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  Role of calcium signaling in Aβ42-mediated neurodegeneration in a Drosophila model of Alzheimer’s disease

  Dena M. Schaeffer, Catherine Jean Yeates

  Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects more than five million individuals in the United States and is the sixth leading cause of death. While there is currently no cure for the disease, it is a highly investigated topic of research. Aberrant calcium signaling has also been implicated in cancer and other neurological diseases besides AD. The Drosophila melanogaster eye model is an excellent system to study AD due to the highly conserved genetic machinery shared between flies and humans. A transgenic fly model of AD was generated, where the GAL4/UAS system was developed to ectopically express high levels of human Aβ42 peptides in the differentiating photoreceptor neurons in the fly eye. This system is used to determine whether modulating the function of the calcium signaling pathway can modify Aβ42-mediated neurodegeneration. We used RNAi to knock down six components of the calcium signaling pathway (Stim^RNAi, SERCA^RNAi, ORAI^RNAi, Inx2^RNAi, IP3R^RNAi, and Plc 21C^RNAi) in an Aβ42 background in the eye and observed the effects in both eye antennal imaginal discs and adult eyes. Similarly, we overexpressed four UAS components of the calcium signaling pathway (Stim, ORAI, SERCA, IP3R). Our results showed evidence that knocking down these components of the pathway may ameliorate the neurodegeneration mediated by Aβ42. Likewise, overexpressing the components furthered our evidence that the calcium signaling pathway has a role in AD. Our research further implicates intracellular calcium signaling in neurodegenerative disorders. Further research will determine the molecular mechanisms linking calcium signaling with Aβ42-mediated neurodegeneration.

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  Role of Hippo and Ecdysone Receptor Signaling in the Regulation of dronc

  Karishma Sanjay Gangwani

  The Hippo pathway is an evolutionarily conserved pathway that regulates organ size and tissue homeostasis in Drosophila and mammals. The pathway functions by regulating the nuclear availability of transcriptional cofactor Yorkie (Yki), mammalian YAP, which is regulated by the activity of a core kinase cascade comprising the serine threonine kinases Hippo (Hpo) and Warts (Wts) and their accessory proteins. Yki binds with transcription factors like Scalloped (Sd) or Homothorax (Hth) to regulate target genes involved in cell proliferation and survival. Downregulation of the Hpo pathway causes increased cell proliferation and overgrowth, whereas hyperactivation of this pathway leads to cell death due to activation of caspases. Caspase proteins are cysteine aspartic proteases which play essential roles in cellular signaling and development via apoptosis. We showed that the initiator caspase dronc (mammalian Caspase 9) is a transcriptional target of Yki. We found that loss of Hippo signaling leads to downregulation of dronc expression, whereas downregulation of Sd resulted in upregulation of dronc expression. We also found that known binding partner of Sd like E2F1 is also involved in regulating dronc expression. Earlier studies have shown that dronc expression is regulated by the Ecdysone receptor (EcR) signaling pathway and mapped a EcR regulatory element on dronc promoter. We found that depletion of EcR or its corepressors like Smrter caused upregulation of dronc expression. Overexpression of Taiman (Tai) a binding partner of EcR and Yki also upregulated dronc expression. We also show that Tai-Yki interaction may not be required for dronc regulation. We hypothesize that dronc expression is regulated by the Hippo and EcR signaling pathways. Here, we present our work on the regulation of dronc by the Hippo and EcR signaling pathways, and its implications on development.

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  Saints and Sinners? The Catonsville Nine and Cultural Change Within U.S. Catholicism

  Jens Mueller

  “The crisis is of such enormous extent and depth, that all solutions based on the sanity and health and recoverability of current structures are quickly proven wrong, untimely, unmanageable, bureaucratically infected: the same old kettle of fish, stinking worse than ever in the boiling juices of change.” This is how the fugitive Daniel Berrigan described the state of American society in 1970. At a time when the United States, as he said, was “going downhill and pellmell, into a dark age, a progress led by neanderthals armed to teeth”, the Berrigans stood up “to open the eyes of more and more of our friends” to lead others into “the saving act of resistance.” He offered this statement only two years after the fateful actions of the Catonsville Nine. Yet, what caused such actions and statements? And how was it received throughout American society?I argue that the events of this group had deep cultural implications for the state of Catholicism. Specifically, it symbolized a divide in US Catholic identity, something which we call nowadays simply “left” and “right”. While some people ecstatically supported the cause for social justice and radical pacifism, others seemed to reject the social actions Catholics took part in. In addition, the Catonsville Nine exemplify a broader trend namely the rupture of the American Catholic subculture.

