PURF Inquiry 2014

inquiry OHIO UNIVERSITY PROVOST’S UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH FUND 2013–14

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inside

THIS ISSUE 

fine arts

humanities & social science

6 Briefs 12 An Eye for Design

16 Briefs 20 The Science of Entitlement

health & environment

science

22 Briefs 30 The Price of an Extra Portion 32 No Bones About It 34 Matter over Mind

36 Briefs 38 Proactive Prey 40 Microscopic Measurement

index 45 PURF Recipients 2013–14

ON THE COVER Sam Johnson, Junior HTC chemistry major Photo by Rob Hardin, HTC telecommunications ’08

LEFT Madeline Cupp tests an electronic interface that would allow the visually impaired to experience art and design.

MEET THE STAFF Editor-in-Chief Maggie Krueger Associate Editor Ben Postlethwait Art Director Paula Welling

Writers Max Cothrel Madison Koenig Ben Postlethwait Hannah Ticoras

Photographer Rob Hardin Fact Checkers Madison Koenig Maggie Krueger Hannah Ticoras Brian Vadakin

Designers Samantha Brunner Rachel Ertel

MEET THE PURF SELECTION COMMITTEES Science, Math, Health and Engineering Commitee Dr. Mark McMills (chair), Dr. Janet Duerr, Dr. Youngsun Kim, Dr. Deborah McAvoy, and Dr. Daniel Phillips Arts and Humanities Committee Dr. Jacklyn Maxwell (chair), Dr. Loreen Giese, Professor Andre Gribou, Professor Laura Larson, and Dr. Brian Schoen Social Sciences, Business, Education and Communcation Committee Dr. Jay Ryu (chair), Dr. Cynthia Anderson, Dr. Laura Black, Dr. Carla Childers, and Dr. Greg Foley

MEET THE PURF ADMINISTRATOR Cary Frith, Assistant Dean, Honors Tutorial College

FROM THE

EDITOR From wilderness survival to dieting habits, the projects funded by the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fund in 2013-2014 have been exceptional.

In total, 43 students representing 6 colleges and 1 branch campus received a PURF grant to pursue indepth research or creative projects beyond the classroom, all highlighted in this magazine.

The PURF tradition began in 2000 under then-Provost Dr. Sharon Brehm.

Currently, Assistant Dean Cary Frith and Dean Jeremy Webster of the Honors Tutorial College (HTC) administer the program. Each year, $50,000 is distributed through a rigorous application and selection process in which students submit proposals that are reviewed by one of three academic committees.

For over a year, I have served as the editor-in-chief of the three Inquiry publications published by the Honors Tutorial College. Next year, Associate

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Editor Ben Postlethwait will be taking over the publications. I am blessed and honored to leave the magazine in such capable hands.

I want to thank the HTC media machine, particularly my colleagues Brian Vadakin, Ben Postlethwait, and Paula Welling, and our masterful photographer Rob Hardin. Your expertise, kindness, and support inspire me to produce better work. Lastly, thank you to HTC Assistant Dean Cary Frith.

Without your guidance, direction, and patience, Inquiry would not be possible.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future issues, please email us at htcmagazine@gmail. com. Thank you for your interest in and support of undergraduate scholarship at Ohio University.

With Peace and Gratitude, Maggie Krueger, Editor-in-Chief HTC Journalism ‘14

PURF BY THE NUMBERS

43 9 4

students received a PURF grant in 2013

juniors received funding

30

sophomores received funding

women received PURF funding

11 16 Arts and Sciences students received funding

Honors Tutorial College students received funding

50,000 dollars of PURF funding awarded this year

30 6 seniors received funding

13 6

projects worked with mice

students traveled from New York City to Cambodia

men received PURF funding

15 faculty members served on PURF committees

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fine arts Recapturing Memory

By Hannah Ticoras

Photographs are a window into our memories, but senior HTC studio art major Sarah Shanks will use her PURF grant to question whether this window is always clear. Shanks’ BFA exhibition will explore the construction of memory through family snapshots, recreated

by Shanks as oil paintings. She plans to manipulate the resolution, color, and competitions of the photographs in the paintings, provoking thoughts for the viewer about how memory is constructed through familial artifacts.

The exhibition, titled “The Memory Yields,” is informing Shanks’ undergraduate thesis on the history of “The Story Campaign”—Kodak’s attempt to get a camera into every middle class American household. This campaign was fueled by Kodak’s insistence that human memory is fallible, and photographs are needed to cement it.

Shanks hopes her work will raise questions about this notion as well as critique the process of forming memory through the use of a snapshot.

Art on Wheels

By Madison Koenig

Senior sculpture and expanded practice major Jasen Bernthisel wants to break down the barrier between artist and viewer. Using his PURF grant, he will construct a mobile art gallery called “Pop Up Gallery N.1” that will be set up around campus and in the local community.

Exhibiting his work as well as that of his peers, the mobile gallery and its artists will engage passersby in a conversation about freedom of communication through artistic expression. Blurring the borders

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between the artistic world and public space, Bernthisel hopes to foster a better understanding of freedom of expression and challenge how art is presented. Because the gallery will be displayed in each location for only a few hours, it will also have a sense of immediacy that more permanent galleries lack. Bernthisel said he will utilize the poetic nature of artistic expression to spur conversation on such a significant issue as freedom to communication.

FINE ARTS

Peculiar Percussion

By Max Cothrel Photos Provided by David Turner Matthews

As a well-studied percussionist, senior music composition major David Turner Matthews will use his PURF award to explore the boundaries of the definition of music. His funding will support an ambitious project of instrumental construction. His first creation, to be featured in his senior thesis composition, is called the turnola and is based on instrument called a whamola — a single stringed instrument that stands upright and is struck by a stick. The creation will mirror in appearance the traditional lap harp, and can be struck, bowed and manipulated using other means. What is unique about the turnola is that its strings can be tightened or loosened though the use of a crank, creating a new kind of string instrument that can vary in pitch and tone. The second part of his composition piece will feature all manner of mallet instruments — such as xylophones and marimbas —that Matthews will construct from unconventional, ubiquitous materials including electrical metal tubing, steel plates, and cooper tubing. In the third portion of the composition, he hopes

to create the sounds of windmills spinning through the use of a sound hose, often used in children’s toys and the rotating mechanics of ceiling fans.

