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  Identification of Bacterial Efflux Pump Inhibitors

  Cristian Mantilla

  Bacteria such as Escherichia coli contain efflux pumps (EP) that allow the cell to achieve multi-drug resistance. This phenomenon has been an increasing threat to modern medicine limiting the number of antibiotics available to treat disease. This pump is a tri-partite complex which includes components AcrA, AcrB, and TolC. TolC is a barrel-like protein that spans the bacterial cell’s outer membrane and opens out to the extracellular space. AcrB is a pump that spans the inner membrane and the periplasm. AcrA acts as a bridge that connects TolC to AcrB. Together, they make up the efflux pump which is activated by the proton motive force allowing the cell to expel antibiotics out into the environment, thus keeping the cell from being killed by the antibacterial drugs. To address the multidrug resistance characteristic that these efflux pumps confer on a bacterial cell, we screened a large number of small molecules with the best potential to bind to the tripartite pump and inhibit normal efflux function. After choosing eight of the most promising candidates, we performed efflux assays and tested the ability of the compounds to block efflux of a fluorescent reporter compound, ethidium bromide, from the bacterial cell.

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  Impact of Music and the Arts on Student Development and Education

  Rachel K Collinsworth, Mary Catherine Donovan

  In the era of STEM and high-stakes testing, the inclusion of music and the arts must still be recognized for their importance. The objective of this EDT 110H presentation is to identify and highlight the important influence the arts have on a student’s education and development.

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  Impeller Power Draw in Liquid-Solid Suspensions

  Mary Elizabeth Heigel

  Impeller power draw in liquid-only systems is well understood; however, this is not the case for liquid-solid suspensions. Typically liquid-only behavior is extrapolated, with the assumption that power draw is proportional to suspension density. Recent work has indicated that power draw can be affected by the presence of solids that do not alter the suspension density. This effect appears to be a function of particle size, and while past work has assumed that all impeller types are affected by solids in the same manner, this has never been verified experimentally. The subject literature is perplexing due to most studies considering only a single impeller type at a very limited number of operating conditions. In this study, the power draw was characterized in liquid-solid suspensions for a number of impeller types including axial-flow, mixed-flow, and radial-flow (with and without a disc). To develop a deeper understanding of the effect of solids on impeller power draw, the following testing was performed. To eliminate the effect of suspension density on power draw, neutrally buoyant solid particles were used. This was done by using salt water that matched the particle density as the liquid phase. Two particle sizes were studied to consider the effect of this parameter. It was found that the power draw increased slightly for both particle sizes as an increased amount of solid was added. Testing was also performed in which addition of solids changed suspension density. Again two solids were used: fine acrylic solids with a density less than twenty percent higher than the liquid and granular sand with a density two and a half times that of the liquid. This testing indicated that the increase of specific gravity increased the relative power draw linearly for each different impeller. For all the tests the various impellers behaved differently.

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  Improvements to Physical Activity at the University of Dayton

  Haley N Glaser, Angel J Pagan, Allison M Sandoval

  There is a growing epidemic of obesity and unhealthy behaviors across America.This presentation’s main focus is on the unhealthy behaviors that are growing among college students. A lack of physical activity and fitness could lead college students to become more stressed, obese, develop unhealthy eating habits, decrease their mental health, and negatively affect other related health areas in the body. Physical activity is key in college to stimulating the brain and developing healthy habits for the future because college is when habits for the future are truly developed. However, it is commonly stated that college students are constantly busy and have a hard time finding time for physical activity. In our project we will discuss the resources the University of Dayton provides students to assist in improving students’ physical fitness and overall health. The RecPlex is campus’ main source of physical activity, but there are also many outside resources available. However, suggestions such as, opening more gym space, creating free workout classes, and encouraging friendly competition between the Student Neighborhoods and doors, the could improve attendance and use of their equipment. There are already many incentives created to increase attendance at the RecPlex like Path Points, but many more could be created that includes more students. The University of Dayton provides few opportunities for students to improve their physical activity outside of the RecPlex and this project looks at resources that could be added to increase overall physical health on campus. Our goal is to provide tools for success to administrative staff and students that could help increase the amount of on campus involvement in unique physical activities both on and off campus.

