HOPR 196, Honors Seminar – Design in Nature and Society

Course description: This seminar develops and explores hypothesized governing principles at work in nature and in technology innovation within society. Includes the following topics: physical and information foundations of nature's playing field; earth-plant interactions and ecosystems; design in animals with a focus on muscle motors; relations between technical design, creativity, innovation and constraints; design history and future of human powered vehicles and tools; purposeful application of universal and personalized design to address access and social justice; challenges of designing intelligent service machines for humans. Includes customized student final projects.

Prerequisites:

• Physics, preferably at the college level but one year of high school physics should be sufficient.
• Exposure to life sciences beyond high school biology is helpful.

Instructor:

• Prof. Jack Winters, jack.winters@mu.edu, 288-6640, Cramer 116C; Office Hours: Tu-Th 2-4 PM, Fr 10-11:30 AM, or by appt.

Reading Material:

• Lecture outlines and handouts (by instructor and students) for each topic
• Targeted chapters/articles from the following (all on reserve or on the Web, many with a photocopy also on reserve):
  • Topic 1: Nature's Playing Field: Physical and Informational Foundations
    • The design characteristics for classification to be used throughout the class: foundations and "-ologies" (see also Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-ology)
    • Vogel, S. [Chapters 1-3 for each, and Chapter 14 in "... Nature and People"]:
      • Life’s Devices, The Physical World of Animals and Plants, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988
      • Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People, New York : Norton, 1998
    • also as resources:
      • Pennycuick, C.J., Newton Rules Biology: a Physical Approach to Biological Problems, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992
      • McMahon, T.A., Bonner, J.T. On Size and Life, New York: Scientific American Library, distributed by W.H. Freeman, 1983
      • Schmit-Nielsen, Scaling: Why is Animal Size so Important? Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1984
  • Topic 2: Earth-Plant Interaction and Ecosystems
    • Rothschild, L.J. and Lister, A.M. (eds), Evolution on Planet Earth: the Impact of the Physical Environment, San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2003 [especially Part 4, Gravity]
    • Niklas, K.J. [Chapter 1 from each]:
      • The Evolutionary Biology of Plants, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997
      • Plant Biomechanics, An Engineering Approach to Plant Form and Function, Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1992
    • also student-selected chapters from:
      • Bazzaz, F.A. and Grace, J. (eds), Plant Resource Allocation, San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1997
      • Wilkinson, R.E. (eds), Plant-Environment Interactions, 2nd-ed, New York, NY: New York: Marcel Dekker, 2000
  • Topic 3: Muscle and Motion
    • Vogel, S., Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle, New York: Norton, 2001 [parts of Chapters 1-6]
  • Topic 4: Human Creativity, Innovation and Constraints
    • Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/patents
    • Florida, R., The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent, see http://www.creativeclass.org/
  • Topic 5: Human-Powered Vehicles and Tools
  • Wilson, D.G. Bicycling Science, 3rd ed., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004 [Chapters 1-2, 11-12]
  • Also student-selected chapters from Vogel books and/or other sources
  • Topic 6: Universal and Personalized Interface Design
  • Resources from RERC on Accessible Medical Instrumentation, see http://www.rerc-ami.org/ami/projects/d/2/udg/
  • Winters, J.M. and Story, M.F., Accessibility and Usability Considerations for Medical Instrumentation, Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2006 [Chapters 8, 24 and 25]
  • Possible Topic 7: Intelligent Machines to Service Humans (?)
    • countless Web-based resources

Desired Outcomes (General):

• active learning and critical inquiry: to have a positive learning experience that includes learning to identify and isolate systems and phenomena, to recognize and apply design principles to the analysis of natural and technological systems and their interfaces, and to critically evaluate knowledge and ideas
• interdisciplinary knowledge and synthesis: to obtain new interdisciplinary knowledge, to develop an appreciation for interdisciplinary study, and to gain experience in proactively scanning resources to extract information of interest that synthesizes knowledge from multiple sources and perspectives
• communication skills: an improved ability to distill and present information to peers using formats that include formal presentations, outlines and discussions; also, an opportunity to improve writing skills
• life-long learning: a heightened awareness of design strategies in nature and in society, and an enhanced desire to learn more about such areas and to engage in the pursuit of long-long learning
  