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  Semantic Segmentation on Aerial Images for Building Damage Assessment

  Sai Nikhil Reddy Mandhada

  Extreme weather events impact large areas in a very short time, resulting in significant damages on many residential houses. After disasters, a recovery process should be promptly implemented to recover damaged local communities, but there are too many structures to be repaired with a limited number of resources. In the post disaster phase, detailed information—such as a degree of damage and house types—is required to automate disaster recovery planning and execution. However, previous studies have not investigated a method that can generate information with adequate details required to automate disaster recovery planning. To fill the knowledge gap, this study aims at recognizing building objects, detecting building damages, and measuring the extent of damage to individual building properties from aerial image data collected by drones. Semantic segmentation is employed to recognized buildings and their damages. The degree of damage will be assessed by a set of rules reflecting current manual assessment guidelines. This work is expected to help reduce a large portion of the current manual process in assessing the degree of damage for damaged buildings, thereby facilitating rapid disaster recovery.

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  Semi Supervised Learning for Accurate Segmentation of Roughly Labeled Pathological Data

  Rachel Rajan

  Recent advancements in medical imaging research have shown that digitized high-resolution microscopic images combined with deep learning architectures have been able to generate promising results better than pathologists in the field of pathology diagnosis. But, for supervised deep learning techniques, the unavailability of labeled data has limited applications for accurate medical image segmentation. Hence, we propose an enhanced adversarial learning approach in semi-supervised segmentation for incremental training of our deep learning-based model to utilize unlabeled data in achieving better learning performance. Studies reveal that unlabeled data combined with small amount of labeled data can improve the overall performance considerably. Since most of the existing methods use weakly labeled images, our proposed technique utilizes unlabeled instances to improve the segmentation model. Experiments on two publicly available datasets such as PASCAL VOC2012 and UCSB Bio-Segmentation Benchmark dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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  Sense of Belonging of International Students in Living Learning Communities

  Paola Ortiz

  As higher education institutions increase international student recruitment and enrollment, one best practice for international student retention and connectedness is the creation of international living communities. This qualitative narrative inquiry explores the sense of belonging of international students in two living learning communities at a small private institution in the Midwest. Students shared their experiences in two different living learning communities on campus focused on intercultural development and the relation they had on their sense of belonging to the institution. This study provides suggestions for the current programs similar to these communities around the nation.

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  Sex Differences in Relation to Affect and Social versus Non-Social Stress on Olfactory Functioning

  Sahar Kaouk, Madeline P. Scherer

  Evolutionarily, olfaction, or the sense of smell, was a way to detect threats (Soudry et al., 2011) and is highly involved various psychological processes including emotion (Chen & Dalton, 2005) and stress (Hoenen et al., 2017). This project aims to assess the biological sex differences in affective response to social and non-social stress, and how this then affects odor detection sensitivity, identification, hedonic ratings, and intensity ratings. This project will further the understanding of sex differences in regard to olfactory functioning, emotional regulation, in various stress conditions. Equal numbers of male and female undergraduate participants recruited from University of Dayton SONA System (N = 90) will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions: social stress or non-social stress. The participant will wear a chest heart rate monitor for the duration of the experiment. Average heart rate will be collected throughout. Participants will first complete a pre-condition administration of questionnaires and olfactory testing. Participants assigned to the social stress condition will participate in a modified version of the arithmetic section of the Trier Social Stress Test (Allen et al., 2017). Participants will be given ten minutes sequentially subtract 13 from 1,022 aloud and in front of a confederate and a camera prop. If the participant makes a mistake, the confederate will bluntly stop the participant and instruct them to start from the beginning thus inducing feelings of social evaluation. Participants assigned to the non-social stress condition will also have ten minutes to subtract the number 13 from 1,022 however on a sheet of blank paper. They will be instructed to do the arithmetic as quickly as possible without making mistakes. Following either stress-task, participants will compete post-condition olfactory testing and questionnaires.