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  Improving Communication Regarding Alcohol Consumption Concerns at UD

  GROUP Kelly F Fuller, Benjamin N Schmeusser, Victoria Lynn Singleton

  Binge drinking is a physical and mental health concern. Students who binge drink may be more inclined to participate in risky behavior, feel disconnected or depressed, and develop alcohol dependency, leading to alcoholism. Even if physiological alcoholism does not develop, other health concerns including high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, digestive issues, and certain cancers are associated with binge drinking. These issues are widespread, but are most prominent on college campuses, with the University of Dayton being no exception. At UD, there are current stigmatizations regarding alcohol consumption during certain holidays, especially St. Patrick’s Day. In response to this, most often through emails and letters, the University has facilitated healthy communication about the issue of binge drinking, expressed sincere interest in protecting the wellbeing of all students and their safety, and laid out clear expectations. Additionally, the University also does a good job of hosting and promoting numerous alcohol free events on and off of campus. With the acknowledgement that there is an increase in high risk drinking during holidays, we have also identified other events that may trigger an increase in alcohol consumption through student interviews. These events consist of but are not limited to hosting visitors, attending social events, and difficult academic weeks. The awareness of these trends creates a need for better communication between students and University Officials pertaining to alcohol safety and more alcohol free events throughout the entire year, which can be modeled after the University’s response to stigmatizations during holidays such as St. Patrick’s Day.

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  Increasing Intensive English Program Students’ Understanding of the Health Effects of Smoking Tobacco

  Emily Effer, Sydney E Hattendorf, Hanna J Peterson, Sherilyn E Rogers

  Health literacy is defined as the range of abilities to comprehend and evaluate health information in a way that allows individuals to make informed choices about their health. People who are especially impacted by this are the international students at the University of Dayton who are immersed in a new culture with a new language. The focus of our project was to determine what health information the international students in the Intensive English Program (IEP) at UD wanted to learn about tobacco use and smoking. We then edited an existing pamphlet about that topic to make it more understandable for IEP readers. Our original text was published by the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. When a SMOG test was run, it read at a 12.84 reading level. After meeting with the IEP students for a field test and eliminating complex language, we lowered the reading level to 6.5 and improved overall understanding. If all health information were presented at lower reading levels, the healthcare system in the United States could become less daunting to the majority of adults with low literacy.

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  Influence of Newspaper Endorsements in the 2016 Presidential Election

  Alexandra R Scherb

  The purpose of this study is to address the influence of newspaper endorsement on the county level in regards to the 2016 presidential election. I am looking at the newspaper endorsement influence of 346 papers on the vote percentages of their respective counties, and then comparing those to state percentages. That way we can see each newspaper’s specific influence on it’s county. This study is significant because we can start to see if newspaper endorsements are important and influential or not, which could have major ramifications for both politicians and newspapers. If we determined that newspaper endorsements were not important, we could begin to ask what has changed to make them unimportant (for example the change in news consumption). Furthermore, this election could be very out of the ordinary due to extraneous variables, and newspapers might not have had a chance at playing their traditional guiding role in voting choice. Should any of this be the case, there would be a major shift in politics and news as politicians have always relied on mass media for successful politics and mass media has relied on politicians for content.

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  Influence of Reverse Shoulder Implant Positioning on Patient-Specific Muscle Forces: A Simulation Study

  Kayla M Pariser

  A reverse shoulder arthroplasty (RTSA) is a common treatment for patients with severe shoulder injuries such as rotator cuff muscle tears and/or severe arthritis. The goal of an RTSA is to stabilize the shoulder and improve a patient’s range of motion. The stability of the shoulder relies on the muscles of the shoulder and with rotator cuff tears, the deltoid muscle becomes the shoulder’s primary stabilizer. The positioning of the implant is important as it directly affects the length of the deltoid muscle moment arm which determines the amount of deltoid muscle force required to produce the necessary torque about the shoulder for it to function after a RTSA. However, it is impossible to experimentally determine the force that the deltoid muscle will be able to produce after surgery. The overall goal of this work is to use simulation and optimization methods to optimize RTSA implant placement and deltoid muscle forces for fifteen RTSA patients. For each of the fifteen patients, a model of the shoulder joint and muscles and an optimization framework will be used to calibrate muscle model parameters and predict the shoulder muscle forces.