Organizational Process:

• The course will use a structured format. Topic 1 is given by Dr. Winters. All of the subsequent Topics will consist of roughly four classes, and be structured as follows:
  • Classes 1 & 2 (first week): General introduction and targeted examples, given by Dr. Winters, to establish a context for the general topic.
  • Asynchronous discussion on D2L (expected participation), normally between Classes 2 & 3
  • Classes 3 & 4 (second week): Coverage of 3-4 topics per class period, each led by 1-2 "primary reviewers," who also provide an outline and a few strategic slides. Secondary reviewers are expected to have scanned the material. The last part of Class 4 is a synthesis on the Topic, moderated by Dr. Winters
• The final presentations will be presented during the last week of class and during the finals time slot.

Grading:

• 30% Exams (2 @ 15% each, with first on Topics 1-3, second on Topics 4-6)
• 16% Participation (preparation for class, participation during class, and participation in on-line discussions) (best 5 @ 3% for each topic, plus 1 for participation in final presentations)
• 24% Role as “primary” for a content segment for Topics 2-6 (lecture/discussion/handouts) (best 4 @ 6% each topic)
• 30% Final project (10% for presentation, 20% for report)

Course Outline:

1. Nature and the Designer’s Playing Field – Physical and Informational Foundations. Considerations of "evolving through natural selection" versus "purposeful design," with a focus on design processes and metrics, on energy and information flow, on material formation and dimensional scaling of structures, and on tools for observing nature’s wonders.
2. Natural Design of Earth and Plants - Earth-Plant Interactions and Ecosystems – Considerations of how principles of diffusion, flow and dispersion of materials and structures within ecosystems impacts on form and function of living systems, with special emphasis on how environmental factors affect the physical form, nature and communities of plant life.
3. Natural Design in Animals – Muscles and Motion. Considerations of how structural differences between animals correlates with distinctive functional abilities and life roles, with special focus on roles of muscle actuators and how muscle activity impacts on living systems.
4. Purposeful Design by Human Technologists - Creativity, Innovation and Constraints – Considerations of how creativity, innovation, patents and technology transfer processes (with historical perspective), importance of understanding user needs and various constraints, and how social class structure might relate to product design lifecycle/paradigm-shifting "solutions" and to sustainable economic prosperity.
5. Purposeful Interface Design: Human-Powered Vehicles - Historical and teleological perspectives on biological and technological engines with a special focus on human-powered vehicles, and on future evolution of human-powered and hybrid vehicle innovation in relation to other forms of human transportation.
6. Purposeful Interface Design: Universal & Personalized Design - Principles of universal design and universal access to devices and services, and overview of social priorities (as reflected by laws and rules related to regulation of health and access) and how such priorities relate to social justice. Challenges of involving a diversity of users in process of designing and evaluating more accessible commercial products, including advances in (and possible implications of) personalized interface design. Special focus on how access to information and services impacts on the evolving concept of community.
7. (?) Purposeful Interface Design: "Intelligent" Machines to Service Humans - Agents and Robots. Review of human's fascination with intelligent robots and computers, as expressed through "science fiction" and in the design of real prototypes and products. Overview of the profound challenges associated with robotic vision, manipulation, mobility and interaction, and of intelligent Web agents for service and disservice (e.g., spyware).
8. Final Projects. The course ends with individual student project presentations prior to and/or during finals week and the submission of final reports. These reports, selected by the student in consultation with Dr. Winters, must include design concepts extracted from insights about natural "design" and technical design in society (e.g., a student role-playing being a senior analyst for a governmental agency or company, writing a white paper that presents a case for an intriguing new policy or product).

