Stander Symposium Projects

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  Auditory Information in the Form of a Scratching Sound Enhances the Effects of the Rubber Hand Illusion

  Brittany C. Fischer, Natalya N. Lynn, Bridget K. O'Mera

  The body schema is generated from a number of different sense modalities such as vision and proprioception. Botvinick and Cohen's rubber hand illusion (1998) demonstrates the relative contributions of vision, tactile perception and proprioception to body awareness. In this illusion, a participant's real hand is concealed from view and a prosthetic rubber hand is seen in its place. An experimenter simultaneously administers tactile stimulation to both the seen rubber hand and participant's actual hidden hand. The combination of this visual and tactile information overrides proprioceptive cues to body perception, creating a sense of ownership of the rubber hand. The present experiment extends research on the sensory inputs to the body schema by employing the rubber hand illusion to investigate the role of auditory information in construction of the body schema. Tactile stimulation was administered with sandpaper while a prerecorded scratching noise played from a concealed speaker. We found that the inclusion of a sound cue heightened the effects of the illusion and caused participants to more readily accept the rubber hand into the body schema. The findings of this study will contribute to the existing understanding of body perception by demonstrating the influence of the auditory system in limb localization.

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  Automatic Intrusion Detection on Pipeline Right-of-Way via Aerial Imagery

  Almabrok Essa Essa, Sidike Paheding

  Object detection in aerial imagery has received a great deal of attention in recent years and become one of the most popular research areas in the field of surveillance systems. Issues in aerial imagery, such as low resolution, the presence of noise, complex appearances of objects and more importantly viewpoints variations of objects have made the process of intrusion detection on oil pipeline Right-of-Way (RoW) more challenge. Thus, a detection system must be able to extract prominent features from an object which has to be distinct and stable under different conditions during the image acquisition process. In this work, we present a novel scheme that automatically detects intrusions such as construction vehicles and equipment on pipeline RoW from aerial imagery. In the first part of the framework, a region-of-interest detector is employed to extract potential regions that may contain objects and to reduce the search region from imagery that are not considered to be a region-of-interest. Next, we develop a rotation-invariant gradient histogram based descriptor for a robust object representation. Since it is built in grayscale space, it is independent of the color changes. In terms of tackling motion blur and noise introduced by sensors or atmospheric effects, a noise reducing kernel is used to compute the gradient of the region, and then histogram of orientated gradient is computed for each key region obtained from the first step of the algorithm. The final descriptor is built by concatenating the magnitude of fast Fourier transform of orientation histograms over all key regions. In the last phase of the framework, a support vector machine with radial basis kernel is used as the classifier to detect objects in an image.

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  Automatic Perception and Target Detection in LiDAR Data

  Nina M. Varney

  LiDAR is a remote sensing technology which uses a set of 3D geo-referenced points in order to describe a scene. Aerial LiDAR is often collected using UAVs or airplanes which can passively collect data over a short period of time, often over several miles. This can result in millions of points used to describe a scene. LiDAR data is often used for surveillance and military applications and because of the large amount of data and varying resolutions it can be difficult for analysts to recognize and identify mission critical targets within the scene. The goal of this project is to develop a technique for the automatic segmentation and classification of distinct objects within the scene to aid analysts in scene understanding. We focus our method on five distinct classes that we wish to identify; ground, vegetation, buildings, vehicles and fences or barriers. The first step is to use a RANSAC-based ground estimation in order to estimate the digital terrain model (DTM) of the scene. Next, 3D octree segmentation is performed in order to distinguish between individual objects within the data. A novel volume component analysis (VCA) method is used to extract distinct geometric signatures from each individual object and these features are used as the input to several support vector machines (SVM) in cascade of classifiers configuration. The cascade of classifiers separates the objects into the four remaining classes. Our method was tested on an aerial urban LiDAR scene from Vancouver, Canada with a resolution of 15.6 pts/m^2 and was found to have an overall accuracy of 93.6%.

