Digital Commons Network^™

The Development Of Hybrid Lipid-Polymer Nanoparticle Architectures For The Sustained-Release Of Small Hydrophilic Molecules, Keegan Curry, Jill M. Steinbach-Rankins Dr.

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Introduction: Polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) have been utilized as drug delivery vehicles for a variety of applications. However, achieving sustained-release of small hydrophilic agents is a primary challenge for their use in prolonged delivery applications.

Objective: This study investigates how novel lipid-polymer hybrid particle architectures can be used to improve the release profile of small hydrophilic encapsulants. Here, PLGA NPs were produced via electrospraying and emulsions. Particles with a core-shell architecture were produced via coaxial electrospraying and the ability of this architecture to sustain release was examined. In addition, we combined polymeric core-shell NPs with a lipid coating to improve biocompatibility, …

Determinants Of Parking Fees On College Campuses, Hannah Huckeby

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The price of parking has recently been a hot topic around the Murray area, especially among the college students. Due to the drastic increase in parking pass prices there has been an abundant amount of discussion surrounding this idea of parking being a public good. Many individuals have been outraged which has brought up the questions of why there is a price tag on something that many people consider a public good. With that being said, this paper is going to take a deeper look into parking specifically pertaining to college campuses but also in the cities surrounding these institutions. …

Elevated Calcium Levels In Kentucky Lake: A Possible Emerging Problem With An Invasive Species, Adam T. Martin

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) are an exotic and invasive mollusk that have spread extensively through various rivers and lakes in the United States. These mussels are notorious for their “biofouling” capabilities costing billions of dollars in their removal from industrial, public, and power plant water supply lines. While having been present in the Tennessee River drainage with occasional small reproducing populations since the early 1990s, zebra mussels were never abundant or widespread. In 2017, high densities were found on structures and solid substrates throughout the lower portion of Kentucky Lake. Calcium is one of the essential elements that contributes …

Soil Responses To One-Season Winter Cover Crops, Mckenna Morgan, Iin Handayani

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Soil Responses to One-Season Winter Cover Crops

McKenna Morgan and I. P. Handayani

Hutson School of Agriculture Murray State University, KY, USA

Abstract

In regions like western Kentucky where wooded lots are common there is a growing interest in how to utilize them so that land profits can be maximized. The frequently poor soils in wooded areas due to erosion and lack of ground cover vegetation often cause complications in the creation of pasture areas. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess the effect of growing winter cover crops on soils to prepare for pasture systems in the …

Utilizing Municipal Compost And Equine Stall Waste As Potential Economic Alternatives In An In-Ground Pot-In-Pot Production System, Ashley Robert, Alyx Shultz

Posters-at-the-Capitol

For Western Kentucky farmers, one viable income source could be a pot-in-pot nursery production. One of the highest costs of production in this system was the planting media that the plants were grown in. Economical alternatives to high-priced, non-renewable peat-based mixes were important to consider. Unique to this region, were two renewable soil amendments that may help farmers to widen their profit margin in a pot-in-pot system. This research looked at the economic viability of locally sourced horse stall waste and municipal compost as soil amendments to a traditional bark and peat based mix. Initial cost projections were favorable for …

Prediction Of Metal Sample Failure From Scanning Electron Microscope Images Using Deep Learning Neural Network, Lawrence Madriaga, Ivan Novikov, Morteza Nurcheshmeh

Posters-at-the-Capitol

We present the preliminary results on using a deep learning neural network to predict a metal sample failure based on a set of images obtained with a Scanning Electron Microscope.

Various metal alloy samples were prepared according to ASTM E8/E8M-11 standards for a tensile test. Each sample was prepared for circle grid analysis and then stressed on a tensile machine. Stress and strain values were obtained for each position along the sample by measuring dimensions of each elongated circle. Increasing stress and strain values were found closer to the breakage of the sample with low values found at the holding …

Community Brought Together, Ethan Alan Conkin, Timothy Jacob Abbott, Tyemirlan Murat, Shahnaz Aly

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Community Brought Together

Ethan Conkin, Jacob Abbott, Tyemirlan Murat

Shahnaz Aly

Architectural Science

A community is a small or large social unit (a group of living things) that has something in common, such as norms, religion, values, or identity. Communities often share a sense of place that is situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighborhood) or in virtual space through communication platforms.

