Follow

• 

  Power to the Plants: Measuring Plant Cover and Species Richness in a Solar Prairie Array and Proposed Solar Sites

  Valerie Thurston, Allyson Allen, Catherine Landry, Elizabeth Vear, Madelaine Gregory

  Solar energy in the state of Ohio has exponentially increased in recent years and has shown no signs of slowing. Large areas of unused land, or previously used agricultural areas are now being converted to solar array areas. At the same time, native Midwest prairies have diminished to making up less than 1% of land. We are now at the forefront of investigating how native plants and solar arrays can share the same spaces and create healthy ecosystems that can benefit many organisms. Few studies have been done on the effects of solar panels on plant composition, but recent studies have investigated how the microclimates created by shading of panels may yield a more diverse plant community. In our own study we wanted to investigate the current solar prairie at Curran Place in comparison to potential solar sites in the City of Dayton to see if solar prairies can have higher amounts of plant cover. Our first hypothesis was that plant cover is higher at Curran Place than the proposed sites. Our second hypothesis was that there would be higher forb species richness at Curran Place than proposed sites. Our last hypothesis was that plant cover will be higher outside of the solar array than inside. We used identification skills to identify the different plant species in quadrats and used Multivariate GLM testing. Univariate GLM testing, and Tukey testing to analyze our findings. We found that there were significant differences in bareground, grasses, and forbes between the sites. We also found that percent cover of plants was higher outside of the panels than inside. Lastly, we found that species richness was highest at the Curran Place prairie compared to the proposed sites. These findings indicate that solar prairies can be a successful ecosystem that yield a variety of native plants.

• 

  Precipitation trends in East Africa 1980-2021

  Elisabeth Arnold

  The East African region has experienced changes in precipitation over the past 4 decades. This region is especially vulnerable to climate change because of its dependence on predictable precipitation for subsistence agriculture. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the changing patterns of rainfall in East Africa using high resolution MSWEP data from 1980-2021. Our results show an overall decrease in annual precipitation (-2.5% per decade) and precipitation frequency (-4% per decade). As a result, precipitation intensity remained largely unchanged. Annual maximum daily rainfall decreased by -1.6% per decade, and maximum consecutive five-day precipitation decreased by -2.7% per decade. Annual maximum number of consecutive wet days also decreased by -5.5% per decade. With the decrease in overall annual rainfall, the annual maximum number of consecutive dry days increased by 2.7% per decade. The high spatial resolution of the data reveals significant spatial variability of these trends, with a clear east/west divide. The western part of the study area experienced more significant decreases in annual rainfall, rainfall frequency, maximum daily and 5-day rainfall and consecutive wet periods. On the other hand, the eastern part of the region experienced slight increase in rainfall and rainfall frequency, and maximum daily and 5-day rainfall remained largely unchanged. Despite such differences, the maximum number of consecutive dry days increased throughout the region, indicating higher propensity for droughts.

• 

  Predicting NBA Player Performance: An Analysis of 11 Seasons of Offensive Statistics

  Payton Reaver

  This project aims to utilize machine learning algorithms to predict a player's performance for the upcoming NBA season. The study utilizes a comprehensive data set comprising various offensive metrics. Such metrics are but not limited to: points, rebounds, assists, fouls, and blocks from the last 11 seasons of NBA basketball. By analyzing historical trends and patterns, this project seeks to develop a predictive model that can forecast a player's future performance accurately. The study has implications for fantasy basketball enthusiasts, sports analysts, sports betting, and team managers seeking to improve their decision-making processes.

• 

  Predictive Modelling Of Mortality Rates for Diabetes: An Analysis Of Risk Factors

  Simin Zhao

  Diabetes is a chronic disease affecting millions globally and is a leading cause of death. Understanding mortality trends and predicting future mortality rates is crucial for public health planning and intervention strategies. This project analyzes mortality rates for diabetes in the United States from 2015 to 2020 and employs various predictive methods in Statistics and Machine Learning to forecast future mortality rates. Our objective is to identify critical factors that contribute to mortality from diabetes and develop a suitable model for predicting future mortality rates. The outcomes of this study could inform policies and interventions aimed at reducing the burden of diabetes-related mortality.

