Digital Commons Network^™

Women Of The 1950s: American Housewives And The Outrageous Expectations, Jordyn Hughes

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The 1950’s was a time when companies took advantage of the sexist and domesticated view that society had on women, they began aiming their advertisements at women and how products would help them please their husbands. These advertisements made people believe they would not be happy or comfortable without the product shown.

Study On The Effects Of Tulsi On Lncap Cells And The Mechanism Used To Induce Apoptosis, Omar Garcia, Omar Viqar

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Homeostasis is a major property that entails the regulation of internal conditions to maintain stability in the human body. A key aspect of regulation is the removal of unwanted cells. Critical diseases such as cancer may occur due to excess cell proliferation. Inducing apoptosis can be a significant method of treating cancer. Understanding the mechanisms of apoptosis can be advantageous towards combating diseases in which cells are unnecessarily proliferating. Tulsi (Holy Basil) is a plant that has shown many therapeutic properties. Furthermore, it has shown to contain significant antitumor agents. Analyzing the level of expression of proteins when cancer cells …

Temperature Dependent Variation In Self-Reported Contagious Yawning Within A Single Season, Melissa Dauzonne, Yana Prilutskaya, Daniel Garcia, Amani Al Barghouti

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Previous cross-cultural research on humans has shown that self-reported contagious yawning frequency varies between distinct seasons and climate conditions. However, it remains possible that differences in yawning across seasons may be a result of physiological circadian changes across the year. In attempt to address this question, here we discuss the results of a study investigating the variation in the frequency of self-reported contagious yawning within a single season in one geographic location. A total of 142 pedestrians were recruited outdoors during an 18-day period over the summer in an equatorial monsoon climate in southern Florida, USA. Consistent with the thermoregulatory …

The Potential Effects Of Caffeine, Energy Drinks, And Alcoholic Drinks On Gene Expression Using The Yeast (Saccharomyces Cerevisiae) Model System, Amal Bhullar, Ashley Chang-Story

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Especially while in college, young people are supplementing their diets with various additives including caffeine in the forms of pills and energy drinks, in addition to consuming alcoholic beverages. This project aims to investigate the effects of three concentrations (low, medium, and high) of various caffeinated and alcoholic dietary additives/beverages on gene expression. Since yeast share approximately 30% of their genome with humans several conserved genes belonging to various functional groups (digestion, cell cycle, ion channel, molecular chaperone, kinases and transcription) were selectively targeted in this study. High, medium and low concentrations of caffeine tablets, energy drinks (Red Bull energy …

Understanding The Mysteries Of African Ancestry Along My Maternal Lineage, Natalie Negrón

Undergraduate Student Symposium

People have often been interested in their ancestral roots, and the ability to document ancestry via the use of genetic tools has never been greater and more economical. Inspired by the Human Genographic Project, the purpose of this study was to better understand the historical links connecting African ancestry to Puerto Rican individuals along their maternal lineage. Previous research had shown that the researcher’s maternal ancestry was linked to Haplogroup L1, which is one of the human subpopulations to have more recently migrated from Africa. For this project, DNA samples were collected from cheek swabs of both the researcher and …

Viral Videos: Random Phenomena Or Reproducible Templates?, Marisa Oleski

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The purpose of this research is to identify the impact of the passage of policies that regulate physician assisted suicide in Oregon and the Netherlands. In the case of Oregon, data was collected from the Oregon State Health Department and was used to identify the number of participants, demographics, and number of deaths as a result of physician assisted suicide. In the case of the Netherlands, data was collected from a Dutch online publication known as Statline and supplementary information was gathered from an evaluation titled “Law Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide”, which was done with the …

A Guide To Exoplanets: Observed Properties, Classification, And Habitability Of Alien Worlds, Rosario Echeguren

Undergraduate Student Symposium

We present a study of exoplanets. Exoplanets are planets orbiting not our sun but other host stars. The thousands of known exoplanets are extremely diverse in terms of mass, orbit, and host-star type. This study will examine the physical properties of exoplanets and their characterization, as well as exoplanetary habitability through the lens of the emerging discipline of astrobiology. The goal of this study is to create a guidebook, which will act as a unique and engaging reference guide for future space travelers.

