Digital Commons Network^™

Preliminary Study On Beetle Biodiversity And Its Role As A Metric For Ecosystem Heterogeneity In The Rowan County Area, Belinda Candra, Sara Monfalcone

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Biodiversity is important for maintaining ecosystem function, including the adaptation of the organisms to reflect the change in the ecological community. Many ecological roles are performed by insects, including keystone organisms, ecosystem engineers and soil modifiers, part of the food chain, general symbionts, and pollinators, and creating a cumulative database of the variety of insect types allows for an effective overview of the different aspects of the environment from which samples are collected. With approximately 400,000 described species, beetles are immensely diverse in their lifestyles and ecological roles, thus making them valuable tools in environmental assessments of terrestrial and freshwater …

Pro Se Divorce Clinic: Tailored To The Times, Kallie Hellard

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Morehead State University partners with Legal Aid of the Bluegrass to provide the region with the Pro Se Divorce Clinic. Through the clinic, supervised students assist indigent clients with filling out the necessary paperwork to represent themselves and obtain a divorce. Without the help of the clinic, most clients would not be able to afford the cost to receive a divorce. Previous to COVID-19, the clinic was held once a month during the school year, serving an annual average of 70+ clients total (that number would be double if counting spouses). The supervised student coordinator manages all of the clinic's …

A Protocol To Overcome The Negative Health Effects Associated With Urinary Catheters In The Hospital Setting; A Quality Improvement Project, Katelynn Arnett, Mary Bott, Abigail Bray, Dakota Brown, Zachary Mains

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

There are estimated to be 449,334 CAUTI events per year (hospitalsafelygrade). As well, this costs the health care system to the United States Healthcare System which shows that it costs the country an extra 340-370 million every year (Gray et al., 2016). The purpose of this quality improvement project is to determine how to overcome the negative effects that patients experience when receiving catheters (indwelling or external) while in the hospital. Increased catheter rates and infections were noted at an urban teaching hospital which led to the creation of this new protocol guideline.

Pitch Accents And Focus: Effects On Syntactic Attachment, Victoria Nash, Kelsey Ball

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

No abstract provided.

College Students' Understanding Of Analog Time Keeping And Rotational Directionality, Katelyn Collins

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Although time-telling using analog clocks is a topic covered in KY math standards in 1st and 2nd grades, and most older adults assume that everyone can read analog clocks, recent media reports and personal anecdotes have indicated that an ever-increasing proportion of young people struggle to correctly read them because most timing devices they are exposed to are digital. Although the personal and academic consequences of not mastering this skill are unknown, it is important to document the extent of this issue at a college level. Of particular interest to the researchers is the description of rotational direction as clockwise …

Decade Long Monitoring Of Active Galactic Nuclei With Swift, Tithi Patel, Dirk Grupe

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

I will report decade-long monitoring campaigns with the NASA Neil-Gehrels Swift mission of about 100 Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). Swift has started with monitoring some AGN since 2005. This long-term monitoring project has enabled us to catch AGN in extreme high and low X-ray flux states allowing to trigger follow-up observations by XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, HST. While this program has led in the past to at least one trigger per year, no AGN was found with extreme variability. I will also give a brief overview of the causes of this extreme variability.

The Influence Of Videoconferencing On Relationship Formation, Alexa Brunson, Daniel Maitland

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the ways we interact with those around us, this has led to an increase in how we engage with our social environment. Given the risks of in person interactions, the use of video conferencing as a means of social contact have increased. The increase in social isolation is correlated with meaningful increases in depression. This study looks at how individuals reporting and not reporting symptoms of depression interact in a virtual interaction structured to facilitate the development of feelings of connection. Specifically, it looks at how depression impacts the level of and perceived responsiveness to …

Kentucky Soldiers At The Battles Of Frenchtown And The River Raisin Massacre, Christian Wright