Matthews intends all of these creations to form a musical experience that has never been heard before.

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fine arts Looking through Glass

By Max Cothrel

Senior art major Tyler Mauk is using his PURF award to create a project that sees through the looking glass.

Fascinated by the dual functions of glass in framed photographs, Mauk will explore the way a sheet of glass acts as both a barrier and a portal between art and audience. By suspending a piece of clear glass above his camera and shooting from a reverse aerial view, he is able to shoot from

beneath. Atop the glass slab, Mauk will mix the human physique with images of the sky, darkness, and natural elements such as sand, to evoke thought about the transition between life and death. Mauk explained that the inclusion of the glass effect will draw attention to the finite nature of the imagery, in which the artist captures a moment and gives it an immortal life of its own.

Traditional Dance

By Madison Koenig

The aesthetics of African dance can be observed in a variety of places, and senior dance major Emily Stepleton will share her interest in Toronto, Canada. After performing a piece by founder and director of the professional dance company Urban Bush Women, Stepleton knew she wanted to learn more about African styles of dance. As a result she will use her PURF grant to travel to York University in Toronto with Azaguno, an African drumming and dance ensemble group at Ohio University. York University’s Department of Dance has invited the group for a one-week residency. While

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there, Stepleton plans to explore the visual and physical aspects of African dance by participating in undergraduate and graduate courses, attending professional dance concerts and rehearsals, and speaking with dance artists, students, and ethnographers.

Her goal is to bring her new understanding of African dance techniques back to Athens, where she will share her knowledge with fellow Division of Dance classmates, as well as with her students at Factory Street dance studio. She said that this opportunity will offer her a better perspective on the role culture plays in dance.

FINE ARTS

Women’s Words

By Madison Koenig

Senior HTC graphic design major Paula Welling is interested in the ways that language affects perceptions of gender.

Her PURF project will explore how the words Americans use to describe women affect and reflect women’s experience in society. Welling will present her research in a series of three artist books. The first two books will contain a juxtaposition of her written research on language and gender with advertisement images Welling collected. The last book will be an artistic representation of a series of Google search results that appear when researching women and language. Welling said that she

hopes her project will encourage viewers to reevaluate the visual and verbal language they encounter on a daily basis. Moreover, she wants her work to encourage audiences to reconsider more insidious aspects of sexism that persist in our culture. One facet of her research on this subject, a small book Words about Women, was accepted into Monumental Ideas in Miniature Books III, a juried exhibition hosted by the University of Akron’s School of Art. As a result, Welling’s research interest will travel with the exhibition nationally and internationally in the form of this book.

Dimensional Design

By Max Cothrel

PURF award winner Bryan Brown, a senior studio art major, is exploring the relationship between Computer Aided Design (CAD), also known as virtual objects, and the physical reality in which they exist. Using 3D scanning and printing technologies, Brown hopes to understand how the act of designing objects in virtual spaces enables the human mind to see higher dimensions that are invisible to the naked eye. Focusing on the ability to see an object from the inside out, he is incorporating elements of super string theory into his BFA thesis exhibition

in March and PURF research, creating an interdisciplinary project with art and science that literally sparkles. His silver sculpture crystal creation will be displayed in its three-dimensional nature, but screenshots of the object’s other dimensions, the ones visible only by scanning the object in a computer program, will be printed and displayed in the exhibition. Brown hopes his project will help uncover new possibilities that recent technologies of 3D scanning and printing hold for the fine arts.

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fine arts Reality on a Canvas

By Maggie Krueger Photos Provided by Mary Claus

In the digital age, some artists argue that the influx of images is overwhelming our ability to truly see.

However, Mary Claus, a senior studio art and painting major, aims to take advantage of contemporary images in combination with traditional painting techniques. Using her PURF grant, Claus plans to explore a theory that paintings necessitate a viewer to stop and observe an image more slowly.

As a result, Claus will create a series of portraits based on nameless photo references on the Internet and other photography. Nevertheless, through a

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de-humanizing color pallet and a portrayal of nonsensical human actions, she will give these digital sources false senses of identity. She said that by combining contemporary image making with painting, she hopes to offer a new sense of creativity as well as challenge viewer interpretations of formally digital images. Ultimately, she explained that she chose to use the traditional forms of painting because each image becomes an examination of raw material and detail rather than a fleeting image on a social network or search engine.

FINE ARTS

LEFT and ABOVE: Collection of Claus’ paintings.

Subjects as Authors

By Maggie Kreuger

“All real living is meeting,” said philosopher Martin Buber, and such is the sentiment senior art and design major Casandra Kupka shares in her PURF project. Using the notion that lives are shaped through relationships, Kupka explained that she will create a collection of self-portraits that interlace images of notes and letters. She hopes through these intricately woven pieces that she will be able to express the

idea of “co-authorship” — the concept that people she has met have played a pivotal role in molding her life. Kupka believes such meaningful interactions to be reciprocal and that this mutual dependence can lead to new forms of self-portraiture through the splicing and weaving of elements. In utilizing notes and letters, Kupka hopes to figuratively illustrate her identity’s dependence on her co-authors.

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Eye Design

An for

By Hannah Ticoras Photos by Rob Hardin

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FINE ARTS

G

raphic designers create many of the images around us. However, a segment of the population is untouched by their work. Madeline Cupp, a senior graphic design major, is creating pieces for the visually impaired. Discussions with her grandfather, who, after suffering a stroke struggles with his vision, created a desire in Cupp to use her PURF-supported project to connect visual design with textile language like braille. “[He] definitely planted a seed.

