Digital Commons Network^™

Deficits In Gait Biomechanics In Runners On A University Team: Implications For Preventative Sport Healthcare, W. Zachary Dean

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Sport healthcare providers in team-based settings conduct functional testing to identify injury risk. Results are used in team-based injury prevention programs. This process is different than care for a patient once they become injured. Gait analyses are a functional test for runners. Therefore, we aimed to describe the bilateral running biomechanics in a university cross country team with emphasis on variables linked to running-related injury (RRI). Twenty-seven male (n=10) and female (n=17) distance runners (age, 18-23yrs; height, 1.82±0.57m; mass, 58.4±6.8 kg) from a single university team participated in this descriptive study. Gait was assessed during a treadmill run at a …

Determinants Of Hospital Charges For Hospital Admissions And Readmissions In 2017 In The United States For Bronchitis And Asthma With Complications And Comorbidities (Drg = 202), Japjot Singh

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Understanding hospital charges in the U.S. healthcare system is vital for value-based care, recovery, and socio-economic wellbeing of the public. Hospital charges vary across hospitals regionally as well as nationally. As per the clinical history of hospital in-patient care, there are several determinants of hospital charges that are specific to the patient, disease, hospital, or the chargemaster. Empirical research on hospital in-patient care has bolstered the extant knowledge on the factors that determine the healthcare cost and utilization, but research is limited on how hospital readmissions impact hospital charges. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed a …

Effect Of Periodontitis On Inducing Late Onset Alzheimer's Disease (Load) Pathology In Mice, Neha Gupta, Courtney Mai, Miguel Cuello

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia; affecting approximately 50 million people worldwide. Recent evidence indicates poor dental hygiene may accelerate Alzheimer’s degeneration. Experimenters used a mouse model of periodontitis induced by P. gingivalis and investigated the implications of poor dental health on Alzheimer’s Disease and neuroinflammation, as well as memory skills, in relation to aging, gender, and condition. All the mice in the model were the same age, and a total of 8 mice with Alzheimer’s Disease and 8 mice who had Alzheimer’s Disease with inflammation with an equivalent number of males and females were utilized. Experimenters …

Elucidating The Function Of 3l1w, A Functionally Unknown Enzyme From Enterococcus Faecalis V583, Michael Egozi, Ethan Depry

Undergraduate Student Symposium

As of February 2022, there were 4057 protein structures with unknown functions in the Protein Data Bank. In all biological organisms there are a variety of enzymes that speed up key biochemical pathways. Despite having a known sequence and structure, many enzymes remain uncharacterized. One relevant enzyme identified is 3L1W, whose function has yet to be elucidated. The P.O.I. was isolated and imaged via Xray crystallography from the vancomycin resistant strain E. faecalis V583.

The purpose of this research was to provide an accurate characterization of 3L1W and its substrates, thus directing our approach of combining in silico and …

Firearm-Related Injuries Rates From 2014 To 2017 Among Floridian Children, Joel Marlapudi

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Purpose: To assess the prevalence of firearm-related injuries among pediatric patients in Florida by age, race, and ethnicity.

Method: The dataset from the Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration from 2014-2017 was utilized for this analysis as well as the Florida Community Health Assessment and Resource Tool Set. The study included ambulatory ED-visits of Floridian patients (aged ≤ 19 years) who had firearm-related Principal Diagnosis coded using the International Classification of Diseases. Patients who reported race as White or Black and Ethnicity as Hispanic or non-Hispanics were included. Patients’ county was categorized into 11 regions defined by Florida Local Health …

Great Plains Midcontinental Loess Deposits Following Prehistoric Megadroughts And Climate-Change Related Ecosystem Collapse In The Badlands, Melanie Vasquez, Drew Tozer, Catherine Acosta

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Understanding effects of prehistoric extreme climate events on the environment is necessary to help predict effects of modern global climate change. Research shows prehistoric megadroughts caused the collapse of North American grassland ecosystems, allowing wind to erode soils and fined-grained sediment. Timing, severity, and regional extent of these megadroughts remain controversial, but research indicates at least three megadrought periods on the North American midcontinent over the last 20,000 years. Evidence for prehistoric megadroughts is preserved in dune fields and loess deposits throughout the North American Great Plains, including our field area in the Badlands of South Dakota. Loess, composed of …