Are we hiding behind selfies and negative social media behavior instead of promoting human interaction and kindness? “For the past decade community has been slowly disappearing. Are we too busy for community, …

Creating A Computational Tool To Simulate Vibration Control For Piezoelectric Devices, Ahmet Ozkan Ozer, Emma J. Moore

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Piezoelectric materials have the unique ability to convert electrical energy to mechanical vibrations and vice versa. This project takes a stab to develop a reliable computational tool to simulate the vibration control of a novel “partial differential equation” model for a piezoelectric device, which is designed by integrating electric conducting piezoelectric layers constraining a viscoelastic layer to provide an active and lightweight intelligent structure. Controlling unwanted vibrations on piezoelectric devices (or harvesting energy from ambient vibrations) through piezoelectric layers has been the major focus in cutting-edge engineering applications such as ultrasonic welders and inchworms. The corresponding mathematical models for piezoelectric …

Quality Of Care Strategies And The Subsequent Improvement Of Kangaroo Care Incidence Rates In Premature Infants, Sarah Anderson

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Purpose: The benefits of kangaroo care (KC) has long been studied and proven. Despite the research, incidence rates of KC are low in the neonatal ICU at the Kentucky Children’s Hospital. Some barriers to KC exist in our NICU and this study strives to address them. This study aims to develop and implement strategies to increase utilization of KC from 41% to  75% for eligible infants.

Methods: KC occurrence was monitored in 364 infants with birth weight ≤ 1250 grams. Strategies implemented were education of nurses, improved nurse-to-patient ratio, emphasis of KC in multidisciplinary rounding, improved documentation, …

3d Wi-Fi Campus Coverage: Flying A Drone, Richard Thompson, Tyler Williams, Seth Pritchett, Tracy Whitlock

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Everyone in a college environment is immersed in their electronic devices. Whether it be in the quad, the classroom, the library or their favorite nook by the windows, they all need a reliable Wi-Fi signal to get their work done. In this era most of the tasks that has to be completed require some sort of connection between electronic devices especially if the individuals require information located on the internet. The main method of accessing the internet is using Wifi technology which uses electromagnetic waves to propagate information across a certain area. Considering the properties of these electromagnetic frequencies it …

Consumption Profiles Of Illicit And Neuropsychiatric Drugs In Urban And Rural Communities In Kentucky Using Sewage Epidemiology, Tara Croft, Katelyn Foppe, Rhiannon Huffines, Bikram Subedi

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The drug overdose deaths in the USA increased by ~20% from 2015 to 2016 to the total >63,600 drug overdose deaths in 2016. Kentucky is among the highest rate of drug overdose death states in the USA. The current estimates of the prevalence of substance abuse are based on the self-reported surveys, overdose/toxicological reports, and drug-related crime statistics. Survey-based conventional approaches are not only cost and time-intensive but also underestimate the actual consumption of drugs. As “wastewater never lie,” the drug residues in raw wastewater collected from the centralized wastewater treatment plants were utilized to determine the consumption rate of …

Impact Of Aerobic Compost Tea On Growth Of Lactuca Sativa Within A Peat-Based Growing Media, Ella Potts, Jessica Stoner, Alyx Shultz, Iin Handayani

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Compost and compost tea have been shown in practice to be valuable soil amendments across many horticultural applications; however, little rigorous quantitative work has been completed. Researchers designed a side-by-side trial with two replications to quantifiably study the impact of compost tea on the growth and vigor of soil-grown lettuce. A recycled poultry-litter-based aerobic compost tea was used for the treatment. Six lactuca sativa plants received each treatment or control. Researchers hypothesized the treatment plants would show more vigor and vegetative growth than control. The null hypothesis was treatment plants would be identical to control lettuce. Researchers failed to reject …

World War I And The People Of The Purchase, Caroline Mikez, David Pizzo

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Title: World War I and The People of the Purchase

Author: Cari Mikez

Faculty Mentor: Dr. David Pizzo

Department: Murray State History Department

ABSTRACT

The extensive impacts of World War I pervaded society on a global scale during the early twentieth century. The United States officially joined the international conflict in April of 1917 by aligning with the Triple Entente composed of Britain, France and Russia in the fight against the central European powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. In a similar fashion as the other warring nations, the American war effort depended on the development of a …