Talking to him really was the first time he had told me how uncomfortable it was,” Cupp said, referring to living with visual impairment. “Completely cut off from his environment, he felt like he was in a cloud.”

Completely cut off from his environment, he felt like he was in a cloud.

Madeline Cupp, graphic design senior, referring to her grandfather

She developed a project that required interdisciplinary expertise. Cupp began by applying large letters in English text and braille to wooden cards. These cards are used to close an electric circuit when placed on a small square box Cupp refers to as the device. When a letter card is place on the device, a letter appears on an iPad screen connected to the circuit and is read aloud.

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My project is metaphorically connecting visual and textile language, so that braille is not just serving a function, but is also a design element.

Madeline Cupp, graphic design senior

The device can also work as a keypad.

If a series of cards is placed on the device, the iPad application will read each letter as well as the word it formulates.

To create the piece, Cupp collaborated with professionals from various fields. Her father, an electrical engineer, helped to install the electrical components of the device.

“The very nature of graphic design is interdisciplinary,” said Dr. Sherry Blankenship, associate professor of graphic design and Cupp’s PURF advisor. “As designers, we work with a huge range of clients with a myriad of design problems from creating a brochure to developing a way to find

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[exhibits] in a zoo. The content, the purposes, the scale, the materials and users will change with each project so interdisciplinary is integral to what we do.”

This sentiment resonates with Cupp.

“I feel so strongly about having other minds around you all the time,” she said.

She explained that the university, with all its resources, has the capacity of being a great think-tank when diverse departments work together.

She hopes that the inclusiveness of her project will extend not only to collaborators and the visual impaired, but the general population as well. Too often, she noted, textile languages like braille are included as an after thought in design for a practical purpose.

“My project is metaphorically connecting visual and textile language, so that [braille] is not just serving a function, but is also a design element for those who can see,” Cupp said.

After college, Cupp hopes to work for a design agency that supports universal designs that her grandfather and all other viewers can enjoy.

ABOVE Cupp tests the conductive surfaces that translate to letters and words from a computer.

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humanities & social science Memoralizing Tragedy

By Maggie Krueger

In the late 1970s, Cambodia endured violence and genocide as the Khmer Rouge regime fought for a classless society. Through systematic killings or death by famine, roughly a quarter of the Cambodian population died under this regime. Elizabeth Cychosz, a junior anthropology and HTC journalism double major said she will use her PURF grant to understand how the current population understands its violent past. During summer 2014, Cychosz will intern at a branch of the

Documentation Center of Cambodia.

Ultimately she aspires to explore how memorials are used to heal as a society in the aftermath of the genocide, eventually creating and publishing a viewbook about the role of memorials in post-conflict Cambodia as a senior journalism thesis project. Additionally Cychosz plans to write an ethnographic article for her honors anthropology thesis exploring why individuals make memorials about the genocide.

Tracing Civil Rights

By Madison Koenig

Junior criminology major Olivia Montgomery believes in the power of stories, and she is using her PURF grant to preserve them. Montgomery will travel to Alabama and record the stories of older African Americans who have experienced racial injustice.

Focusing on events beginning in the twentieth century until the end of the Civil Rights movement, she hopes to interview older individuals who were

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alive and can speak about discrimination and violence. Montgomery plans to connect with this community by networking with local families and nursing homes. She hopes her research will allow her to preserve the voices of people who have not been heard, particularly by compiling these accounts into a book that will effectively capture what life was like during the time period.

HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE

On The Clock

By Max Cothrel

For those who have ever left a timed exam with sweaty palms and a chewed pencil, PURF recipients Zac Carpenter and Taylor Pitcock are interested in your personality traits. Carpenter and Pitcock, seniors and psychology majors at OU Zanesville, are looking for a statistical correlation between time constraints and test performance.

By establishing a quantifiable personality inventory for traits, such as emotional stability, conscientiousness, and openness, they are examining if these traits contribute to the anxiety

test-takers feel as the clock ticks away. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Mturk), a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace, Carpenter and Pitcock are able to gather participants’ personality inventories and have them take timed Human Intelligence Tests (HITs) that will yield results. By using Mturk, Carpenter and Pitcock can collect test results from thousands of subjects across the globe, generating a huge sample set and allowing for statistical analysis of how different pressures on test takers affect their test performance.

Changing Journalism

By Max Cothrel

In an evolving digital age, senior HTC journalism major Katherine Irby knows journalism needs to adapt to survive.

As revenue generated from ad sales and paper subscriptions continues to dwindle, young journalists like Irby are looking to the Internet for ways to keep journalism in the black. Using case studies composed of newspapers with an online presence, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, as well as websites such as ProPublica,

Irby is studying whether flexibility and value represent the most important factors in profitable online news models. Irby used her PURF award to travel to New York City to interview the news executives responsible for these publication decisions. She believes that the key for appealing to online news consumers will be providing a variety of choices in terms of content and access.

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humanities & social science Defining Sex Ed

By Maggie Krueger

Sexual education has continued to remain a controversial topic for school districts and educators. But what if such education programs where taken out of the hands of school programs and facilitated online instead? Such is the question Hannah Ticoras, junior HTC English major, aims to answer through her PURF project. Ticoras used her PURF grant to attend the Soapbox Feminist Camp, a conference held in New York City, where she met a representative from youth + tech + health (YTH), a California based organization that provides sexual education through online and SMS text-based

platforms. Finding the work inspiring, Ticoras decided to investigate the successes and failures of multiple online sex education organizations including Bedsider, Scarleteen, and Go Ask Alice.

After analyzing these organizational models from a structural and financial standpoint, Ticoras hopes to create her own plan for what a successful online sexual education program should look like. Through her study Ticoras hopes to consider questions of inclusivity in sexual education—including who sexual education is really tailored for and what sexualities are presented as “normal.”

