Digital Commons Network^™

Partners In Performance, Jordyn Irlmeier, Yedid Maya, Julissa Ramirez, Kyle Case, John Coate

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This presentation will discuss Partners in Performance. Partners in Performance was co-founded in 2015 and has partnered with 9 area schools to facilitate mentorship and music making in partner schools. Partners in Performance involves many different activities to help benefit area schools through music. These different activities include a mentorship retreat, a school residency, an on-campus clinic, and a side-by-side concert. Each component of Partners in Performance is unique and serves a unique purpose in meeting the needs and goals of area elementary, middle school, and high school students.

The Mentorship retreat serves as an introductory event for area high …

Can The Presence Of A 1/F Structure In Stride-To-Stride Variability Enable Us To Withstand Falls?, Jenny A. Kent, Andreas Skiadopoulos, Jordan Wickstrom, Nikolaos Stergiou

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Falls are a persistent threat to longevity and quality of life, affecting 1/3 of older adults living in the community each year. There is strong evidence suggesting that a particular pattern within our walking reflects an ability to adapt to a continually changing environment. Specifically, the stride-to-stride patterns of healthy walking have a 1/f frequency spectrum. This has been observed to degrade to varying extents with aging and pathology. The aim of this study was to determine whether the presence of this structure of variability is related to an increased ability to withstand perturbations. We hypothesized that individuals who demonstrated …

Modeling And Predicting Serious Cwbs Using Improved Analytic Methods, Benjamin Thomas, Kyle Kercher

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Research seeking to study and prevent serious forms of employee misbehaviors has been stymied by low incident rates and non-normal responses. Polychoric (cf., Pearson) correlation -based analytic methods offer solutions to these kinds of data. This 2-study (N = 172; N = 454) research provides support for these analytic methods in building models that distinguish serious and minor CWBs.

Identification Of Optimal Parameter Ranges In Building And Assessing Correlation Networks Built From Gene Expression., Qianran Li

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Gene expression data refers to the amount of product made by a gene go through central dogma. The processes of gene expression are not working alone. The collaborations among gene expression are happening in most of gene expression. To identify these correlation relationships, correlation network is chosen as a powerful tool to help modeling the co-expression relationships among gene expression process. A correlation network is a graphical model where the nodes represent genes and the edges represent the amount of correlation between genes, based on their expression. This network model in general is a wonderful tool for showcasing relationships, but …

Fire-Induced Mineralogical Changes In Midwest Tallgrass Prairie Soils, Lacey Legrand

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Tallgrass prairies are productive ecosystems that historically covered a large part of the Midwest and in the past were subjected to frequent, natural fire regimes. Today prairie remnants are often managed by ecological burns. Glacier Creek Preserve is a restored prairie in Omaha, Nebraska that includes randomized research plots established in 1978 to study the effects of burning on vegetation and provides a controlled field environment to investigate the effects of fire on soils. The purpose of this study is to compare soil mineralogy in long-term burned and unburned plots to answer the question: “Does prescribed burning induce mineralogical changes …

Towards A Mechanism Of Action Of An Antischistosomal Drug: Measuring Granulocytic Activity, Samantha Sack

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by a family of schistosome parasites which leads to vital organ damage. Praziquantel (PZ) is the only available treatment, but it is effective only against the adult worm. Partner labs have tested an antischistosomal drug which has been shown to have a higher efficacy against both juvenile and mature parasites in mice and monkeys compared to PZ. This effectiveness does not transfer to in vitro experiments; it kills the parasite outside of its host only at extremely high concentrations. This indicates that its efficacy is host-dependent, but the mechanism by which it functions …

Oral Microbiome Networks And Their Impact On Determining Early Childhood Caries Risk, Carly Johnson

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The oral microbiome of humans is known to be important not only to oral health but systemic health as well (1,2). Specifically, bacterial species present have been shown to contribute to the incidence of dental caries (3,4,5). The composition of oral bacteria in children can differ based upon different environmental factors such as birth and infancy feeding type (6,7,8,9,10,11). These factors occur early in a child’s life and therefore may be contributing factors to the development of early childhood caries (ECC). ECC is the most common chronic disease in childhood (4) and has become a major public health issue in …

Effect Of The Usage Of Handrails On Gait Dynamics In People With Parkinson's Disease, Daniel Jaravata, Danish Bhatti, Vivien Marmelat

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The purpose of this project is to determine if increasing body stability during handrails-use walking on a treadmill will increase the complexity of gait variability in patients with Parkinsons disease (PD). In young healthy participants, stride time-series of walking presents a pattern of complex variability, but this complexity critically decreases in patients with PD. Complexity is defined as an optimal state between too much regularity and too much irregularity, allowing the locomotor system to maintain robust performances while being able to adapt to perturbations. A possible explanation is that the decrease in complexity results from increased control mechanisms to avoid …