Revitalization: Creating New Architecture From Remnants, Joseph Williams, Anthony Graham, Milton Ochoa, Shahnaz Aly

Posters-at-the-Capitol

While it may seem appropriate to overlook the old for the new, is it possible to sustain our ecosystem in this manner? The choices we make impact our environment and those within it. Instead of relying on the novelty of the new, we should look to our inadequacies to give us greater opportunities. For we can achieve this through revitalization. By using revitalization, we have the opportunity to imbue something with new life and vitality. Revitalization in architecture can serve as a means to stabilize and perform for the greatest benefit to our ecosystem. We should look to revitalization in …

An Evidenced-Based Protocol For Eliminating Errors Associated With Intravenous Medication Errors, Susie Chaney, Blake Smith, Andrea Howard, Chanel Wilder, Suzi White Msn, Phcns-Bc

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The purpose of our research is to decrease the number of IV medication errors. IV medication errors occur due to the wrong drug, wrong dose, wrong rate, wrong concentration, incorrect aseptic technique, known allergies, omitted medications, wrong time of administration, incorrect labeling, patient identification, and no order for the infusion. Nurses’ perceptions of why medication errors occur included physicians’ medication orders are not clear, the names of many medications are similar, pharmacy did not label the medication correctly, poor communication, lack of staff to patient ratio, fatigue from hard work, nurses' heavy workload, and working night shift. This quality improvement …

Females Serving As The Head Coach Of Competitive Elite Male Sports, Christian Hensley

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Student-athletes’ Perceptions of females serving as the head coach of competitive elite male sports

Recent coaching employment of Becky Hammon and Kathryn Smith in the NBA and NFL inspires the discussion of the potential of witnessing the first female head coach hired in men’s professional basketball and football. Despite the presence of female leaders in many business and political realms, there still seems to be lack of gender equality in the employment of female administrators and coaches in the male dominant sports. This study investigate how women were perceived as an ideal head coach candidate in a male dominant sports …

Steeplechase Peer-Review Guidelines

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editor

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

No abstract provided.

Issue Information

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

No abstract provided.

2018-11-12, Board Of Regents, Murray State University

Board of Regents Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

2018-11-12 Facuty And Staff Forum, Board Of Regents, Murray State University

Board of Regents Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

Are Dietary Factors And Exercise Levels Related To Fertility Status?, Britt Fugmann, Rachel Tinius

Posters-at-the-Capitol

BACKGROUND: Infertility is a major public health concern as it affects up to 25% of couples in Western Countries. While there is some evidence that diet and exercise may be linked to fertility, there is no official dietary or exercise guidance for couples when trying to conceive. Additional information regarding the relationship between diet, exercise, and fertility is needed to better inform the development of guidelines for couples trying to conceive.

PURPOSE: To examine the relationships between diet, exercise, and fertility among women.

METHODS: Participants were selected from on ongoing pregnancy study (N=33). All participants went on to have healthy …

Performance Of The Parallelized Monte-Carlo Tree Search Approach For Dots And Boxes, Pranay Agrawal, Uta Ziegler

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The Monte-Carlo tree search (MCTS) is a method designed to solve difficult learning problems. MCTS performs random simulations from the current situation and stores the results in order to distinguish decisions based on their past success. MCTS will then select the best decision and finally repeat the process. Parallelizing the MCTS means to divide the learning process among independent learners. Then, after a fixed number of simulations, the data is shared and combined. Past research has shown that this approach is faster than non-parallelized approaches. Therefore, we anticipated that the time reduced from dividing the learning outweighs the potential costs …

Development Of A Pd-L1 Pet Imaging Biomarker, Caleb Jack Bridgwater

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Immunotherapy strategies are very promising treatments for cancer patients. Specifically, Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy focusing on the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway shows long-lasting positive results in many cancer patients. Unfortunately, not all the patients can benefit from this highly effective treatment. Hence, there is a great need for predictive biomarkers. Immunohistochemical (IHC) staining has been used as a way of predicting patient response, yet shows many problems. For example, IHC utilizes an invasive biopsy and sample fixing, which creates an incomplete and delayed picture of the patient’s biochemistry and the tumor microenvironment, consequently ignoring metastases.