• 

  Prioritization of Discordant Chronic Comorbidities and prediction of its medication using machine learning

  Ichchha Pradeep Sharma

  About one in three adults worldwide suffer from multiple chronic diseases [1]. In the United States, about 12% of adults have five or more chronic conditions [2]. Such chronic conditions are increasing in the elderly, putting a high toll on our healthcare system. Patients with Discordant Chronic Comorbidities may require numerous appointments with general practitioners, complex and structured care, as well as enhanced coordination between various healthcare providers to ensure quality of care and treatment.With the large prevalence of multiple chronic conditions, it is difficult for the patients and providers to prioritize the medications and understand the impact caused by one treatment on the other simultaneous treatments. Healthcare practitioners trust the patients to actively participate in their care and treatment because of the prolonged nature of chronic disorders. Meanwhile, multiple factors affect a treatment, and it becomes difficult for patients to keep up with the interactions, change in body weight or the cost of a treatment. These factors need to be taken into consideration while making any recommendations.Numerous research studies are being done for managing and recommending medication for a single chronic disease. To the best of our knowledge, there are no solutions available to help people simultaneously manage their type-2 diabetes and any other disease. In this work, we seek to design a decision aid/recommendation system powered by state-of-art Machine learning algorithms to aid the healthcare practitioners and patients make informed decisions.We start out by designing a survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk. The survey captures multiple concerns and complex/changing needs of patients with DCCs. The goal is to use this survey to understand healthcare providers' treatment strategies for patients and how they prioritize the care of patients with complex care needs. Mechanical Turk provided us access to a diverse set of healthcare providers who have different experience and working in different contexts. After the collecting the data, it is cleaned to extract the required data for further processing. We tested out this data and are creating benchmarks using various state-of-art Machine Learning algorithms. Reference:[1] Hajat C, Stein E. The global burden of multiple chronic conditions: a narrative review. Preventive medicine reports. 2018 Dec 1;12:284-93.[2] Buttorff, Christine, Teague Ruder, and Melissa Bauman. Multiple chronic conditions in the United States. Vol. 10. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2017.

• 

  Propaganda Campaign Analysis

  Emma Pearn, Madeleine Cachat, Lauren Riley

  Examining the propaganda techniques utilized in different media messages, students analyze a variety of public health and marketing campaigns to understand how these messages serve to shape audience awareness, attitudes, and behavior.

• 

  Public Opinion, Voter Turnout, and Public Policy: Political Science Senior Capstone Presentations

  Rosemary Drake-Brockman, Tocarra Hogue, Xavier Russell, Nikolaus Rottjakob, Gunnar Hendrix, Kevin Parente, Brenden Dempsey, Judith Clark, Justin Phares, Keelin Slawecki, Jessica Leffew, Mary Vanek, Patrick Murray, Sofia Garcia, Grace Zehner, Katherine Hodgdon, Aija Cason, Jordan Ford, Michael Gibson

  This semester senior political science majors have conducted varied group projects. Presentations will assess support amongst college students for U.S. support of the Ukraine-Russia war, the factors that influence voter turnout, and analysis of sports betting and environmental policies.

• 

  Queen Elizabeth II's Death and Its Impact on Media Ethics

  Mary Newman

  Queen Elizabeth II's passing led to many different responses. Many were positive, but some criticized the Queen and her role in Britain's history. This poster will highlight responses on social media, specifically Twitter, from university professors, many of which are negative toward the Queen. These Tweets and the responses they garnered raise many ethical questions such as "Should professors or educators be allowed to have social media accounts and share their personal opinions?" or "Does mentioning negative traits or issues a celebrity or famous person was involved in violate the notion of “don’t speak ill of the dead,” or does the practice of only positive obituaries violate the journalistic values of objectiveness, truth, and fairness?”

• 

  Queer Art and Activism

  Sarah Behnke

  As anti-transgender rhetoric and regressive laws spread across the U.S., it is vital that queerness in all its forms be visually represented in art and society. This presentation explores the effects of queer visibility for artists and their audiences. This research reviews art selections from the past and the present and relates the work to LGBTQIA+ liberation movements. Connections to this theme in art will be demonstrated by several selections at Dayton's Edward A. Dixon Gallery.