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  Integrated Shape and Texture Features for Robust Pedestrian Detection

  Hussin K Ragb

  Over the last decade, detection of human beings became one of the most significant tasks in computer vision due to its extended applications that include human computer interaction, visual surveillance, person identification, event detection, gender classification, robotics, automatic navigation, and safety systems, etc. However this task is rather challenging because of the fluctuation in appearance of the human body as well as the cluttered scenes, pose, occlusion, and illumination variations. For such a difficult task, most of the time no single feature algorithm is rich enough to capture all the relevant information available in the image. To improve the detection accuracy we propose a new descriptor that fuses the local phase information, image gradient, and texture features as a single descriptor and is denoted as fused phase, gradient and texture features (FPGT). The gradient and the phase congruency concepts are used to capture the shape features, and a center-symmetric local binary pattern (CSLBP) approach is used to capture the texture of the image. The fusing of these complementary features yields the ability to localize a broad range of the human structural information and different appearance details which allow to more robust and better detection performance. The proposed descriptor is formed by computing the phase congruency, the gradient, and the CSLBP value of each pixel with respect to its neighborhood. The histogram of oriented phase and histogram of oriented gradient, in addition to CSLBP histogram are extracted for each local region. These histograms are concatenated to construct the FPGT descriptor. Principal components analysis (PCA) is performed to reduce the dimensionality of the resultant features. Several experiments were conducted to evaluate the detection performance of the proposed descriptor. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier is used in these experiments to classify the FPGT features. The results show that the proposed algorithm has better detection performance in comparison with the state of the art feature extraction methodologies.

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  Intensive English Program Oral Communication Posters

  Ahmed M Al Riyami, Rashed B Alajmi, Sadiq M M A Almotawa, Mishari A Alshatti, Saori Kai

  The presenters are students from the Intensive English Program. The posters they have created are representative of an end of term project for the level 3 Oral Communication and Listening/Note-taking course; an intermediate class for English language learning students at the intermediate proficiency level. The goal of this assignment is to give students an introduction to research and an opportunity to improve their speaking and presentation skills.

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  Interaction of the hippo pathway and dronc in regulating cell proliferation

  Hannah M Scharf, Kirti Snigdha

  Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is one of the most important regulatory events for proper tissue homeostasis. It is a gene-directed program that helps in controlling the number of cells through components that influence cell survival as well as those that control proliferation and differentiation. Dysregulation of apoptosis is a hallmark for cancer in which mutated tumor cells exhibit uncontrolled cell division and evade cell death. Hence, to understand cancer biology and devise effective therapeutic avenue, it is highly essential to study how the genes involved in the pathways of cell growth and cell death get dysregulated to promote tumorigenesis. The Hippo signaling pathway was identified in Drosophila melanogaster, (commonly known as the fruit fly) and is evolutionarily conserved in mammals. The Hippo pathway regulates organ size, cell proliferation, and cell death, and is commonly deregulated in human tumors. Previous study in our lab has shown that the Hippo pathway interacts with initiator capase Dronc, along with effector caspase Drice and Dark to regulate cell death. In addition, Dronc is the first target gene that is negatively regulated by the Hippo pathway. We hypothesized that loss of Dronc, Drice, and Dark function will enable unchecked cell proliferation. To evaluate this we used the eye imaginal disc of the Drosophila melanogaster in which we will produce small clones of mutated cells for Dronc. We will evaluate different cell proliferation markers like cyclin A and E through immunostaining and confocal microscopy. This will help us in understanding how the loss of Dronc affects cell proliferation. Here we present our findings on this.

