Scholars Week 2016

Permanent URI for this community

https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/handle/mtsu/4805

Browse

Browsing Scholars Week 2016 by Issue Date

Jump to a point in the index:
  • Item
    Alternative mRNA Splicing Analysis of DAF-2 During Hydrogen Peroxide Stress
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2015) Akter, Mahmuda ; Davis-Farrow, Paige ; Seipelt-Thiemann, Rebecca ; Chemistry
    Alternative mRNA splicing is a mechanism of regulating gene expression accomplished by varying which protein-coding sequences are included in the mature mRNA. It is known that various types of stress influence alternative splicing. Thus, the concentration, variety, and functionality of proteins produced in a cell and organism. DAF-2 is a gene whose protein functions in the insulin pathway in many organisms including the nematode, C. elegans. This pathway is known to be altered during the stress response. Our hypothesis was that nematodes will alternatively splice DAF-2 mRNA in the region encoding the tyrosine kinase domain (exons 10-13) upon exposure to the environmental stressor, hydrogen peroxide. To test this hypothesis, nematodes were grown under standard conditions, isolated, and exposed to either 20 mM H2O2 or diluent only. RNA was isolated and analyzed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. The results were visualized following agarose gel electrophoresis. Four distinct and specific cDNA fragments were observed in the control sample indicating that the mRNA had been spliced in four different ways. Only one of these distinct and specific cDNA fragments was observed in stressed worms. This clearly indicated that alternative splicing had occurred due to the peroxide stress. The largest cDNA fragment is the size expected if all exons were included and thus the tyrosine kinase domain would be encoded. The smallest cDNA fragment is the size expected if exons 11 and 12 were skipped and thus the tyrosine kinase domain would be absent from the DAF-2 protein. The two middle size fragments were not predicted. These may represent skipping of exons 11 and 12 individually. Cloning and sequencing of the fragments should be done to confirm the identity of these assumptions. In addition, the experiment should also be performed with different peroxide concentrations and for varying times to analyze the kinetics and timing of alternative splicing in response to this stressor.
  • Item
    Pilot Study: A Survey of Middle and High School Choral, Band, and Orchestra Directors Regarding Professional Development of Musicianship Skills for Music Educators
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Brown, Jessica J. ; McWhirter, Jamila L. ; Music
    Professional development is a key component of an educator’s journey in continuing to strengthen their teaching. For music educators, maintaining personal musicianship skills is vital for excellent instruction, yet there appears to be little professional development in maintaining those skills. The purpose of this research was to discover what types of professional development would benefit secondary music educator’s musicianship skills and by whom and how often this type of professional development should be offered. A brief online survey was sent out to middle and high school music educators who are members of either the Middle Tennessee Vocal Association or the Middle Tennessee School Band and Orchestra Association. The survey consisted of categorical ratings, ranking questions, multiple choice questions, and open-ended questions. The data are reported through frequencies and percentages. 100 percent of the educators expressed the belief that this type of professional development benefited their teaching. However, scheduling conflicts were the highest deterrents of the teacher’s ability to to attend this professional development. In addition, cost and location of the professional development also provided difficulties. Conducting, sight-reading, and improvising were ranked as the top skills sought out for professional development sessions. Through this pilot study, it may be concluded that music educators feel the need for a focus of personal musicianship through professional development. However, their perceptions of these opportunities are not offered often enough to meet their specific secondary music educator needs. In the future, it may be beneficial to study a larger sample of secondary music educators to corroborate the findings of this study.
  • Item
    Folate Effects on Lifespan of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Hicks, Alesha ; O'Connell, Kayla O'Connell ; Seipelt-Thiemann, Rebecca ; Biology
    Dietary effects on lifespan have been studied for many years. The most well-known is that calorie restriction can increase longevity in many species. Previous research has also implicated restriction of certain nutrients in increasing lifespan. Reduction of folate has increased lifespan in C. elegans, both by feeding worms folate-deficient diets and biochemically inhibiting folate synthesis. Based on this research, it was hypothesized that budding yeast that are genetically deficient in the folate biosynthesis pathway would have a greater longevity than the wild type yeast. To test this hypothesis, wild type and yeast mutant in one folate biosynthesis gene, ABZ1, were aged for six consecutive weeks in rich (folate-containing) and folate-deficient media and tested for chronological lifespan using a growth assay. Final results were compared by t test to detect differences in average growth. Overall, there was no difference in growth between the wild type and mutant, rejecting our hypothesis that the ABZ1 mutant strain would have greater longevity. In addition, both yeast strains grew equally well in rich and folate-deficient media, rejecting our hypothesis that the SC medium would allow greater longevity in both yeast species. Therefore, our results did not support those from previous research in C. elegans, which indicated that reduction of folate biosynthesis has increased lifespan. As these long growth assays can be subject to contamination, it will be absolutely necessary to replicate the experiment to confirm these results.