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  Signs to Speech

  Yashesh Dinesh Bharti

  There are softwares which translate from any language to any language, however, the promise of the futuristic sign language decoders have always been far away from being a day to day reality,Proposing a Neural Network based Sign language to speech translator which purports to translate sign language in real-time to text or speech as the user gestures. For people in the Deaf community, this tool could come in handy as it will not demand any extra hardware and use a camera (Like the ones present on the phone) to detect the pose and gestures.

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  Smelling How to Feel: The Role of Ambient Odor and Olfaction in Affective Experience and Evaluation

  Michael Alex Lee, Juliana Mitchell, Wyatt Kaiser

  Olfaction, or the sense of smell, and emotion have long been recognized as closely related. Previous research has found that odors are not only capable of influencing our mood, but can also affect the way we evaluate different types stimuli that are associated with them. However, no study to date has examined how odors can influence the way we evaluate visual stimuli, nor considered the relationship between odor’s ability to influence mood as well as affective evaluation. This study’s goal was to address this gap in the literature. For this study, we had participants complete questionnaires about their demographic information, current mood, and the affective impact of odor for them. Then, we had them view a series of images and rate them for positive valence, negative valence, and intensity. Once they viewed all the images, participants then relocated to another room that was prepared with a pleasant odor, unpleasant odor, or no odor. Participants then completed another questionnaire regarding their mood following odor exposure, and then viewed and rated another set of images, which contained both new images and the same images they viewed earlier. We hypothesized that participant’s reported mood state would change after being exposed to a pleasant or unpleasant odor, that their ratings of positive and negative valence for the images would change after being exposed to a pleasant or unpleasant odor, and that the change in image ratings is mediated by their change in mood due to the odor. While most hypotheses were not supported, we found unexpected changes in mood and ratings over time between odor exposure conditions. This study provides additional nuance to our understanding of the relationship between olfactory and affective processing, as well as creates opportunities for building our understanding of the relationship between the two domains in the future.

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  “SMH White Gays”: A Netnographic Study of Hegemonic Masculinity and Internalized Homophobia among Queer Men of Color on Twitter

  Ryan Scott

  This study takes an in-depth look into the way that gay men of color create spaces for themselves on social media. Focusing on the social media platform Twitter, I explore the dialogue around identity among gay men and the obstacles to creating inclusive spaces (i.e. internalized homophobia, anti-effeminacy and racial preferences). To study these trends within Twitter posts, I preform a content analysis of 15 posts and their comments/replies, from October 2019 to February 2020, by self-identified gay men and look for themes of internalized homophobia, hegemonic masculinity or exclusion of people of color. The key idea of this study is that even within marginalized communities, there is still an emphasis on being able to conform to normative identities. I take a closer look at how queer men of color navigate Twitter to create their online personas and understand their intersecting identities. With the growing presence of social media in our lives, it is important to see social media as the new frontier for studying human interaction. While this study focuses on the creation of spaces for gay men, the sociological forces at play in this research could be applied to any group.

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  Social and Emotional Support for Siblings of Children with ASD

  Alison Jane Kolber-Jamieson

  Siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) frequently experience a higher level of social-emotional issues when compared to siblings of typically developing children. This study examined data gathered from individual interviews with siblings of individuals with autism ASD. Participants described social and emotional issues that arose from living with an individual on the autism spectrum, what systems of support they accessed and benefitted from, and barriers to competent family-centered care. In exploring the social and emotional issues faced by siblings of individuals with ASD, analysis of the interview transcripts revealed five broad themes: anxiety/stress, depression, guilt, isolation, and anger/resentment. Exploration of the variables that influence these social and emotional issues (systems of support and barriers) reveal themes related to factors at school, factors at home, and factors within the community. Recommendations and implications for practice are provided for school personnel to support siblings of students on the autism spectrum.

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  Social Media and The Multiple In-Group Identity of the English Premier League International Supporter Clubs

  Nicholas Kerver

  This study addresses the use of social media by independent organizations – supporters clubs, which associate with sport teams to connect with fans. Arsenal America is a group of more than 70 supporters clubs ran independently from Arsenal FC across the United States. The organization was first founded in 2001 and was officially recognized in 2005. Club events are held for every home and away match at local restaurants and bars within each club’s region. While many of the events revolve around socialization between supporter club members, other events are held throughout the year including charity and philanthropy events. Each supporters club in Arsenal America has at least a Twitter and Facebook page, with the vast majority holding both. The purpose of this study is to show the use of social media by each Arsenal America organization in terms of content creation. A content analysis will be performed to examine the parameters which categorize the content delivered through both Twitter and Facebook by Arsenal America clubs. This study implicates the tactics revolving around content which can connect fans through an in-group identity, which can help fans feel both connected with their fellow fans, the local place identity, and the sport organization itself.