• 

  Recidivism in the Criminal Justice System

  Brendan Kadel, Carson Rhoades

  Our group has done analysis of inmates in the prison systems, and the many variables that impact recidivism rates here in America. We have conducted research, a survey analysis, and developed a clear understanding of our topic that we can share with others. The goal of this project is to determine whether specific socioeconomic-related variables, like educational attainment, have an affect on the number of prior arrests among inmates.

• 

  Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences, Attachment Style, and Relationship Satisfaction in Young Adults

  Rachel Banks

  Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are defined as childhood events considered as traumatic. These events can lead to a plethora of physical and psychological health issues as the individual ages (Mosley-Johnson, 2019). Furthermore, ACEs can lead to the development of more insecure attachment styles (Thomson, 2017). It is predicted that those with an insecure attachment style will experience lower relationship satisfaction if they have a higher ACEs score. Participants will be recruited from the University of Dayton’s Psychology Research Sign-Up titled Sona Systems, which is utilized by Introduction to Psychology courses at the university. Participants will complete several questionnaires to measure their ACEs score, level of satisfaction in relationships, and the security in their attachment style. There are not many studies that investigate the relationship between ACEs and relationship satisfaction, especially when using attachment styles as a means to connect those variables. This study intends to determine whether there is a relationship among these variables so that further methods of treatment and therapy can mitigate the negative health issues of ACEs. It is important to investigate the aspects that can increase the likelihood of physical and psychological health issues so that they can potentially be discovered and treated before becoming too detrimental. If ACEs, attachment style, and relationship satisfaction are found to have a relationship, then treatments can be developed in an attempt to decrease the severity of health issues caused by high ACE scores.

• 

  Religion and Juvenile Deviance

  Rachel Burton

  This research looks to analyze and identify a correlation or lack of correlation between religion and criminality. Past literature presents a variety of results that prevents any concrete determination of a correlation. Through a negative binomial regression, this research looks at data from interviews of juveniles ages 14 to 18 to see if a relationship exists between higher crime rates and the importance of spirituality in their lives. The results of this research contribute to a better understanding of spirituality on individual’s criminal behaviors and specifically adds a focus to the youth population.

• 

  Religious Rhetoric of UD

  Mary Sabatino, Douglas Villhard, Rachel Young, Julian Berry, Elizabeth Finnigan, Sarah West, Natalie Blue, Jennifer Reckers, Kiley Blatt, Anthony Martine, Kristeena Bright, Phil Leon, Joseph Zern, Anna Gagliardo, Charles Corrigan, Brendan Kadel, Graysen Rizzo, Kacey Moyna, Brendan Miller, Timothy Stewart, Casey Fuller, Caroline Duarte, Casey Tirado, Abigail Carter, Anne Waters, Keelin Kelly, Ethan Schum, Liana Caterine Yara, Christierra Williams, Sarah Abed, Emma Blair

  Students in the CMM 357 Religious Rhetoric course were given the choice to choose a statue, building, space/place on campus that is marked as a religious text/artifact or propose a new object of visual rhetoric in order to analyze using the rhetorical theories from class. Thier analyses employ a variety of rhetorical theories and concepts discussed in class during the semester. Each group collaborated to answer the question: how does this artifact/text rhetorically communicate and construct religious identity at UD?

• 

  Renewable Natural Gas - Demonstrating the Potential of the World’s Biggest Battery