  • Item
    Urban Sprawl and Environmentally Safe Alternatives
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Hall, Brittnie D. ; Phipps, Eli ; Sharp, Christopher ; Behavioral & Health Sciences
    A critical issue that faces many places all over the world is urban sprawl. This issue affects overpopulated and underpopulated regions alike, and is detrimental to both the people and the communities that it touches. Using various online reports, articles and graphs, we are attempting to better educate our community on urban sprawl as well as propose ways to decrease it, and its impact on our communities, cities, and planet. Our research was done in November, 2015, and we hope that the results of said research and proposal of possible solutions will influence the community in the future to strive to create laws, new procedures, or limitations for the mitigation, or perhaps eventually the total elimination of urban sprawl. Our goal is to bring urban sprawl into the spotlight, and help start conversations that could lead to more ideas to do something about the problem.
  • Item
    Title: Effect of Rest-Pause VS. Traditional Bench Press Training on Muscle Strength, Electromyography and Lifting Volume
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Korak, J. Adam ; Paquette, Maxime R. ; Brooks, Justin ; Fuller, Dana K. ; Coons, John M. ; Health & Human Performance
    This study compared one repetition maximum (1RM), muscle activity (EMG), and volume differences between rest-pause vs. traditional resistance training. Trained males (N = 20) were randomly assigned to either a rest-pause or a traditional training group. Pre and post 1RM testing was recorded. Training sessions were completed twice a week for 4-weeks and consisted of four sets of bench press to volitional fatigue at 80% of pretest 1RM with a 2-minute rest between sets. Total volume completed was recorded on each training day. Muscle activity of the pectoralis major was measured on the first and last training days. The RMS signals of the last repetition in the last set were normalized to the RMS peak values of the first repetition in the first set for each participant during the 1st and 8th training sessions. A 2-way repeated measures ANOVA indicated both groups significantly increased their 1RMs following the 4-week training protocol (p < .05). However, no significant differences were found in 1RM and muscle activity between the two groups (p > .05). An independent samples t-test indicated total volume lifted was significantly higher for the rest-pause group (56,778lbs vs. 38,315lbs; p < .05) throughout the protocol and independently during weeks 2, 3, and 4. While strength and muscle activity changes did not differ between groups, the rest-pause group achieved greater increases in volume than the traditional group. If volume is the focus of training (i.e., hypertrophy phases), the rest-pause resistance training method should be utilized.
  • Item
    Scholars Week 2016 University Exposition
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Scholars Week
    Schedule of Events for Scholars Week 2016 University Exposition.
  • Item
    Scholars Week 2016 Winners
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Scholars Week
  • Item
    The Good Wife? : Pearl S. Bucks Feminist Critique
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Li, Lusha ; Du, Jiaying ; Liberal Arts
    Set in early twentieth century China, the novel The Good Earth won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. Its author, Pearl S. Buck, became the first American woman writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Our project explores women and marriage during the early twentieth century in China by analyzing specific scenes, quotes, and characters in The Good Earth. Although our primary method is literary analysis, our larger purpose is to address the novels (and novelists) feminism by discussing O-Lan, the female protagonist and good wife, within the context of Chinas ever-changing birth control policy. In this way, we will draw attention to gender issues in China. Buck understood these issues quite well, having lived the majority of her life in China. Our main sources will be Bucks biography and novel, selected scholars comments on her work, and reports of Chinas birth control policy as well as. We will highlight the parallels between life and art in a timeline that features relevant events in the history of early 20th century China and in the biography of Pearl S. Buck. The audience for our project includes anyone interested in womens history, China, American literature, or Pearl S. Buck.
  • Item
    The Impact of Adolescence Employment on Welfare Participation Later in Life
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Mansour, Fady M.
    This study is the first to employ welfare participation to investigate the impact of working during adolescence on outcomes later in life. I use National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1979 data to investigate the impact of the average hours worked from age 14 through 19 on both the welfare payment and the probability of welfare participation in the twenties and thirties of the respondents’ life. I use a variety of different model specifications, including instrumental variables and Heckman selection models, to check the robustness of the results. The study shows that working one extra full-time week per year for an average individual between the ages of 14 to 19 will reduce the probability of receiving welfare in the twenties by 2.6 (10.8%) percentage points and the welfare payment received in the twenties by 6.3% per year. This impact is generated mainly from the hours worked during the ages of 17, 18 and 19.