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  Interfering with the Consolidation of Memory

  McKenzie J Anderson, Kelly A Dunne, Alexander N Lawriw

  Research suggest that sleep improves memory. Specifically, memories are consolidated—incorporated within the context of previously established memory networks— during sleep (Rasch & Born, 2013). Studies indicate that memories are initially unstable after encoding and must be consolidated to become resistant to interference (Robertson, 2011). The objective of the present research was to examine how interrupting the encoding of a memory would interfere with later memory consolidation. Participants experienced a fake computer crash during their study (encoding) of pictures of common objects in a slideshow. While the experimenter attempted to “fix” the crash, participants completed an unrelated task to prevent rehearsal of the pictures. The slideshow resumed, showing the remaining pictures. One group of participants completed a recognition task of the pictures not long after viewing the slideshow. A second group of participants was asked to complete a delayed recognition task of the pictures via an online survey the following day. A third group of participants was asked to complete both the immediate recognition task, as well as the online delayed recognition task, the following day. Overall, we hypothesized that memory would be better for pictures that appeared near the beginning and the end of encoding, while pictures that were presented just before the interruption would be less likely to be remembered. Moreover, this last effect would be more pronounced on the second day because any memory consolidation that might have taken place would be disrupted. Finally, we expected two outcomes for the second day of testing: first, participants would be less confident in their assessment of their memory than they were on the first day of the experiment. However, participants would be just as and even more accurate in their memory for the pictures that we did not expect would be impacted by the interruption.

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  Investigate the role of OPA1 gene mutation in amyloid-beta 42 mediated neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s Disease

  Elizabeth A Borchers, Lydia C Payton, Ankita Sarkar

  Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder with no known cure to date. The disease is caused by the extra-cellular accumulation of amyloid-beta 42 (Aβ42) peptides, which results in neuronal death. We have developed transgenic Drosophila melanogaster (a.k.a fruit fly) model of AD where human Aβ42 peptide was misexpressed specifically in the Drosophila eye using the GAL4/UAS system. Our approach allows Aβ42 accumulation only in the differentiating photoreceptor neurons, which kills only the retinal neurons, and does not affect the reproductive ability as well as life span of flies. It allows us to use these flies to understand the molecular genetic basis of AD. One of the hallmark of AD is generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) from mitochondria, which triggers neuronal death. My hypothesis is that OPA-1, a dynamin related GTPase, which regulate mitochondrial fusion, is involved in regulating Aβ42 mediated neurodegeneration. A fine balance between mitochondrial fission and fusion events is essential for normal mitochondrial and cellular function. Mutations of OPA1, an early stop signal produces small unstable mitochondrial proteins, which increases ROS levels in neurons. There is a strong correlation between increased ROS levels and mitochondrial fragmentation with neuronal death. I will investigate role of OPA1 in Aβ42 mediated neurodegeneration using our fly eye model. This gene is highly conserved between flies and humans. Thus, our studies will have significant bearings on understanding molecular genetic basis of AD and role of energy generating mitochondrial machinery in age related neurodegeneration.

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  Investigating cell-cell interactions in Drosophila glioma models

  Logan J Roebke

  Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a devastating form of primary brain cancer with poor prognosis. Capitalizing on the similarities between mammalian and Drosophila glial cells, Drosophila glioblastoma models have been established that show similarities to anaplastic glia from high-grade human glioma. Using the Repo MARCM system, we established two models of Drosophila glioblastomas by overexpressing oncogene RasV12 together with downregulation of Pten (PtenRNAi) in one model system and suppression of scribble (ScribRNAi ) in another. These genetic alterations lead to overgrowth of glial cells creating glioblastomas in Drosophila larval brain. The glioblastoma containing brain appear enlarged in comparison to normal wild type brain, which clearly suggests the dysregulation of growth control in tumors. We studied expression of ecdysone receptor (ECR) and Taiman proteins in the two model glioblastomas. Taiman is the co-activator of ECR, and cooperatively control growth. One mechanism by which Taiman regulates growth is by cooperatively interacting with Yorkie (Yki) the co-activator of the Hippo growth control pathway. We want to understand the role of these proteins in the development of the gliomas. We first tested the expression of ECR and Taiman in our glioma models and found that in both the models, ECR and Taiman are downregulated in the tumor cells in comparison to the normal expression in non-tumor cells. This suggests the growth control is lost in tumors. We will test the role of Yki in this growth regulatory interaction. Here we present our findings from the ECR-Taiman-Yki studies in Drosophila glioma models.