Ha Ha Ha... Good One!... Not You Hmongs. Laughter, White Privilege, And "Othering" In Medical Cultures, Sarah Soliman

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The response to alternative medical approaches of underprivileged and underrepresented groups detailed by Anne Fadiman differ from the hegemonic alternative approaches exemplified by Norman Cousins. In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Fadiman describes the inadequate efforts made by healthcare professionals to communicate with the Lee family who did not understand English and had significantly different medicinal practices from Western biomedical practices. Rather than being met with respect and attentiveness, these medical professionals viewed this family as “difficult” and “stupid.” In comparison to the various mistreated groups of minorities, the Hmong are a minority within the minority …

How Non-Profit Organizations Can Create A Hybrid Social Media Strategy Using Paid And Organic Posts, Samantha Carl Selorio

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The emergence of social media has changed the methods and approaches for communication between health agencies and their community. As such, non-profit organizations must learn to use social media to better promote their mission. Organizations can engage and capture the attention of their online target audience via paid posts. Broward Regional Health Planning Council (BRHPC), a non-profit organization, provides an analysis of how integrating social media tools has increased its social media presence. BRHPC already had an online presence on the social media sites Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. To increase the number of people in BRHPC’s intended audience who …

Human Mtdna Copy Number Quantification, Leonardo Lacayo, Luzcarime Saco-Vertiz

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Our social worlds and physical health are profoundly intertwined, but we have limited tools for studying these important connections. Within the recent psychiatric literature, changes in mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) have been linked to a variety of socially influenced mental illnesses such as major depression. In principle, this biomarker may therefore also be responsive to more subtle changes in our social environments, including life events that attenuate stress.

This poster outlines plans for a novel molecular study of how interspecies social bonding impacts human cells. Specifically, we propose to use quantitative PCR to measure the abundances of (single copy) …

I Can Hear You, I Just Can't Remember You: Deconstructing The Sensory And Cognitive Components Of Hearing Loss, Pranay Narang, Hana Amireh

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Hearing loss is commonly thought of as solely a sensory, not cognitive, problem. According to the effortfulness effect, however, those with presbycusis are burdened with an increased attentional cost for auditory processing, taxing the central executive such that working memory is impaired. The excess strain placed on the central executive to decode sensory noise ultimately impairs one’s capacity to attend to and consolidate memories, compromising retention. We hypothesize that the presence of white noise during encoding will mimic the effect of hearing loss sustained in older adults and will impair the retrieval of auditory information in those with normal hearing. …

Implications Of Covid-19 For Education And Research In Healthcare And Stem: Analysis Of Global Case Studies, Yumna Indorewala

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 has posed a major threat to global education and research in STEM and healthcare. Social distancing guidelines were initially recommended to refrain from face-to-face operations for preventing the transmission of the virus. As schools and higher academic institutions implemented multifarious methods to effectively transition to remote/online or hybrid educational formats, the Coronavirus Infectious Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic introduced further hurdles and necessitated designing, adopting, as well as evaluating the efficacy of new instructional approaches, especially for disciplines that require active, experiential learning such as healthcare and STEM. These effects are accentuated in less developed/developing nations or …

Investigating Polymer Metal Chelation Via Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy, Meha Pandya, Agustin Olivares

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Heavy metal contaminants in water are known to disrupt ecological systems and cause detrimental biophysical and physiological effects in living systems. Prominent metallic environmental contaminants include lead, cadmium, and zinc. Removing heavy metal contaminants is essential to enhance water quality and reduce heavy metal toxicity. Chelating polymers that contain functional groups such as carboxyls and amines, offer an inexpensive and efficient way to remove metals from solution. The purpose of our study is to develop a protocol to quantify metal binding efficiency of various polymers via Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS). Alginate and Chitosan, two bio derived polymers with known chelating …

Metanalysis Of Genome Editing Using Crispr/Cas9 Technology Towards Hiv-1 Treatment, Nitya Alaparthy