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Research on The War of 1812 has been sporadic over the last two hundred years. In spite of the two centuries which have passed, significant gaps in the scholarship remain. Most individuals recognize that Kentucky troops played a major role in the war, but their participation and the number of casualties they suffered remains speculative. American newspaper accounts of the period, written with an eye to sell more copies, may not be accurate as they historically over inflated the number of dead. At the same time, British accounts have a tendency to downplay the numbers of American troops involved for …

The Glamor Fades Away: Fictional Spies Vs. Real Life Intelligence Agents, Victoria Nash, Sylvia Henneberg

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Spies have been featured in fiction for centuries. As the spy fiction genre developed and spying became one of the principal national preoccupations in many countries during the Cold War, spy narratives increased in popularity and were successfully adapted for film. Perhaps the most notable spy films come from Ian Fleming’s James Bond franchise. This study uses the James Bond and Jason Bourne film franchises as models of fictional spy portrayals. The project evaluates the representations of spying in fictional writing and film, comparing these to the actual traits, tasks, and lives of real-life spies. Real-life spies live dramatically different …

Analysis Of The Changing Look Agn Ngc 1566, Rebecca Mikula, Dirk Grupe

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

The Seyfert Galaxy NGC 1566 was detected in an X-ray outburst by INTEGRAL in June 2018 and triggered several observatories with follow-up observations including the Neil-Gehrels Swift Observatory. This source saw a second, smaller flare in the summer of 2019. I will report on the long and short term X-ray and UV/Optical light curves and how we can explain this outburst by an accretion disk instability. I will also discuss some spectroscopic modeling done with Cloudy. Interestingly, optically NGC 1566 is a 'changing look' AGN which changes its optical spectroscopic classification from a Seyfert 1.5 type to a Seyfert 1. …

Growth Performance Of Weaned Angus Bulls Housed In A Compost Bedded Pack Barn, Courtney Branham, Anna Meyers

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Compost-bedded pack barns (CBP) are a typical facility utilized in dairy cattle operations across the United States. Their popularity is the result of improved animal welfare and reduced costs. The crossover of CBP into the beef cattle industry is new and the benefits and downfalls are not yet explored. Through a grant from NRCS, a CBP was built at the Derrickson Agricultural Complex in 2019-2020. In fall of 2020, the pack was established by mixing manure and sawdust shavings to start the aerobic composting process and weaned bulls were given access to the barn in November 2020. The objective of …

Asynchronous Delivery Format: Differential Effects On Performance And Engagement, Jessica Hamm, Leah Hayes, Makayla Reynolds, Raeanna Whitaker, Reganne Miller, Gregory Corso

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

In recent years, the number of online courses offered to students has increased. This increase brings the question of what format of online learning is the best for students. The purpose for this study was to investigate the effects of three asynchronous presentation formats on participant performance and engagement: slides with video-audio, slides with audio, and slides alone. We hypothesized significant differences among the formats in participant performance and engagement (best in video-audio format, worst in slides alone format). Participants (N=27) were randomly assigned to one of the three formats. Each format presented information about a fake island created by …

The Effects Of Nurse's Mental Health On Quality Patient Outcomes: A Quality Improvement Study, Alexandria Kincaid, Mara Walker, Mila Osborne, Tiyanna Jones, Victoria Clevenger

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Morale among nurses is declining rapidly, this could be due to the rising mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, stress, worry and post-traumatic stress disorder. Not to mention the rate of suicide in female nurses is 11.97/ 100,000 compared to non-nurse females having a rate of 7.58/ 100,000. Also, male nurses have an incidence of suicide at a rate of 39.8/ 100,000 compared to non-nurse males at 28.2/ 100,000. A thorough literature review was conducted and a total of 40 studies were reviewed. Common themes that emerged were "A decrease in nursing staff retention related to low satisfaction, lack …

Who Are You? The Evolution Of Appalachian Identity, Kiersten Baum, Ashton Culp

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

No abstract provided.