The Relationship Between Linear And Nonlinear Analysis On Activity Data, Katlyn J. Nimtz

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Activity monitoring in older adults is a great way to predict disability without interfering in their daily life. We can analyze that data using linear and nonlinear analysis. While linear analysis measures the variation of activity during a specific period of time (i.e., mean, standard deviation), nonlinear analysis focuses on the evolution of activity over a period of time. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to observe the relationship between linear and nonlinear analysis of activity data obtained by activity monitoring in older adults. Eight participants wore an activity monitor around their waist for seven days. Linear analysis was …

Gender Identity And Self-Esteem Within The Contexts Of The Same-Sex Peer Group, Nation, And Group Individualism And Collectivism, Mithra H. Pirooz

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Adolescence is a period of development during which needs and relationships shift (Sebastian, Burnett, & Blakemore, 2008). Issues of gender also become more salient, and gender identity has been related to different areas of psychosocial adjustment, such as self-esteem (Egan & Perry, 2001). The current study examined predictors of self-esteem among early adolescents in the context of a multilevel model. We considered felt pressure to conform to gender norms, gender typicality, and gender satisfaction as individual-level predictors within the contexts of the same-sex peer group, nation, and group levels of individualism and collectivism. Multilevel modeling was employed to account for …

Self-Care Among Social Work Educators, Shelby Connett

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Self-Care Among Social Work Educators combines the results of several academic projects completed to understand the intersections of self -care practice and teaching methods among social work educators and presents them as complete work, highlighting themes present throughout the projects and providing recommendations for further efforts.

Is Poverty Colorblind? Implications Of Imagery Used By International Nongovernmental Organizations In The United States, Abhishek Bhati

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

International Nongovernmental Organizations (INGOs) use images of the beneficiaries in their fundraising campaigns when soliciting donations. Often these images are negative and stereotype poor as victims and helpless. However, there is little empirical research to understand if such representation leads to stereotyping of the poor and subsequently contributes to racial biases. This paper aims at establishing this empirical link by answering the research question: Does the representation of beneficiaries by INGOs lead to stereotyping and racial biases. The study draws on data analysis of images from the 32 largest INGOs in the United States and experimental survey design to investigate …

Acute Subdural Hematoma In A High School Football Player Requiring Emergent Decompressive Craniecromy, Christine Center

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The purpose of this report is to present the case of a high school football player that was injured in a game causing an acute subdural hematoma (SDH). A SDH is a potential life-threatening arterial vessel bleed in the brain, causing increased intracranial pressure. The intervention used to treat the athlete was an emergent decompressive craniectomy. The uniqueness of the case is due to both rare pathology and treatment method used. The athlete had a positive outcome due to prompt on-field assessment, and advanced surgical treatments. Certified Athletic Trainers (ATC) should know how to recognize symptoms of traumatic brain injury, …

Can The Scale-Free Networks, Improve The Prediction Of Pertussis Infection Rates?, Kimia Ameri

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Whooping cough is a highly contagious disease with randomness pattern of infection. Outbreaks of whooping cough have increased over the past few years and has drawn the attention of health care providers. Understanding the spread mechanisms of contagious disease is very important and timely. Extension of contagious disease depends on many complicated factors including pathogen and host environment, exposed population and their activities. In this work, we try to find best prediction for the exposed population. A new SEIR model based on network (NB-SEIR) proposed to improve the accuracy of prediction for number of infected individuals. For this purpose, the …

The Astro Xo Exoskeleton Alters Ankle Kinetics In Healthy Individuals, Blake Beier, Angel E. Gonzalez, Erica Hedrick, Jeffrey M. Patterson, Corbin Rasmussen

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The ankle joint is one of the most important for walking, producing 35-45% of the summed ankle, knee, and hip positive mechanical work for each stride. Ankle weakness results in reduced torque and power production, leading to slower self-selected speed. Slower preferred walking speed correlates with poorer physical function, health status, more disabilities, and increased medical-surgical visits. Many orthotic and exoskeletal devices have been created to restore proper ankle function by promoting ankle plantar flexion. This study assessed the effects of the Astro XO Exoskeleton (AXO) on ankle kinetics and kinematics for healthy, young individuals. The study demonstrated that wearing …

Creativity In Two Types Of Violent Groups, Laramie Sproles

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Terrorism can be defined as a type of ideologically motivated violence that arises during asymmetrical conflict and has far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate target. This project seeks to isolate and examine one element of terrorism: ideologically-motivated violence. While malevolent innovation has been written about extensively over the past five years, little is known about correlates of creativity in actual violent individuals. At the broadest level, the current project focuses on personality profiles and creative problem solving of two different types of violent individuals. The goal of this study is to examine individual differences that characterize two types of violent …

Team Leadership Emergence And Team Outcomes, Ryan Royston

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Using sequential analysis, we observed how team problem solving and procedural communication differed by leadership (shared leadership, single leader, or leaderless). While all teams engaged in solution identification and elaboration, shared leader teams showed higher performance, and tended to draw more connections with solutions and engage in planning follow-up tasks.

