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Papers & Publications

Extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs) are a family of enzymes that confer resistance to a number of antibiotics, including those containing a beta lactam ring. ESBLs exhibit antibiotic resistance by destroying the antibiotic’s structure and may be encoded by bacterial plasmids that can easily be transferred between bacteria from the family Enterobacteriaceae. Organisms that produce ESBLs pose both threats and challenges in the administration of appropriate therapeutic agents to treat infections. Water environments such as streams can help the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which can originate from a variety of sources, including food processing, waste water treatment plants, and urban runoff. We are studying the isolation and identification of ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae from water samples obtained from a water treatment plant and its receiving stream in north Georgia. In this paper, we carried out enumeration of ESBL-producing bacteria from water samples obtained immediately upstream and downstream from the water treatment plant. ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae were observed from both pre-treated water obtained from the water treatment plant and from upstream (240/ 100 ml) and downstream (240/ 100 ml) water samples, including ESBL-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumonia. Our results indicate that ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae are present in all water sources sampled. This suggests that the waste water treatment plant is not the source of these microorganisms. Further studies are needed to determine the originating source.

Quantification of extended-spectrum-beta-lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae from water sources in Hall County, Georgia, USA

Purpose: Research shows Millennials learn better by actively doing things than listening to lectures. However, there is little research on millennials and how they learn or what drives them towards success. The purpose of this study was to investigate the preferred learning styles of undergraduate college students and their perception of academic success.
Methods: Data collection included quantitative and qualitative measures that were used to collect data from a convenience sample of 344 undergraduate college students in a rural southeast regional university. Study was IRB approved prior to data collection. Data were analyzed using appropriate descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations, and coding of qualitative data.
Results: Findings indicated that 35.4% of the 344 participants self-reported as kinesthetic (hands-on) learners compared to visual (23.6%), auditory (17%), and read/write (24%) learners. Findings also revealed that only 12.9% of the participants “spend 3 or more hours a day outside of class studying; 34% “ask for help when they do not understand something in class”; 41.1% “feel comfortable approaching professor for extra help” and 60.6% “prefer a teacher who incorporates hands-on activities with lecture.” Millennials in this study defined academic success as (1) establishing effective learning habits, (2) attending class regularly to maintain consistent performance, (3) achieving academic goals, and (4) making good grades.
Conclusion: Incorporating kinesthetic activities in the classroom setting will positively enhance learning outcomes and academic success of millennial college students.

How Do Millennials Learn? An Investigation of the Learning Styles, Strategies, and Perceived Academic Success Among College-aged Millennials

Abstract
Recently protests or marches such as those in Charlottesville, Virginia, have caused concern among the public regarding the balance between freedom of speech and race-based violence. The purpose of the current study was to explore current perceptions of race ideology groups and race relations in the United States. More specifically, we assessed if students at our small, southern college viewed race ideology groups as problematic in society. We were particularly interested in how students viewed Black Lives Matter and White supremacist groups differently depending on their own race and political affiliation. Overall, roughly half of our respondents reported all race ideology groups have a right to freedom of speech. Other results indicated conservative students were more likely to view Black Lives Matter as harmful for race relations and violent in comparison to liberal students. This relationship remained significant while controlling for other factors such as a student's gender, race and other factors.

Undergraduate Perceptions of Race Ideology Groups as Problematic in Society

Many environmental factors effect the behaviors of African elephants, Loxodonta africana, such as, health, drought, and dominance. The purpose of this research was to observe play behaviors within the different age classes (calf, juvenile, and adult) of wild elephants during recent drought conditions in Amboseli National Park, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and Samburu National Reserve in Kenya. Scan sampling every 15 minutes was used to record play behavior. The results from this study indicated that there are differences in the types of play behavior among the age classes. Adults displayed the most play frequencies for environmental, alone locomotion, and tactile play. Calves exhibited the most play frequencies for object and calm play. Calves were also the only age class to display nursing attempts, with juveniles displaying zero attempts. Research was conducted at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an elephant orphanage, as a comparison to the wild data. The findings indicated similarities between wild and captive data. Similar to the results in the wild, juveniles had the highest play frequencies for environmental play. Calves also had similar behavior in the orphanage and in the wild, where the highest play frequencies were object and calm play. Observing play behavior across the different age classes can be beneficial in order to understand the impact play behavior has on social development.