Women Lead the Way

By Hannah Ticoras

While women remain underrepresented across the public and private sectors in southeastern Ohio, senior HTC political science major Caroline Boone noticed that women lead several prominent non-profits in the region. Using her PURF grant, she is conducting in-depth interviews with

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9 of them. Boone hopes to identify how they achieved their positions, as well as the similarities and differences in their leadership styles. Her project will add to discourse on Appalachian nonprofits, women-led organizations, and the social science community.

HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE

Into the Wild

By Ben Postlethwait Illustration by Samantha Brunner

Overconfident college students are not uncommon, but overestimating their wilderness survival skills can prove dangerous. Citing national reports of individuals suffering from poor wilderness preparedness, Alexandra Rhue, a senior outdoor recreation and education and journalism major, will use her PURF grant to survey just how out of tune students may be in their outdoor survival knowledge.

Rhue will analyze this sample of Ohio University students and examine their self-reported beliefs about wilderness survival skills. Rhue hopes that by comparing students’ attitudes toward

wilderness survival and their actual knowledge of survival skills, she can improve education programs for the general population as well as the Outdoor Recreation and Education Department’s curriculum.

Cross Cultural Journalism

By Ben Postlethwait

The types of media that people consume are closely tied to the culture and laws of the particular country in which the news originates. Junior journalism major Caroline James will use her PURF grant to study the ways beliefs and laws affect journalism in Germany in comparison to the United States. To do this, James plans to secure student housing and a twomonth long internship at Mephisto 97.6, the student radio station of

the University of Leipzig in eastern Germany. Using interviews from both American and German journalism professors and students, James will create a multimedia report comparing and contrasting the role journalism plays within each culture. James said she values the need for journalists to have an international perspective in order to fully understand their role in society.

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The

Science of Entitlement

By Hannah Ticoras Illustration by Samantha Brunner

E

xploration and change are staples of the college experience.

As a sophomore, HTC business major Brianna Rea realized that her interest lay in medicine. Since then, she has worked hard to fulfill her business and pre-med requirements. However when Rea, now a senior, enrolled in science and math classes for the first time, she noticed vast differences in the courses’ structures.

“It is a whole other world,” said Rea. “The first week of classes, my mind was blown.”

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She explained that business introductory classes are more relaxed and loose in structure. While the academic aspects of business are emphasized, she said that the soft skills, such as interviewing and networking, are very important because they are critical to career success for business majors. On the other hand, the pre-professional science classes she enrolled in were heavily weighted academically, “weeding out” students not performing at the appropriate level.

HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE

Rea’s experience of shifting her focus from business to science has sparked her interest in combining the disciplines in her senior undergraduate honors thesis. She is examining academic beliefs of science, math, engineering, and technology (STEM) majors versus non-STEM majors.

Academic entitlement is a perception an individual may hold that he or she deserves a certain academic outcome often regardless of effort.

Rea explained that these expectations include quick email responses from professors or a passing grade for unsatisfactory work if the student simply attended class every day, among other factors. Rea said that in the university system academic entitlement is based in a consumer mentality.

“We are paying so much for college; we feel entitled to certain outcomes,” she said.

Rea is wondering whether this mentality differs across students from different fields. She suspects that attitudes of academic entitlement may be more prevalent among non-stem majors such as business, in comparison to STEM majors.

In order to test her hypothesis, Rea created a survey asking students their feelings toward their majors. One section of the surveys taps into students feelings toward their majors—where they feel it is useless or useful, stupid or intelligent, and joyless or joyful, to

name a few. The next section touches on how they perceive their family and friends’ feelings about their major, and whether or not success will come from their major.

The final section of the survey was geared specifically towards Rea’s questions of academic entitlement, asking questions such as: “If I don’t do well on a test, the professor should make tests easier or curve grades,” “It is the professor’s responsibility to make it easy for me to succeed,” or “Because I pay tuition, I deserve passing grades.”

All of these statements were ranked on a 7-point scale with Rea surveying over 32 classrooms yielding 573 total surveys.

In analyzing her results Rea said the biggest challenge she faces is lack of outside information. “[My thesis] is pulling from education on STEM majors and from this other literature on academic entitlement,” she said. “It’s tying things together that haven’t yet been associated with each other.”

In establishing such multidisciplinary research, Rea hopes that she can help lend insight on how to meet the needs of a predicted 17 percent growth in STEM occupations from 2008 to 2018. In examining the role of academic entitlement flaws or challenges in the STEM curriculum may improve such education in the years to come.

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health & environment Stopping the Spread

By Madison Koenig

Each year, 1.1 million fatalities worldwide are the result of a bacterium called Shigella — the cause of an infectious diarrheal disease.

Using her PURF grant, HTC biological sciences senior Amanda Dunson will study a potential target for therapeutic drugs. By disrupting the temperature regulation of the bacteria that allows them to adjust to new environments, Dunson hopes she can impede the infection’s spread to other cells. Specifically, she will look at the

temperature-dependent regulation of outer membrane protein A, or OmpA, and its effect on Shigella virulence.

Drawing on Dr. Erin Murphy’s research, Dunson will modify the genetic makeup of Shigella’s chromosomes in order to determine its impact on regulating the OmpA. This regulation is important in several other human pathogens, and Dunson hopes that her research can lead to a better understanding of how to stop them.

Couch Exercising

By Ben Postlethwait

Is it possible to get a day’s worth of exercise by playing video games?

Senior exercise physiology major Tyler Bloniak is trying to find out. Bloniak will be building off research that showed consistent and extended use of active video games (AVG), such as those available for the Xbox Kinect system, can lead to weight loss in adolescents. He will use his PURF grant to show that, not only does this activity qualify as “moderate-tovigorous physical activity” according to the US Department of Health and 22

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Human Services, but it also elicits a lower physical impact, reducing risk of injury when compared to running or other high-impact exercise. To do this, Bloniak will study both healthy and overweight college students using a variety of biometric sensors and monitors to measure exercising’s impact on lower limbs and participant heart rate. Bloniak hopes that these tests can prove that AVG are both valid exercise options as well as a safer option to manage weight.

HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT

Understanding Parasites

By Max Cothrel

For more than 10 million people worldwide, Chagas disease is a debilitating tropical illness and serious public health issue. Caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. crzui), Chagas disease is common in the warmer climates of South America, but it is difficult to diagnose. Senior biological sciences major Dustin Kocol seeks to help medical professionals better understand Chagas by studying T. cruzi and two other closely related parasites that are commonly misidentified as causing Chagas: T.

rangeli and B. triatomae. Using DNA extraction and analysis techniques, Kocol will look for statistical significance in the differences of the parasites in regards to where they came from geographically and what species hosted them. By looking for ways to determine if T. cruzi and the two impersonators come from specific parts of the world or specific infecting hosts, Kocol hopes to help medical practitioners streamline institutional diagnosis efforts.

Dormant Diseases

By Max Cothrel

A serious public health issue in Latin America, Chagas disease is caused by a parasite transmitted through the feces of the kissing bug, named for its blood-sucking tendencies. As the focus of senior biological sciences major Tyler Brady’s PURF research, Chagas disease is a particularly hazardous disease because it can lie dormant – with effects on cardiac and digestive health sometimes unnoticeable for 15 to 20 years. The disease is complicated by the diversity of its infecting parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), which Brady will study. Using six Discrete Typing Units (DTUs), or strains, of

the illness, he will generate a wide range of data about their genotypes and growth patterns. Once the different strains’ genetic makeup are identified, they will be introduced into experimental cultures that will allow the DTUs to grow. This will allow Brady to analyze the strains’ growth in a relatively controlled environment. By understanding the genetic differences between the strains and analyzing how they grow, he wants to improve science’s understanding of the biology of Chagas disease, providing physicians significant insights to improve control efforts.

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health & environment Downstream Recovery

By Hannah Ticoras

For biologists in Appalachia, restoring creeks contaminated by acid mine drainage is a non-stop project. With her PURF grant, Sarah Maj, a senior geological sciences major, will work on the Raccoon Creek watershed restoration project. Under the guidance of her advisor, Dr. Dina Lopez, Maj will be the first researcher to look at the levels of iron oxidation in the stream.

The iron she finds in the water can be a sign of oxygen in the water. Iron levels can change depending on the season,

so she will take multiple samples throughout the year. She will also take samples along the stream, testing the levels of oxidation of the iron. She explained that she will use these samples to determine which season allows for the most iron precipitation and, therefore, the best biologic conditions downstream. Maj’s work will add to the literature on Appalachian acid mine damage, which she hopes will eventually allow for a full recovery of these damaged streams.

Fighting Child Obesity

By Madison Koenig

In rural Appalachia, childhood obesity rates exceed the national average.

Senior applied nutrition major Jessica Kilbarger and senior exercise physiology student Nicholas Toumazos are using health education to address the problem. Their program, Teaching HENRY: Healthy Exercise and Nutrition Recommendations for Youth, seeks to educate children about healthy eating and staying active. It centers on reading Henry Gets Moving!, a children’s book about a hamster that

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learns how to be healthy. The program will be offered to children from the after-school program Kids on Campus.

In addition, Kilbarger and Toumazos will have a subset of children wear an activity monitor to measure physical activity levels, as well as observe food choices and behaviors in the children’s cafeteria during lunch. Toumazos and Kilbarger’s project is part of a larger research initiative of Dr. Cheryl Howe on childhood obesity.

HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT

Weight Cycling

By Madison Koenig

The fluctuation of weight loss and gain, also known as weight cycling, is an important concept in obesity research. Using her PURF grant, senior cellular and molecular biology major Elizabeth Jensen will observe how this cycling affects longevity and aging in mice. The focus of her research is chronic inflammation and cellular senescence, a telltale sign of aging.

Her goal will be to see if weight cycling affects chronic inflammation and accumulation of senescent cells in fat tissue, and if so, how this inflammation affects mice’s lifespan. While Dr. Edward List has studied the impact of obesity and weight cycling on cell damage previously, Jensen’s project will advance this research as it focuses on chronic inflammation and cellular senescence.

Size of Life

By Max Cothrel

While studying a line of transgenic mice, PURF award winner Kathleen Black is interested in a distinction: the diminutive stature of these particular lab subjects. Black, a sophomore HTC biological sciences major, said these mice express a growth hormone receptor antagonist (GHA, for short) that causes them to grow differently from other mice. GHAs block cellular sites that growth hormones (GH) activate to cause growth. However, unlike other mice that lack growth hormone signaling, GHA mice don’t show a tendency toward increased longevity.

Black will be comparing GHA mice to Wild Type (WT) mice, serving as a control, which experience normal growth hormone action. By studying one hormone present in both of these types of mice as well as general body composition, Black hopes to illuminate what it is that makes GHA mice—inhibited by an antagonist that blocks GH binding — differ from other mice that lack growth hormone signaling. In doing so, she hopes to better understand what it is that allows some dwarf mice to live longer than others.

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health & environment Hormone Suppression

By Ben Postlethwait

As a player in several complex physiological processes such as growth and metabolism, growth hormone (GH) serves as a linchpin in many biological processes. In mice, studies have found that those with reduced GH signaling live longer, are less prone to diabetes, and have lower incidences of cancer.

Senior nutrition major Callie Wood will use her PURF grant to observe the effects of GH disruption later in life, exploring whether disruption of GH signaling at older ages will show

the same benefits. Wood will use a specifically bred line of mice called Adult-Onset Growth Hormone Receptor Knockout mice, which do not experience GH receptor disruption until 6 weeks of age. Because disruption of GH signaling is feasible with currently available drugs, Wood hopes that her research will clarify the unique health benefits that adulthood GH disruption has in mice models that could illuminate viable treatment options for the future.

