The University of North Georgia is pleased to announce the 21st Annual Research Conference, a university-wide event for all campuses. This year, the conference will be held on Friday, March 25th, 2016 from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm on the Gainesville campus.
<h4>New this year – Best Presentation Prize for completed essays/posters</h4>
Students who wish to be considered for the Best Presentation Prize (a certificate and an iPad mini) should also upload their complete presentation essay and/or poster under the “Additional Files” tab by Friday, March 11, 2016. Additional smaller prizes will be awarded as well.
Transportation will be provided between campuses as requested for presenters. Please indicate when you submit whether you require transportation. Other students who require transportation should contact the CURCA office prior to the conference.

UNG Annual Research Conference 2016

ARC Program 2016

The purpose of our presentation is to illustrate the limitations of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. The book, published in 1975, is a culmination of his observations of a social experiment at Mettray Penal Colony that was in operation from 1840 until 1937. This colony allowed for an unprecedented social experiment and revealed facets of human behavior that were unstudied. The prison’s architectural structure, called the Panopticon, provided for constant observation. Guards could observe the inmates without being seen. Foucault posits that the fear of the consequences of misbehavior caused the prisoners to begin self-regulation, whether or not they were being watched by guards. However, we aim to demonstrate how this system does not anticipate the possibility of outliers that could find ways to manipulate the system, thus creating more clever and less detectable miscreants.
In order to elucidate our analysis, we have used the popular film and book series The Hunger Games as a case study. We will show that the only way to truly grasp Foucault’s views is through the lens of a dystopian series like The Hunger Games.
We also incorporated references to several real life examples such as the Patriot Act of 2001 and statistics concerning surveillance in the modern world. We believe that in a world where cameras are in nearly every building and satellites can read a newspaper headline from space, it is important to understand the concept of the Panopticon and its theoretical applications.

19. The Odds of Outliers are Ever In My Favor/ The Limitations of Foucault’s Panopticon as Seen in The Hunger Games

The P300 Components in a Three-Stimuli Auditory Oddball Paradigm
Lynn Cameron, Philip Brust, Troy A. Smith
When the brain detects an unexpected change, it generates an electrical signal which can be measured at the scalp using electroencephalography (EEG). This P300 signal is generated in the parietal cortex approximately 300 ms after a rare stimulus is detected within a series of common stimuli. Recent research has shown the P300 has two subcomponents, the P3a and P3b, that depend on whether a rare stimulus is task oriented or not. Our research project uses a three-stimuli auditory oddball paradigm to examine these subcomponents. In this paradigm, participants hear sequences of 80 auditory tones. Within each sequence, a common tone is presented 80% of the time, a rare tone with no response required (novel) 10% of the time, and a rare target tone with response required (target) 10% of the time. We expect to replicate the robust finding that the P300 is stronger for the rare stimuli than the common stimuli. Additionally, we expect to see a stronger P3a at frontal electrodes for the novel stimuli, and a stronger P3b in parietal electrodes for the target stimuli. Future analyses of brainwave frequencies and power will further explore the differences between the three conditions. The results of this research will provide specific measures of normal brain activity that can be used to help us better understand attention, perception, decision making, and memory. This will also improve our understanding of the brain activity in individuals with mental disorders or impairments.
Keywords: auditory oddball, P300, P3a, P3b, electroencephalography (EEG), change detection