Play behavior varies by age class in wild African elephants (Loxodonta africana)

Reactions to gun violence and potential policies regarding gun control are often reactions to fear with schools being the focal point of gun control dialogue. From elementary schools to college campuses, the concealed carry debate exists. Should we allow staff, faculty, and at the college-level, students to carry concealed guns? Students at a private college in Florida were surveyed in regards to their attitudes towards concealed carry and campus safety. We tested a number of hypotheses related to how much time students spend being exposed to media, student perceptions of safety, and their attitudes toward concealed weapons on campus. Results show low levels of support for armed campus safety and concealed weapons for faculty among our student sample. Students were even less comfortable with other students being armed on campus. In support of previous research, conservative students were more likely to believe the media spends too much time covering gun violence. While our results show mixed support of previous research on concealed weapons our findings are particularly interesting due to our close proximity to two recent mass shootings in Florida.

Student Perceptions of Faculty, Staff, and Students Carrying Concealed Weapons on Campus

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard uses nature to talk about philosophical and spiritual topics. She exercises the habit of seeing, which is both passive observation and active creation, and uses it to explore questions of God’s goodness, or theodicy. Dillard’s creation—Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—does not deny that both cruel things and beautiful things exist in God’s creation. Dillard instead proposes that “[t]he answer must be . . . that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there” (Pilgrim 10). The result of Dillard’s decision to “sense them” and “be there” is her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which invites the reader to explore along with her, both in its content—stories of outdoor explorations—and in its overt position as a book, or something created in order to be sensed. Dillard champions the act of creation as the counterpart to the horrors found within creation; she presents creative action is her theodicy.

Snakeskins, Sunsets, and Seeing: Creation and Theodicy in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

In 19th century America, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “The American Scholar” finds a satisfying manifestation in Frederick Douglass’ autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. A careful examination reveals Douglass to be the epitome of Emerson’s “Man Thinking,” a distinction which allows Douglass to escape slavery in a thoroughly transcendental way. In “The American Scholar,” Emerson expounds upon the deficits in the American education system, in particular, passive knowledge consumption. In an attempt to correct this deficit, Emerson enumerates the qualifications necessary to achieve the pinnacle of American scholarship, which he calls “Man Thinking.” Emerson claims that a man must be in touch with nature, he must explore the past through books, he must activate his soul, and he must use his new knowledge to take action and produce change. Douglass reaches each of the essential phases and meets all necessary requirements for Emerson’s conceptualization. As a slave, often commodified and rendered as livestock, he can be no closer to nature. Reading the written orations of the past, Douglass is spurred into action to change his slave status. His soul is fundamentally active. It is this combination of factors which allows Douglass to transcend slavery and embody, ironically, the zenith of white transcendental intellectualism.

The World’s Eye, the World’s Heart: Frederick Douglass and the Transcendence from Slavery

This paper examines The Coal Tattoo by Silas House and its focus on psychological self-reflection by its two main characters, Easter and Anneth Sizemore. Anneth, the younger of the sisters, is characterized as a “wild child,” chasing after men and sex in an attempt to discover her identity and fulfill a longing within her that may be too large to satisfy. The Sizemore girls’ mother, Birdie, committed suicide when Anneth was five years old. Through a Lacanian lens, Anneth’s entrance into subjectivity is a violent and incomplete one, which evolves into an incomplete sense of her “imaginary” self and an intensified longing for her real desires while these two warring elements intensely disrupt her sense of existence and placement within the symbolic order. Anneth’s entrance into the symbolic was irreparably disrupted, and she is the picture of social rebellion: multiple marriages, going to bars, underage drinking, smoking, and becoming pregnant. The unhealthy state of her identity manifests itself in a myriad of ways, including psychic restlessness and the intensification of her desire for the Other. Anneth only feels a partial sense of wholeness when she listens to music, using music as an incomplete expression of her desire. Within a Lacanian context, due to the linguistic nature of music, she is incapable of fully articulating desire; however, because music is also non-linguistic, she is able to achieve a partial expression of desire, though she cannot articulate it herself and it cannot be articulated fully even through music.

Searching for Purpose: Silas House’s The Coal Tattoo

The advancement of technology has brought upon a great many things: wonder, efficiency, mass production, different forms of communication, and an easier way of life. However, it has also caused fear and anxiety about how technology will shape the future and human life to come. Will we become more adaptable with it or become consumed by it? Dehumanization has become a great concern for a lot of people who are growing along with the exponentially-rising digital landscape.

Petrolia

Who Says: Photography Exhibition

Papers & Publications (Vol. 7)

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