An Algebro-Geometric Approach To Reverse Engineering The Lac Operon In E. Coli, Priscila Reyes, Ly Nguyen

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Discrete modeling of biological mechanisms such as the lac operon is crucial in giving us a thorough understanding of their function and the related control mechanisms. This, in turn, provides us with a deeper insight into the organisms that employ these biological mechanisms as a whole. In this work, we utilize certain techniques from algebraic geometry, such as Gröbner basis, to attain a polynomial representation of the lac operon in E. coli based on its required catalysts and environmental conditions. First, we construct a Boolean network and wiring diagram of the lac operon system in order to predict the status …

Attitudes Of Rural Ecuadorians Toward Conservation Of Species And Environmental Education, Amanda Craig

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The exploration of people's attitudes in regard to other animal species with whom they co-exist in a shared ecosystem is a key element necessary for the improvement of local and regional conservation initiatives. In Ecuador, species such as the jaguar (Panthera Onca) require vast ranges of tropical rain forest and stretches of riverbank in order to survive in the wild. Increasing numbers of people share the forest with jaguars and other species. Habitat destruction and conversion, hunting and the potential lack of knowledge regarding the species’ ecological role continue to influence the conservation efforts of these threatened large …

Can Affordable Housing Stimulate The Fort Lauderdale Economy?, Andrew Socarras

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The purpose of this research is to determine whether or not affordable housing can have a positive impact on the Fort Lauderdale economy and, if possible, to identify the methods on how to extract the most profitable outcomes for society. Many times, affordable housing is managed improperly and after only a matter of years is regarded by locals as the “projects” or “ghetto.” As a result, the neighborhoods that encompass these developments depreciate in value, impairing the local economy.

Fort Lauderdale has experienced a grown spurt within the past 5 years and is continuing to grow at a steady pace …

Don't Think It, Don't Do It: Controlling Executive Control, Karissa Delorme, Hannah Dean

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Self-control involves the ability to control immediate impulses and desires. According to the ego depletion model, self-control is a limited resource. Many studies have found that participants who perform a selfcontrol task show impaired performance on subsequent executive control tasks, such as those measuring working memory and attention. In this study, we hypothesized that individuals who perform a self-control task would subsequently demonstrate poorer inhibitory control as measured in a Stroop and stop signal task. Participants were first given instructions to list their daily activities for five minutes as they either attempted to not think about a white bear (self-control …

Dsc And Tga Analysis On 3-Flowable Dental-Light Cured Restorative Composite, Samon Nazemian

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Since their introduction in 1996, dental-light cured flowable composites have been used as restorative materials for filling and repairing minimally invasive cavities. They are commonly used because they are insoluble, aesthetic, insensitive to dehydration, easy to manipulate, and reasonably inexpensive. Various brands advertise multiple advantages and are comprised differently. One property prior flowable composites exhibited was a significant polymerization shrinkage, which makes it unsuitable for occlusal wear. In this project, we analyzed the marginal shrinkage and stability of three different types of composites: CLEARFIL MAJESTY ES Flow, Genesis Flowable Light Cure Composite, and GrandioSO Heavy Flow. The composites were cured …

Shifting Londoner Medical Practices In The Early 1800s: The Influence Of Paris Medicine, Aarabhi Rajagopal

Undergraduate Student Symposium

For centuries, Western medicine has developed and flourished in the urban city of London, changing the dynamic between the practice and focus of medicine. This study aims to understand and compare the medical practices in London before and after the introduction of Paris medicine, examining the contributions Paris medicine made to create the “after” medical practices in London. Specifically, in the early 1800s, clinical medicine in London was profoundly affected by Paris medicine, a branch of clinical medicine that flourished in France in the late 1700s and early 1800s, leading to the innovation of medical practices currently in use today. …

Why Do Patients Who Are Going Blind Lose Their Blue Color Vision First?, Mariana Ferraz

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a slowly progressive, inherited retinal degeneration affecting roughly 1 in 4000 people, typically resulting in a loss of peripheral and night vision, with most legally blind by age 40^[1] . RP is characterized by the apoptosis of retinal rods and cones (photoreceptors). Cones are responsible for central and color vision, while rods provide peripheral and nighttime vision. Over 20 years ago, it was reported that some RP patients initially lose short wavelength cones (i.e., s-cones for blueviolet colors; e.g., imagine a world in which shades of blue look grey), but no further research on this …

Antibacterial Activity Of Byoplanet's Advanced Oxidation Prototype, Karan Patel, Poorandai Sanicharran, Joanna Theodorou

Undergraduate Student Symposium

In today’s effort to improve public health, antimicrobials have been a key point of focus in reducing the spread of infectious disease. ByoPlanet, a total solutions provider for bringing advanced science for killing today’s germs, took on the challenge of developing new products for sanitation in its Advanced Oxidation Prototype. In this system, distilled water is exposed to UV light and infused with ozone. Our goal was to determine if the treated water exhibited antibacterial activity. Ten liters of distilled water was pumped through the Advanced Oxidation Prototype for 15 minutes. The treated water was applied to Escherichia coli or …