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  Behavioral Activation in a Homeless Shelter: Development and Validation of the Behavioral Activation Treatment Efficacy Measure

  Zachary S. Glendening

  Beginning in the summer of 2013, Reeb and colleagues implemented a Behavioral Activation (BA) Program in a homeless shelter for men. Based on operant conditioning, BA is a “therapeutic process that emphasizes structured attempts at engendering increases in overt behaviors that are likely to bring [the person] into contact with reinforcing environmental contingencies and produce corresponding improvements in thoughts, mood, and overall quality of life” (Hopko et al., 2003, p. 700). Quantitative and qualitative results show that BA has efficacy in increasing homeless men’s participation in various shelter activities (Reeb et al., 2014). With funding from the Graduate Student Summer Fellowship, the author co-developed and is in the process of validating the Behavioral Activation Treatment Efficacy Measure (BATEM) to assess psychosocial outcomes of BA. This brief psychometric instrument assesses the following constructs central to mental health maintenance and recovery from mental illness: agency, hope, purpose/meaning in life, quality of life, perceived social support, emotional well-being, and positive social climate. Validation of the measure relies on anticipated support for the following hypotheses: (A) The BATEM will have strong internal consistency. (B) At baseline, participants without a history of mental illness and/or substance abuse will have higher (i.e., less clinically significant) BATEM scores, relative to those with such histories. (C) Men who engage in high numbers of BA sessions will show greater improvements in BATEM scores over a one month period, relative to those who engage less or not at all. That is, changes in BATEM scores will positively correlate with the number of BA activities in which individuals participate during the previous month. Though final statistical analysis is underway, preliminary results will be provided.

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  Brain Machine Interface for a Robotic Arm

  Matthew Thomas Cusumano, Mark J. Edmonds, Daniel P. Prince, Andrew J. Sutter

  The purpose of this project is to expand the capabilities of an existing interface of controlling a static robotic arm with brainwaves. Brainwaves are collected with an Emotiv EPOC headset. The Emotiv headset utilizes electroencephalography (EEG) to collect the brain signals. This project makes use of the Emotiv software suites to classify the thoughts of a subject as a specific action. The software then sends a keystroke to the robotic interface to control the robotic arm. The team is to identify actions for mapping, implement these chosen actions, and evaluate the system’s performance. The actions chosen and their implementation would also test the limits of the interface, and provide groundwork for future research. This semester, we are actively working on creating our own, independent signal processing system for analysis on subjects' thought patterns.

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  Bridging the Gap: The Impact of an Intensive English Program on Female Middle Eastern Muslim Students Social Experiences

  Nicole M. Martin

  This study investigates the impact of intensive English program (IEP) on female Middle Eastern Muslim student abilities to interact with native English speakers at a Catholic institution. The sample consisted of eight female Middle Eastern Muslim students who already completed IEP, currently enrolled in IEP, or was able to waive IEP requirements through testing. Through a qualitative approach, factors associated with female Middle Eastern Muslim students’ social experiences were explored. Findings detailed challenges based on religion, English proficiency, cultural differences, and campus support. Recommendations are presented for staff members, IEP instructors, and students to assist in improving the social success of female Middle Eastern Muslim students.

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  Changes in Relative Abundance and Spatial Distribution of Dominant Overstory Taxa in an Old-growth Forest Over 30 Years