  Subathra Rajendran

  TITLE: Renewable Natural Gas - Demonstrating the Potential of the World’s Biggest BatteryI. ObjectivesThe proposed effort aims the development of commercial and technological models to demonstrate the feasibility of a closed loop renewable natural gas power production model. This process is also called Power-to-Gas (P2G).II. Method(s)Power-to-Gas represents the conversion of electrical power into a gaseous energy carrier such as methane. The overall proposed approach to P2G involves the conversion of renewable/excess electricity into natural gas using high temperature electrolysis, carbon capture in the form of CO2, and catalytic methanation. The electrolysis generates hydrogen (from water), which combined with the captured CO2 (i.e. from power plants’ flue gases) forms, under a catalytic environment, methane (methanation). In order to assess the feasibility of such an approach, the following steps will be carried out:•Identification of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies for electrolysis/hydrogen production, carbon capture and methane production•Develop several integrated configurations of these technologies that are suitable for large-scale methane production (10 MW) and analyze their cost-benefit•Predict current and future costs associated with the proposed P2G systems III. SignificanceThe current geopolitical dynamics have more than ever highlighted the importance of energy independence. The existing US natural gas infrastructure has a capacity that would satisfy the domestic energy requirement for up to one year. However, it is only used at 30% of its capacity. Several countries, including the US, are racing to implement more renewable energy infrastructures. However, their dependence on natural events (sun exposure, wind intensity) often leads to peak energy productions where excess energy is lost. Thus, the ability to store such energy for later use would be of utmost importance. P2G offers a long-term and alternative solution to other energy storage technologies such as batteries or hydrogen storage. The methane produced from P2G can be stored directly in the existing infrastructure. Hence, an alternative to traditional batteries. Hydrogen storage has very strict requirements in terms of materials and safety, and the existing US natural gas infrastructure is not compatible for hydrogen storage. The proposed work will deliver several technological configurations and their associated costs for a large-scale P2G production. In addition, it will predict how improvements on existing technologies, in terms of costs and efficiencies, might affect P2G implementation costs in the future

• 

  Resolving a gene network for a developmentally patterned and rapidly evolving fruit fly trait

  Corinne Stone, Rachel Stanojev, Emily Daniel

  Our research aims to further resolve a gene regulatory network (GRN) responsible forthe development of a male-specific (dimorphic) pattern of pigmentation on the abdomensegments of the fruit fly Drosophila (D.) melanogaster. The male A5 and A6 segments are blackin color from melanin pigment produced by the resident epidermal cells. These melanicsegments differ from the non-melanic A1-A4 segments, and the A5 and A6 segments offemales. Previous studies identified 30 regulatory genes whose functions are needed for thisdimorphic pigmentation, and found the cis-regulatory elements (CREs) that control theepidermis expression of four genes that encode pigment metabolism enzymes, and one CREthat controls expression of a key regulatory gene. Here we describe a plan to use RNA-interference to turn down the expression of these regulatory genes one-by-one, and determinewhat effects reduced expression has on the function of these five CREs. The results will revealconnections between regulators and their target genes that embody a pigmentation GRN.Abdomen pigmentation differs between fruit fly species, so success in characterizing this D.melanogaster GRN will bolster future studies on how this GRN evolved. Few animal GRNs havebeen characterized, and thus the breadth of regulatory genes and their CRE interactions remainunclear. While all traits have evolutionary histories, how they originate, become modified, andlost has not been characterized at the level of GRNs and CREs. However, fruit fly pigmentationpresents an ideal trait and species lineage to study GRNs, as its genetic tools are second tonone.

• 

  Restorative Justice: Conflict, Accountability, Healing

  Liliana Busic, Jeffrey Davis, Autumn Doleno

  What does it mean to accomplish justice when someone has caused harm? This poster will describe how Restorative Justice answers that question in a way that centers the victim's needs and includes the perpetrator's accountability. The poster will introduce a variety of contexts where these processes are being used to build a way forward in the face of conflict and loss.

• 

  Revealing the Dynamics of the Brain-Limb Axis During Limb Regeneration

  Ben Klocke, Jason Tornes, Kaitlyn Martin, Augustine Miller; external collaborators include Dr. Katia Del Rio-Tsonis at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) and Dr. Mario Looso at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research (Bad Nauheim, Germany).

  Complex tissue regeneration is an uncommon ability which can only be found in a small subset of vertebrates, with one of these being the amphibious axolotl, a salamander capable of regenerating its limbs following amputation. While the necessity of nerves in the process of limb regeneration has been well studied, the possible role of other components of the nervous system, such as the brain, is largely unknown. In the current study proteomics, gene expression and immunohistochemical approaches were employed to investigate changing protein expression patterns at various time-points throughout the process of limb regeneration. In the context of this presentation, we highlight intriguing neurobiological alterations that occur in the axolotl brain during limb regeneration, in an effort to shed light to the regulation of this fascinating physiological process.