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  Social Media Content Labelling Toolkit

  Allen Mathew Madathil

  The proposed project is a graphical user interface for annotating recorded data on the social media composing process. This data can be used to learn about human behavioral patterns. Although this application was built for Windows, but it can be easily scaled to other platforms like Android as it was developed using Java. The Graphical User Interface allows the user to load the video files and label the video segments according to the actions performed. Labels are divided into two categories like action label and verbal label which are further subdivided into many categories. There are around 90 labels to choose from. For each action, the start time and end time are recorded. The labels along with the start time and end time of the actions are saved in a text file. The name of this text file matches the video file so whenever the user reopens the same video, previously saved labels are retrieved from the file which helps the user to continue where he left off. Another feature is that the application has a time-label bar which helps to visualize the labels with its corresponding time frames. Apart from learning about human behavioral patterns this tool can be modified and used for many other research works that require video labeling.

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  Soft Robot Actuator Design for Digital Light Processing

  Dillon Montgomery Balk

  This research involves the design, simulation and fabrication of novel soft robot actuators. Since the 1970s, robot design engineers have been experimenting soft materials in robotics components. Inspired by natural organisms, “soft robotics” involves the integration of a soft polymer material into a mechanism in order to achieve a variety of configurations. Pneumatically actuated by air through hollow channels within, a soft robotics component allows for very large, non-linear, displacements compared to classical rigid body components. These attributes allow soft robotics to have potential biomedical, industrial, and rescue applications. This research project involves designing and simulating various soft robotic actuators to mimic primitive motions, including twisting, bending, elongating, and angular displacement. The various actuators can be assembled to form serial and parallel chains to perform basic robotic tasks, such as search-and-retrieval or pick and place operations. Digital light processing (DLP) technology is an appealing fabrication technique because it is able to create very intricate parts with high resolution. Utilizing UDRI’s DLP capabilities, experiments with physical prototypes will calibrate and validate the simulation results.

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  Special Education in France and The United States of America: A Comparison and Contrast

  Joy Rogers

  Special Education for young children has been changing for years. These changes have included more progressive education in a global sense, that involves a focus on the child over a focus on their disability. These progressive changes have not only changed Special Education in The United States but also in western Europe. During a study abroad experience in Angers, France in the summer of 2019, research was conducted on how the Special Education System in The United States differs from the Special Education System in France. The goal of this project is to educate university peers, staff and officials about progressive education in a global sense and its importance. This project focuses on the similarities and differences between the two systems. Through the use of interviews of relevant individuals, based on their experiences and expertise, as well as personal experiences and research while studying abroad, it has been discovered that more progressive instructional practices have been implemented in The United States.

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  Stock Market Analysis

  Kate Rustige

  This project aimed to develop a program to predict the future prices given past prices of a stock. Using the properties of Brownian motion, we may derive its mean and variance. A stock price is modeled as a Geometric Brownian motion, with mean referring to the average return of the stock and the volatility referring to the risk of the stock. For each individual stock, the mean and volatility aid in predicting the future stock price.

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  Stories of Moral Courage on Campus

  Ana Teresa Aleman Belendez, Britney Agendia Amin, Mackenzie Elizabeth Baynes, Anna Elizabeth Beebe, Nicolette Marissa Bettuzzi, Dezanee M. Bluthenthal, Bailee K. Boland, Liliana Melissa Busic, Clark N. Campbell, Kaitlynne Elizabeth Chapman, Zac Alexander Collopy, Colleen Rose Conway, Margaret L. Deneen, Joshua James Digby, Grace Susan Elliott, Julia E. Gallenstein, Hannah Elizabeth Gibson, Bridget Therese Graham, Tongyu Guo, Kathryn Grace Hay, Aileen Marisa Hull, Elijah Nova Johnson, Kelsey Marie Kamil, Lydia Kimberley Kladitis, Kaitlyn Marie Leach, Maya Rose Leibold, Douglas Stuart Lennon, Justine Marie Liptak, Colleen Rose Liston, Arabella D. Loera, Mitch Edward Long, Brandy Megan Lynch, Nathan Thomas Marcus, Jared Dominic Marsh, Jai'Shawn Madelyn Lamar McClendon, Darby Rose McMonagle, Sarah Ellen Mcgonigle, Devan Connor Moses, Alex M. Mueller, Casey Marie Mullin, Jake Davidson Neff, Robert Botti Nolan, Cameron Cristina Nowlin, Jillian A. Parker, Tess L. Poe-Slade, Jasmine H. Riechmann, Meredith N. Robinson, Jonathon Caleb Nehemiah Sattler, Connor James Snodsmith, Claire Elaine Strobach, Claire C. Sullivan, Nicole Ann Vanvoorhis, Angela Kay Weiland, Elizabeth Anne Weiler, Maleah Aujenae Wells, Sophie Jane Wilson

