The University of North Georgia is pleased to announce the 23rd Annual Research Conference, a university-wide event for all campuses. This year, the conference will be held on Friday, March 23, 2018 from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm on the Gainesville campus in the Martha T. Nesbitt building.
<h4>Best Presentation Prize for completed essays/posters</h4>
Students who wish to be considered for the Best Presentation Prize should also upload their complete presentation essay and/or poster under the “Additional Files” tab by Friday, March 2, 2018. Additional smaller prizes will be awarded as well. The awards ceremony will take place at noon in the Nesbitt building. The keynote speaker will begin immediately after.
Please contact the CURCA office upon submission of the abstract if you require transportation between campuses for the event: <a href=”mailto:curca@ung.edu”> CURCA@ung.edu</a>.

UNG Annual Research Conference 2018

ARC 2018 Program

The movie Mother! tells an intriguing story of an apparently common couple: a writer and his wife, whose main attribute is the fact that she is constantly reforming the house in which they live. However, the importance of the movie is in its metaphors rather than in its apparent denotation. In order to understand the general idea of these metaphors, we shall change the first sentence. The movie Mother! tells the story of a couple: God and Mother Earth.
The movie emphasizes the Mother Earth’s perspective, which provides three main interconnected discussions: religion, the environment, and feminism. Why have humans associated the image of God with a father rather than a mother? Is the disregard for environmental issues by the powerful related to the patriarchal system? How has the movie represented these ideas? The research, therefore, will focus on answering those questions by making a connection of the male and female images with the mentioned issues. That is, he represents the creation; she represents the tool for creation, dehumanized and used. How do these opposed ideas relate to the three main topics of the research? Initially, there will be a detailed analysis of the movie. After that, there will be an analysis of each of the three aspects to be studied. Finally, the aspects will be connected through the metaphors used in the movie and analyzed in the context of today’s society. This will lead the research to a final question: will our visions of religion change over time?

19. A Religious Analysis of the Environment on a Feminist Perspective.

Research into the Endocannabinoid system (ECS) is attractive because of the medical implications and the association with medicinal Cannabis. Yet, little research regarding evolutionary aspects of the ECS is available. The ECS consists of two main receptors CB1, CB2, and their primary ligands Anandamide and 2-arachadonyl-glycerol, which regulate a range of homeostatic related processes. The ECS is present in all Chordates, but there are no studies addressing the homology of the ECS throughout Chordates, or beyond. Therefore, we sought to identify significant gene homologies in the receptors and their corresponding genes of the ECS across Chordates as well as demonstrate the conservation of putative functional polymorphisms identified in humans, and examine the conservation across species outside of Chordates. We hypothesize that there will be conservation of the ECS system within chordates and expect conservation of certain polymorphisms indicative of specific functions. Additionally, we expect to identify this system as unique to Chordates with little corresponding conservation outside of Chordates. Using gene and protein sequence comparisons we will produce a unique genome-wide association study of the ECS. Our initial search of SNP’s show CB1 genes in H. sapiens are associated with various clinical and behavioral outcomes, this was found using SNPedia search engine. The remainder of our search derives from bioinformatic software applications, such as: PDB, NCBI, DNA Master, and Mega. This novel study will characterize the ECS within the context of evolution providing unique functional implications of the ECS in chordates and the evolutionary history of this system.