  • Item
    An Evolutionary Analysis of Membrane-Associated Guanylate Kinase Protein Family
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Carr, Ryan ; Deal, Heather ; Seipelt-Thiemann, Rebecca ; Biology
    Gene families come into being through gene and/or genome duplication followed by mutation over time which results in the evolutionarily-related genes having somewhat different nucleotides, amino acids, gene structure, and functions. The membrane-associated guanylate kinase protein family has twelve members in humans: DLG1, DLG2, DLG3, DLG4, CASK, MPP1, MPP2, MPP3, MPP4, MPP5, MPP6, and MPP7. This gene/protein family is characterized by the presence of three specific protein domains: PDZ, SH3, and GUK, all of which aid in protein-protein interactions. These proteins are known to interact with cytoskeletal proteins and also are involved in signal transduction. A characteristic member of this family is the DLG3 gene, is responsible for encoding a synapse associated protein (SAP102). The goal of this study was to better understand the evolutionary relationships among the protein/gene family members. To attain this goal, two evolutionary investigations were undertaken. First, phylogenetic trees, which are the traditional method of analysis, were constructed using the amino acids. This analysis indicated evidence for three distinct sub-groups: group A contained CASK, MPP1, MPP2, MPP6; group B contained MPP3, MPP4, MPP5, MPP7; and group C contained DLG 1, DLG2, DLG3, DLG4. Next, the phylogenetic relationship based on the exon structure was undertaken. Briefly, multiple alignments were combined exon boundary information to generate a visual map of similarities and differences in exon structure among the gene family members. This visualization and its comparison to the traditional phylogenetic analysis will be presented.
  • Item
    Simulation of Multiple Inheritance in Java
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Swaroop, Sonal ; Computational Sciences
    Multiple inheritance is a cornerstone of OOPs paradigms with benefits such as reusability (using methods of parent class by child classes), extensibility (extending the parent class logic as per business logic of the child class), data hiding (base class may keep some data private so that it cannot be altered by the derived class), and lesser compilation time. But there is no consensus among researchers on the semantics of multiple inheritance in the presence of method overriding and potential conflicts due to multiple definitions. C++, Common lisp and few other languages supports multiple inheritance while java doesn't support it. It is just to remove ambiguity, because multiple inheritance can cause ambiguity in few scenarios such as Diamond problem. James Gosling quotes “JAVA omits many rarely used, poorly understood, confusing features of C++ that in our experience bring more grief than benefit. This primarily consists of operator overloading and multiple inheritance. Java creators provided users with much easier and robust alternative to multiple inheritance i.e. interfaces, composition and abstract classes that alleviate problem during casting and constructor chaining. The primary objective of this research study is to develop a trade-off between multiple inheritance in C++ and substitution for multiple inheritance in Java and conclude if multiple inheritance is good programming technique and if Java should introduce direct implementation of multiple inheritance. The secondary objective is to introduce novel ways to substitute multiple inheritance in Java such as twin pattern and dynamic multiple inheritance, and conclude if such implementations may bring much easier and feasible alternatives to interfaces
  • Item
    A silver bullet for bullwhip effect: minimizing lead-time
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016) Choi, Soochan ; Supply Chain Management
    The Bullwhip effect is information twisting that creates movement of wasteful products over what the market requires within a supply chain. There are four causes; demand signal processing, the rational game, batch ordering, and price variation (Lee at el, 2004). Current researchers are providing superior solutions, especially in coordination and information sharing methodology (Lee at el(1997), Moyaux at el(2007), Wu at ell(2006), Sahin at ell(2002), Disney at el(2008), Fiala at el(2005), Xu at el(2001) Paik at el(2007). However, the two prevailing solutions are required to “trust” to each other. Cooperation is hard to be accomplished until the companies fully open their information. In addition, the degree of trust is not easy to measure. Other problems arise when the trust is not fully accomplished. How could we measure cooperation? There are ways for measuring cooperation but it is not a general methods. In addition, it depends on analyzers point of view of cooperation. In this sense, I am going to provide another solution: decreasing lead time that it can be measured easily while proving that decreasing lead time is time saver and more cost effective than other suggested solutions.
  • Item
    Not another Meeting!