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  Investigating Factors that Impact the Probability of Covering the Spread in NFL Games

  Larry J D'Onofrio

  This analysis is to determine if the winner against the spread of NFL regular season games can be probabilistically determined. In order to obtain the results for the analysis, a logistical regression will be run analyzing data from the 2010 – 2015 NFL seasons. The data consists of variables pertaining to team resources, individual games, and Las Vegas closing spreads.

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  Investigating the role of inflammatory cytokines on tumor progression and metastasis in a Drosophila cancer model

  Kirti Snigdha

  Tumor cells and surrounding normal cells interact with each other and constitute the tumor microenvironment (TME) which supports the survival and proliferation of tumors. Studies indicate the presence of inflammatory components in the TME. However, little is known about the effect of these inflammatory molecules on tumor growth and progression. The core inflammatory pathways are conserved in Drosophila. Imaginal discs of Drosophila melanogaster are a popular model to study epithelial tumors due to the variety of mosaic analysis tools, and the ease positively marking cells that allow tracking growth and progression of tumor cells. We co-activated oncogenic forms of Yki or RasV12 activities in polarity deficient (scribble mutant) epithelial cells to model aggressively growing and metastatic tumors. To simulate the TME, ‘FLP-out’ clones of tumor cells marked with GFP were generated. The activity of key inflammatory pathways Toll, TNF, and JNK in the TME was tested by immunohistochemistry. We observed upregulation of Cactus (TLR pathway component) and p- JNK (activated form of JNK), and downregulation of Drosophila TNF ligand, Eiger in the tumor cells. Of these, only Eiger was upregulated in neighboring normal cells. Based on these results we hypothesized that a bidirectional cross-talk between the tumor and normal cells in the TME elicits a differential inflammatory response that promotes tumor cell survival and progression. To analyze this, we down-regulated Cactus and Wengen (TNF receptor) and evaluated the effect on tumor size and survival of tumor cells. A comparison of hyperplastic (Yki ScribRNAi) and metastatic (RasV12 ScribRNAi) tumor model was done to identify the role of inflammatory cytokines in tumor progression. Here, we report our progress on the study of the effect of these pathways and inflammatory cytokines on tumor survival and metastasis. Our research will help unravel the correlation between inflammatory pathways and tumor progression in an in vivo model.

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  Investigating the role of putative regeneration genes of Notophthalmus viridescens using Drosophila melanogaster model.

  Abijeet S Mehta

  Notophthalmus viridescens, Red-spotted newt, possess amazing capability to regenerate its organs including tail, limb, heart, brain, spinal cord, lens and other tissues. We have identified a novel family of proteins expressed in adult tissues during regeneration in newts by using a de novo assembly of the newt transcriptome that is combined with proteomic validation. Although, these proteins have no counterparts in public databases, they have a putative signal peptide suggesting the secretory nature of these proteins. To investigate the regeneration potential of these newt-specific genes (and given certain restrains with transgenic newts, such as time), we employed transgenic Drosophila melanogaster model to express these genes. We generated the transgenic flies containing candidate genes, and tried to evaluate their potential to rescue pattern defect mutants of Drosophila melanogaster. Simultaneously, we prepared samples for RNA sequencing to generate the snap shot of gene expression when the candidate genes are misexpressed. Using transgenic approach, these candidate genes were expressed in all the tissues of Drosophila, and samples for sequencing were collected at third instar larval (L3) stage. Interestingly, we have found that these genes are affecting regulatory machinery of Drosophila melanogaster by binding to the sequence specific sites in DNA and regulating the genes involved in Apoptosis and cell cycle. We are further evaluating the potential of these novel genes to rescue pattern defect mutants of Drosophila melanogaster. Our hypothesis is that if these genes are responsible for regeneration they will be able to rescue developmental cell death. The results generated from these studies will be presented in the conference.

