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  Our Voices Matter: Stories from UD’s LGBTQ+ Students

  Heather Ashley, Morgan Couture, Elizabeth Gallagher, Leo Holbrook, Brian Kizer, Christopher Peck, Christina Reynolds, Rebecca Trumbull, Angela Weiland

  LGBTQ+ students often rely on their found families at college to be able to truly express their identities and have people who understand what they are going through. During a time of physical distancing, many students have been separated from their found families. In addition, they may be in spaces where they cannot freely express themselves or do not have a proper support system. Our Voices Matter highlights the voices of LGBTQ+-identifying students and their narratives. We have collected anonymously-submitted narratives pertaining to the themes of found family and community during the current pandemic. These will be shared by volunteer members of the LGBTQ+ community. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss the stories they have heard, and to identify ways they can act in solidarity with UD’s LGBTQ+ students. This is the third annual Our Voices Matter event, and the first year that it will be facilitated as a part of the Stander Symposium.

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  Overall Semi-Empirical Rate-Law Formulation for the Performance Evaluation of a Lithium-Based Cell or Battery

  Shane Kosir

  Professor Sarwan S. Sandhu and his graduate chemical engineering students at the University of Dayton have actively participated in the theoretical modeling and experimental activities to investigate and develop new lithium-based cells and batteries since 2013 in collaboration with a team of engineers and scientists led by Dr. Joseph P. Fellner of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Here, we present the very recent developed formulation intended for the performance evaluation of lithium-based cells and batteries.

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  Parent University

  Erin Collins

  Parent University is a monthly, psychoeducation class offered to parents and guardians on the east and west ends of Dayton where topics such as resiliency, mindfulness, and self-regulation are discussed. This study aims to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from the first cohort of participants on their thoughts on the program and its effectiveness in their lives. Participants will complete the Protective Factors Survey and a measure designed by the researchers in collaboration with the community partners leading the sessions. Data collection is still in progress, and the data will be evaluated to determine the effectiveness of the Parent University sessions and what participants hope to see in future sessions and cohorts.

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  Patience, Young Grasshopper: Analyzing the Fungal Composition of the Grasshopper Gut Microbiome

  Staci Seitz, Melani Muratore

  Microbes inhabit many corners of the Earth, including the intestines of all animals. These intestinal microbes, collectively called the “gut microbiome,” provide numerous nutritional and regulatory functions for the animals they live in and thus play an important role in animal health. The fungal communities in insects, specifically, play a diverse, but important role in insect physiology, as well as insect control. The goals of this project were to expand knowledge of R programming through statistical analysis of microbial ecology and to identify the fungal communities in grasshoppers to enrich our knowledge in insect fungal microbiome. The two main objectives in the project include (1) the identification of the composition of the fungal communities in grasshoppers and (2) the assessment of the drivers influencing the composition of the fungal communities. The grasshoppers were collected in the summer of 2017 from a Texas prairie bu Dr. Prather's research team. Upon arrival at the University of Dayton, the guts of the grasshoppers were removed by Melani Muratore to extract the DNA, which was then submitted for sequencing by Zymo Research. After analyzing the sequencing results, with funding from the STEM Catalyst Grant awarded to Dr. Prather, we identified two fungal phyla that were present in all samples: Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. Within Ascomycota, the class Dothideomycetes is most prevalent. Within Basidiomycota, the classes Tremellomycetes and Ustilaginomycetes are most prevalent. Dothideomycetes are typically found as saprobes, or decomposers, that break down dead organic matter. They are also commonly found on living plants, acting as pathogens or endophytes. Tremellomycetes are a type of pathogenic fungus that acts as a parasite toward insects and plants. Ustilaginomycetes, known as “smut fungi,” act as a parasite toward vascular plants. These classes of fungi are directly involved with plant matter, suggesting the association of plant fungi and the grasshopper fungal communities.

