research experience developing and deploying information discovery tools for the classroom (both in a traditional classroom setting and on the Internet due to the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19), we share insights about ethics and the role of the expert-in-the-loop, teachers, both as co-design partners and liaisons between …
Why Don't You Act Your Age?: Recognizing The Stereotypical 8-12 Year Old Searcher By Their Search Behavior, Michael Green
Why Don't You Act Your Age?: Recognizing The Stereotypical 8-12 Year Old Searcher By Their Search Behavior, Michael Green
Boise State University Theses and Dissertations
Online search engines for children are known to filter retrieved resources based on page complexity, and offer specialized functionality meant to address gaps in search literacy according to a user's age or grade. However, not every searcher grouped by these identifiers displays the same level of text comprehension, or requires the same aid with search. Furthermore, these search engines typically rely on direct feedback to ascertain these identifiers. This reliance on self identification may cause users to accidentally misrepresent themselves. We therefore seek to recognize users from skill based signals rather than utilizing age or grade identifiers, as skill dictates …
5Th Kidrec Workshop: Search And Recommendation Technology Through The Lens Of A Teacher, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Maria Soledad Pera, Jerry Alan Fails
5Th Kidrec Workshop: Search And Recommendation Technology Through The Lens Of A Teacher, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Maria Soledad Pera, Jerry Alan Fails
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
In this past year, the role of technology to support education has been more prominent than ever. This has prompted us to focus the 5th Edition of the International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Children & Recommender and Information Retrieval Systems (KidRec) around a major stakeholder when it comes to technology adoption for the classroom: the teacher. Much like in the previous editions of the workshop, our priority remains understanding what is good when it comes to information retrieval systems for children, this time from the perspectives of teachers. In order to control scope of our discussion and …
Engage!: Co-Designing Search Engine Result Pages To Foster Interactions, Garrett Allen, Ben Peterson, Dhanush Kumar Ratakonda, Mostofa Najmus Sakib, Jerry Alan Fails, Casey Kennington, Katherine Landau Wright, Maria Soledad Pera
Engage!: Co-Designing Search Engine Result Pages To Foster Interactions, Garrett Allen, Ben Peterson, Dhanush Kumar Ratakonda, Mostofa Najmus Sakib, Jerry Alan Fails, Casey Kennington, Katherine Landau Wright, Maria Soledad Pera
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
In this paper, we take a step towards understanding how to design search engine results pages (SERP) that encourage children’s engagement as they seek for online resources. For this, we conducted a participatory design session to enable us to elicit children’s preferences and determine what children (ages 6–12) find lacking in more traditional SERP. We learned that children want more dynamic means of navigating results and additional ways to interact with results via icons. We use these findings to inform the design of a new SERP interface, which we denoted CHIRP. To gauge the type of engagement that a SERP …
Distributing Participation In Design: Addressing Challenges Of A Global Pandemic, Jerry Alan Fails
Distributing Participation In Design: Addressing Challenges Of A Global Pandemic, Jerry Alan Fails
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Participatory Design (PD) – whose inclusive benefits are broadly recognised in design – can be very challenging, especially when involving children. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to further barriers to PD with such groups. One key barrier is the advent of social distancing and government-imposed social restrictions due to the additional risks posed for e.g. children and families vulnerable to COVID-19. This disrupts traditional in-person PD (which involves close socio-emotional and often physical collaboration between participants and researchers). However, alongside such barriers, we have identified opportunities for new and augmented approaches to PD across distributed geographies, backgrounds, ages …
Somewhere Over The Rainbow: Exploring The Sense For Relevance In Children, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Emiliana Murgia, Mohammad Aliannejadi, Maria Soledad Pera
Somewhere Over The Rainbow: Exploring The Sense For Relevance In Children, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Emiliana Murgia, Mohammad Aliannejadi, Maria Soledad Pera
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
We explore the facets of relevance that guide children when assessing materials retrieved by search engines when looking for information in the classroom. We involved children in a collaborative exercise and asked them to design innovative icons to point their peers towards useful results. We also asked them to complete a survey meant to capture explicit motivators guiding their design. This resulted in a rich set of metaphors. Analysis of the emerging metaphors is what allowed us to identify and discuss the many interpretations of relevance children naturally assign to resources they find in response to school-related information discovery …
Improving Spellchecking For Children: Correction And Design, Brody Downs
Improving Spellchecking For Children: Correction And Design, Brody Downs
Boise State University Theses and Dissertations
Children commonly use software applications such as search engines and word processors in the classroom environment. However, a major barrier to using these programs successfully is the ability of children to type and spell effectively. While many programs make use of spellcheckers to provide spelling corrections to their users, they are designed for more traditional users (i.e., adults) and have proven inadequate for children. The aims of this work is twofold: first, to address the types of spelling errors children make by researching, developing, and evaluating algorithms to generate and rank candidate spelling suggestions; and second, to evaluate the impact …
We’Ve Only Just Begun: Children Searching In The Classroom, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Emiliana Murgia, Maria Soledad Pera
We’Ve Only Just Begun: Children Searching In The Classroom, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Emiliana Murgia, Maria Soledad Pera
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
In this extended abstract, we present an overview of our ongoing project. Specifically, we briefly discuss the motivation for our research agenda, research goals in the short and long term, and the body of work we have published thus far that serves as the foundation upon which we build the next steps related to Information Retrieval and Children in the Classroom Setting.
