Biology Commons^™

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

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

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

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

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

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

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

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

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

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

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

No abstract provided.

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

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

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

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

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

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

Emotion Recognition Using Brainwave Datasets, Bethlehem Seid, Heba Elgazzar

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

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

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

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

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

Testing Turmoil, Laura Von Mann, Christopher Beckham

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

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

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

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

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

Streptococcus Mutans And The Oral Microbiome, Danielle Pintone

Honors Program Contracts

No abstract provided.

2021 Spring Newsletter, Plaster Creek Stewards

Newsletters

Highlights:

Heron Rookery

Spring Event 2021

Education on Cedar

Spring Interns

Watershed Support Grant Awarded

Analysis Of Student Learning Gains In A Biochemistry Cure Course During The Mandatory Covid-19 Shift To Online Learning, Ambika Kapil, Santanu De, Arthur Sikora

Biology Faculty Proceedings, Presentations, Speeches, Lectures

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, institutions across the world have had to make modifications to existing curricula, especially in the experimental science lab. There is a need to better understand student learning in this environment. Using the Participant Perception Indicator (PPI) survey, we measure the students’ knowledge, experience, and confidence (KEC) growth over the course of a fully online biochemistry course. Using a combination of video explanations, experimental procedure documents and sample data students completed the Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab (BASIL) Course-based Undergraduate Experience (CURE) in summer 2020. The results and analysis of the survey data gave light …

Effect Of Cyclooxygenase-2 Glycosylation On Downstream Expression Of E-Cadherin And Β-Catenin In Mcf-7 Breast Cancer Cells, Genna Roan, Grace Alexander, Klarisse Cruz, Janelle Nguyen, Mary B. Sevigny

Natural Sciences and Mathematics | Faculty Research Posters

Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is an enzyme that helps catalyze the formation of prostaglandins, which promote inflammation, pain, and fever and maintain other normal physiological functions throughout the body. However, the overexpression of COX-2 has been found to play a role in various diseases including breast cancer. COX-2 exists as two major glycoforms— 72 kDa and 74 kDa— due to the glycosylation site Asn580 which is glycosylated 50% of the time. Past studies from our lab have shown that this glycosylation regulates COX-2 protein turnover in the cell3. The proteins E-cadherin— a tumor suppressor— and β-catenin— a tumor driver— can be regulated …

Creepy Crawly Compensation: Examining The Costs Of Ectoparasite-Induced Compensatory Growth In Late-Stage Nestlings, Elliot Lusk

Biology

When normal growth rates are suppressed, organisms may undergo a rapid period of increased growth in order to match the physical requirements of a developmental benchmark. This compensatory growth, however, is not without its costs, which can have varying consequences. In nestlings, a major benchmark is that of fledging, which requires advanced physical maturation. In previous studies, compensatory growth and some of its associated costs have been shown in prefledging nestlings but fledging-aged nestlings and the costs they may have sustained needs further study. Here we examine the costs of compensatory growth in late-stage European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) nestlings under …

Moderately Elevated Glucocorticoids Increase Mate Choosiness But Do Not Affect Sexual Proceptivity Or Preferences In Female Gray Treefrogs, Alexander T. Baugh, M. D. Gall, Stewart C. Silver , '20, M. A. Bee

Biology Faculty Works

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are rarely studied in the context of female mate choice, despite the expression of receptors for these products in sexual, sensory and decision-making brain areas. Here we investigated the effects of GC concentrations on three aspects of female sexual behavior in breeding Cope's gray treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis): proceptivity—a measure of sexual motivation, intraspecific mate preferences, and mate choosiness. To our knowledge this is the first experimental study on the endocrine basis of mate choosiness. We predicted that mate choosiness—forfeiting an initial mate preference to pursue a suddenly more attractive mate—would be particularly impacted by elevated GCs with moderate …

Selfish Gene Theory Explains Oedipus Complex, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Sigmund Freud famously placed what he called Oedipus complex at the center of his explanation of psychological and psychiatric problems. Freund's analysis was based on anecdotal evidence and intuition, not on solid experiments -- as a result, for a long time, many psychologists dismissed the universality of Freud's findings. However, lately, experiments seem to confirm that indeed men, on average, select wives who resemble their mothers, and women select husbands who resemble their mothers. In this paper, we provide a possible biological explanation for this observational phenomenon.