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  Permaculture Gardening: The Potential for and Obstacles to Behavior Change in Farming Techniques to Increase Food Security in Rural Malawi

  Morgan Day

  This study assessed permaculture (PC) gardening as a solution to food insecurity in rural northern Malawi by investigating its potential to be adopted by farmers and increase food production. Permaculture is "a system of agricultural and social design principles that synergistically and adaptively centers upon natural ecosystems," which includes strategic water and waste management and plant selection (Rivett et al., 2018). Research was conducted in partnership with Determined to Develop, a grassroots Malawi-based NGO. On a micro-level, this study documented best practices of permaculture in Malawi. On a meso-level, the obstacles to adoption of permaculture by traditional farmers and behavior change of the individual within larger cultural, political, economic, and environmental contexts were assessed. On a macro-level, the state of development of Malawi and whether permaculture is a potential solution to food insecurity was explored through interviews with political, academic, and nonprofit representatives. This study included 21 interviews and one focus group. An overarching theme of reciprocity was found, with sharing of knowledge and resources among stakeholders as well as a symbiotic relationship with the environment being indicators of successful outcomes. Overall, permaculture has the potential to mitigate food insecurity in Malawi, but obstacles, including economic (poverty and lack of education), cultural (aversion to labor and jealousy among neighbors), and ineffective public policies, prevent farmers’ behavior change and permaculture from being an effective solution. This study recommends further research into commercialization of agriculture and reform of public policy to increase available permaculture farming education and inputs.

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  Photon Effect Observed in Nano-Rectenna for Optical Frequencies

  Shuo Sun

  The purpose of the research is to explore novel nanostructure configurations such as metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structures for broadband and ultrafast response photodetectors and high efficiency energy harvesters.

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  Physical to Virtual Reality Mapping

  Dakota Pease

  Since its commercial release, virtual reality has opened a new world of possibilities, and continues to find its way into an increasing number of industries. One limitation of current virtual reality systems is the user’s inability to feel the objects they interact with. In order to tackle this problem a system was designed to track objects in a physical space and map them to a virtual world. This would allow a user to interact with objects in the real world and the virtual world at the same time. The system would combine three pieces of technology: a virtual reality engine (Unity3D) to manage the virtual world, a LeapMotion sensor to allow the system to track the users hands in the real world and project them into the virtual world, and a Kinect Camera Sensor that tracks the positions of objects in the real world and updates them in the virtual world. The system could be used as a proof of concept to study how this new form of interaction affects the user experience, and serve as a building block for more advanced virtual reality systems.

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  Physiology Understanding (PhUn) Week

  Jenna Sorensen

  Physiology Understanding Week (PhUn Week) is a nationwide outreach program. Beginning in 2005 as a small-scale pilot program launched by the American Physiological Society (APS) in four states, PhUn Week has steadily expanded to connect thousands of scientists and local school children every year. During the pilot phase, the theme focused on the physiology of exercise and fitness, with students looking at heart rate respiration, muscle contractions, and the cardiovascular system. PhUn Week fosters partnerships between researchers and K-12 teachers and students and brings increased representation to the field of physiology. It was designed with the goals of increasing student interest in and understanding of physiology, increasing teacher recognition of physiology in their science curriculum, and introducing students to possible careers in physiology. We want to foster curiosity in students and give them an “inside look” at what research can be about at a university and how important physiology is to all of us.The theme for this year’s PhUn Week is stress, specifically looking at the nervous system and stress (while still broadly introducing other systems to the students). As stress and components of the nervous system can be difficult concept for young students to grasp, we are taking an integrative approach to discuss the anatomy and physiology of sympathetic engagement in the nervous system, explain how diet and exercise can stress this system, and explore factors that can positively and negatively impact psychological stress.