Evaluating And Improving Child-Directed Automatic Speech Recognition, Eric Booth, Jake Carns, Casey Kennington, Nader Rafla
Evaluating And Improving Child-Directed Automatic Speech Recognition, Eric Booth, Jake Carns, Casey Kennington, Nader Rafla
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Speech recognition has seen dramatic improvements in the last decade, though those improvements have focused primarily on adult speech. In this paper, we assess child-directed speech recognition and leverage a transfer learning approach to improve child-directed speech recognition by training the recent DeepSpeech2 model on adult data, then apply additional tuning to varied amounts of child speech data. We evaluate our model using the CMU Kids dataset as well as our own recordings of child-directed prompts. The results from our experiment show that even a small amount of child audio data improves significantly over a baseline of adult-only or child-only …
Kidspell: A Child-Oriented, Rule-Based, Phonetic Spellchecker, Brody Downs, Oghenemaro Anuyah, Aprajita Shukla, Jerry Alan Fails, Maria Soledad Pera, Katherine Wright, Casey Kennington
Kidspell: A Child-Oriented, Rule-Based, Phonetic Spellchecker, Brody Downs, Oghenemaro Anuyah, Aprajita Shukla, Jerry Alan Fails, Maria Soledad Pera, Katherine Wright, Casey Kennington
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
For help with their spelling errors, children often turn to spellcheckers integrated in software applications like word processors and search engines. However, existing spellcheckers are usually tuned to the needs of traditional users (i.e., adults) and generally prove unsatisfactory for children. Motivated by this issue, we introduce KidSpell, an English spellchecker oriented to the spelling needs of children. KidSpell applies (i) an encoding strategy for mapping both misspelled words and spelling suggestions to their phonetic keys and (ii) a selection process that prioritizes candidate spelling suggestions that closely align with the misspelled word based on their respective keys. To assess …
Panel: Broadening The Discussion Of Ethics In The Interaction Design And Children Community, Christopher Frauenberger, Monica Landoni, Jerry Alan Fails, Janet C. Read, Alissa N. Antle, Pauline Gourlet
Panel: Broadening The Discussion Of Ethics In The Interaction Design And Children Community, Christopher Frauenberger, Monica Landoni, Jerry Alan Fails, Janet C. Read, Alissa N. Antle, Pauline Gourlet
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Interaction Design and Children (IDC) as an academic field, and as a community, has a responsibility to engage with the many and diverse ethical challenges that arise from work that concerns the creation of digital technology for and with children – both in terms of research and industry contexts. This panel builds on a short history of similar events at previous conferences and aims to foster and strengthen the debate about ethical conduct and moral responsibilities in IDC. In this year’s panel, we seek to broaden the discussion by collecting ethical concerns, issues or dilemmas from within the community to …
Pushing The Boundaries Of Participatory Design With Children With Special Needs, Jerry Alan Fails
Pushing The Boundaries Of Participatory Design With Children With Special Needs, Jerry Alan Fails
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Despite its inherent challenges, participatory design (PD) has unique benefits when designing technology for children, especially children with special needs. Researchers have developed a multitude of PD approaches to accommodate specific populations. However, a lack of understanding of the appropriateness of existing approaches across contexts presents a challenge for PD researchers. This workshop will provide an opportunity for PD researchers to exchange and reflect on their experiences of designing with children with special needs. We aim to identify, synthesize and collate PD best practices across contexts and participant groups.