  Julia I. Chapman

  The temperate deciduous forests of eastern North America are subject to an array of ecosystem drivers including anthropogenic disturbance, gap dynamics, and both local and regional climate events. An ongoing “mesophication” trend has been observed in many of these forests where communities are shifting from oak dominance (Quercus spp.) to more mesophytic, shade-tolerant species (Acer spp.). Using a 30-year dataset (1979–2010) collected in an old-growth forest in southeastern Kentucky, we examined decadal patterns of distribution and relative abundance of dominant overstory taxa: oaks (Quercus spp.), maples (Acer spp.), hickories (Carya spp.), and beech (Fagus grandifolia). Overstory stem data were divided into three size classes, small (2.5–10 cm dbh), medium (10–25 cm dbh), and large (> 25 cm dbh), to assess regeneration patterns over time. Relative abundance and frequency of large oak and hickory stems were fairly consistent through time, but small and medium stem frequency and abundance decreased. On the contrary, small and medium sugar maple (A. saccharum) and beech were more frequent than large stems and generally increased in relative abundance over time. The observed spatial patterns suggested that oak species are persisting mainly as mature canopy trees with little recruitment in mesic areas of the study site, becoming more restricted to xeric ridgetop areas over time. Hickories did not exhibit a strong spatial pattern but showed an overall lack of recruitment in smaller size classes. Mesophytic species (maple, beech) appeared historically restricted to certain habitats (as evidenced by the clustered, limited distribution of mature trees) but are currently recruiting across a broader area of the watershed. This widespread “mesophication” trend in eastern deciduous forests is predicted to have important ecological and economic impacts, and understanding these changes in the context of multiple ecosystem drivers (fire, climate, human activity) is key for effective conservation and management.

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  Characterization and Application of Bubbles during Thermal Blooming in a Thermal Medium

  Ujitha A. Abeywickrema

  When a highly absorbing thermal medium is heated with a focused laser pump beam, diffraction ring patterns can be observed due to self-phase modulation. When the laser power increases, the usual self-phase modulation diffraction patterns change due to bubble formation inside the thermal lens created by the focused beam. This phenomenon is called thermal blooming and can be considered as the next step to self-phase modulation. A stable bubble is formed using a focused laser beam, and the bubble is characterized using holograms made with a probe beam. A 532 nm Argon-Ion laser is used as the pump and a 633 nm low power He-Ne laser is used as the probe. The thermal medium comprises a mixture of a red dye and isopropyl alcohol. To minimize the optical effects arising from convection, the focused pump is introduced vertically into the liquid sample. The recorded in-line holograms are numerically reconstructed to determine the size and 3d shape of the bubbles. Bubble sizes are monitored as a function of the pump intensity. Once formed, the bubbles can be steered by mechanically deflecting the pump beam or any other laser beam. Finally, Ag nanoparticles are fabricated, examined, and introduced into the thermal medium. The presence of nanoparticle agglomeration around the thermally generated bubbles is tested using a focused probe beam at 405 nm corresponding to the absorption peak of the Ag nanoparticles due to plasmonic resonance. This technique should prove useful in drug delivery systems using nanoparticles agglomerated around microbubbles.

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  Characterization of Iron Phthalocyanine as the Cathode Active Material for Lithium-Ion Batteries

  Mohammed M. Albader

  This project presents the characterization of iron phthalocyanine (FePc) as the cathode active material to be used in higher specific lithium storage and energy density lithium-ion cells/batteries. Theoretical work suggested the control of the active material particle size for its optimum utilization during the discharge of lithium-ion cells. Also, the experimental work reported the lithium storage in FePc is equivalent to 2050 mAh/g FePc that was encouraging to characterize FePc as a potential cathode material. In experimental work, two types of cells were tested: 1) high temperature polyethylene oxide electrolyte-based lithium/FePc cells and 2) room temperature organic liquid electrolyte-based lithium/FePc cells. Estimating the theoretical lithium storage capacity of the cathode active material, and the experimental results from the ongoing research/development work on the lithium/iron phthalocyanine cells are included in this project.

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  Characterization of the p53 Signaling Pathway in Urodele Amphibians during Lens Regeneration

  Kathryn C. Oehlman

  Urodele amphibians such as the red spotted newt, Notophthalmus viridescens, and axolotl are commonly used to study organ regeneration due to their remarkable ability to regenerate organs such as limb, tail, spinal cord and lens. The newt is able to regenerate the lens solely from dorsal iris pigmented epithelial cells in 30 days following removal. Axolotls, neonate salamanders, invoke curiosity because they can only regenerate their lens two weeks post hatching although they have the same regeneration potential as newts for limb, tail, and spinal cord. Using these animal models the role of the p53 protein, a tumor suppressor protein, in regeneration and cell cycle regulation can be further examined. Previous studies showed that when p53 is disrupted using pharmacological reagents limb regeneration is impaired. In this study, p53 protein expression was inhibited and activated and histology was performed to determine the effect on lens regeneration. The outcome of this study will help in the understanding a potential new role of p53 and its signaling partners during lens regeneration.