29. Evolutionary Significance of Endocannabinoid Receptor Polymorphisms

The parasitic, polyembryonic wasp Copidosoma floridanum is useful for studying the evolution of development because it has evolved a novel phase of development, the proliferation phase. C. floridanum development begins when females oviposit eggs into a lepidopteran host egg. After an egg is laid, it undergoes cell division to form a morula. However, instead of then initiating morphogenesis, as commonly occurs in organisms, morphogenesis is delayed in favor of continued cell division during the proliferation phase. During proliferation, invagination of a surrounding membrane parcels groups of dividing cells into independently developing embryos. This mass of embryos, a polymorula, gives rise to thousands of genetically identical sibling embryos. These embryos undergo morphogenesis to form larvae. To investigate the molecular regulation of proliferation and the switch to morphogenesis in C. floridanum, quantitative PCR (qPCR) was used to measure the level of expression of 3 candidate genes, vasa, pax-1-like-interacting, and geranyl-geranyl transferase. Prior work suggests that these genes have roles in cell division or morphogenesis in other animals and that they are expressed at these stages in C. floridanum. However, expression of these genes has not been examined at a finer time scale or quantified in C. floridanum. Results will show the level of gene expression between proliferation and morphogenesis stages. Different levels of gene expression across these developmental stages suggest a gene could be a good candidate for future functional studies, while displaying consistent levels of expression suggest it is likely are not involved in regulating proliferation or the switch from proliferation to morphogenesis.

EXPRESSION LEVELS OF VASA, PAX-1 LIKE INTERACTING, AND GERANYL-GERANYL TRANSFERASE ACROSS DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES OF THE WASP Copidosoma floridanum

This study seeks to investigate the effects of the instructional method Promoting Acceleration of Comprehension and Content Through Text (PACT) on the social studies content acquisition and subject area reading comprehension of fourth grade students. The use of PACT as an instructional method has been investigated heavily in middle-school and high school social studies classes with replicated findings. It has been shown to consistently produce positive results in content acquisition and retention in these two age groups. Previous studies have found some inconsistent support for the improvement of content area reading comprehension but not for the improvement of overall reading comprehension.
This study is designed to investigate the merit of extending this specific instructional method to upper elementary grades. Given the substantial gains demonstrated in other studies on this technique, as well as the evidence that the content is better retained when taught with this technique, it is imperative to learn whether this particular lesson structure can be equally effective in the upper elementary setting.
The success of the treatment will be assessed through teacher created pretest/posttest content acquisition measures. The impact of the treatment on content area reading comprehension will be measured using articles and questions from the cognitive science based reading resource NewsELA. These same measures will be administered to the control group. The treatment will be considered successful if there is a statistically significant improvement in the scores of the treatment group over the scores of the control group, who experienced traditional teaching methods.

Improving content knowledge in social studies for upper elementary students

Starspots are dark areas on a star’s surface formed by intense magnetic fields that actively suppress the flow of energy, causing the area to become cooler and darker than its surroundings. Starspots threaten a star’s equilibrium because they prevent energy from leaving the star, causing a buildup of pressure. The prevailing assumption is that increased pressure will cause the star to inflate, producing a cooler and larger star. For this reason, starspots have been proposed to explain why some stars appear cooler and larger than we expect. This requires energy blocked by a spot to be trapped deep within the star where it cannot easily escape. However, the location of trapped energy directly relates to physical processes that produce starspots, but the process is still highly debated. To establish where in a star energy becomes trapped, we developed a mathematical toy model that predicts how starspots affect a star's color and brightness using six adjustable parameters that directly relate to starspot formation processes. We present results of a systematic study exploring how a star's color and brightness are affected by each model parameter, linking spot formation theories to direct observables. We find that starspots cause unique observational changes depending on whether energy is trapped near the stellar surface or deeper within the star. When compared against properties of real stars, our model can distinguish between different starspot formation theories, contributing a way to test whether starspots are responsible for the anomalous properties of young stars.

14. Irregularities In Young Stellar Models: Are Starspots To Blame?

The purpose of this experiment was to study individual differences in how distraction influences people’s sense of control over moving objects. In a computer task, participants used a joystick to track a red dot over a moving target while simultaneously performing a working memory task that manipulated their levels of distraction. During the tracking task, participants’ objective control over the red dot varied; they had either 25% (low), 50% (medium), or 75% (high) control over the red dot. In the working memory portion of the task, participants were presented with three, five, or seven items and required to remember the items while performing the tracking task. The researchers hypothesize that participants will show less difference in judgments of control on low control trials (25%) compared to high control trials (75%) when required to recall a longer series of items. Because judgments of control depend on working memory resources, participants should be less sensitive to control when they must require a longer list of numbers.