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  Possible Cancer Treatment using the Drosophila Glioma Model

  Rachel Croyle, Claire Feller, Cristina Flamand De Los Reyes, Catherine Martini, Isha Mishra, Jordan Terschluse

  Glioma are brain tumors with very poor prognosis. The standard of care is surgery followed by radio- and chemo/immuno-therapy, or combinations thereof, however, healthy cells are affected as well as tumorous cells and all patients eventually die. Thus, there is a need to test if recently approved drugs can inhibit the growth and progression of this tumor. We have developed a Drosophila glioma model based on the two genetic/ oncogenic pathways known to be most frequently activated in patients viz., the Ras/MAPK pathway and the PI3K pathway. We designed a chemical screen involving drugs targeting Tyrosine kinases (Selleck Biochem Chemical library) – key enzymes that are activated by oncogenic pathways. The chemical screen involves feeding glioma containing larvae 10uM and 300uM drugs from the library at early third instar stage, then allow these larvae to grow and mature to the third instar stage (120h of development), and then dissect the brain to study effects on glioma growth and track survival on days 5-7 when other glioma positive larvae die. Here, we present data from our screen on promising drugs from this academic year’s testing focusing on drugs H10 and H11. Once we identify potential glioma inhibitors in the primary screens, we will validate them in secondary screens.

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  Praying with your eyes open: potential U.S. lay saints' somatic spirituality

  Joshua Wopata

  This presentation will use modern lay causes for sainthood as sources of somatic spirituality. We will do this by looking through their eyes at the world in a way that is closer to seeing it as at least a sacrament, if not more in keeping with the more classical image of an organism or body. I will attempt to demonstrate how their experiences of particular icons of nature (e.g. trees, leaves) led to encounters with the sacred. These evocative events compliment and connect to their embrace of a more strictly Catholic and liturgical sacramental imagination. Lastly, we will examine how these lay witnesses very own bodies also function as sacramental sites of redemption that reflect a long standing Catholic and Incarnational spirituality, but in a new way and context. Phenomena like the stigmata, or in one even more extreme case- a rose allegedly growing out of the chest of one mystic, frustrate our modern sensibilities, but are suggestive about where the Sacred has come to rest in modern American Catholic Church: inscribed in the fragile bodies and bedrooms of laywomen who themselves become icons of the presence of God in a society that has attempted to quarantine the supernatural. Banished from our imagination to a non-corporeal transcendent reality God remains at a safe distance- entirely within the immanent frame. The Enlightenment metaphor that reimagined the created cosmos as a machine may have suffocated a legitimate Christian instinct finding God within creation. The overly enthusiastic Enlightenment division of the natural from the supernatural may have also limited our imagination about where we can find God. It is the goal of my research to allow these holy persons to assist us in rediscovering a somatic spirituality that can find the transcendent God here in our body and the body of the world.

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  Production Chain Analysis Using Markov Chains

  Nick Cagle

  Many businesses maintain inventories of items, both virtual and material, to be sold directly to the end user or to be used in the production of manufactured items. Maintaining an inventory incurs cost to the business due to a variety of factors that include procurement of a storage facility, wages, and energy usage. In addition, the longer an item is idling in a storage facility, the more cost it incurs. Therefore, an effective inventory management scheme is essential to maintaining the profit margin of any business that runs an inventory. In this presentation, we discuss the steady-state analysis of a mathematical model of inventory originally developed by J. Artalejo (2006). Using matrix analytic queueing theory, the performance measures (average number of demands for inventory in system and the average time spend by demands in the system) are collected for systems undergoing the regimes of light, normal, and heavy traffic. The study will demonstrate that the average number of demands and the average time in system will increase in proportion to the severity of traffic experienced by the system.