  Students enrolled in three courses (HRS200, VAH428, POL431) worked on a collaborative multimedia project, inspired by the UD Human Rights Center's program, the Moral Courage Project. Through an open nomination process, the UD campus community put forward names of people who exemplify "moral courage". What is Moral Courage? We describe it as a trait a person exhibits when they act to promote respect and dignity within a community, especially in a way that challenges social norms, even though they could expose themselves to risk or harm in the process and may never be recognized for their actions. Student teams interviewed these individuals and collected visual artifacts to produce concise storytelling pieces showcasing the actions of the ordinary people around us who work to positively contribute to our campus culture.

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  Storytelling as a Tool for Activism: Agroecology and Food Security in the Himalayas Case Study

  Grace Scott, Emily Shanahan

  Through the Global Flyers: India Program, Grace and Emily spent six weeks exploring the intersection of agriculture, globalization, climate change, food security, and culture in the context of rural agricultural communities of the Himalayas. Food, in addition to the literal life-giving nutrition it provides, is a vehicle for language, culture, familial traditions, and interpersonal relationships. Due to climate change, the commodification of food, and inattentive globalization, farmers have been increasingly forced from their land and livelihood, despite the immense benefits they provide, and replaced with industrial agriculture operations that act as cultural erasures. During their time in India, Grace and Emily collaborated with team members to conduct community meetings, interview farmers, and facilitate youth input to create community-based storybooks. Storytelling has been used for centuries to define social values and have a particularly potent psychological influence. How can we continue to use storytelling as a tool for advocacy, for issues both locally and abroad? Join us to interact with stories from Sikkim, India and discuss how we can use our own stories as a tool for activism.

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  Structure function analysis of defective proventriculus (dve) in Drosophila melanogaster eye growth and development

  Anuradha Chimata Venkatakrishnan, Neha Gogia

  During development, axial patterning is required to establish Antero-posterior (AP), Dorso-Ventral (DV), and Proximo-Distal (PD) axes, which is crucial for the generation of a 3-dimensional organ from a monolayer organ primordium. Of the three axes, DV axis is the first lineage restriction event during eye development and any deviation results in developmental birth defects. In our study, we have used Drosophila melanogaster (Fruit fly) eye as a model system to understand the role of different domains of a new dorsal eye fate selector gene, defective proventriculus (dve, an ortholog of SATB1) in growth and development. In humans, SATB1, functions as a transcriptional regulator and chromatin organizer and requires tetramerization by the ULD domain. In Drosophila eye, dve regulates expression of wingless (wg), a negative regulator of eye. In genetic hierarchy, dve acts downstream of GATA-1 transcription factor pannier (pnr) and upstream of wg. Loss-of-function of dve results in dorsal eye enlargement while gain-of-function results in eye suppression. We performed structure function analysis of Dve protein to elucidate the role of various domains in patterning, growth and differentiation. We have developed several transgenic lines, which will allow us to induce expression domains of the specific domains of Dve protein and assay their effect on Drosophila eye patterning and growth. Dve has a ULD domain for tetramerization, HOX domain for DNA binding and PPP4R2 domain for H2AFX dephosphorylation. Here we present our results on ectopic induction of these individual domains of Dve and their effect on eye phenotype and Wg expression in the developing eye.