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Genome editing, also called gene editing is a new branch of research that aims to explore means to modify genes of living organisms. Genome editing appears to have a promising future for researchers as it will further help to understand the gene function and develop ways to treat genetic or acquired diseases. Moreover, gene editing such as CRISPR/Cas9 technology can aid in manipulating the genome sequence, thereby, advancing treatments that will improve patients’ life span and quality of life. CRISPR/Cas9 technology supports three main mechanisms for genome editing, including plasmids-based methods, the direct intracellular distribution of the Cas9 mRNA, and …

Physiological Mechanisms Of Pregnancy: How The Kidneys And The Renin-Angiotensin System Protect The Fetus, Raghavi Vuppala, Crystal West

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Physiological changes concurrent with pregnancy include plasma volume expansion with increased sodium retention to enable normal development of the fetus. Expansion of plasma volume and sodium reabsorption are adaptive mechanisms that occur in response to the altered physiological state of pregnancy. These adaptations are mediated by the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) and its primary hormone, angiotensin (Ang) II, acting on the kidney. The role of Ang II in the kidney also involves stimulation of aldosterone release from the adrenal gland, which promotes sodium retention by the kidney. Ang II activates its two main receptors in the kidneys: AT1 and AT2. The …

Social Vulnerability And Adult Obesity In The State Of Florida, Shreeya Patel

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Introduction: Socioeconomic and racial disparities are prevalent regarding obesity rates, where race, income, and education are predictors of obesity. Social vulnerability, or a community's ability to respond to stressors on health, may be one explanation for these disparities. The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between social vulnerability and obesity among Florida counties. Methods: We conducted an ecological cross-sectional study among 67 Florida counties. To measure county-level social vulnerability, we utilized the CDC Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), which is composed of four themes. County-level adult obesity prevalence in 2017 was obtained from the UWPHI’s County Health Rankings. …

Structural Identification Of Secondary Metabolites From Bacteria, Vijay Patel, Mark Sourial, Alana Bertrand

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Chronic misuse and abuse of antibiotics over the last century has led to an end of the golden age of antibiotics. However, we could turn to bacteria to find a solution to the current antibiotic resistance crisis. Bacteria are engaged in an endless arms race against each other, and humans can use the compounds bacteria produce as antibiotics. Our team isolated bacteria from local soil samples and aimed to identify and characterize these microbes. The two bacterial strains we were able to identify were Pseudomonas fulva and Plesiomonas shigelloides. P. fulva is an aerobic proteobacterium which produces secondary metabolites …

The Effects Of Herbal Products In Cartilage Healing And Reducing The Progression Of Osteoarthritis, Mariya Baig

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Treatment for osteoarthritis (OA) is primarily aimed at symptom management and is generally limited with emphasis placed on therapy and drugs such as NSAIDs, opioids, and acetaminophen. However, these drugs pose health risks for long-term use including contraindications, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular issues. Thus, this systematic review of literature was conducted to evaluate the impact of the herbal products, turmeric and ginger, on reducing the progression of OA when utilized on both a short-term and long-term basis. After evaluating the content of several scholarly journals, it was found that turmeric and ginger can aid in symptom management of OA and promote …

The Universal Mass Function And Its Applicability To Organic Molecules, Gabrielle Biltgen-Morrissette

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The ability to predict the yield when synthesizing an organic molecule is a challenging issue in organic chemistry and a major obstacle when planning a multi-step organic synthesis. To choose the most time, money, and waste efficient way it will be beneficial to be able to predict the yield of the product. The Universal Mass Function (UMF) states that cosmic objects on all scales are in direct relation to each other. It shows that massive objects are much rarer than objects with lower masses. The following research aims to examine if the UMF theory is applicable to the field of …

Touch Sensitivity In College-Aged Adults, Hannah Laufenberg, Isabel De Angelis

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The present study aims to identify what factors influence pain perception. Previous studies have focused on the differences in pain tolerance between genders, but this difference could be due to differences in physiology. The COMT rs4680 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) has been implicated in stress and pain perception (Serrano et al., 2019, Hill et al., 2018). G/G/ allele carriers perform better under stressful conditions and perceive less pain relative to the A/- allele carriers. Here we examined how gender, body size, and genetic makeup influences pain intensity, pain threshold, and pain tolerance. Participants will be asked to passively drool into …