College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, April 2021, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 2, Issue 4

Page 1 Dean's Message
Page 2 & 3 Awards & Recognition
Page 4 Student Spotlight: Allsion Bjornstad
Page 5 Research Spotlight: Dr. Vondruska & Students
Page 6 Department Head Interviews
Page 7 Media Coverage of CNS
Page 8 Open PRAIRIE Data
Page 9 Student Club Spotlight: BMGSA
Page 10 Then & Now: Urban Geography

Otto Warburg And His Contributions To The Screw Pine Family (Pandanaceae), Martin W. Callmander, Robert Vogt, Anna Donatelli, Sven Buerki, Chiara Nepi

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Otto Warburg (1859–1938) had a great interest in tropical botany. He travelled in South-East Asia and the South Pacific between 1885 and 1889 and brought back a considerable collection of plant specimens from this expedition later donated to the Royal Botanical Museum in Berlin. Warburg published the first comprehensive monograph on the family Pandanaceae in 1900 in the third issue of Das Pflanzenreich established and edited by Adolf Engler (1844–1930). The aim of this article is to clarify the taxonomy, nomenclature and typification of Warburg's contributions to the Pandanaceae. Considerable parts of Warburg's original material was destroyed in Berlin …

Mostly Harmful? Phragmites Australis And Typha Angustifolia In A Study Of The Meaning Of Invasiveness In An Abandoned Limestone Quarry And Beyond, Diana Borse '21

Honor Scholar Theses

Purpose Statement:

The purpose of this work is to study the language used in invasive species biology, to examine the meaning of the invasive label, and to apply these considerations to a geographical 9 study of Phragmites australis and Typha angustifolia. I will explore current issues with the study of invasive species and present the kind of study for which I advocate. The implications of this work fall into politics, science writing, and resource management. Throughout the work I will be interrogating the definition of invasive species and the associated language used for plants that are called invasive. After …

Cyclic Fluctuations Of Zooplankton Dynamics In A Tidal Salt-Marsh Basin, Jamaal Jacobs

Senior Theses

Zooplankton are pelagic aquatic animals that are limited in their movements by the water currents around them and are major links in aquatic food webs between primary producers and higher trophic levels. Their populations are temporally and spatially variable, as they are sensitive to changes in salinity, temperature, and dissolved oxygen. This is especially true in highly dynamic environments, like estuaries, where environmental conditions are highly variable across seasonal and daily cycles. In order to examine the variability in zooplankton populations across a tidal cycle, we collected zooplankton samples from North Inlet Estuary at 30-minute intervals over a half tidal …

Weather Affects Post-Fire Recovery Of Sagebrush-Steppe Communities And Model Transferability Among Sites, Cara Applestein, T. Trevor Caughlin, Matthew J. Germino

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Altered climate, including weather extremes, can cause major shifts in vegetative recovery after disturbances. Predictive models that can identify the separate and combined temporal effects of disturbance and weather on plant communities and that are transferable among sites are needed to guide vulnerability assessments and management interventions. We asked how functional group abundance responded to time since fire and antecedent weather, if long-term vegetation trajectories were better explained by initial post-fire weather conditions or by general five-year antecedent weather, and if weather effects helped predict post-fire vegetation abundances at a new site. We parameterized models using a 30- yr vegetation …

Comparing Expression Of Green Fluorescent Protein (Gfp) With Different Plasmids, Tinsae Alem, Charles Curbeam, Mackenzie Woody

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

How do different plasmids carrying different promoters affect the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) expression? If the appropriate promoter is not used within the bacterias, then the bacterias will not be able to survive and glow.