Documenting Night Sky Brightness Using Sky Quality Meters, Ryan Sergent, Jennifer Birriel

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

The use of artificial light at night contributes to light pollution across the globe. Prior to 2005, artificial sources of light at night were mainly high- and low-pressure sodium light sources, which are yellow rich. The increased use of LED lighting is changing spectral signature of the night sky is changing. LEDs emit a peak in blue light. Blue light is scattered much more effectively than yellow and red, increased use of LEDs will increase both glare and skyglow. Unihedron’s Sky Quality Meter (SQM) is an instrument used widely by astronomers to measure the luminance of the night sky. Data …

Use Of Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy To Study Hydroxyfulvenes, Ashley Stefani

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

This project was conducted to determine the conditions necessary in Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy (GCMS) for various hydroxyfulvenes. Several samples each having unique characteristics, such as high molar mass or specific functional groups, were used to determine the optimal conditions for each compound. Different GC parameters were varied including the inlet temperature, initial oven temperature and oven temperature ramp. Compounds were also studied at varying concentrations in order to determine the optimal conditions needed to produce reliable molecular ion data in the MS.

Emotion Recognition Using Brainwave Datasets, Bethlehem Seid, Heba Elgazzar

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

The purpose of this research project is to analyze the brainwave data collected from MUSE EEG headband and use machine learning techniques to select a small number of features and accurately predict the emotional state of an individual. The brainwave dataset records the reading of the MUSE EEG headband. Supervised machine learning techniques are designed and implemented on a brainwave dataset to predict positive, negative, and neutral emotional state. The classification algorithms: K-Nearest neighbors (KNN), Random Forest, and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are used in this research. Further, the dimensions of this dataset were also reduced without compromising the accuracy …

An Overview Of The Qualified Immunity Doctrine And Its Application In Kentucky Law, Ethan Garvin, Joe Dunman

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that protects law enforcement officers from lawsuits if the courts find their actions fit three criteria: the action must be discretionary rather than ministerial, the action must be in good faith, and the action must be within the scope of the employee’s authority. By conducting a survey of cases in both the Kentucky court system and the federal court system, this presentation analyzes how qualified immunity is applied. This presentation looks at the doctrine and what the courts look for in various tort claims involving police officers, such as negligence, assault, and false imprisonment. …

Testing Turmoil, Laura Von Mann, Christopher Beckham

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Test anxiety affects students throughout all grade levels, higher education, and even into adult life, at various levels of severity. With standardized testing becoming increasingly more present in the American school system, the condition known as test anxiety has also become a more prevalent topic amongst researchers and educators. This research aims to better understand test anxiety, its symptoms, causes, and possible treatments in order to ensure student success.

Continuous Authentication Of Smartphone Users Using Machine Learning, Suhana Ambol, Sherif Rashad

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Current smartphone security techniques offer less reliability. As an instance, personal identification numbers can be easily guessed or hacked, fingerprint scan requires hardware to operate, and face recognition can be affected by light, other people in the background, or different poses by the users. In addition, they are beneficial for one-time security, therefore commonly used at the time of login to verify users. However, what if there’s a change of user while accessing the smartphone, and the phone is accessed by an intruder after login. To deal with this issue, continuous authentication is applied which regularly and unnoticeably will address …

Analytical Method Development For The Analysis Of Biomass Degradation Products, Calista Dean, Emma Schmittzehe

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The goal of this project is to study the kinetics of hydrothermal liquefaction of biomass. Biomass contains stored chemical energy that can be converted to renewable liquid and gaseous fuels through various processes, but an in-depth understanding of the kinetics of these processes is important in order for them to be feasible on a large scale. Since biomass degradation products depend on the type of biomass used as well as the reaction conditions, this task can be quite complicated. To minimize complications in our initial studies, we will use D-glucose as the starting material. To better understand the degradation pathway’s …

Parental Sensitivity And Children's Emotion Regulation Development, Griffin Newell, Olivia Kee, Shari Kidwell