"Anon What What?": Children's Understanding Of The Language Of Privacy, Stacy Black, Rezvan Joshaghani, Dhanush Kumar Ratakonda, Hoda Mehrpouyan, Jerry Alan Fails
"Anon What What?": Children's Understanding Of The Language Of Privacy, Stacy Black, Rezvan Joshaghani, Dhanush Kumar Ratakonda, Hoda Mehrpouyan, Jerry Alan Fails
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Internet usage continues to increase among children ages 12 and younger. Because their digital interactions can be persistently stored, there is a need for building an understanding and foundational knowledge of privacy. We describe initial investigations into children’s understanding of privacy from a Contextual Integrity (CI) perspective by conducting semi-structured interviews. We share results – that echo what others have shown – that indicate children have limited knowledge and understanding of CI principles. We also share an initial exploration of utilizing participatory design theater as a possible educational mechanism to help children develop a stronger understanding of important privacy principles.
3Rd Kidrec Workshop: What Does Good Look Like?, Theo Huibers, Jerry Alan Fails, Natalia Kucirkova, Monica Landoni, Emiliana Murgia, Maria Soledad Pera
3Rd Kidrec Workshop: What Does Good Look Like?, Theo Huibers, Jerry Alan Fails, Natalia Kucirkova, Monica Landoni, Emiliana Murgia, Maria Soledad Pera
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Today’s children spend considerable time online, searching and receiving information from various websites and apps. While searching for information, e.g. for school or hobbies, children use search systems to locate resources and receive site recommendations that might be useful for them. The call for good, reliable, child-friendly systems has been made many times and the thesis that the algorithms of “adult” information systems are not necessarily suitable or fair for children is widely accepted. However, there is still no clear and balanced view on what makes one search/recommendation system for children good or better than other systems, nor on what …
With A Little Help From My Friends: Use Of Recommendations At School, Maria Soledad Pera, Emiliana Murgia, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers
With A Little Help From My Friends: Use Of Recommendations At School, Maria Soledad Pera, Emiliana Murgia, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
In this exploratory paper, we study the usage of recommendations by and for children (ages 9 to 11) in an educational setting. From our preliminary analysis, it becomes apparent that recommender systems (RS) could provide extra support to and help children successfully complete inquiry tasks. Nonetheless, children have difficulty in recognizing the role of RS, in terms of aiding information discovery for classroom assignments. Findings from our study set a foundation that can inform future design and development of RS for children that support classroom-related work.
Here, There, And Everywhere: Building A Scaffolding For Children’S Learning Through Recommendations, Ashlee Milton, Emiliana Murgia, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Maria Soledad Pera
Here, There, And Everywhere: Building A Scaffolding For Children’S Learning Through Recommendations, Ashlee Milton, Emiliana Murgia, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Maria Soledad Pera
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Reading and literacy are on the decline among children. This is compounded by the fact that children have trouble with the discovery of resources that are appropriate, diverse, and appealing. With technology becoming an evermore presence in children’s lives, tools that can minimize choice overload and ease access to online resources become a must. A powerful but underutilized tool in regards to children that could assist in this situation is a recommender system (RS). We posit that RS could be used to impact children’s learning, using them to not only suggest what children might like but what they need in …
The Seven Layers Of Complexity Of Recommender Systems For Children In Educational Contexts, Emiliana Murgia, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Jerry Alan Fails, Maria Soledad Pera
The Seven Layers Of Complexity Of Recommender Systems For Children In Educational Contexts, Emiliana Murgia, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Jerry Alan Fails, Maria Soledad Pera
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Recommender systems (RS) in their majority focus on an average target user: adults. We argue that for non-traditional populations in specific contexts, the task is not as straightforward–we must look beyond existing recommendation algorithms, premises for interface design, and standard evaluation metrics and frameworks. We explore the complexity of RS in an educational context for which young children are the target audience. The aim of this position paper is to spell out, label, and organize the specific layers of complexity observed in this context.