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  Classification of Vehicles using Monocular 3D Reconstruction

  Yakov Diskin, Nina M. Varney

  State of the art 3D reconstruction techniques utilize frames from a video sequence to render a 3D model of the scene. Our 3D reconstruction technique utilizes Speeded-Up Robust Features along with optical flow points to create a dense point cloud. Each point within the model has been tracked from frame to frame and triangulated into its (X,Y,Z) model position. We present an application for these structure from motion models that exploits our previous work in 3D object classification. In our experiments, we reconstruct a parking lot scene that contains several vehicles. The first step of our object classification algorithm is to segment each of the vehicles. Then, for each separate point cluster, our algorithm utilizes the volumetric and shape properties of the 3D object to label it with a vehicle type. The novelty of this classification approach allows us to tackle the noise challenges commonly associated with monocular 3D reconstructed models.

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  Closing the Gap: Examining Humanities Majors' Perceptions of Career Services

  Eilis Wasserman

  Connecting one’s degree in the humanities to a career path can be an ambiguous challenge in a society focused on job preparation. Career services offices in higher education institutions are at the forefront of helping students advance in their career development, yet little research has explored student insights and perspectives about these resources. This study explores humanities majors’ perceptions, insights, and knowledge of career services at a private institution in the Midwest. A mixed methods approach provided evidence of over 125 students’ knowledge and utilization of career services while supported by in-depth insights of students' experiences. Humanities majors revealed their satisfaction with their degree of study, while simultaneously exposing their lack of awareness and understanding of career services resources, guidance and overall career readiness knowledge. Findings implied that the mission and brand of career services must be marketed in meaningful and intentional ways to connect to and guide humanities majors as they navigate their college experience.

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  Clothing Type Versus Color: Understanding the Role of Dress and Ovulation on Mate-Attraction Effectiveness and Mate-Guarding.

  Sally M. Askar, Thomas N. Ballas, Christine N. Farmer, Charles A. Hunt, Christine Kershaw, Bernadette D. O'Koon, Angela L. Receveur, Cody Stitzel, Clarice Vavro, Sarah A. Wilhoit

  The dual-mating hypothesis suggests that mating strategies adopted by women vary across the menstrual cycle. While women are usually attracted to men who exhibit strong potential as a provider, at peak fertility women are attracted to men who exhibit stronger genes. To attract genetically strong men at peak fertility, research shows that women will alter their behavior in ways that make them more attractive to members of the opposite sex. For example, women tend to wear red clothing and clothing that shows more skin at peak fertility in an effort to attract a mate. These mate-attraction strategies not only increase attractiveness and sexual receptivity to members of the opposite sex, but they also provoke competition from other women. Given that women have a narrow fertile window, using the most effective mate-attraction strategy and derogating potential sexual competition is critical for mate-attraction and reproduction. The present research examined whether there is a most effective mate-attraction strategy, and the role of ovulation in derogation. By manipulating shirt color and type, we tested the effectiveness of mate-attraction strategies by examining the independent effects of each mating strategy and their interactive effects on attractiveness and derogation. Next, we examined whether mate-guarding is stronger for women who are ovulating. Ovulating women should show an increase in mate-guarding in an effort protect her reproductive partner from other women. To test these questions, male and female participants viewed a photo of a woman and evaluated her attractiveness, sexual receptivity, and intentions to mate-guard (women, only). The photo viewed, determined by random assignment, was of a woman wearing a red or white shirt, and the shirt was either sleeveless or long-sleeved. Findings from the present study will increase the understanding of mating strategies and further illuminate the role of ovulation in effectively attaining strong genes.