Cellular Death

By Ben Postlethwait

Half of all men and one-third of all women in the United States will develop cancer during their lifetimes, according to recent estimates by the American Cancer Society. In the face of such staggering statistics, senior HTC biological sciences student Samantha Chang will invest her PURF grant in understanding this pervasive disease. Studying the death of the average healthy cell may provide a gateway into understanding the cause and spread of cancer. Chang will analyze three genes known to be involved 26

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in cancer. By chemically manipulating the genes p53, Clic and JAK, Chang will observe the effect these mutations have on rate of cell death and cancer spread in Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies. As regulators in the process of apoptosis, otherwise known as cellular death, these genes are critical in the proliferation of cancer in the body. As a result, Chang hopes that research in this area could lead to more targeted and efficient treatments for this deadly disease.

HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT

Shape of Cells

By Ben Postlethwait

Cell morphology, also know as the study of cell forms, is an important area of cancer research. As senior biological sciences major Ruohan Wu explained, normal cells in the body all have a specific size and shape. Once a cell loses control of this shape, it can become malignant and invade other tissues. Using his PURF grant, Wu will look at the ways three proteins, Ezrin, Radixin, and Moesin — known as the ERM proteins — bind to a protein called Clic5. Research has shown that these proteins are involved in linking

a cell’s inner membrane and its actin cytoskeleton, which allows the cell to keep its unique shape. Wu hypothesizes that Clic5 interacts directly with Radixin in order to establish this link and will use cells gathered from pig kidneys to test his hypothesis. Wu hopes that an investigation of ERM proteins will open doors for the study of cell structure and cancer metastasis. Depending on the findings, Wu said that Clic5 could be targeted for therapeutic treatment of cancer in the future.

Understanding Obesity

By Hannah Ticoras

While social and economic factors play a role in obesity, Nicole Brooks will use her PURF award to examine influences at the micro level. Using mice as her lab subject, Brooks, a sophomore HTC biological sciences major, will study the adipose tissue (AT) of individuals — of particular interest because growth hormone (GH) likely regulates an important process called angiogenesis in AT. Angiogenesis is a process by which the body forms new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, making it a key element in the treatment of such common ailments as hypertension, cardiovascular disorders, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, and

cancer. Brooks began her research on AT and the fat deposits within it during summer 2013 with her advisor Dr. Darlene Berryman. Using many of the same methods, she will now continue by studying the capillary density in AT of mice with varying GH activity, which may serve as an indicator for the presence or absence of GH in the AT. By understanding the relationship between GH and angiogenesis in the AT, she believes in the future it could help offer viable medical treatments through stimulating or inhibiting angiogenesis with GH depending on the situation.

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health & environment Fat Cell Growth

By Ben Postlethwait

Everything in moderation may not only be a phrase relevant to daily habits but also to the molecules that control bodily functions. Growth hormone (GH), a protein hormone responsible for promoting growth, may be one such element that, in excess, can cause harm to the body. Studies have found that elevated GH levels in transgenic mice have been linked to increased rates of cancer, diabetes, and accelerated aging, with mirroring effects found in humans. Senior biological sciences major Ross Comisford will use his PURF grant to test what role excessive GH plays in the particular cellular process of cellular senescence. Comisford explained that cellular senescence ceases the growth

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of a cell —preventing the growth of cancer in some cases—but these cells still live on in the body secreting molecules that are thought long term to contribute to chronic inflammation, aging, and tumor formation. Using transgenic mice that overexpress GH, Comisford will use staining techniques to quantify the number of senescent cells in fat tissue of transgenic mice expressing high levels of GH and compare this to control mice expressing normal GH levels. He hopes that better understanding GH’s role in cellular processes such as senescence will help improve treatment and preventive measures for such debilitating diseases as cancer and diabetes in the future.

HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT

Difference of Age

By Madison Koenig

At the Edison Biotechnology Institute, thousands of mice have served as research subjects for Dr. Edward List’s work on growth hormone (GH).

However, one group of lab mice have been largely left out of the experiments — mice older than 18 months.

Sophomore microbiology major Jesse Kowalski plans to change that using her PURF grant. Using a GH antagonist (GHA) strain of mice in which GH action is dampened, Kowalski will look at how this decrease in GH

activity changes the mice’s ability to regulate glucose. The lab noticed that GHA mice start with normal glucose metabolism, but by the time they reach 18 months they are insensitive to the insulin necessary for breaking down glucose. Kowalski will test the glucose metabolism and insulin levels of mice at 12, 18, and 24 months, in the hopes of understanding the relationship between glucose, insulin and GH.

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The

price of an extra portion

By Ben Postlethwait Illustration by Rachel Ertel

I

ndulging in an extra slice of cake or helping of mashed potatoes may prompt some overeaters to run an extra mile or do a few more sit ups. Senior exercise physiology major Jessica Luzar is studying whether or not additional exercise is an effective method of countering overindulgence.

Luzar’s research focuses on the physiological effects of postprandial lipemia (PPL), the 8 to 12 hour period after eating certain foods when fat content stays in the digestive system.

During this time, the body is high in triglycerides, which can lead to a build-up of plaque in the arteries called atherosclerosis. Such build-up contributes to cardiovascular disease.

“We live in a post-prandial world,” said Dr. Michael Kushnick, an associate professor in the School of

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Applied Health Sciences and Wellness who serves as Luzar’s advisor for the project. “We are almost always in this state of being in between meals with triglycerides in our system.”

However, Luzar explained that in most previous research, participants had fasted and their blood work showed limited triglycerides. Her research differs because the participants will be overfed. Previous research has shown that exercise has positive impacts on PPL when performed before a major meal, but less research has been conducted after overeating.

“Overfeeding is not nearly as researched as underfeeding in this area,” Luzar said.

Using a PURF grant, she has recruited 10 healthy male participants to test three different trials: restricting

HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT

caloric intake with regular exercise on a treadmill, calorie-neutral diet with exercise, and overfed caloric levels with exercise.

While in the past exercise has been shown to improve the reduction of PPL, it is less conclusive as to whether this result stems from the exercise or the energy deficiency it creates. As a result, if subjects are unable to achieve the same energy deficit through exercise due to overeating, it is not yet understood whether the exercise effects are as beneficial.