Fostering The Retrieval Of Suitable Web Resources In Response To Children's Educational Search Tasks, Oghenemaro Deborah Anuyah
Fostering The Retrieval Of Suitable Web Resources In Response To Children's Educational Search Tasks, Oghenemaro Deborah Anuyah
Boise State University Theses and Dissertations
Children regularly turn to search engines (SEs) to locate school-related materials. Unfortunately, research has shown that when utilizing SEs, children do not always access resources that specifically target them. To support children, popular and child-oriented SEs make available a safe search filter, which is meant to eliminate inappropriate resources. Safe search is, however, not always the perfect deterrent as pornographic and hate-based resources may slip through the filter, while resources relevant to an educational search context may be misconstrued and filtered out. Moreover, filtering inappropriate resources in response to children searches is just one perspective to consider in offering them …
Investigating Query Formulation Assistance For Children, Oghenemaro Anuyah, Maria Soledad Pera, Jerry Alan Fails
Investigating Query Formulation Assistance For Children, Oghenemaro Anuyah, Maria Soledad Pera, Jerry Alan Fails
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Popular tools used to search for online resources are tuned to satisfy a broad category of users—primarily adults. Because children have specific needs, these tools may not always be successful in offering the right level of support in their quest for information. While search tools often provide query assistance, children still face many difficulties expressing their information needs in the form of a query. In this paper, we share results from our ongoing research work focused on understanding children's interactions with query suggestions and their preferences with respect to suggestions offered by a general-purpose strategy versus a counterpart designed exclusively …
International And Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Children & Recommender Systems (Kidrec), Jerry Alan Fails, Maria Soledad Pera, Natalia Kucirkova, Franca Garzotto
International And Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Children & Recommender Systems (Kidrec), Jerry Alan Fails, Maria Soledad Pera, Natalia Kucirkova, Franca Garzotto
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Resources for children are abundant, but finding suitable and appropriate resources for children in our information-rich society can be challenging. Due to this abundance of information, systems to find and recommend appropriate information for children are needed. Recommender systems (RS) for children have only recently begun to be researched. This area of research brings together researchers in education, child-development, computer scientists, designers, and more who address several issues including those related to education, algorithms, ethics, privacy, security. In this workshop we will: discuss and identify issues related to RS designed for children including challenges and limitations, discuss possible solutions to …
Cultivating Community Interactions In Citizen Science: Connecting People To Each Other And The Environment, Bret Allen Finley
Cultivating Community Interactions In Citizen Science: Connecting People To Each Other And The Environment, Bret Allen Finley
Boise State University Theses and Dissertations
Citizen science leverages a distributed user-base which participates in crowd-sourced scientific inquiry. Geotagger is a citizen science project that allows people to collaboratively investigate the natural world around them and share their findings. Citizens are rarely compensated for their work and individual contributors can feel isolated which leads to motivation problems. This thesis focuses on engaging citizen scientists and motivating their contributions via social interaction and engagement. As a part of this work, a number of social enhancements have been developed as extensions to the existing Geotagger project. These enhancements and their effect on social engagement were evaluated using in-field …
Combustion-Derived Nanoparticles, The Neuroenteric System, Cervical Vagus, Hyperphosphorylated Alpha Synuclein And Tau In Young Mexico City Residents, Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas, Rafael Reynoso-Robles, Beatriz Pérez-Guillé, Partha S. Mukherjee, Angélica Gónzalez-Maciel
Combustion-Derived Nanoparticles, The Neuroenteric System, Cervical Vagus, Hyperphosphorylated Alpha Synuclein And Tau In Young Mexico City Residents, Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas, Rafael Reynoso-Robles, Beatriz Pérez-Guillé, Partha S. Mukherjee, Angélica Gónzalez-Maciel
Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations
Mexico City (MC) young residents are exposed to high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), have high frontal concentrations of combustion-derived nanoparticles (CDNPs), accumulation of hyperphosphorylated aggregated α-synuclein (α-Syn) and early Parkinson's disease (PD). Swallowed CDNPs have easy access to epithelium and submucosa, damaging gastrointestinal (GI) barrier integrity and accessing the enteric nervous system (ENS). This study is focused on the ENS, vagus nerves and GI barrier in young MC v clean air controls. Electron microscopy of epithelial, endothelial and neural cells and immunoreactivity of stomach and vagus to phosphorylated ɑ-synuclein Ser129 and Hyperphosphorylated-Tau (Htau) …
Kidrec: Children & Recommender Systems: Workshop Co-Located With Acm Conference On Recommender Systems (Recsys 2017), Jerry Alan Fails, Maria Soledad Pera, Franca Garzotto, Mirko Gelsomini
Kidrec: Children & Recommender Systems: Workshop Co-Located With Acm Conference On Recommender Systems (Recsys 2017), Jerry Alan Fails, Maria Soledad Pera, Franca Garzotto, Mirko Gelsomini
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
The 1st Workshop on Children and Recommender Systems (KidRec) is taking place in Como, Italy August 27th, 2017 in conjunction with the ACM RecSys 2017 conference. The goals of the workshop are threefold: (1) discuss and identify issues related to recommender systems used by children including specific challenges and limitations, (2) discuss possible solutions to the identified challenges and plan for future research, and (3) build a community to directly work on these important issues.