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  Cocoa and Chocolate: Deconstructing the Development Paradigm in Cameroon

  Chelsea M. Vanhook

  This project focuses specifically on the neo-liberal economic iteration of international development. Neo-liberalism is the idea that the deregulation of the private sector, reductions in government expenditures, and expansion of free trade will lead to growth in undeveloped countries, which will effectively end poverty and increase the standard of living. Development is, thus, justified on the basis of its purported virtues: that economic liberalization has resulted in the prosperity of Western countries and that the same models can be replicated elsewhere to produce the same results. My ethnography in Southwest Cameroon, however, shows that the experience and embodiment of development takes on a new understanding at the local, daily level. Progress and growth is connected to what can be reaped from the ground, obstacles understood as material difficulties that disable work from being done efficiently. Exploring the paradox of cocoa and chocolate in Cameroon, I find that while the average Cameroonian is able to grow cocoa, he/she is unable to afford chocolate. Moreover, assistance from government agricultural technicians provides the necessary aid to farmers and Common Initiative Groups (CIGs) to mitigate the difficulties and technicalities associated with agricultural work. Therefore, not only does neo-liberal economic development not provide the proper prescription for overcoming the difficulties individuals face, but it can hinder the work already being done by local professionals working within their communities. This context calls for a critiquing of the assumptions which undergird the development paradigm in order to understand how and why it so often fails, as well to reconcile development with the local understandings and needs in the Global South, generally, and Southwest Cameroon, specifically.

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  Coding DNA into Music: An Alternate Way of Analysis

  Samuel J. Fesenmeier

  Our study’s purpose is take a completely different approach to understanding DNA, specifically non-coding segments. How we will do this is through coding DNA into music. By applying a system that codes known information of DNA into sound, music could prove to be a powerful means of finding patterns in DNA. It is possible that hearing the segments could allow our brains to pinpoint patterns that are not found through computational or experimental analysis. Music may also open up the expression of complex patterns that are visually hidden. The application of DNA to music will also allow for very long segments to be analyzed in a short period of time. Ideally, discovering certain patterns will lead to a better understanding of function.

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  Comparison of the Life Cycle Energy Consumption in the Use Phase of Wireless Devices

  Nicole S. Erlich, Mariana Lopes, Ahmad Maarafi, Daniel C. Smith

  Smartphone and wireless device market has more than doubled in the United States since 2010. However, only few research have done regarding how much energy is consumed by the smartphone and the wireless device. This research aims at comparing the energy consumption and environmental emissions generated from the most energy-intensive processes in the life cycle of various smartphones and wireless devices with different consumption scenarios. The major processes looked at were the energy consumption for charging smartphones, data usage over 4G, 3G, and WiFi networks, as well as wireless storage in “the cloud”. Data transmission was found to be the greatest source of energy consumption in smartphones, however, new developed networks have dramatically improved the efficiency of data transmission. In order to compare the energy consumption of the wireless devices with the traditional methodology, energy consumption of desktop computers are compared. Moreover, energy required for networking and storage of data for traditional desktops and wireless devices are compared. Desktop computers typically utilize traditional networks and storage application whereas wireless devices typically utilize cloud networking and storage applications. It was observed that traditional desktops require more energy than modern wireless devices. The lower operation costs of smartphones more than make up for their higher data transmission energy compared to a WiFi connected desktop. When comparing traditional networking to cloud networking it was observed that the energy, server utilization, and many other benefits of cloud networking outweighed the benefits of traditional networking.

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  Confessions of a Sorority Woman: Impacts of Hazing on New Members of Panhellenic Greek Lettered Organizations

  Kaci E. Durham

  The purpose of this study was to examine how Panhellenic Greek lettered organizations might choose to haze their new members and how being hazed impacted a new member, physically and mentally. Participants responded to a web-based survey that asked individuals to identify what they believed constitutes hazing, hazing acts they have been asked to engage in, and outcomes of joining a Panhellenic organization. Both new members and initiated members received the survey. For data analysis, participant responses were compared using an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). New members of Panhellenic Greek-lettered organizations defined organizational unity and mental/emotional instability as an outcome of joining a Panhellenic organization.