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016-03) Clements, Joel S. ; Engineering Technology
    A meeting should help an organization better accomplish its mission. Many times our meetings do not achieve this goal. This does not have to be the case. Individuals and organizations invest significant time and resources in meetings, but they can fall short of the desired results. When meeting participants are not engaged, there is a real but frequently hidden cost on both the entire organization and individuals. These costs can include hard dollars due to wasted or misdirected efforts and soft dollar costs associated with individuals stress and morale. Once an organization has an understanding of the cost and benefits associated with meetings, there are many best practices which can be used to help achieve the results needed. These practices are designed to make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing. This research provides a prioritized list of best practices that can improve the meeting experience, outcomes, and build organizational capabilities. Prioritization is based on empirical data from literature as well as limited survey results and personal experiences.
  • Item
    The Pilgrimage of a Burner: Motivations behind the Global trek to the Nevada Wasteland
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016-03-30) Thompson, Olivia ; Anthropology
    While Burners themselves do not label the Burning Man site as a religious pilgrimage, I argue Burners have many motivations to traverse this desolate location in the Nevada desert from a religious and anthropological studies perspective. By conducting research on this unique, sacred journey, I examine their main motivations to travel across the U.S. and the globe to this site. Do they travel for religious or spiritual purposes, individual interpretation or communal dependence/unity, admiration for intricate art sculptures and creativity, or has Burning Man become an outlet for the ultimate partier? I decipher the complexities that constitute the Burning Man experience and foster understanding for why Burners migrate to this dusty wasteland. I examine three prominent religious studies’ theorists, focused on pilgrimage, and compare their theories to three recent pilgrimage scholars who studied Burning Man as a pilgrimage site. In concluding my argument, I apply the anthropological method of ethnography by using my cousins personal account of working and journeying to Burning Man to support my thesis. My audience is primarily those interested in pilgrimage studies, anthropology, and sociology, but is not limited to these fields. By examining Burning Man, I contribute to the field of religious-pilgrimage studies and social sciences by stating that pilgrimage can exist by functioning and manifesting outside the constraints of organized religious movements, expanding the view of religious pilgrimages. Pilgrimage studies are applicable outside major religious pilgrimage sites for structured belief systems. I seek to understand from an anthropological view why Burners, a distinct and diverse group, journey to this site and create a temporary city only to destroy it and return to that locale yearly. My research is a more holistic interpretation of the Burning Man pilgrimage site, proving that social scientists can study through multiple lenses.
  • Item
    Optimizing the end-to-end performance of workflow based applications in distributed environments using resource sharing
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016-04) Aggarwal, Eti ; Basic & Applied Sciences
  • Item
    More Missing: Expanding content analysis in social work journals to include non-binary orientations and gender identities
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016-04-01) Wilson, S. M. K. ; Social Work
    In 2002, Van Voorhis and Wagner published "Among the Missing: Content on Lesbian and Gay People in Social Work Journals". This study was a content analysis of four significant social work journals for the years 1988 - 1997, which identified articles that covered gay and lesbian issues and provided an overview of the themes and focuses of these articles. Pelts, Rolbiecki, and Albright repeated this study and analyzed the same journals (using similar criteria and additional analysis) covering the years 1998 - 2012. As of 2015, there was no comparable analysis of social work journals that looked at content applicable to orientations that are not specifically straight, gay, or lesbian, or gender identities that are not cis male or cis female. This purpose of this project was to find out the material available to social work students and professionals regarding this significant and underserved population. This project looked at the same significant social work journals as previous studies, covering the years 1998 - 2013, to identify articles that pertain to non-binary orientations and gender identities and to compile an overview of themes, focuses, and language in these articles. By establishing what material is available in current primary material we can define the extent of the existing literature gap and design research to fill in the missing pieces.
  • Item
    Image Cryptography with Chaos: Testing the k-epsilon Turbulence Model as a Chaos Generator
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016-04-01) Hammock, Gary L. ; Computer Science
    Cryptography has uses in everyday applications ranging from e-commerce transactions to military communications. Traditional approaches for encrypting images has been performed by processing an input image as a one-dimensional stream of bits before applying the encryption algorithms. There is current research in manipulating images in their native two-dimensional form rather than as a one-dimensional stream. To do this, deterministic chaos maps have been explored for their use in providing the operations required to transform a plaintext image into a ciphertext encrypted image and vice versa. Different approaches for generating chaos maps have been explored ranging from cellular automata to bio-inspired algorithms. This research aims to borrow a deterministic chaos technique from the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics that is used to simulate turbulence in fluid systems. The feasibility of using this technique as a chaos generator will be quantitatively determined using cryptanalysis techniques including measuring the luminance histograms, various image spectra, and pixel covariant dependence.