Prefrontal White Matter Pathology In Air Pollution Exposed Mexico City Young Urbanites And Their Potential Impact On Neurovascular Unit Dysfunction And The Development Of Alzheimer’S Disease, Partha S. Mukherjee
Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations
Millions of urban children are chronically exposed to high concentrations of air pollutants, i.e., fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, associated with increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Compared with children living with clear air those in Mexico City (MC) exhibit systemic, brain and intrathecal inflammation, low CSF Aβ 42, breakdown of the BBB, attention and short-term memory deficits, prefrontal white matter hyperintensities, damage to epithelial and endothelial barriers, tight junction and neural autoantibodies, and Alzheimer and Parkinson's hallmarks. The prefrontal white matter is a target of air pollution. We examined by light and electron microscopy the prefrontal …
Finding, Understanding And Learning: Making Information Discovery Tasks Useful For Children And Teachers, Ion Madrazo Azpiazu, Nevena Dragovic, Maria Soledad Pera
Finding, Understanding And Learning: Making Information Discovery Tasks Useful For Children And Teachers, Ion Madrazo Azpiazu, Nevena Dragovic, Maria Soledad Pera
Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
We present our ongoing efforts on the development of a search environment tailored to 6-15 year-olds that can foster learning though retrieval of materials that not only satisfy the information needs of users but also match their reading abilities. YouUnderstood.me is an enhanced environment based on a popular search engine specifically designed to help students deal with search for learning tasks, and allow teachers to track their progress. An initial assessment conducted on YouUnderstood.me and well-known (children-oriented) search engines based on queries generated by K-9 students, showcases the need for this type of environment.
A Critical Proton Mr Spectroscopy Marker Of Alzheimer Early Neurodegenerative Change: Low Hippocampal Naa/Cr Ratio Impacts Apoe 4 Mexico City Children And Their Parents., Partha S. Mukherjee
A Critical Proton Mr Spectroscopy Marker Of Alzheimer Early Neurodegenerative Change: Low Hippocampal Naa/Cr Ratio Impacts Apoe 4 Mexico City Children And Their Parents., Partha S. Mukherjee
Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations
Severe air pollution exposures produce systemic, respiratory, myocardial, and brain inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) hallmarks in clinically healthy children. We tested whether hippocampal metabolite ratios are associated with contrasting levels of air pollution, APOE and BMI in paired healthy children and one parent sharing the same APOE alleles. We used (1) H-MRS to interrogate bilateral hippocampal single-voxel in 57 children (12.45± 3.4 years) and their 48 parents (37.5± 6.78 years) low pollution city v Mexico City (MC). NAA/Cr, Cho/Cr, and mI/Cr metabolite ratios were analysed. The right hippocampus N-acetylaspartate/creatine (NAA/Cr) was significantly different between cohorts (p=0.007). The NAA/Cr ratio …
Mexico City Normal Weight Children Exposed To High Concentrations Of Ambient Pm2.5 Show High Blood Leptin And Endothelin-1, Vitamin D Deficiency, And Food Reward Hormone Dysregulation Versus Low Pollution Controls. Relevance For Obesity And Alzheimer Disease, Partha S. Mukherjee
Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations
Millions of Mexico, US and across the world children are overweight and obese. Exposure to fossil-fuel combustion sources increases the risk for obesity and diabetes, while long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) and ozone (O3) above US EPA standards is associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Mexico City Metropolitan Area children are chronically exposed to PM2.5 and O3 concentrations above the standards and exhibit systemic, brain and intrathecal inflammation, cognitive deficits, and Alzheimer disease neuropathology. We investigated adipokines, food reward hormones, endothelial dysfunction, vitamin D and apolipoprotein E (APOE) relationships in …
Flavonol-Rich Dark Cocoa Significantly Decreases Plasma Endothelin-1 And Improves Cognition In Urban Children, Partha S. Mukherjee
Flavonol-Rich Dark Cocoa Significantly Decreases Plasma Endothelin-1 And Improves Cognition In Urban Children, Partha S. Mukherjee
Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations
Air pollution exposures are linked to systemic inflammation, cardiovascular and respiratory morbidity and mortality, neuroinflammation and neuropathology in young urbanites. In particular, most Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) children exhibit subtle cognitive deficits, and neuropathology studies show 40% of them exhibiting frontal tau hyperphosphorylation and 51% amyloid-β diffuse plaques (compared to 0% in low pollution control children). We assessed whether a short cocoa intervention can be effective in decreasing plasma endothelin 1 (ET-1) and/or inflammatory mediators in MCMA children. Thirty gram of dark cocoa with 680 mg of total flavonols were given daily for 10.11 ± 3.4 days (range 9–24 …