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.

The end of the Pleistocene epoch (roughly 10,000 years ago) saw the extinction of many mammal taxa, including charismatic megafauna such as the mammoth, giant ground sloth, and saber-toothed tiger. While we have a good understanding of the types of animals that lived during that time, little is known about what factors might have contributed to their demise. Relatively few excavations have been conducted in Georgia, which limits our understanding of this major ecosystem transition. In this study, 1) we present preliminary paleoecological data from an existing locality from Coastal Georgia, and 2) we outline a projected strategy for supplementing these data and generating new paleoclimatic and environmental data to expand our understanding of this important period. We find that stable isotopic data derived from mammalian enamel collected from this locality indicate a mixed vegetative environment (i.e., one composed of both open and closed settings). This information structures renewed explorations. Over the coming months, we plan to 1) create a high-resolution model of local depositional setting during this period, 2) excavate new fossil material, and 3) create a digital compilation of fossil material from Georgia. Using these data, we expect to better understand ancient large mammal ecology, which will undoubtedly lead to novel insights into ecosystem dynamics and the overall mechanism of extinction during this period.

18. A preliminary stable isotopic investigation of newly discovered fossils from coastal Georgia as a framework for future paleoecosystem investigations

This project seeks to compare the genetic sequences of the native shrubs Calycanthus floridus L. and Calycanthus brockiana Ferry & Ferry using the nuclear ribosomal ITS region and the chloroplast matK marker. Currently Alan Weakley’s Flora of the Southern and Mid-Atlantic States(2015) lists two species within the genus: C. floridus and the northeast Georgia endemic C. brockiana. The genetic analysis of the two purported species will allow us to suggest either that they remain separate species or that they be combined. As a secondary goal, the project will attempt to create a phylogenetic tree showing the relationship between the genera in the Family Calycanthaceae. C. floridus is a highly variable woody shrub native to the East coast of the United States. Due to the variance in the leaf shape, overall pubescence, and color of the flowers, the genus Calycanthus has been split into many different species (Small, 1933, Radford et al., 1968) and varieties outside of cultivation over the years and then grouped back together by various authors, so another secondary goal will be to specifically focus on C. floridus with the hope of determining if the genus is made up of many separate cryptic species of plant rather than one or two variable species.

19. COMPARING THE GEORGIA ENDEMIC CALYCANTHUS BROCKIANA (CALYCANTHACEAE) AND CALYCANTHUS FLORIDUS L. (CALYCANTHACEAE) USING ITS AND MATK

In Boromir of Gondor from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings and Roland Deschain of Gilead from Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, the audience is introduced to two dynamic heroes. Though Boromir’s intention to steal the ring from Frodo was undesirable, Roland’s willingness to kill a child shows that he will stop at nothing to achieve revenge. Boromir sees the ring as a tool to be used to save Gondor, but is overruled when the council decides to destroy the ring; however, Boromir volunteers to follow the Fellowship of the Ring to Mordor to destroy the ring. Roland is the last of his order of knights who wishes to gain closure by destroying the Man in Black. Roland is on a journey of revenge rather than a journey to save anything. Though both characters are considered heroes, they have different objectives. Boromir shows his true objective of taking the ring to save Gondor just before his death and redemption. Roland sacrifices his follower to achieve his purpose of catching the Man in Black. Both characters actions show their true purpose, and demonstrate the way that heroes are portrayed at the end of the modern epoch, and during the postmodern epoch. A close reading of Tolkien’s epic and a re-telling of Tolkien’s epic shows the different understandings of what heroes are; furthermore, each heroes’ actions allow the audience to examine what a hero is, and stretches the idea what a hero’s motives should be and who they are.

The Evolution of the Hero: An Evaluation of Tolkien's and King's Portrayal of a Hero

To study the behavior of spiders when given the choice of prey reared on different diets (iridoid glycosides and pyrrolizidine alkaloids), Trichoplusia ni caterpillar hatchlings were reared on Gelsemium sempervirens (a plant rich in iridoid glycosides (IG)) and Eupatorium capillifollium (a plant rich in pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PA)). A contingency analysis was performed with the following spider groups: Nephila clavata, Pholcus phalangioides, and Lycosids given the choice groups (IG v. PA) (IG v. Control) and (PA v. Control). Observations were noted on whether the spiders could make a preferred choice of caterpillar reared on the certain diet. A contingency analysis was performed to compare preferences of each spider group.

20. Spider Preference of Prey Reared on Diets Rich in Iridoid Glycosides vs Pyrrolizidine Alkaloids

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.

Effects of Repeated Reading and Rhyming Poetry on Reading Fluency

So, you've presented at a conference...what's next? Come listen to a panel of faculty and staff discuss options for publishing your work. The session will begin with a brief overview of the nuts and bolts of looking for publishers, submitting, revising, etc. The remainder of the workshop will be an open form Q&A where students can ask specific questions. We urge you to stop by!

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.

18. A preliminary stable isotopic investigation of newly discovered fossils from coastal Georgia as a framework for future paleoecosystem investigations

19. COMPARING THE GEORGIA ENDEMIC CALYCANTHUS BROCKIANA (CALYCANTHACEAE) AND CALYCANTHUS FLORIDUS L. (CALYCANTHACEAE) USING ITS AND MATK

The Evolution of the Hero: An Evaluation of Tolkien's and King's Portrayal of a Hero

20. Spider Preference of Prey Reared on Diets Rich in Iridoid Glycosides vs Pyrrolizidine Alkaloids

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

How to Get Published: A Q&A on Next Steps

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Items in this collection

ARC 2018 Program