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  Cultural, Linguistic, and Emotional Adjustment: Adaptation of International Students into a U.S. College

  Tong Li

  International students’ enrollment at academic institutions in the U.S. has expanded in the last decade. Plenty of research studies show that these international students experience acculturation difficulties in adapting to both academic performance and residence life (Gebhard, 2012). This study aimed at exploring the cultural, linguistic, and emotional stresses that international students experienced as well as the adjustment they g through to adapt at an American institution. The qualitative approach was used to study international students at an urban, mid-sized, Midwestern university. The findings of this study indicated that international students’ adaptation and adjustment into college learning community could be accelerated by various sources of motivation, cultural interaction services, and language improvement activities provided by education administrators.

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  Defective proventriculus (dve) a new member of DV patterning in the eye

  Neha Gogia

  In multi-cellular organisms, axial patterning is required to generate three-dimensional organ from its primordia during organogenesis. Drosophila eye serves as an excellent model to study patterning and growth. In Drosophila eye, Dorso-ventral (DV) patterning is the first lineage restriction event in the developing eye. The early eye primordium begins with the default ventral fate on which the dorsal eye fate is established by expression of a GATA-1 transcription factor, pannier (pnr). We have identified defective proventriculus (dve), a K50 homeodomain gene as a novel dorsal gene that plays a crucial role in Drosophila eye development. We have found that dve acts downstream of pannier (pnr) in the developing eye. Loss-of-function phenotypes of both pnr and dve results in the dorsal eye enlargement. We will study role of dve and pnr in growth regulation during development. The results from these studies will be presented.Keywords: Axial Patterning, Differentiation.

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  Design and MIMO control of A Hyper-Redundant Robotic Arm

  Xingsheng Xu

  An application robotic platform has been constructed based on the kinematic model of a 9-DOF hyper-redundant manipulator. The efficacy of our kinematic algorithm affects the accuracy and stability of both motion control and path tracking. An objective of this work is to achieve multi-input multi output (MIMO) control, where the inputs are the torques at each joint, and they are used to control joint dynamic variables such as position, orientation, velocity and acceleration in a hyper-redundant robotic system. This control approach can highly improve the robotic performance considering both its kinematics and dynamics while executing motion control or tracking a path. The result of tracking different paths and the error analysis both in joint space and work space show that the MIMO control algorithm works functionally and satisfies all the requirements of experimental design.

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  Determining Volume Changes from Overhead Video Surveillance

  Yakov Diskin

  Cost effective persistent wide area surveillance is a challenging real-world problem that research has not sufficiently tackled yet. At present, surveillance corporations spend millions on human analysts to monitor live or recorded video feeds. Depending on the application, the analysts may be looking for unauthorized activities, suspicious behavior, or a more specific sequence of events. Human performance is costly and is often affected by ambiguous definitions of anomalies as well as natural factors such as fatigue. We present a fully automatic 3D change detection technique designed to support persistent overhead surveillance in changing environmental conditions. The novelty of the work lies in our approach of creating an intensity invariant system tasked with detecting changes in a changing environment. Although previous techniques have proven to work in some cases, these techniques fail when the intensity of the scene significantly changes between the capture of the datasets. Our techniques leverages our 3D reconstruction capabilities to overcome the intensity variation challenges. We present several proof of concept experiments conducted in a laboratory setting, in which we study the effects of model noise and scene illumination on the proposed volumetric changed detection algorithm.

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  Did That Just Happen? Acts of Bias and Perception of Campus Racial Climate of Racially Minority Students at a Predominantly White Institution

  Jasmine Whitlow

  Whether covert or overt, racism, racial prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination, and microaggressions are acts in which many marginalized students’ experience, particularly on predominantly white colleges. The study was designed to examine the perception of the campus racial climate among racial minority students after a bias incident has occurred and identify coping strategies and support structures that promote the students ability to matriculate and persist. This examination is critical in properly addressing issues on campus and ultimately supporting students who experience daily challenges as it relates to their perceived racial identification. Findings provided an overview of student experiences on campus as it relates to bias incidents. Recommendations are presented to assist higher education administrators to improve the campus climate for racial minority populations on college campuses.