8. The P300 Components in a Three-Stimuli Auditory Oddball Paradigm

Japanese animated film Perfect Blue involves a young woman named Mima who is attempting to shed her image as a pop idol in order to achieve a better status as an actress. Similarly, American live action film Black Swan showcases the struggles of emerging dancer Nina as she deals with the stresses associated with being the lead in her company's production of Swan Lake. Both Perfect Blue and Black Swan are psychological thrillers involving female leads who struggle with being perceived as socially deviant in their pursuits. In Perfect Blue Mima’s strain occurs when she casts aside her pure image as a pop idol in pursuit of one as an actress. Mima cannot achieve this new status unless she takes roles that involve compromising her virginal image achieved from her days as a pop idol. Members of Mima’s talent agency and old fans react negatively to her changing role in society and view her as “tainted.” Black Swan’s Nina experiences strain once the pressures of her new leading role become insurmountable. Playing both the White and Black Swan in Swan Lake causes clashing aspects of her personality to emerge. Using Merton’s Strain Theory, I hope to explore Mima as a Conformist in Eastern society and Nina as an Innovator in Western society in order to reveal variations in how cultures define and perceive deviance. My presentation will also address certain aesthetic tendencies in these two films that give us a broader conception of social deviance.

“Excuse Me... Who Are You?”: Strain Theory and Storytelling in Perfect Blue and Black Swan

The overall objective of the project is to separate and characterize the chemical components present in yellow – striped oakworms (Anisota peigleri) in order to determine if the oakworm’s toxic metabolites are sequestered from its diet or synthesized by the oakworm. The first stage of the project entailed the development of a column chromatographic method to achieve chemical separation. The oakworm samples were macerated, sonicated, and extracted with methanol. The extracted samples were loaded onto silica-gel columns, and four unique fractions were eluted using different solvents. The fractions collected were recognized either by their color or with the aid of an UV lamp.

31. A Method Development Column Chromatographic Separation of Methanol Extracts from Yellow – Striped Oakworm

This panel strives to draw attention to the field of interdisciplinary research and its implications for research dealing with literature. Using many unrelated fields such as, chemistry, geography, and psychology, and a bit of strong determination, the panel members have coaxed out new meaning from seemingly “dead” pieces of literature. Paper one will explore the short story, “Videotape” by Don DeLillo by widening the perspective from which it is read from strictly literary to psychological and scientific, using the principle of Schadenfreude and the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle which gives readers a better understanding of character motivation resulting in deeper meaning from the text. Paper two is a interdisciplinary literary cartography project that explores F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace” through a geographic lens. Literary cartography deepens readers understanding of the geographical and cultural differences between the main characters in the story. Paper three applies the techniques of literary cartography to the fictional work “In the Land of the Free” by Sui Sin Far in order to develop a greater sense of its context and background. Together, the panel aims to uncover the process of interdisciplinary research and its applications to literature.

A Glimpse at Interdisciplinary Studies

“Video Gaming as an Escape”
There is a large population in video gaming, especially Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) more people are spending time on their computers rather than in contact with people face to face. Previous research suggests <a>[BD1]</a> that escaping the real world is a large reason that people play video games (Hagstöm and Kaldo<a>[BD2]</a> , 2014) and that people are unsatisfied with their lives and that is why they play video games. People who play video games tend to identify as two different people; themselves and their character. However, others suggest that players take on the persona of their virtual character (Hefne, Klimmit, & Vorderer, 2007). It seems players may be trying to escape their real lives. Another study suggests that people use video gaming as not just an escape from their negative real life but rather it provides a social support system that is not present in the real world (Kaczmarek and Drażkowski, 2014) The current study seeks to examine the relationship between life satisfaction and enjoyment playing video games and the study seeks to build a model examining the impact that game playing has on life satisfaction<a>[BD3]</a> . Participants (college age students) responded to an online questionnaire regarding their perceptions of life satisfaction among other scales. We predicted that the participants who are less satisfied with real life and have a lower self esteem, have a more satisfying in game life in a MMORPG setting. The results of this study are important to understanding the mechanisms surrounding video games that can promote positive and negative real life satisfaction.
Key Words: Escapism, Video Games, Self Esteem, Life Satisfaction
<a>[BD1]</a>Suggest, not “shows”
<a>[BD2]</a>Needs the DATE too.
<a>[BD3]</a>Should add another variable here, what about if Im playing with friends, so if I play alone or with others online games may actually positively influence my life satisfaction. People do build communities, others use it to slink away from the pressure of real life...