Luzar hypothesizes that overfeeding will reduce the helpful effects of exercise observed after average calorie consumption, showing that overeating is really more harmful than it seems.

Kushnick agrees with this hypothesis, explaining that this is a hard truth that we need to understand about the nature of nutrition.

“It seems that exercise is always going to be good for you,” Kushnick said. “I feel strongly that we’re going to find unhappy results; overeating is going to be more harmful for you than we previously thought.”

Luzar’s research will have implications for dietary and lifestyle coaching. On a professional level, she said the lab work she does with Kushnick

is extremely beneficial to her future career, especially as a senior pursuing graduate study in a physician assistant program.

“This type of laboratory work is definitely relevant to what I want to be doing in the future,” Luzar said.

“Working in this lab setting is a nice step toward graduate-level research.”

Luzar became involved in Kushnick’s project through a Program to Aid Career Exploration (PACE) position in his laboratory. Kuschnick said that Luzar put forth the extra effort necessary to tackle such a difficult topic. In addition to winning a PURF grant, Luzar was the recipient of an Outstanding Undergraduate Student Research Study Project Award from the Midwest American College of Sports Medicine.

With such support and interest Luzar hopes that research on this subject will lead to better dietary and lifestyle treatments in order to combat diseases like cardiovascular disease.

Kusnick too is looking forward to the practical applications and further research that can be done on this topic.

“We’re going to see that overfeeding is a behavior problem only encountered by some good ol’ TLC: Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes,” Kushnick said.

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No Bones About It

By Hannah Ticoras Photos by Rob Hardin

Margeaux Dennis, a senior biological sciences major, will use her PURF grant to study the effects of osteoporosis on elderly bones. Her research will focus on Type 2 osteoporosis, which is responsible for cortical bone loss, which is often caused by physical inactivity.

Cortical bone is instrumental in the support and protection of the body, and its loss could be responsible for almost 80% of fractures in individuals 60 years or older. Dennis hypothesizes that a relationship exists between the

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porosity of these affected bones and their bending strength. As a result, she will test how much force it takes to fracture an ulna using cadaveric human arms. Using equipment to measure the bending stiffness of the bones, Dennis will then increasingly load the ulnas in bending until they fracture. These measurements and the 3D images of the cadaveric bones will help Dennis determine how closely porosity and bending strength are related to further the discourse on osteoporosis.

HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT

LEFT and BELOW Senior biological sciences major Margeaux Dennis uses computer imaging to measure bone porosity.

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HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT

Matter over Mind

By Max Cothrel Photos by Rob Hardin

As a PURF recipient, senior biological sciences major Amanda Cassady will look at the world through the eyes of a soil nematode, typically one millimeter in length. This species of nematodes, known as C. elegans, has neurotransmitters called monoamines (MAs), a common element in many living organisms’ internal communication networks. When MAs are degraded by certain enzymes in the body, monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) work to reverse or inhibit this degradation.

Because MAOIs can protect MAs, they are often used in prescription medicine to treat neurological disorders such

as Parkinson’s, depression, and ADHD. However, in some cases, the MAOIs in these prescriptions can have undesirable side effects. Using the nematodes as test subjects, Cassady will study the effects MAOIs have on the species during its three-day lifespan. This short lifespan, coupled with its small size, makes C. elegans a worthy test subject for investigating the chronic effects MAOIs have on living organisms’ nervous systems. Cassady said she hopes these findings can help medical science better understand how to treat neurological disorders.

BELOW: Cassady examines nematodes in petri dishes under a microscope.

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science A Sense Restored

By Hannah Ticoras Illustration by Rachel Ertel

With his PURF grant, Ethan Vindvamara plans to move the scientific community one step closer to a solution for loss of whole or partial hearing. A sophomore biological sciences major, Vindvamara is working alongside Dr. Mark Berryman in his research on stereocillia, sensory hairs in the cochlea that translate the sounds entering the ear into the electrochemical signals our brains comprehend. Vindvamara will study a group of membrane proteins that have not been studied in relation to hearing loss. Because these

proteins assist in the functions of the stereocillia, he hopes to identify particular proteins that may be a part of a deficient structure derived from the human deafness gene. Finding a relationship between these proteins will provide a new platform for research that aims to find a natural cure for hearing loss.

Tracing Toad History

By Ben Postlethwait

For one modern species of toad, senior geological sciences major Lauren Johnson’s hopes that the key to understanding the past can be found in research of the present. Johnson will use her PURF grant to study the burrowing patterns of the Scaphiopus holbrooki, commonly referred to as the eastern spade foot toad. Observing its burrowing patterns in different types and depths of sediment, she

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will use plaster to cast their exact structure and measure each burrow.

The goal of these measurements is to produce a model that will aid in the identification of fossil records of these toads’ ancestors. Johnson noted that not enough is known about the burrowing behaviors of toads and that learning about their present habits may unlock knowledge about how to interpret trace fossil records.

SCIENCE

The Death of a Star

By Ben Postlethwait

We all look up at the night sky.

However, we are unlikely to notice that certain pairs of stars show a unique behavior through periodic outbursts of intense light. Senior HTC astrophysics major Yashashree Jadhav will use her PURF grant to study binary stars called cataclysmic variables (CV), which contain one white dwarf star and a secondary star that are gravitationally bound to each other. Using data obtained from the Pan-STARR1 optical telescope in

Hawaii, Jadhav will survey and create selection criteria in order to find and identify these CV in the night sky.

This is important, according to Jadhav, because CV are often the parent of Type 1a Supernovae, the explosive phenomena at the end of a star’s life.

She hopes that studying the unique patterns of electromagnetic radiation these stars give off will allow greater understanding of their behavior and its impact on other celestial bodies.