Understanding The Tradeoff Between Atp Metabolism And Growth In E. Coli, Naziba Nuha, Julia Gumirov, Ariane Kalifa

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The inoculum effect (IE) is a phenomenon in which the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of an antibiotic increases with the density of a bacterial population. IE has been observed for nearly all antibiotics, and has been shown to decrease antibiotic efficacy, prolong the recovery period and increase mortality rates. Despite its ubiquity in the clinic, a mechanism to explain IE for bacteria that expresses antibiotic resistant elements, such as β-lactamases, has yet to be identified. Interesting enough, recent work has shown that interactions between growth rate and metabolism, as determined through ATP production, affect IE for bacteria that lack a …

Who Stressed The Dogs Out: A Case For Studying Mitochondrial Dna As A Novel Biomarker For Stress In Canines, Aidan Kunju, Ariana Ali, Ritika Kothur, Olivia Singleton

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Canines transiting through animal shelters experience extreme stress that is subsequently ameliorated by adoption into loving (human) homes. These transitions provide exceptional opportunities to study links between social stress and physiological processes, and to develop biomarkers for stress and social bonding with applications in both animal welfare and human health. Here, we propose a novel approach to the study of shelter-related stress in dogs, and of stress reversals following adoption. Specifically, we will quantify mtDNA dynamics in buccal swabs sampled during shelter intakes of canines at the Broward County animal shelter, as well as samples collected after these animals’ adoptions …

Skill Football Players Outperform And "Outforce" Big-Skill And Big Players In The Vertical Jump, Jeffrey Marin, Erica Vazquez

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Vertical jump (VJ) performance is critical for football players. Position demands vary and may influence VJ loading (eccentric) and propulsion (concentric) forces. Examining forces in addition to jump height (JH) informs training programs. We aimed to determine differences in VJ performance [reactive strength (RSImod, m/s); JH (cm)] and peack concentric (CON-PF) and eccentric (ECC-PF) forces between position groups. Sixty football players (age, 22.6±1.1yrs; ht, 186.4±6.8cm; mass, 103.6±21.2kg) representing three position groups, Skill, Big-Skill, and Big, performed VJ on dual uniaxial force plates. ForceDecks software allowed for calculation of the dependent variables. ECC-PF and CON-PF were normalized to body mass (N/kg). …

Survival And Development Of Zebra Longwing, Heliconius Charithonia, On Native And Non-Native Passion Vines, Passiflora Sp., In South Florida, Cassidy Loucks, Celina Nelson-Jordan

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Zebra longwing butterflies (Heliconius charithonia) are distributed throughout Central and South America, and the southernmost regions of the United States, including Florida. These heliconian butterflies not only consume nectar, but are also known to feed on pollen, resulting in a longer lifespan than most butterflies. In their larval stage, H. charithonia feed exclusively on Passiflora spp, however preferred host species for H. charithonia eggs and overall larval performance across Passion vine species is not well documented. We examined these criteria of zebra longwings from egg to adulthood on two native passion vines to Florida, corky stem (Passiflora …

An Episodic Study Of Hospital Charges For Hospital Admissions And Readmissions In 2017 In The United States For Degenerative Nerve Systems Disorders (Drg = 056), Esha Sultana

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Understanding hospital charges upon admission as well as readmissions is critical for value-based care. The extant literature focuses on patient-specific, disease-specific, and hospital-specific factors to explain the variance in hospital charges across the United States. Studies have mainly examined hospital charges upon admissions but there has been lack of empirical research on examining hospital charges upon readmissions. This has resulted in ambiguity in understanding the primary determinants of hospital charges upon readmissions. To address this gap, the federal agency AHRQ developed the HCUP hospital readmissions database that produces nationally representative information about hospital readmissions. This study utilizes the AHRQ 2017 …

Bioremediation Of Algae-Based Water Treatment: Analysis Of Algae Adsorption Of Heavy Metals Based On Ion Size And Covalent Indices, Samir Sakaria, Rebecca Mathew, Amelia Figueroa