The purpose of this study is to …

Variations Of Soil Qualities In Urban And Rural Areas, Gabby Barnes, Iin Handayani, Steve Still

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the variations of soil characteristics under different management practices in rural soils versus urban soils. In this study, soil samples from rural areas in Kentucky were collected from a woodland plot, a no-till plot, and a tilled plot. The soil samples from the rural were taken from two depths in order to better evaluate the effect of tillage on the soil. A shallow depth of 0-7cm and a deep depth of 7-15cm were used. Soil samples were also taken from urban plots in Memphis, TN. The sampled plots included were an animal …

British Family Structure: Expressions Of Power And Conceptions Of Family, Chloe Chaplin, Kathy Callahan Dr.

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The goal of this research is to examine family structure in early modern Scotland and England though the use of written communication. The primary focus will be on aristocratic families with a secondary look at upper-middle class families. This is due primarily to availability of records, and also why I will mainly be using written correspondence rather than secondary analyses, as this field is still relatively new. By exploring the development of key familial relationships (e.g. parent-child, husband-wife, and in-law interactions) through private correspondence, larger insights can be drawn about gender and the nuclear family. Also, these central relationships guide …

Mirror Mirror: A Look Into Muscle Dysmorphia, Olivia Parker, Jamie Scott

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Muscle dysmorphia is a subcategory of body dysmorphia. There is an extreme desire to gain body mass, and this is characterized by many psychological and behavioral symptoms. Previous research has found that mirror checking is a symptom of muscle dysmorphia. The purpose of this study is to continue the investigation into mirror checking as a diagnostic symptom of muscle dysmorphia. Our hypothesis is that participants who score higher on a scale of muscle dysmorphia will spend more time looking in a mirror than those who score low on the scale of muscle dysmorphia. Participants were males enrolled in psychology courses …

Longitudinal Study Of Water Quality In Jennings Creek, Bowling Green, Kentucky: Urbanization Impacts On Karst Groundwater, Lea Mitchell, Jason S. Polk, Rachel Kaiser, Ethan Givan, Kegan Mcclanahan

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Karst groundwater systems, which occur in areas where caves, sinkholes, and underground rivers dominate the landscape, are vulnerable to pollution from surface contaminants. In urban areas, like Bowling Green, Kentucky, which is home to extensive caves and groundwater supplies, the immediate transport of heavy metals, organic waste, chemicals, and other pollutants from surface activities into groundwater poses a serious threat. This research project was done to examine the water quality of urban karst sites in Bowling Green, Kentucky at Jennings Creek, which is a local river primarily fed from springs; the water quality of Jennings Creek was never tested before …

The Impact Of Terrorism On Consumer Sentiment: Evidence From Twitter Data, Kyla Scanlon

Posters-at-the-Capitol

This paper investigates the effects that 12 different terrorist attacks had on consumer sentiment, using data scraped from Twitter to determine a broad based emotional stance. This was inspired by my previous research that worked to determine the impact that terrorism had on the stock market. The goal of this research is to determine a more qualitative impact of terrorist attacks. I utilized Rapid Miner for data processing, and the Global Terrorism Database as my data source. The project began by examining the rise and fall of keywords and hashtags through sentiment analysis to measure reaction over time. The text …

Two-Dimensional Layered Materials (Graphene-Mos2) Nanocatalysts For Hydrogen Production, Jacob Dobler, Taylor Robinson, Sanju Gupta 7455940

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Recent development of two-dimensional layered materials including graphene-family and related nanomaterials have arisen as potential game changer for energy, water and sensing applications. While graphene is a form of carbon arranged hexagonally within atomic thin sheet, MoS₂ is becoming a popular, efficient, and cost-effective catalyst for electrochemical energy devices, in contrast to expensive platinum and palladium catalysts. In this work, we electrochemically desulfurize few-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) and aerogels with reduced graphene oxide (rGO) prepared under hydrothermal conditions ((P< 20 bar, T< 200 ^oC), for improving hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity via point defects (S-vacancy). Moreover, the interactions between rGO …