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  Differential Effects of Commercially Available Probiotics on Listeria monocytogenes Virulence

  Eric Edward Newton, Ashley N. Zani

  Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen which can cause lethal infections in immunocompromised individuals. These infections involve meningitis in the elderly or spontaneous abortions of neonates--both scenarios result from Listeria crossing the intestinal barrier. The conditions that promote Listeria invasion during the intestinal phase of infection are not clearly defined. We have evidence that suggests intestinal fermentation acids as potential signals for Listeria virulence regulation. Therefore, we hypothesized that probiotic bacteria, which generate different fermentation acids, will exhibit different levels of inhibition against Listeria virulence. To test how different probiotic bacteria affect Listeria virulence, we used two commercially available probiotics from Phillips, Colon Health and Digestive Health Support, each containing a unique mixture of bacteria. First, a co-culture experiment between probiotic bacteria and Listeria was conducted to determine the probiotics ability to inhibit Listeria growth. Second, we tested Listeria survival in the fermentation products generated by these probiotic bacteria. Finally, we tested how the fermentation products affect Listeria production of the virulence factor listeriolysin O (LLO). Listeria growth was reduced when co-culturing with either of the two probiotics with both probiotics showing similar levels of suppression. After five hours of incubation in the supernatant of probiotic cultures, Listeria survival was significantly reduced in the Digestive Health Support probiotic compared to the Colon Health probiotic. Exposure to supernatant from the Digestive Health Support probiotic also significantly reduced LLO production. Taken together, Digestive Health Support probiotics exhibited stronger overall inhibitory activity against Listeria fitness and virulence. Future investigations will focus on determining the chemical composition of the probiotics fermentation products to explain the different responses in Listeria. Probiotics are quickly gaining popularity which argues for better understanding of their effects. Understanding their effects on foodborne pathogens will pave the way for applying appropriate probiotics as effective preventative and treatment strategies.

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  Diminishing the Discipline Gap: Restorative Justice as a Promising Alternative in One Urban School

  Polly K. Long

  Across the nation, the education system is responding to student misbehavior with zero tolerance policies that parallel the punitive practices found in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Zero tolerance policies have contributed to the “discipline gap,” wherein schools punish racial and ethnic minorities more often and more severely than they punish whites. One alternative to punitive punishment is restorative justice, which aims to foster respect, responsibility, and empathy in members of school communities. This project evaluates the relationship between restorative justice and out-of-school suspension rates in an urban school district. It also serves as one of the few studies that evaluate the effect of restorative practices on the discipline gap. The results validate previous research findings, as restorative justice is related to reductions in out-of-school suspension rates. Further, the results reveal a promising alternative to the punitive practices that plague the education system, as restorative justice is related to reductions in the size of the discipline gap.

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  Does Study Abroad Impact Students’ Personality?

  Ashley Ann F. Marshall

  International education is universally valued both in academics and the job market because of the perception that those who study abroad have increased intercultural awareness, experience with diversity, and opportunity for personal growth. Given that students who are studying abroad are experiencing increased independence and experience with a new culture, this is a potential time for the development of perspective-taking, empathic concern, non-prejudice, and other forms of personal growth. The present, longitudinal study collected narrative and non-narrative data on these qualities of personality development before, during, and after the participants’ studies. For comparison, we gathered the same measures with a group of students who were taking a summer course on campus. Contrary to popular views of studying abroad, we did not find evidence that summer study abroad facilitated personality development more so than summer study on campus. We did find that students were more likely to report personal growth after studying abroad than studying on campus, but this was explained by the fact that the study-abroad group had higher expectations for personal growth before summer studies.