"Design" concepts and classification scheme to be used throughout this class:

• Design as "accidental" or "purposeful" process
  • inherent contradiction of "evolution by natural selection" and "intelligent design"
    • natural "products" evolving by existing, statistical chance, constraints, fitness
      • yet "solutions" often seem awfully creative and optimized
    • purposeful product designing by creating, choice, constraints, performance optimization
      • yet "solutions" often seem awfully uninspiring and suboptimal
    • mathematics of "genetic algorithms" work as effective (robust but slow) optimization algorithms
  • "functionality" and "beauty" and "purposeful" are a function of the perception of the observer
• Two foundations for study of physical systems that are used across scientific fields of study:
  • physical “energetic” systems
    • viewed this way, systems obtain or synthesize (transform) energy, possess and store (potential) energy, use energy for internal development, and in some cases may be able to actively release (kinetic) energy to operate on their external environment
    • across physical interfaces, the exchange is generally two-way power transfer involving two variables (force-velocity, voltage-current, pressure-flow), and "laws" help describe the exchange (Newton's, Ohm's, Fouriers' ...)
    • commonly used approach in physics, physical chemistry, and engineering (e.g., mechanical, electrical, chemical, biomedical, civil)
  • information systems
    • viewed this way, information can be obtained from external sources (input), stored (memory), lost (leaky memory), used internally (passed within internal subsystems), and passed to their external environment (output)
      • notice that the absence of information ("0") is still information, but that information can also be hidden within a system (unobservable)
    • across information interfaces, transmission is generally by a one-way (signal) flow that is accomplished either by an impedance mismatch at the interface (e.g., sensors used for vision, hearing) or through an active transport (e.g., chemical synapses between neurons)
    • most commonly used biology, psychology, systems/control engineering (e.g., biomedical, electrical, industrial, mechanical), biochemistry, medicine
• Multidisciplinary nature of this course ...-ology - “the study of ___” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-ology)
  • these apply to all nine: phytology (botany/plants), zoology (animals), technology ((“practical arts,” tools, techniques)
  • look at all the others that are given below!

Design Classification Scheme:

1. Form and Scale
   • Physical foundations: mechanics (statics, solids, dynamics)
   • …ology: morphology (form, shape), examples (each also applies to materials/interfaces): anthropology (physical - human form), dendrology (trees), petrology (rocks)
2. Materials and Surfaces
   • Physical foundations: materials science (bio/chemistry, bio/physics)
   • …ology: geology (earth; minerology (minerals)), ecology (interrelationships, organisms-environment), ), histology (living tissues; e.g. oncology (cancer))
3. Flow and Dispersion
   • Physical foundations: fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, mass transfer, physical chemistry
   • ...ology: rheology (flow)
4. Energy and Function
   • Physical foundations: energetic systems
   • …ology: physiology (body function), kinesiology (human movement)
5. Regulation and Preservation
   • Informational foundations: systems science (cybernetics, control engineering), bio/chemistry
   • …ology: physiology (e.g., endocrinology, neurophysiology, immunology, pathology, enzymology, pharmacology), teleology (purposeful, goal-directed, cybernetic behavior)
6. Fabrication and Growth
   • Informational foundations: information sciences (bioinformatics (e.g., proteomics), bio/chemistry, developmental biology, product development
   • …ology: agrobiology (plants-soils), auxology (human growth)
7. Memory and Cycles
   • Informational foundations: information science (computing, memory), bioinformatics (e.g., genetics, genomics), product lifecycles
   • …ology: psychology (mind and behavior), etiology (causation), phenology (climate-based life cycles)
8. Competition and Reproduction
   • Informational foundations: bioinformatics (e.g., genetics), developmental biology, dynamic systems, neural networks
   • …ology: ontology (existence), ecology (interrelationships, organisms-environment), epidemiology (epidemics), teleology (purposeful, goal-directed, cybernetic behavior)
9. Population and Community
   • Informational foundations: population dynamics, behavioral science
   • …ology: ecology, psychology, ethology (animal behavior), sociology