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Parental sensitivity is critical in the development of children’s attachment to their caregivers. Sensitivity refers to a parent's ability to understand and react synchronously with their child's emotions. Covert hostility is a form of insensitivity in which parents are subtly dismissing. The current study examines both parenting constructs during a frustration task, in relation to child behavior in an emotion interview. As part of a larger longitudinal study, 35 children (average age 6 years) and their parents waited eight minutes for children to be permitted to open a bag of prizes. Parental reactions to their children's behaviors were coded into …

April 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates Passover; From the Rabbi;From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

2020-2021 Lindenwood University Honors Convocation, Lindenwood University

Honors Convocation Programs

2020-2021 Lindenwood University Honors Convocation

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 62 Number 1, Spring 2021 [Print Issue V.61:1], Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

14 - VALUE PROPOSITION With more people going to college than ever before, how do we calculate the worth of a college degree? Lauren Loftus.

22 - HUMANITY IN THE HUMOR Santa Clara Magazine sat down with Assistance Professor Danielle Morgan to explore how laughter can be lifesaving—and life affirming. Leslie Griffy.

26 - TOMORROWLAND So really, what happens next? We chat with experts about how the pandemic could change our world as we know it. Leslie Griffy and Tracy Seipel.

32 - A BREAK Explore what you see when you step away from it all—and discover some flighty friends …

"I Am A Arkansas Man:" An Analysis Of African-American Masculinity In Antebellum Arkansas, Tye Boudra-Bland

ATU Theses and Dissertations 2021 - Present

This thesis examines the experiences of African-American men in the years leading up to and through the American Civil War in order to understand how they constructed their own sense of manhood. Contemporary slave narratives and abolitionists’ expositions routinely tailored their definitions of manhood to white notions of gender in order to garner white support. Prominent abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass tailored their language of resistance against slavers to cast them as honorable martyrs as opposed to vengeful slaves so as to undermine racist caricatures of brute violence. But black southern men struggled against the confines of their bondage and …

Mothers, Wives, And Sisters…But Also Citizens: Defining The Duty Of Female Civilians Through The Publications Of The Pankhurst Sisters During The Great War, Nicole Bridges

2021 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Undergraduate Major On The Youth Electorate Within The Bryant Community, Jenna Birnbohm-Kaminski

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

This thesis will carefully explore the relationship between undergraduate college major, and political participation and affiliation of young voters (ages 18-29). There has been a great deal of research in the field of voter behavior about this generation of young voters, and how they will impact the new electorate and overall political climate. An increasing commonality amongst young people is an undergraduate education of some kind. However, undergraduate students can choose their area of study, thus differentiating the exposure to information and experience of each student at a very impressionable time in their lives. A study of the political behavior …

A Literary Analysis Of The Origin Of Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Its Advancements, Philosophical, Ethical, Sociocultural, And Political Aspects; An Investigation Of The Underlying Attributes That Affect One’S Views On Hesc Research To Resolve Turkey And Brazil’S Hesc Policy, Religious, And Cultural Conflicts, Haleema Shamsuddin

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are cells derived from 5-day human embryos and are self-renewing cell lines that change into any type of cell in the body, a trait called pluripotency. hESCs have almost unlimited clinical and medical research potential. Despite the great therapeutic promise of hESC research, it comes with a controversial ethical debate due to its involvement with the destruction of the human embryo. The central argument revolves around the question of whether or not these human embryos should be ascribed equal moral status to fully developed humans. This thesis aims to analyze the origin and advancements of …

Reimagining The Duck Stamp, Hunting Licensure And Public Land Preservation, Alec Wayne Boyd-Devine

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The American Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp, or Duck Stamp, is a form of licensure issued by the Federal Government for waterfowl hunters. Why do physical stamps act as licensure to hunt waterfowl on both public and private land in the United States? How did the stamp become the key that grants access to resources that supposedly should be owned by the public? The duck stamp has been well-documented in conservation communities as a resource which has made significant positive impacts on the environment. The increase of anti-hunting sentiments in our society combined with fewer hunters per capita may …