Leading with Light

By Max Cothrel

In the course of one hour, enough sunlight hits the Earth’s surface to meet our current energy demand for an entire year, explained senior HTC chemistry student Jason Malizia. With his PURF grant, Malizia will using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging, X-ray crystallography, and a variety of other spectroscopic techniques to better understand how photoactive materials can help make solar energy a more practical energy source. By synthesizing a specific photochromic compound — one that converts energy from photons to potential

energy in chemical bonds that can be used later – Malizia incorporates this material into synthesized metal organic frameworks. He believes this will help him take a step toward storing solar energy, making it a fuel just as dense as natural gas, coal, or oil.

His research could go on to be used in closed, carbon-free fuel cycles that run on solar power, he said. His ambition is to find a renewable source of energy, such as the sun, that is just as viable as the fossil fuels currently fueling human society.

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Proactive Prey

By Madison Koening Photos by Rob Hardin

Paddlefish, or Polyodon spathula, are a freshwater species found throughout the United States, commonly recognized by the paddle-like fins sticking out of their heads, used for food scavenging. These fins are covered in clustered pores, which produce a gellike mucus and are made up of sensory and support cells. Although much research has been done on the sensory cells, junior HTC biological sciences major Wenjuan Zhang has found a lack of information on the function of the support cells. She noted that these pores seem to be particularly exposed

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to parasitic attack, yet must not be an evolutionary disadvantage as the paddlefish has had similar pores for millions of years. Previous research has suggested that the support cells secrete a component of the gel that covers these pores, protecting them from attack. Using this hypothesis and her PURF grant, Zhang will focus on the gel component produced by the support cells to see if it contains protective mucins. This research will enable a better understanding of how the paddlefish defends itself from microorganism attack.

SCIENCE

LEFT: Zhang prepares cell samples to examine under a microscope.

BELOW: Paddlefish and cell slide used in Zhang’s PURF project.

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Microscopic Measurement

By Maggie Krueger Photos by Rob Hardin

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SCIENCE LEFT: Johnson use large scale objects to his work with nanoparticles.

J

unior HTC chemistry major Samuel Johnson measures temperature on what may be the smallest scale ever. He is using his PURF award to study heat transfer in nanoparticles and refine temperature measurement at the nanoscale.

At a larger scale, water boils in a pan or teakettle because air pockets are trapped in the vessels. The air pockets help facilitate the water’s transition from liquid to vapor. On the nanoscale, however, the trapped air is absent.

“The shocking thing is that when you take a very small structure and heat it on the nanometer scale in water, the water does not boil,” said Dr. Hugh Richardson, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and Johnson’s PURF advisor. They are hoping to determine why.

Johnson is calibrating a method that can accurately determine the temperature of a gold particle at the nanoscale. He uses light to heat the particle on a sensor. As the heat moves into the sensor, the sensor sends an optical signal that Johnson measures.

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There is a lot of controversy over the temperature of nanoparticles.”

Dr. Hugh Richardson, professor of chemistry and biochemistry

These events occur within a nanosecond.

“A large part of his project is understanding how to interpret the optical signals we are getting and relate them back to the temperature of the particle,” Dr. Richardson said.

“By placing these particles at different distances away, [Johnson] can not only figure out the temperature right on the surface of the chip, but he can also figure out how much the heat has dissipated into the surroundings,” Richardson said.

Measuring at the nanoscale presents many challenges. A practical one that Johnson faces involves resuming his lab work after breaks. The gold

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particles he heats with light exist on a slide with solutions spin coated on them. Finding the exact particle he was measuring last is difficult. So, Johnson has devised a grid system that pinpoints position and helps him find a sole particle he can locate in isolation through multiple trials.

Johnson’s research will add to a body of data on nanoscale heat that Dr. Richardson’s lab has been working on for more than 10 years.

“There is a lot of controversy over the temperature of nanoparticles. It is such a wide open field, and there really is no sort of conventional wisdom,” said Dr. Richardson. “That is why it is so important for Sam to get this calibration right.”

When asked about the project’s broader implications, Johnson said that knowing the temperature of a particle at the nanoscale and understanding its interaction with water could assist in the development of a cancer treatment.

ABOVE: Johnson uses intense lights to test temperature sensors.

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index Recipients 2014-15

Bernthisel, Jasen Black, Kathleen Bloniak, Tyler Boone, Caroline Brady, Tyler Brooks, Nicole Brown, Bryan Carpenter, Zac Cassady, Amanda Chang, Samantha Claus, Mary Comisford Ross Cupp, Madeline Cychosz, Elizabeth Dennis, Margeaux Dunson, Amanda Irby, Katherine Jadhav, Yashashree James, Caroline Jensen, Elizabeth Johnson, Lauren Johnson, Samuel Kilbarger, Jessica Kocol, Dustin

pg. 6 pg. 25 pg. 22 pg. 18 pg. 23 pg. 27 pg. 9 pg. 17 pg. 34 pg. 26 pg. 10 pg. 28 pg. 12 pg. 16 pg. 32 pg. 22 pg. 17 pg. 37 pg. 19 pg. 25 pg. 36 pg. 40 pg. 24 pg. 23 inquiry | 45

Kowalski, Jesse Kupka, Casandra Luzar, Jessica Maj, Sarah Malizia, Jason Matthews, David Mauk, Tyler Montgomery, Olivia Pitcock, Taylor Rea, Brianna Rhue, Alexandra Shanks, Sarah Stepleton, Emily Ticoras, Hannah Toumazos, Nicholas Vindvamara, Ethan Welling, Paula Wood, Callie Wu, Ruohan Wenjuan, v

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pg. 29 pg. 11 pg. 30 pg. 24 pg. 37 pg. 7 pg. 8 pg. 16 pg. 17 pg. 20 pg. 19 pg. 6 pg. 8 pg. 18 pg. 24 pg. 36 pg. 9 pg. 26 pg. 27 pg. 38

The Honors Tutorial College 35 Park Place Athens, OH 45701 740.593.2723

last look David Matthews tests percussion instruments for his fine arts research project.