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  Project-Based Learning in the College Composition Classroom: A Case Study

  Zoe Burke

  Many college composition instructors are facing lower levels of student engagement in their classes, and it is not entirely clear why this disengagement is happening or what we can do to stop it. As a composition instructor here at UD, I see this disengagement firsthand and want to experiment with different way of teaching composition to help students better engage with the material while still meeting all the learning outcomes. For this project, I build and teach two sections of ENG 200 using the structure of Project-Based Learning (PBL), a student-focused teaching method in which students develop real-world solutions (“projects”) for real-world problems. I then perform a qualitative summative evaluation of each section, using interviews with students and personal notes on my experience. From these data, I find that students prefer the PBL classes to traditional English classes for a variety of reasons, including the wider range of choice and control afforded to them by projects and the real-world impact of their creations, but that PBL can make it more challenging for instructors to meet all learning outcomes. PBL may not be the perfect answer to college composition’s engagement problem, but it is worth considering as a possible model for composition instructors and an exciting new area of study for composition scholars. In this presentation, I will discuss my experience of building and teaching a PBL class, my findings regarding my students’ experiences of taking the class, and my suggestions for further research and experimentation with PBL in the college composition classroom.

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  Propeller Partial Ground Effect

  Jielong "Jacky" Cai

  We extend our recent propeller ground-effect study to consider a circular ground-plate, instead of planar-surface of assumed infinite extent. Parameter studies include propeller to plate diameter ratio, propeller diameter to ground-offset ratio, and propeller pitch to diameter ratio. As with classical ground effect, benefits of thrust-augmentation and/or power-reduction with proximity to the ground, depend on the propeller pitch to diameter ratio. Flow visualization suggests that for larger pitch to diameter ratio, the lack of conclusively large ground-effect benefits can be attributed to stalled flow about the blade, and spatially more diffuse tip-vortices. A circular ground-plate of half of the propeller diameter was found to have almost no distinction from that of an unimpeded free-stream, while when the plate and propeller have the same diameter, the resulting ground-effect already resembles that of the infinite-plate.

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  Properties of the Line Graph and Total Graph Operators

  Preston Reed Boorsma

  This is a MTH 480 capstone project. A graph is a mathematical object that consists of two sets, a set of vertices and a set of edges. An edge joins two vertices and depicts a relationship between those vertices. This project investigates properties preserved and generated by the line graph and total graph operators on graphs. We explore the effects of these operators on Hamiltonian, Eulerian, and pancyclic structures of graphs.

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  Public Safety Advocates - Bridging the Gap Between Students and Police at the University of Dayton

  Huthayfa Usman

  The 21st century requires police departments to be a part of the community that they police. The Public Safety Advocate program started by UD Criminal Justice major Huthayfa Usman in Fall 2018 attempts to bridge the gap between students and police at the University of Dayton. Employing techniques of Community Oriented Policing (COP) based on President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the Public Safety Advocate program works on community problem solving and engagement.

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  Queer Borders and Belongings: Reparative Storytelling from El Paso

  Mary McLoughlin

  At its best, queer theory exposes the ways in which reproductive heteronormativity structures a social order around gendered and relational roles of dominance and submission, but often queer theorists respond to the oppressions they identify with arguments advocating for withdrawal and alienation from the relationships they deem to be damaging. This project takes a different approach by using storytelling to explore how queer theory can go beyond just identifying what is broken about our world, and—instead—offer an embodied queer ethic centered on mending wounds caused by social division and making queer lives livable. Guided by stories from interviews I conducted with community members living at the border in El Paso, I first investigate the role reproductive heteronormativity plays in shaping hierarchical and patriarchal notions of citizenship, immigration policy, community organization, and national belonging, and then I look to the ways queerness—and the love it makes possible—enables alternate and liberatory ways of forming relationships and being together.

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  Race and Culture in American Factory: A Case Study

  Emily A. Callam

  This case study focuses on the 2019 documentary American Factory and examines the issues of race and culture through the ethical lens of social justice. The Academy Award-winning documentary directed by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar introduces viewers to the transition of a large factory in Dayton, Ohio, from General Motors Company to Fuyao Glass America, a Chinese company. The film attempts to capture an all-encompassing view of this transition as it depicts the effects it has on everyone from the CEO of the company to both American and Chinese workers on the factory floor. Lifestyles and workplace cultures clash as the productivity levels of those in the United States does not nearly reach that of China.