Overall Wellness Of First Generation College Student-Athletes, Shane Warehime

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The present study examined the overall wellness of first-generation student-athletes (FGSA) in comparison to non-first generation student-athletes (non-FGSA),first-generation college students (FGCS), and non-first generation college students (non-FGCS). Overall wellness was assessed using the Five-Factor WellnessInventory. Non-FGSA scored significantly higher than non-FGCS in overall wellness and life satisfaction. Non-FGSA and FGSA scored significantly higher than non-FGCS and FGCS in the physical self subscale (i.e., diet, exercise). In sum, athletics may play an important role in the wellness of student-athletes, which could be enough to mitigate any challenges that first-generation college students face.

Follow My Voice: The Future Of Phr Authentication, Jeanette M. Rose, Ryan Schuetzler, John R. Windle, Ann L. Fruhling

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The current electronic personal health record (PHR) has low patient adoption [1]. Increasing use and adoption of the PHR will improve patient-centered care. Users often have difficulty remembering passwords or share them, giving multiple people access to one account.

Utilizing biometrics for authentication is becoming more common in our daily lives – think of the fingerprint sensor on a smartphone or retina scanners at high security corporations. The quickly evolving technology that runs our lives calls for incorporating biometric authentication into more systems. Using biometric authentication can ensure that passwords would not need to be remembered and that only the …

Amazon Alexa: The Best Personal Assistant Or An Eavesdropping Witch, Alisa Bohac, Michael Keck

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The prolific integration of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices into our homes is continuously generating discussions surrounding the security and privacy of these devices. One device that has received particular attention in the past few years is the Amazon Alexa, a ‘personal assistant’ IoT device, which listens to user commands and performs certain actions. According to Amazon, “millions of Alexa devices” were sold in the 2017 Holiday period alone [1]. However, the continuous amalgamation of technology has prompted the idea that many digital devices, through their overall functionality, could be utilized by cybercriminals to digitally intrude into our personal lives [2]. Hence, …

Impact Of Real World Environments On Movement Variability, Matt Harrison

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Osteoarthritis; OA for short, is the most common form of arthritis and is one of the leading causes of disability. OA is the progressive wearing down of the cartilage covering bones and joints. For those with end stage knee OA, a total knee arthroplasty, or replacement, is the standard treatment with more than 700,000 TKA’s performed annually. While pain is improved in general, the functional performance and activity levels of the joint often do not return to those of healthy individuals. To understand the long-term consequences of poor function post-TKA, we need data that characterizes an individual’s real-world movement and …

Summit: Social Media Platform, Delaney Lyman

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Summit is a new social media platform designed to foster international discourse and understanding. My platform supports targeted questioning where users can pose questions to specific demographics and have their question brought directly to the audience it was intended for. This manner of connecting opens channels of communication to small audiences that are often hard to reach and allows answerers to be heard without being drowned out by larger communities online. My hope is that Summit creates a space where diverse ideas and people unite.

Effect Of Mindful Meditation And Gratitude Journaling On College Student Stress And Well-Being Overtime, Stephanie N. Hines, Lisa L. Scherer

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

College students are stressed out! Majority of students tend to use maladaptive mechanisms to cope with stress, which can potentially impact their academics and career planning. This study focused on the potential benefits of two mainstream Mindfulness Training interventions in reducing stress for college students. Specifically, Mindful Meditation and Mindful Gratitude Journaling were implemented into two separate conditions, in which data was collected from 30 Organizational Psychology students online who were randomly assigned to each condition. Students were required to answer a series of questionnaires at times one (pre-test) and times two (post-test) that measured demographics, levels of stress, and …

The Moderating Effects Of Structure In Evaluation Criteria On The Relationship Between Tolerance For Ambiguity And Idea Evaluation Accuracy, Vignesh Murugavel