Techniques Learned By Students To Determine Which Agar Coated Plates Will Show Bacterial Growth And Glow., Lilly Rogers, Hannah Spencer

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

The process in which students conducted a series of experiments to find if agar plates would produce the GFP gene.

The Transformation Of E. Coli Using The Pglo Plasmid, Hailee Banks, Kira Edens

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

The experiment was based on taking E. coli and transforming those cells using pGLO plasmid. It was questioned whether colonies will grow after genetic modification using GFP and if so, will the colonies present a fluorescent green glow. With the consideration of GFP and pGLO being normally associated with each other, it was hypothesized that the colonies will present a fluorescent green glow after using biotechnology processes. This experimental process undergone various steps to successfully verify the presence of GFP and then transform the E. coli. PCR amplicon via gel electrophoresis, purification of amplicon sequence, and transformation using agar plates …

Encouraging Public Outreach And Education To Drive Covid-19 Vaccination In Farmville, Grace Freeman, Marcia Lanasa, Mitchell Sharry

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

As part of our Biology Capstone, we have created a white paper to communicate the importance of public outreach and education regarding the current COVID-19 vaccines to the Farmville Town Council. Previous research has shown that available vaccinations help to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus and highlights the importance of widespread community vaccination. Our recommendation to the Farmville Town Council is to create an educational campaign to encourage vaccination within the Farmville community.

Which Weather And Water Conditions Affect The Biodiversity And Abundance Of Macroinvertebrates The Most?, Alyssa Oppedisano, Phil Anderson, Val Phillips

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Macroinvertebrates are important biological monitors that play a valuable role in the metabolism of freshwater food chains. Previous studies have suggested that conditions such as dissolved oxygen, pH, water temperature, precipitation, and air temperature can affect the abundance of macroinvertebrates which can in turn affect the health of freshwater ecosystems. This research aimed to find the relationship between macroinvertebrate biodiversity and various environmental conditions in freshwater ecosystems. Weather data was taken from a weather station at Lancer Park and water data was taken on-site at Wilson stream, both locations in Farmville, Virginia. Sample collection and identification occurred twice a week …

Transformation Of E. Coli And Regulation Of Gfp In Pglo, Melanie Rowland, Emily Edwards

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Research Question: Will the presence of pGLO plasmid containing GFP gene produce glowing cells?  Hypothesis: In the presence of pGLO plasmid containing GFP gene, the production of glowing cells will occur. 

The Abundance Of Soil Microbes In Relationship To Proximity To The Urban Area Of Lancer Park In Farmville, Virginia, Christian Michael, Callie Cutrell, Miguel Diaz-Montealegre

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Soil microbes are microorganisms found in soil that serve various critical roles and functions in the environment, such as decomposition and the cycling of nutrients in ecosystems. Natural and human-caused factors can have positive and/or negative impacts on soil microbes. The objective of this study is to examine the abundance of soil microbes in relationship to proximity to the urban area of Lancer Park in Farmville, Virginia. Soil samples were taken from four locations within Lancer Park: the upper and lower floodplain of Buffalo Creek, the bottom of a large stormwater detention pond, and adjacent to an ephemeral channel connecting …

Combined Effects Of Allelochemical And Pesticide Treatment On The Growth Of Cucumber Plants, Samue Morgan

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Allelochemicals are biochemicals produced by one plant that inhibits the success of other plants in its vicinity. These allelochemicals are sometimes produced naturally or as a result of stimulus or stress. Ferulic acid is a widespread allelochemical found in cucumbers (Cucumis sativus). Artificial inhibitory chemicals such as the pesticide zeta cypermethrin may create new interactions with ferulic acid. We found that cucumbers acclimate to ferulic acid over time while the inhibitory effects of pesticide remained relatively constant over 14 days.