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  Racial Disenfranchisement and Its Impact on Political Participation in the United States

  Cierra Dei Stewart

  In the United States, the ability to participate in our political system, andspecifically the power to cast a vote, is the cornerstone of our nation and whatunites us as a democracy. When this power is lost, one loses the ability toshape policies and political agendas in their community. However, manygroups, particularly minority groups, have historically faced substantialobstacles to voting in the form of government-dictated racial discrimination,also known as voter suppression laws. Using the lens of history, this projectexplores how modern voting and electoral structures (e.g., voter ID laws,redistricting, felon disenfranchisement, etc.) may lead to voter suppression ofracial minorities, and how that suppression impacts the participation andrepresentation of these groups in politics and government.

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  Reaching Out, Encountering Dayton, Acting with Others, Leading Together: Assessing College Student Experiences in a Community Engagement Program

  Lily Hannibal

  The inclusion of community engaged learning opportunities for students is becoming more prevalent among institutions of higher education. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of REAL Dayton, a community engagement program at a mid-sized Catholic and Marianist university. REAL Dayton encourages students to create sustained relationships and lasting connections with the broader community. I use a multi-method approach (pre/post surveys and semi-structured interviews) to assess how community engagement within the city of Dayton shapes University of Dayton students' attitudes towards and perceptions of Dayton. I explore participants’ previous levels of community engagement and interaction with Daytonians, how they understand connectivity between the University of Dayton and the city of Dayton, the perceptions that participants have of the city, their knowledge of the city, their likelihood of future engagement, and the effectiveness of the program. The findings demonstrate how students understand their community engagement experiences, what impact it has on them, and to what extent community engagement constructs students’ perceptions. This research will further enhance understandings of the effects and outcomes of community engagement programs on students.

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  Real Time Hand Gesture Recognition for 3D World

  Bhrugvish Timirbhai Vakil

  Gestures are very important to convey our self to each other since the dawn of human civilization. Our proposal focuses on detecting human hand gestures so that virtual environment machine can interpret it easy. This will enable us to communicate in virtual reality world using hand gesture. Some other application of our proposal includes body language interpretation, sign language interpretation etc. We address the highly challenging problem of real-time 3D hand tracking based on a monocular RGB-only sequence. Our tracking method combines a convolutional neural network with a kinematic 3D hand model, such that it generalizes well to unseen data, is robust to occlusions and varying camera viewpoints, and leads to anatomically plausible as well as temporally smooth hand motions. This project will help us to interact with virtual world using our hand gestures with the help of predefined rules. This project can be use as method to communicate with virtual lenses and interact with them. It can also we used in virtual field like Education, medical. Imagine if you are doctor and imagine you need to perform intricate surgery you can develop the object of your surgery in a virtual world and interact with it in using your hand gesture.

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  Redetermination of the Spectral Dependence of the Verdet Coefficients of Terbium Gallium Garnet and Potassium Terbium Fluoride

  Michael Josef Mueller

  Terbium Gallium Garnet and Potassium Terbium Fluorideare paramagnetic materials used as optical isolators which prevent feedback to the pump laser in high power laser systems via the Faraday effect. The Verdet constant is a measure of the strength of the Faraday effect and was measured by exposing samples of materials to a magnetic field as a linearly polarized diode laser beam passed through the samples. The change of direction of the linear polarization was measured as a function of the magnetic field at wavelengths between 0.405 microns and 1.55 microns and the Verdet coefficients of Terbium Gallium Garnet and Potassium Terbium Fluoride were determined.

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  Refractive Index of Photo-thermo-refractive Glass

  Zayne M. Parsons

  Volume Bragg gratings (VBGs) are spectrally-selective elements used in spectral beam combining, which is used to combine multiple beams with slightly different wavelengths into a single output. VBGs are created by exposing photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass to interference patterns of UV laser radiation, and then annealing the glass, producing a modulated refractive index. The diffraction efficiency of these gratings is dependent on the refractive index modulation amplitude. We report the refractive indices of unprocessed and processed PTR glass at wavelengths from 0.4 to 4.6 microns and discuss their uses in specifying VBGs for laser beam combining.