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  Investigation of the role of Mitochondrial Dysfunction as a trigger for neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s Disease

  Lydia C Payton, Amit Singh

  Alzheimer’s disease (hereafter AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects cognitive function and memory of the patient. It results from plaques formed by the abnormal cleavage of the Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP), which result in the formation of 42 amino acid polypeptide, also known as amyloid beta 42 (Aβ42). Accumulation of Aβ42 peptide triggers cell death in the neuronal cell population of central nervous system. However, the trigger for this abnormal cell death is unknown. A possible explanation involves the role of mitochondrial dysfunction as the trigger for neurodegeneration. Mitochondria are involved in vital cellular functions, including ATP production, calcium ion homeostasis, reactive oxygen species production, and apoptosis. My hypothesis is that mutations in genes regulating mitochondrial health may play a role in neurodegeneration observed in AD mediated neurodegeneration. The rationale behind this hypothesis is, mitochondria are present in all neurons and mitochondrial function impairment results in cell suicide. It is known that trigger for cell death initiates from the mitochondria. Therefore, mitochondria might play an important role in Aβ42 mediated neuronal death. In order to investigate these issues, a Drosophila melanogaster eye model is used with the Gal4/UAS to misexpress the human Aβ42 polypeptide in the photoreceptor neurons of the fly retina. I propose to test the role of mitochondria in AD using candidate gene approach. These studies swill have significant bearings on understanding the etiology of AD and identification of biomarkers for early detection of this disease.

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  Investigation of the role of OPA1 gene mutation in amyloid-beta 42 mediated neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s Disease

  Elizabeth A Borchers, Lydia C Payton, Ankita Sarkar

  Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder with no known cure to date. The disease is caused by the extra-cellular accumulation of amyloid-beta 42 (Aβ42) peptides, which results in neuronal death. We have developed transgenic Drosophila melanogaster (a.k.a fruit fly) model of AD where human Aβ42 peptide was misexpressed specifically in the Drosophila eye using the GAL4/UAS system. Our approach allows Aβ42 accumulation only in the differentiating photoreceptor neurons, which kills only the retinal neurons, and does not affect the reproductive ability as well as life span of flies. It allows us to use these flies to understand the molecular genetic basis of AD. One of the hallmark of AD is generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) from mitochondria, which triggers neuronal death. My hypothesis is that OPA-1, a dynamin related GTPase, which regulate mitochondrial fusion, is involved in regulating Aβ42 mediated neurodegeneration. A fine balance between mitochondrial fission and fusion events is essential for normal mitochondrial and cellular function. Mutations of OPA1, an early stop signal produces small unstable mitochondrial proteins, which increases ROS levels in neurons. There is a strong correlation between increased ROS levels and mitochondrial fragmentation with neuronal death. I will investigate role of OPA1 in Aβ42 mediated neurodegeneration using our fly eye model. This gene is highly conserved between flies and humans. Thus, our studies will have significant bearings on understanding molecular genetic basis of AD and role of energy generating mitochondrial machinery in age related neurodegeneration.

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  Is hemipteran community structure in a coastal tallgrass prairie dependent on micronutrients?

  Kiersten P Angelos, Emma E Pierpont, Ryan W Reihart

  Insects play a major role in our ecosystems as pollinators, pest controls, decomposers, and a as food sources. Yet, there is limited knowledge on the factors that frame the structure of herbivore communities. The insect order, hemiptera, have piercing/sucking mouthparts, and are very important in grassland ecosystems as major herbivore species that affect nutrient cycling, primary productivity. They are also an important food source for other organisms. We con a large conducted a large fertilization experiment manipulating macronutrients (N,P) and micronutrients (Ca, K, and Na) in all combinations (16 total treatments) replicated 8 times (128 plots total) in large plots (30m x 30m) in a coastal tallgrass prairie in Texas. We sampled insects in each plot by sweepnetting plots, and also sampled plants and soil properties. We sorted insects to order, and are identifying all hemipterans to morphospecies. Because hemipterans were the abundant group in the samples, their responses drove community level responses of insects. Hemipterans were co-limited by nitrogen, phosphorous, and sodium. Their response may be driven by plant community responses to our treatments: their abundance was positively correlated with plant species richness. Future experiments will test to see if hemipterans are responding the micronutrients or the plant communities. These results demonstrate, for the first time, that this globally important insect group may be co-limited by a combination of macro- and micronutrients in this ecosystem. These findings important implications for the management of insect pest, and management for insect diversity.