• 

  Rhetorical Analysis of Rituals of Healing: Body, Mind, Spirit

  DJ Villhard, Abby Carter, Keelin Kelly

  Students in the CMM 357 Religious Rhetoric course were given the choice to choose a statue, building, space/place on campus that is marked as a religious text/artifact or propose a new object of visual rhetoric in order to analyze using the rhetorical theories from class. Thier analyses employ a variety of rhetorical theories and concepts discussed in class during the semester. Each group collaborated to answer the question: how does this artifact/text rhetorically communicate and construct religious identity at UD?

• 

  Rhetorical Analysis of the Marianist Community: Three O'clock Prayer Statue

  Tim Stewart, Brendan Miller, and Charlie Corrigan

  Students in the CMM 357 Religious Rhetoric course were given the choice to choose a statue, building, space/place on campus that is marked as a religious text/artifact or propose a new object of visual rhetoric in order to analyze using the rhetorical theories from class. Thier analyses employ a variety of rhetorical theories and concepts discussed in class during the semester. Each group collaborated to answer the question: how does this artifact/text rhetorically communicate and construct religious identity at UD?

• 

  Right-Sizing Solar Systems for Low-Income Housing

  Rishabh Sanjaykumar Shukla, Phillip Clayton

  Tools for estimating the solar systems for a building often err in oversizing out of caution in their results. This is fine for people who can afford the upfront cost and can wait for the eventual payback. But this makes it difficult for people with lower income to afford a solar system for their home, and lower income families are often the ones who could most use a relief from high energy bills.Our goal is to create an analysis tool that estimates the right size of solar system needed to fulfil the energy needs of a building with the lowest payback period and the least amount of energy going back into the grid.Using data for houses in the Dayton area with average, low, and high energy usage, we have analyzed what the payback period, amount of the load is met, and how much power is going back to the grid for various sizes of solar and battery capacities in a system. We then shifted these data sets +/-4 hours to analyze different scenarios of when energy consumption may line up with solar system production.The results of this analysis have given us a good idea of how certain combinations of solar and battery capacity in a system can work in buildings of different amounts of energy consumption. We will be able to build on this research in the future, to look at what solar systems will be needed if all the energy requirements of a building are converted to electricity. We will also record the actual energy usage of low income homes in the Dayton area to compare to this analysis.

• 

  Rising Interest Rates and Energy Price Trends in 2022

  Matthew Dahlke

  The macro environment in 2022 included a sustained effort by the US Federal Reserve to curb inflation through a major increase in the Federal Funds rate. In this study, I look at the growth rate trends in energy commodities (e.g. natural gas) and energy services (e.g. electricity) to see if their price trends are declining due to the Fed's policy of monetary tightening. I also compare the energy price growth rates to overall CPI growth rates to see if they trend together. I use year over year by month growth rates and rolling 3 month growth rates annualized to develop my trend analysis.

• 

  River Stewards 2023 Cohort Capstone Project

  Lyuba Benin, Victoria Jacobs, Sarah Yaroma, Kyle Torbic, Christopher Pirovano, Kerry Howard, Kelsey Saylor, Kathleen Dawson, Lauren Sapienza, Isabel Bartram, Elizabeth Vear, Emma Allington, Sean Zegarski, Grace Jackson, Natalie Yersavich

  The 2023 cohort of the University of Dayton River Stewards, the flagship program of the Rivers Institute, partnered with Dakota Center, a community partner located in West Dayton. The Rivers Institute, housed with other leadership development programs in the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community, uses a watershed model of community to promote service, learning, and leadership in Dayton and its neighboring communities. Capitalizing on an established relationship with the Dakota Center, the River Stewards began work towards revitalizing outdoor space at the Dakota Center, an under-utilized asset of the organization that could better serve both the afterschool and the senior programs there. The senior cohort organized volunteers from other cohorts in various garden days at the center and successfully wintered the garden, improved the raised beds, and prepared the garden for spring planting. In the off-season, the cohort developed a sustainability curriculum for the center’s afterschool program. These lesson plans drew upon the cohort’s interdisciplinary expertise, with a myriad of topics spanning from food sustainability to insect observation. As graduating seniors, the cohort intends for younger cohorts to continue nurturing this partnership; seniors compiled comprehensive lesson plans so future cohorts can continue the sustainability curriculum and garden days at the Dakota Center. The River Stewards hope that this project strengthens their partnership with the Dakota Center, that the curriculum enhances young people’s understanding and practice of sustainability, and that the garden days improve a space that inspires the joy of the outdoors in the greater Dayton community. The cohort thanks Mike Miller, Erin Wilson, Kristine Irby, Leslie King, and Kam Lee for their support and mentorship on this project.