16. Detecting loss of control under cognitive load

Food Security on a Warming Planet: A Case Study with Tenebrio molitor (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)
As earth warms and human population soars, finding sustainable food sources is more challenging. Tenebrio molitor, a common pest of stored grains that requires little space and nutrients to complete its life cycle, may be one alternative to mainstream livestock, including poultry. In this study, we assessed the sustainability of maintaining T. molitor’s adults on a simplified nutritional regimen. We hypothesized that T. molitor adults kept on an oats-only diet would survive as long as those kept on a water-supplemented diet. Recently matured adults were separated into individual containers and assigned to one of four diet (water-supplemented v. dry) and temperature (24C v. 30C) treatments. Adults kept at 30C had shorter lifespans than those at 24C. Moreover, access to water did not prolong adult lifespan: for example, at 30C, females with carrot-supplemented diets did not seem to live longer than those in the no-carrot treatment. We discuss our findings in light of how climate change might affect food production.

Food security on a warming planet: a case study with Tenebrio molitor

Sheriff of Babylon is a short comic series about American-occupied Baghdad in 2004 just after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s reign. It features multiple examples of a marked callousness for the deaths of civilians, from both the Iraqi people and the American soldiers. What makes the soldiers so unconcerned about the things happening to the people they’re there to protect? It’s easy to condemn acts of war from the safety of home, just as it is easy to offer sympathy to those suffering from PTSD. But it is another thing entirely to try to understand how these things happen, to put oneself in the shoes of a modern soldier. The American soldiers in Sheriff of Babylon are not being inhuman or racist or cruel, it’s a defence mechanism that soldiers have been using since time immemorial. War is a horrible thing, and it exposes the raw humanity in all those involved. It’s much easier to ignore the horror one is presented with, to make the mental shift of those being maimed and killed as others. They’re not like me, they’re different, that couldn’t happen to us. As horrible as it is, it’s often the only way to stay sane when faced with so many extremes of the human condition. And often, making the shift back when going home is harder than the first change. But understanding is the first step on the road to helping others recover.

Defensive Techniques for the Modern Soldier: Shedding One’s Soul to Save it

This IRB approved study tested two methods to determine which one would be more beneficial to increase reading fluency in elementary school students. The study was conducted in a first-grade classroom with twelve students from a public school in Northeast Georgia. It focused on comparing the effects of repeated reading to the effects of rhyming poetry on students’ reading fluency. The rhyming poetry intervention used a combination of instruction to teach phonics and fluency while reading a passage. The repeated reading intervention had students repeatedly read a poem. The same poem was used for both interventions and consisted of rhyming words. Matched group design was used to place participants in ability groups based on their reading levels. The study was conducted over a four-week period and each intervention was given twice a week for ten minutes. At the end of each intervention week students were given an assessment that required them to orally read a list of words that contained the taught word family pattern. The purpose of the study was to answer the following research questions: Does using rhyming poetry intervention have an effect on reading fluency and reading achievement? Does using repeated reading intervention have an effect on reading fluency and reading achievement? How does using rhyming poetry as an intervention compare to using repeated reading as an intervention to teach reading fluency? Preliminary results indicate that there is no difference in the effects of either intervention. Both interventions had a positive effect on reading fluency and reading achievement.

UNG Annual Research Conference 2018

Best Presentation Prize for completed essays/posters

Items in this collection

ARC 2018 Program

19. A Religious Analysis of the Environment on a Feminist Perspective.

29. Evolutionary Significance of Endocannabinoid Receptor Polymorphisms

EXPRESSION LEVELS OF VASA, PAX-1 LIKE INTERACTING, AND GERANYL-GERANYL TRANSFERASE ACROSS DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES OF THE WASP Copidosoma floridanum

Improving content knowledge in social studies for upper elementary students

14. Irregularities In Young Stellar Models: Are Starspots To Blame?

16. Detecting loss of control under cognitive load

Food security on a warming planet: a case study with Tenebrio molitor

Defensive Techniques for the Modern Soldier: Shedding One’s Soul to Save it

Effects of Repeated Reading and Rhyming Poetry on Reading Fluency

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Items in this collection

ARC 2018 Program