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  Journalism Ethics: Bias in Coverage of the Duke Lacrosse Team Sexual Assault Case and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

  Janine A Costello, Nora E Sullivan, Annette M Taylor

  Nora Sullivan considers press coverage of the 2006 rape scandal involving members of Duke University lacrosse team and whether a media bias toward alleged victims led to a rush to judgment and errors in coverage. Her paper explores the ethics involved and how the press could have better reported this case. Janine Costello examines whether bias is evident in press coverage of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her paper focuses on ABC News’ misidentification of photos of rubble in Gaza as being in Israel, The failure to verify information about the photo reinforced the preconceived notions that American news outlets are more likely to sympathize with Israel rather than Palestine.

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  Journalism Ethics: News Coverage of the Trayvon Martin Shooting and Death of Robin Williams

  Dawnn P Fann, Anna Lagattuta Lagattuta, Annette M Taylor

  Anna Lagattuta explores how several news organizations used edited versions of 9-1-1 tapes in their coverage of the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, which created a distorted view of the situation. She considers ethical decision-making in selection of facts and what the press should have done in its reporting. Dawnn Fann examines press coverage of the 2011 death of actor/comedian Robin Williams, and whether the reporting adhered to ethical standards of reporting truth while minimizing harm to the surviving family as well as those suffering mental illness. She considers how the press can remain accountable as well as sensitive when reporting on suicides, especially of celebrities.

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  Journalism Ethics: Stephen Glass and Juan Thompson Fabrication Scandals

  Xi Jin, Christopher M Miller, Annette M Taylor, Qi Wang

  Stephen Glass, at the age of 25, was a popular and prolific writer in the 1990s who had stories published in top news magazines including the New Republic, Harper’s and Rolling Stone. Then it was discovered that Glass had plagiarized and fabricated scores of stories. Qi Wang examines the ethical violations and the impact of his transgressions on journalism’s credibility with audiences. Xi Jin also considers Glass’ transgression in light of today’s charges of “fake news” and how adherence to journalism ethics can prevent against such cases in the future. Christopher Miller examines fabrication in journalism through the 2016 case of Juan Thompson, a journalist for The Intercept, who created sources in some of his stories, apparently to promote an agenda of racial and community justice. While his goal was admirable, Thompson violated ethical norms of journalism and his lying destroyed his credibility with audiences.

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  Journalism Ethics: The Fall of Journalist Jack Kelley and “The Hitler Diaries” Hoax

  Emily P Biery, Annette M Taylor, Elizabeth C Torrance

  The career of Jack Kelley, a longtime USA Today reporter, came to an abrupt end in 2004 when it was discovered that he had fabricated many of his stories. Lizzie Torrance explores the ethical issues involved in the fall of this Pulitzer Prize finalist who once reported on important international events but became better known for violating journalism’s core principles of truthfulness and accuracy. Emily Biery analyzes the systematic failures of verification by German magazine, Der Stern, and several British magazines in the 1983 publication of "The Hitler Diaries," a series of journals allegedly written by Adolf Hitler that were later concluded to be fabricated by German swindler, Konrad Kujau.

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  Keeping Your Friends Close: Perceived Distance as a Function of Psychological Closeness

  Sierra F Corbin

  Traditionally, visual-spatial perception research has focused quite heavily on the visual information necessary to perceive the environment and the locations of objects within that space. Recent research has illustrated that non-visual factors like our emotional states, motivations and physical abilities affect not just the ways we behave, but may also affect how we perceive the environment. Social factors may also impact the way we see the space around us. This study sought to investigate whether feelings of psychological closeness to another person influenced the perception of spatially-oriented characteristics (e.g. perceived distance) of that person. In short, this study asked whether we perceived people with whom we share social ties to be physically closer than people we do not know. This research intended to determine whether psychological closeness affected perceived physical interpersonal distance using a variety of indicators of perceived egocentric (self-to-target) distance. Fifty undergraduate students were recruited from introductory psychology courses at the University of Dayton. Participants made several estimates of the distance between himself or herself and another “target” person. This target person represented either someone with whom the participant shared a relationship or a stranger. I hypothesized that an individual’s feelings of psychological closeness to someone considered a best friend would lead to the perception of closer visual-spatial proximity to a visual representation of that friend than to a visual representation of a stranger. This project contributes to a growing body of literature illustrating non-visual contributions to the perception of egocentric distance and spatial cognition.