• 

  Role of M1BP, a transcriptional pausing factor in JNK-mediated cell death during eye development

  Hannah Darnell, Anuradha Chimata Venkatakrishnan

  During development, transcriptional regulation is a fundamental mechanism(s) to regulate differential gene expression. Recently, we have shown that M1BP, a transcriptional pausing factor and a functional homolog of ZKSCAN3, promotes cell survival in developing eyes by suppressing wingless (wg). We performed a forward genetic screen, to identify other targets of M1BP mediated transcriptional repression that may contribute to eye suppression phenotype. We identified members of Jun-amino-terminal-(NH2)-Kinase (JNK) signaling pathway as modifiers of the “no-eye” or “reduced-eye” phenotype of MIBPRNAi. We hypothesized that M1BP may promote cell survival in developing eyes by downregulating JNK signaling. Using the Gal4-UAS system, we modulated both JNK signaling components along with downregulation of M1BP function and assayed their role in cell survival during eye development. We found that downregulation of M1BP results in activation of JNK signaling which in turns activates both apoptosis as well as autophagy. Activation of JNK signaling enhances M1BPRNAi phenotype and downregulation of JNK signaling rescues the M1BPRNAi “no-eye” phenotype. Secondly, blocking cell death or autophagy alone genetically does not completely rescue M1BPRNAi phenotype of “no-eye”. Finally, downregulation of M1BP along with blocking both apoptosis and autophagy resulted in a significant rescue of the M1BPRNAi ”no-eye” phenotype. Here, we present the role and mechanism by which transcriptional pausing promote cell survival in developing eye.

• 

  Role of ZFP36L1 in suppressing human coronavirus replication

  Andrew Villasenor, Tooba Shafeeque Ahmed Momin, Malabika Bhowmik

  ZFP36L1 is a CCCH-type zinc figure protein (ZFP) where zinc ions coordinate the protein structure in a tetrahedral geometry by binding to cystine-cystine or cysteine-histidine amino acids. ZFP36L1’s unique structure enables it to interact with a wide variety of molecules including RNA; thus, it could modulate several cellular processes including virus replication. Several CCCH-type ZFPs have shown their antiviral efficacy against various DNA and RNA viruses. However, the role of ZFP36L1 in the human coronavirus is little explored. We used human coronavirus (HCoV)-OC43 to determine the role of ZFP36L1 on its replication. We overexpressed and knockdown ZFP36L1 in HCT-8 cells individually using lentivirus transduction. Wild type, ZFP36L1 overexpressed, and ZFP36L1 knockdown cells were each infected with HCoV-OC43, and the virus titer in each cell line was measured over 96 hours post-infection (p.i.). Our results show that HCoV-OC43 replication was significantly reduced with ZFP36L1 overexpression while ZFP36L1 knockdown significantly enhanced virus replication. ZFP36L1 knockdown HCT-8 cells started producing infectious virus at 48 hours p.i. which was an earlier timepoint as compared to wild-type and ZFP36L1 overexpressed cells. Wild-type and ZFP36L1 overexpressed HCT-8 cells started producing infectious virus at 72 hours p.i. Overall, the current study showed that overexpression of ZFP36L1 suppressed human coronavirus (OC43) production

• 

  Runoff to the Mangroves: Agricultural Runoff over Time in Volusia County, Florida

  Lauren Corrigan

  Mangrove habitats are coastal wetlands that make up less than 2% of marine environments. In the United States, mangrove habitats are located along the coast of Florida. These mangrove habitats are important because they protect the coast from erosion, are habitats to many organisms, and serve as a filter to rid carbon dioxide. It is important to monitor anthropogenic disturbances since mangroves play a crucial role in the ecosystem. This study will display geographic data of agricultural runoff over time. It will show total nitrogen and phosphorus inputted into the environment over about a ten year time frame in Volusia County, Florida. It will help show how agricultural runoff can cause possible transgenerational effects in organisms that live in these areas by showing areas of high runoff overtime.