Modeling And Simulation Of Caenorhabditis Elegans Chemotaxis In Response To A Dynamic Engineered Bacteria, Divya Pandya

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Parasitic helminthes remain important causative agents of human, plant and animal diseases. Helminthes seek out food sources and navigate toward potential hosts using olfaction of simple chemical cues, a process called chemoattraction. While several studies have examined how nematodes, including Caenorhabditis elegans, behave in response to a chemoattractant, how the characteristics of the chemoattractant affect worm behavior has yet to explored. In this manuscript, we develop a mathematical model to examine how characteristics of common chemoattractants affect movement and behavior in the model nematode C. elegans. Specifically, we model a scenario where a toxic, engineered bacteria designed to …

Source Memory Recognition After A Distractor Task, Rajeev Jaundoo

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Without the language to describe the objects and events in the environment, is it more difficult to encode memories of those objects and events? Based on our previous research, we expected better memory for objects we have the language to label. Specifically, in our study we examined the relationship between language and source memory. First, participants were presented the names of novel animals to learn. Participants were then asked to draw some of the animals they just learned, along with some novel animals as well. This exposed the participants to novel stimuli, but without any language or labels to describe …

14th Annual Undergraduate Student Symposium, Farquhar Honors College

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The Undergraduate Student Symposium, sponsored by the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, presents student projects through presentations, papers, and poster displays. The event serves as a “showcase” demonstrating the outstanding scholarship of undergraduate students at NSU. The symposium is open to undergraduate students from all disciplines. Projects cover areas of student scholarship ranging from the experimental and the applied to the computational, theoretical, artistic, and literary. They are taken from class assignments and independent projects. The projects do not have to be complete; presentations can represent any stage in the concept’s evolution, from proposal and literature review to fully …

Using Visual Vignettes: My Learning To Date, Tricia L. Morrison

The Qualitative Report

Cancer survivors report a gap in work integration advice from healthcare professionals. This occurs despite physicians routinely providing comment upon survivors’ work abilities to insurers and employers. In order to understand the phenomena of survivors’ work integration from physicians’ perspectives, a vignette methodology was used. Vignettes were chosen as a means to explore physicians’ perspectives in a non-confrontational and sensitive manner. Vignettes, composed of photographs and narratives reflective of survivors’ lived experiences of work integration were presented to 10 physicians during individual interviews. In this manuscript, I outline my experience using vignettes, the learning I have achieved, and the modifications …

Positive Psychology’S Character Strengths In Addiction-Spirituality Research: A Qualitative Systematic Literature Review, Sahaya G. Selvam

The Qualitative Report

There is an increasing interest in the scientific study of the association between spirituality and recovery from addiction. While most of these studies have provided evidence for a possible relationship, others have explored the underlying mechanisms and meditators in the relationship. However, generally, many studies and reviews have not approached the issue within a specific theoretical framework of mainstream psychology. In an attempt to fill this gap, the review being reported here undertook a Qualitative Systematic Literature Review (QSLR) of addiction-spirituality literature. QSLR is an orderly manner of searching for academic literature, selecting relevant literature following a set of inclusion/exclusion …

Opening The Ears That Science Closed: Transforming Qualitative Data Using Oral Coding, James A. Bernauer

The Qualitative Report

The purpose of this article is to describe an alternative method for transcribing and transforming (analyzing and interpreting) oral data collected from interviews. Rather than record and then immediately transcribe data, the “oral coding” approach relies on a Three-Phase Approach. Phase One involves extended and reflective listening to the original interview data. This extended time with data in its original oral form enables researchers to construct both propositional and tacit knowledge in relation to the phenomenon being investigated. Intensive encounters with the original data are continued during the Second Phase of analysis and interpretation by re-recording on another device those …

Governance And Organizational Sponsorship As Success Factors In Free/Libre And Open Source Software Development: An Empirical Investigation Using Structural Equation Modeling, Aleksandr Blekh

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Recent advances in information technologies and subsequent explosive growth of computer software use in practically all aspects of everyday life provide tremendous opportunities and benefits for improving people's lives. However, significant proportion of software projects represents cancelled, abandoned or otherwise failed projects. This situation exists not only in commercial software products or government information systems, but also in an increasingly popular and important domain of free/libre and open source software (FLOSS).

The problem of failures in software development projects requires identification and understanding of the factors of success and their interrelationships. Practice and previous research suggest that governance of software …

Affect And Online Privacy Concerns, David Charles Castano

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of affect on privacy concerns and privacy behaviors. A considerable amount of research in the information systems field argues that privacy concerns, usually conceptualized as an evaluation of privacy risks, influence privacy behaviors. However, recent theoretical work shows that affect, a pre-cognitive evaluation, has a significant effect on preferences and choices in risky situations. Affect is contrasted with cognitive issues in privacy decision making and the role of affective versus cognitive-consequentialist factors is reviewed in privacy context.