Undergraduate Student Symposium

A previous published study completed at Nova Southeastern University determined that Neochloris alveolaris and Neochloris minuta algal strains which were grown in nitrogen-rich (+N) and nitrogen-depleted (-N) environments biosorbed Pb²⁺, Cd²⁺, Zn²⁺, Cu²⁺, and Ni²⁺ at varying concentrations. These algae biosorbed each metal differently based on their biomass composition (carbohydrates, fats, and lipids) and the type of hard or soft metal acids available, according to the Pearson theory of Hard Soft Acid Base (HSAB) definition. Given these promising findings, this study aimed to further analyze and determine the effect of hard …

Effect Of β-Lactamase Expression And Varying Metabolism On The Inoculum Effect, Kielan Singh, Vijay Patel

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Infections with antibiotic resistant bacteria pose a substantial challenge to the field of medicine. Accordingly, it is of the utmost importance that we understand the mechanisms by which bacteria resist antibiotics towards the development of novel drugs and treatment paradigms. One mechanism by which a population of bacteria can resist an antibiotic is the inoculum effect (IE). During IE, the initial density of the population determines the efficacy of the antibiotic; highly dense populations of bacteria require more antibiotics to kill the population as compared to less dense populations. One mechanism that has been proposed to explain IE is the …

Examining The Impact Of Mind Wandering On Task Performance: Does Task Difficulty Matter?, Kortne Bajor, Jozef Cruz, Amulya Chowd Koritala, Gargee Pandya

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Mind wandering is a phenomenon in which an individual’s thoughts drift from the current task to a task unrelated thought (TUT). It is known to be affected by various factors such as state of mind, neuroticism, and boredom which may differ for each individual. Task difficulty appears to impact mind wandering rates, such that mind wandering increases on tasks with lower difficulty (Seli et al., 2018). However, prior work has not examined how emotionally valenced mind wandering impact task performance at different levels of task difficulty. Mind wandering typically predicts poorer ongoing task performance (McVay & Kane, 2010) and negatively …

Exploring The Prevalence Of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Cts) Symptoms In College Students, Kyrah Maduro

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) causes functional impairments and is prevalent in occupations involving repetitive hand movements. Given the extensive use of electronic devices for coursework, college students may be at risk for CTS. The purpose of this study was twofold: to examine the symptomology of CTS in college students, and to determine treatment strategies used by occupational therapists (OT) who treat college students with CTS. We developed and administered a 17-question College Student CTS Experiences Survey for students. Participants were recruited via flyers posted on a university campus. Inclusion criteria for responding included being a college student experiencing pain, tingling, …

Measuring The Effect Of Methionine Deprivation In Genome Methylation Of Ccp Genes Within The Prolaris Molecular Score Along Prostate Cancer Cell Lines, Yatin Srinivash Ramesh Babu, Trevor Fuhriman Oms 2, Andy Aleman Espino Oms 2

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Impairment of physiological metabolism is the trademark of various cancers and cancer cells as a component of their mechanism which ultimately bolsters survival. While normal cells are highly regulated and follow a sophisticated mechanism of cellular metabolism to achieve their goals of survival, cancer cells take the dysregulated path for survival, ultimately robbing the overall vital energies of the entire organism. Unfortunately, only a limited number of uniform ways exist that permit for a complete cure of various presentations of cancers. The PC3 cell line has been reported to be dependent upon exogenous pools of methionine, whereas the DU-145 cell …

Molecular Biomarkers Of Ptsd: A Case For Measuring Psychotherapy Efficacy And Mtdna Cn Involvement, Ariana Ali, Aidan Kunju

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that occurs in individuals who witness or experience a traumatic event. Many PTSD treatments have a focus on direct alterations of emotion and thought responses due to trauma. Some of the leading psychotherapy treatments for ptsd include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and Prolonged Exposure (PE). Eye Movement Desensitization and Realization (EMDR) Therapy has greater focus on altering memory storage in the brain. EMDR differs from other psychotherapies in that the reprocessing of trauma engages both hemispheres of the brain via bilateral stimulation. EMDR along with other psychotherapies …