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This study examined how participant’s tolerance for ambiguity affected the accuracy of their evaluations of ideas. Structure in evaluation criteria was used as a moderating variable. Participants assessed 15 solutions to an ambiguous problem and evaluated the originality of the solutions under three experimental conditions. Participants were either given no structure, limited structure, or more structure for evaluating solutions. Participants were also given a measure of tolerance for ambiguity. Tolerance for ambiguity had no bearing solution evaluation accuracy for the quality of a solution in any condition. Tolerance for ambiguity was negatively related to originality evaluation accuracy in the no …

Intelligent And Human-Aware Decision Making For Semi-Autonomous Human Rehabilitation Assistance Using Modular Robots, Anoop Mishra

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Modular Self-reconfigurable Robots (MSRs) are robots that can adapt their shape and mobility while performing their operations. We are developing an MSR called MARIO (Modular Robots for Assistance in Robust and Intelligent Operations) to assist patients with spinal cord injury in performing daily living tasks. In this research, we are investigating computational techniques that will enable MARIO to autonomously adapt its shape while performing an assistive task, and, while remaining aware of the human user’s satisfaction in receiving assistance from MARIO. We are developing semi-autonomous decision making techniques within a computational framework called shared autonomy that will adapt MARIO’s movements …

Examining The Minute To Minute Predictability Of Walking Distance Across Multiple Terrains, Tyler Hamer

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

EXAMINING THE MINUTE TO MINUTE PREDICTABILITY OF WALKING DISTANCE ACROSS MULTIPLE TERRAINS

Tyler Hamer, Abderrahman Ouattas, Katlyn Nimtz, & Brian A. Knarr

Department of Biomechanics, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE 68182

With findings that the 6MWT is more efficient than the original 12-minute walk test (12MWT), perhaps it can be evident that even the 6MWT can be shortened to examine its effects in a shorter duration that can be more beneficial to the participant. The objective of this study is to examine the outcomes of each minute throughout the 6MWT trials and to see if functional measures can …

Contextual Fear Learning And Memory In Alternative Stress Coping Styles, Matthew R. Baker, Ryan Y. Wong

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Animals frequently must overcome stressors, and the ability to encode and recall these salient experiences is essential to an individual’s survival. Across many taxa, studies have documented two alternative stress coping styles (proactive and reactive) that differ in behavior, cognition, stress physiology, and underlying neuromolecular mechanisms. The role of stress in cognitive traits (e.g. learning and memory) has been well documented, however, the influence of an animal’s stress coping style on learning and memory capabilities is only beginning to be understood. Here, we developed a contextual fear learning paradigm to characterize learning and memory differences between proactive and reactive stress …

Supervised Walking Exercise Therapy Improves Gait Biomechanics In Patients With Peripheral Artery Disease, Anthony Arellano, Sara A. Myers, Iraklis Pipinos, Ben Senderling, Molly Schieber, Jason Johanning, Cassidy Berlin, Holly Despiegelaere

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is commonly caused by atherosclerotic build-up of plaque within the peripheral arteries, affecting the blood flow to the legs. The most common presentation of PAD is intermittent claudication; a condition in which when the patient walks the metabolic demands of the lower limbs exceed the limited supply of blood, causing exercise- induced discomfort and decreased walking ability. Walking exercise is the first line of treatment in patients with claudication with the best results achieved in patients undergoing supervised exercise therapy for at least three months. Supervised walking exercise results in increased maximum walking distances comparable to …

Conjugate Addition Of Sulfur Nucleophiles To Bisphenol A-3,4-Quinone, Mahmud Bezhani

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a known endocrine-disrupting chemical and displays estrogenic properties. Both in vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated BPA can display genotoxic properties. BPA is metabolized to catechols which are further oxidized to electrophilic o-quinones capable of binding to cellular nucleophiles. One hypothesis of BPA toxicity is reaction of these electrophilic metabolites with cellular nucleophiles. We have developed an efficient, high-yield synthesis of both mono- and di-o-quinones of BPA, in addition to mono- and dicatechols of BPA. We have investigated the products form when bisphenol A-3,4-quinone (BPA-3,4-Q) reacts with the sulfur nucleophiles N-acetylcysteine (NAS) and glutathione (GSH). The …

Supercell Crystal Structure Of Na2ga2(Bo3)2, Grace Brown

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Na₂Ga₂(BO₃)₂O is an oxyborate with a reported crystal structure in the trigonal space group P1c. The literature states that the three-dimensional structure is created from infinite stacking of parallel [NaGa₂(BO₃)₂] ∞ sheets separated by sodium layers. Our single-crystal X-ray diffraction data requires some modification to this structure. We believe that Na₂Ga₂(BO₃)₂O actually possesses a supercell crystal structure with lower symmetry. The borate anions within the [NaGa₂(BO₃)₂ ] sheets are not parallel to each …