A causal model was developed to address how affect influences privacy concerns and …

Immunology Inspired Detection Of Data Theft From Autonomous Network Activity, Theodore O. Cochran

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The threat of data theft posed by self-propagating, remotely controlled bot malware is increasing. Cyber criminals are motivated to steal sensitive data, such as user names, passwords, account numbers, and credit card numbers, because these items can be parlayed into cash. For anonymity and economy of scale, bot networks have become the cyber criminal’s weapon of choice. In 2010 a single botnet included over one million compromised host computers, and one of the largest botnets in 2011 was specifically designed to harvest financial data from its victims. Unfortunately, current intrusion detection methods are unable to effectively detect data extraction techniques …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Athletic Apparel And Equipment Sponsorship Related To Student-Athlete Recruitment, Melissa J. Davies, Katharine A. Burakowski

The Qualitative Report

The purpose of this study was to extend previous literature on student-athlete college choice by examining part of the recruitment process as a precursor to student-athlete decision-making. More specifically, this exploratory study aimed to empirically examine the extent to which apparel sponsorships affect student-athlete recruitment. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten football players at a state-supported NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) institution in the Rocky Mountain region. An inductive approach was used in identifying three emergent themes. These themes suggest that football players at this institution did not hold the apparel and equipment sponsorship as a deciding factor for the …

Goal Orientation And Reading Strategy Use Of Turkish Students Of An English Language Teaching Department, Leyla Tercanlioglu, Hakan Demiröz

The Qualitative Report

This study aims to investigate qualitatively the role of goal orientation in reading comprehension both in native (L1) and second or foreign languages (L2), and the reading strategy use in L1 and L2 of the Turkish advanced students of an English Language Teaching (ELT) Department in order to understand the pedagogical aspects of reading. The data of this phenomenological study come from one-on-one, semi-structured interviews carried out with 8 Turkish ELT students; 4 preparatory class students, 4 firstyear students, who take a reading course. The results of the study demonstrated that the participants had a variety of goal orientations which …

Together, Apart. A Review Of On (Writing) Families: Autoethnographies Of Presence And Absence, Love And Loss, Edited By Jonathan Wyatt And Tony E. Adams, Jessica Smartt Gullion

The Qualitative Report

In this essay, I offer a review of the book, On (Writing) Families: Autoethnographies of Presence and Absence, Love and Loss, edited by Jonathan Wyatt and Tony E. Adams. An important contribution to the field of authethnography, this book will appeal not only to scholars of family and of qualitative inquiry, but also to people struggling to find meaning in the crazy complexities of family relationships.

The Political Dynamics Of Corporate Co-Evolution: Replicating And Extending A Case Study, Ilan Avrichir, Maria Laura Ferranty Maclennan

The Qualitative Report

Although a significant body of knowledge about the strategies that companies use in their interactions with their environments exists, much less is known about the political dynamics of these interactions in situations of co-evolution between companies and environments. In this case study, we analyze the interactions between the representatives of producers (RPs) of ornamental rock and government authorities (GA) in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo (ESS). These interactions involved the regulation of heavy cargo transportation and resulted in a significant reduction in road accidents. In this analysis, we replicate a recently published case (Child, Tse & Rodrigues, 2013). Replicating …

A Grounded Theory Of Persistence In A Limited-Residency Doctoral Program, Donna H. Kennedy, Steven R. Terrell, Michael Lohle

The Qualitative Report

Approximately 50% of doctoral students in social science, humanities, and educational doctoral programs fail to earn their Ph.D. This number is 10% to 15% higher for students enrolled in online or limited-residency programs. Using in-depth interviews and qualitative data analysis techniques, this grounded-theory study examined participants’ recollections of their experience as students in a limited-residency doctoral program and their reasons for withdrawal while working on their dissertation. The study was guided by the central question “What is the nature of the participants’ experiences of doctoral attrition in a limited-residency doctoral program?” The resultant theory clarified relationships between attrition and a …

Exploring Teacher Development Through Racial Discourse, Lamont D. Simmons

The Qualitative Report

In reviewing the book, Making Meaning of Whiteness, by Alice McIntyre, I discussed the author’s examination of whiteness through the lenses of white female, student teachers. I underscored how McIntyre employed a Participatory Action Research methodology (drawing on feminist theory), as a way to understand how her participants made meaning of whiteness. The study’s findings reveal that for the participants, their “whiteness” is normal, which may serve to hinder their capacity for developing culturally responsive teaching practices.