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  Refugee Family Mental Health: Interventions, Programs and Social Connection

  Elizabeth Henninger

  The purpose of this study is to assess refugee family mental health and programs that can be implemented to intercept the breakdown of social capital due to mental health disparities. I analyze the data from various peer reviewed sources to obtain critical information towards combating social disconnection due to mental health imbalances. This work emphasizes the importance of combating severe levels of mental illness among refugee populations by connecting refugees with community resources and services.

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  Resin Transfer Molding (RTM): Analytical and Numerical Approach Development and Verification for a Linear and Radial Flow Model using PAM-RTM

  Khalid Aldhahri

  Liquid Composite Molding (LCM) processes are among the most commonly used processes in composite manufacturing, including resin transfer modeling (RTM) and vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM). These types of processes provide several advantages, such as reduced cost, faster cycle time, and efficient part fabrication compared to autoclave molding. RTM is increasingly used to produce composite materials for several applications, especially in the aerospace industry. It offers mass production of composite parts with simple and complex geometry and with small to medium sizes. RTM involved four essential steps to produce the composite part: loading the fiber preform into the mold, injecting the mold with resin, resin curing, and composite demolding. The final composite properties are affected by these steps of production, especially the mold filling and resin curing steps. Numerical process models offer potential benefits for use in LCM, such as improving the mold design, optimizing the location of resin injection gates and vents, controlling the position of the resin flow front, and improving part quality. The main thrust of this study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of simulation applied to RTM for understanding how to choose the right location of injection and vent ports, cure development, and monitoring the position of resin. Numerical modeling allows for initial viewing of the expected flow patterns and cure profiles before the actual resin injection experiment. The commercial PAM-RTM software is used to simulate key process variables, including resin velocity, pressure distribution, filling time, and process parameters. These results will be validated with analytical solutions using Darcy’s Law applied to linear and circular flow models. The model example will be used to compare results of these two approaches for flat panel molds and using two different resin injection strategies for each: constant pressure and constant flow rate.

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  Resolving the Molecular Mechanisms by Which DNA Mutations Alter the Function of a Genetic Switch

  Sarah Marie Adams, Michael Weinstein

  Animal genomes likely possesses anywhere from tens of thousands to more than a million mutations that are genetic baggage from DNA replication mistakes or “mutations” that occurred in the past. Each mutation can either improve, reduce, or have no effect on fitness. Moreover, the effects of such mutations can depend on the presence or absence of other mutations, so called epistatic interactions. A goal of evolutionary-developmental biology research is to identify the mutations responsible for the evolution of form and function, and to understand the molecular mechanisms of their effects. This goal remains out of reach, as the effects of mutations and epistatic interactions are difficult to predict without knowing the function of the DNA sequence they reside in. This difficulty is heightened for mutations occurring in cis-regulatory element sequences that act as switches to control gene transcription. We are using a fruit fly model to test hypotheses about the molecular mechanisms by which mutations alter a genetic switch’s activity, and whether these function-altering mutations are subjected to the tyranny of epistatic interactions. Specifically, we are investigating the Drosophila melanogaster dimorphic element that is a transcription-regulating switch for the bric-à-brac genes. Three mutations in the dimorphic element were identified that individually alter the level of bric-à-brac transcription. The presence or absence of epistatic interactions will be determined by measuring the activity of dimorphic elements from related species that have been engineered to possess the Drosophila melanogaster mutations. I will also test the hypothesis that these mutations impart their effects by creating or destroying binding sites for proteins known as transcription factors. The results will provide a sorely needed example where an understanding of molecular mechanisms bridges the gap between a cis-regulatory element’s DNA sequence and it’s in vivo function.