2. Video Gaming as an Escape

Most students in their grade school career have learned about Dolly the cloned sheep. While this process was a scientific endeavor, would cloning humans be for the same purpose as Dolly or for personal gain? Whatever the answer may be, most people have their own agenda behind their acts of human cloning which range from a variety of desires. The most common begin with trying to suffice with personal loss to attempting to advance science. Every reasoning is different, but both rely on this process to accomplish their goals. My research will include many academic journals, films, and literature to explain the current society’s interests in pursuing human cloning to suffice personal loss.
In my presentation, I will be focusing on the scientific process of cloning, and different case studies about this topic. Human cloning appeals to those who want to have eternal life as well as an eternal life for a loved one, save a dying person, and bring someone back from the dead.This topic contributes to the presentation because it introduces the process of cloning, and shows how personal gain is more popular amongst today’s society than furthering our knowledge on the limits of cloning. I hope to appeal to the audience that does not know much about cloning, but also to activists who have a desire to make cloning legal, which includes the general public.

Human Cloning for Personal Gain

We like to think of history as constantly progressing in a positive sense. For example, how today people of every race are able to vote, so clearly we have progressed positively in the civil rights movement compared to 100 years ago. Unfortunately with history that is not always the way it goes. The negative progress towards woman and mental health in England from the early 1800s to the early 1900s affected women to the extent that they were forced to take damaging and unnecessary treatments. For a period of time women were admitted into insane asylums, not because of true necessity, but because of the cultural norms and gender roles imposed on them at the time. After World War I artists and authors began to speak out through their works about these problems in an effort to raise awareness. Two of these artists were the renowned authoresses Virginia Woolf and Rebecca West. Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and West’s The Return of the Soldier provide a look into the state of mind of women in post-WWI Britain. They imply that the patriarchal society’s pressures caused women to be traumatized emotionally and I argue that the records of insane asylums and Victorian values correlate with those implications. The women in these novels can be analyzed individually and compared to each other to see the similarities and differences between Woolf’s and West’s writing approach to address this social problem.

West and Woolf’s Women Left Behind: Comparison and Analysis of Post-War Trauma, Psychology, and Socioeconomics

Researchers have successfully created therapeutic cloning, but how advanced will technology become before scientists start replicating the DNA of humans to create a whole human clone? The idea of human cloning has been a big controversy since 1996. In 1996, scientists made it possible to clone the first mammal, which was “Dolly” the sheep. When they finally do replicate their first human clone, will this new clone have its own personal identity or the identity of who it was replicated of? Arguments have come about whether this reproductive cloned human will have a unique new identity, or whether it will just be a mere identical “copy.” Before scientists make reproductive human clones, these questions need to be addressed.
My research will attempt to define the essential nature of a human clone, by examining whether this “copy” represents an individual human, or a new species. The project will ultimately define what a clone is, but specifically defining what it means to be a human clone. Will the clone have the same identity or will it be unique? I will propose my own idea’s on why I believe a human clone will have its own unique qualities. In order to answer my research question, I plan to discuss what makes one considered a human; physically and mentally. I will use literature such as Science Fiction & Philosophy, by Susan Schneider, and films such as The Island (2005), to gain the knowledge in order to gather the research to better answer these questions.

UNG Annual Research Conference 2016

New this year – Best Presentation Prize for completed essays/posters

Items in this collection

ARC Program 2016

19. The Odds of Outliers are Ever In My Favor/ The Limitations of Foucault’s Panopticon as Seen in The Hunger Games

8. The P300 Components in a Three-Stimuli Auditory Oddball Paradigm

“Excuse Me... Who Are You?”: Strain Theory and Storytelling in Perfect Blue and Black Swan

31. A Method Development Column Chromatographic Separation of Methanol Extracts from Yellow – Striped Oakworm

A Glimpse at Interdisciplinary Studies

2. Video Gaming as an Escape

Human Cloning for Personal Gain

West and Woolf’s Women Left Behind: Comparison and Analysis of Post-War Trauma, Psychology, and Socioeconomics

Defining the Identity of a Human Clone

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Items in this collection

ARC Program 2016