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  Students Making a Difference: Diversity and Campus Climate at UD

  Aniqa Noreen Ahmed, Cara M. Daley, Malon Ariel Hood, Amariá Chryslyn Camille Jones, Christopher Arnold Jones, Galila S. Kiffle, Serena Maya Melgar, Joia Marie Mitchell-Holman, Emily M. Ruebelman, Leah L. Ward

  Creating Inclusive Community involves students, faculty, and staff who enrolled in UDI 380 “Understanding, Respecting, and Connecting: Examining Privilege and Taking Action” and attended a diversity conference in Chicago, IL in April 2020. The focus of the conference was to examine the challenging concepts of privilege and oppression and to develop strategies to create a more equitable world. Come hear the students experiences at the conference and discuss the skills and knowledge they gained to enhance the campus climate for inclusivity and diversity at the University of Dayton. Please join us for a lively discussion!

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  Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education & Dayton

  Destiny Watson

  Studying Human Rights as it relates specifically to Dayton, and what can be done to make Dayton a Human Rights City has allowed me to learn more about Dayton. This course has allowed me to reflect on my hometown & own experiences as it relates to the SDGs. As a person who has had a good quality education and having family members who did not, I understand the importance of having a quality education regardless of location, class, race, etc. It’s good to see that there are actions being taken to improve the education system in Dayton.

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  Sustainable Stories: Linking Graphic Design and the Environment to Inform, Educate, and Inspire

  Shannon Stanforth

  I believe that graphic design has the ability to inspire social good and action. Similarly, sustainability is an emerging concern which depends on the collective decisions of an environmentally aware and civically-minded society. This thesis project explores the ways that graphic design and sustainability affect and influence each other. Graphic designers have the responsibility to visually communicate and connect with audiences. Sustainability’s applicability to a multitude of disciplines and its relevance to the future of our planet makes it a message worthy of communication. In an effort to link graphic design and sustainability together for the purpose of inspiring social and environmental good, I created a children’s book which focuses on the importance of naming and knowing the world around us. The book seeks to serve as an example of how design and sustainability can be linked in both a book’s production and the development of its content. It aims to maintain the ideals of sustainability while simultaneously emphasizing the importance of caring for our natural world and spreading this message to the youngest generation. Future steps for this research include: determining sustainable methods of printing and production, continuing to examine the intersections between the fields of sustainability and design, and disseminating my message to children and the community.

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  Synthesis, Characterization, and Fluorescence Behavior of Oxidized Biochar Particles

  Bethany R. Davies

  Biochar is made through a simple combustion method from any biomass. In this work, we produced fluorescent carbon-based particles using a hydrothermal process whereby biochar and hydrogen peroxide reacted; three separate sources of biomass were investigated. The synthesized particles were characterized via the following spectroscopic methods: Infra-Red, Ultraviolet-Visible, Fluorescence, and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. The spectroscopic results suggest the presence of a conjugated carbon lattice with nitrogen and multiple oxygen-containing functional groups. All three biochar-based carbon particles exhibit similar strong fluorescent behavior when excited by light in the ultra-violet to near-visible range, with fluorescence occurring in the visible region over a range of approximately 300 nm with an emission maximum in the 430-450 nm region. The physical and fluorescence characteristics of these particles makes them an ideal candidate for future research into a safe, green, and cost-effective biosensor. Additionally, the minimal waste produced in this synthesis suggests a possible economically viable method for the large-scale production of fluorescent materials.

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  Taking Action: How Community Residents’ Positionality, Trust in the Government, and Risk Perceptions affect Advocacy in the Superfund Process

  Alyssa Miller

  A Superfund Site is a contaminated area designated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that poses a risk to human health and must be cleaned up and remediated. Not only can a Superfund Site’s contamination affect residents’ health, but it can also jeopardize their property value and community life. Drawing on the human rights framework, international doctrines, and peer reviewed research, this poster proposes a conceptual framework for how residents’ social positionality, perceived risk, and trust in government could influence a community member’s ability to take action around such Superfund sites. This review of the literature is framed within the context of an underfunded and understaffed program which has resulted in a backlog of contaminated sites that require remediation. The findings from this literature review are contributing to a broader Environmental Justice in Greater Old North Dayton research project led by Dr. Danielle Rhubart which is focusing on three of the currently six Superfund sites within Dayton, Ohio, including Behr Dayton Thermal System VOC Plume, the North Sanitary Landfill (i.e. Valleycrest Landfill), and Valley Pike VOC. This poster will end with a brief snapshot of how these findings shed light on the survey findings from that project.

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  Technical Writing in China

  Julia Ziemelis, Maya Gerker, Savanna Simons

  Over winter break, we visited various businesses in China in the cities of Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. We are going to discuss what we learned about technical writing from these businesses and about the increasing demand for professional technical writers.