Anti-proliferation of melanoma cells and immune stimulation by the cyanobacterial indole-alkaloid scytonemin

http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1052/thumbnail.jp

Characterization of the Nature of Rag5 Mediated Resistance to Soybean Aphids

http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1058/thumbnail.jp

Microbial Diversity of Biological Soil Crusts of the Indiana Dunes State Park

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are microbial assemblages that play important roles in the areas they inhabit, and can influence aspects such as local nitrogen flux, water infiltration, and plant seedling germination. In the dune environment, BSCs can form close connections with sand particles to stabilize dunes at their surface. Despite their potential critical role within Indiana Dunes State Park, little is known about their diversity, ecology, or interactions with plant communities there. The objective of this study, therefore, was to examine abiotic and biotic factors that influence dune BSCs, using Illumina high-throughput sequencing (HTS) to characterize these microbial communities. We hypothesized that specific environmental variables would influence BSC microbial diversity. In this study we sampled every 50m along a 550m transect, moving from the Lake Michigan shore inward to the hind-dune environment. At each sampling point soil pH, PAR, UV, and chlorophyll and scytonemin pigments were measured, and plant community cover, richness, and diversity were assessed. Moisture, conductivity, and nutrient content (total N and P) were also measured at every 100m. Overall, our HTS effort recovered 1,214,542 bacterial sequences across our 30 samples, and five major phyla were found to dominate our BSC samples, these being Proteobacteria (~20% of all sequences), Acidobacteria (~17%), Actinobacteria (~16%), Bacteriodetes (~17%), and Cyanobacteria (~10%). While there were no significant trends observed for BSC diversity moving along the transect, we did note a significant negative correlation for biological pigments and soil pH, suggesting a shift in the microbial community structure in response to these environmental parameters. The tendency for pH to structure terrestrial microbial communities has been noted in many studies; therefore, we are currently carrying out additional analyses to examine BSC community composition changes across our transect in relation to measured abiotic variables, with pH being of special interest.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1039/thumbnail.jp

The X-Men Rebooted

http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1063/thumbnail.jp

The Spread of Authoritarian Regimes in Interwar Europe

A number of studies have found that a variety of political phenomena, including democracy, can spread through a diffusion process. It is also possible that non-democratic phenomena can follow a similar pattern. The spread of authoritarian regimes in Europe between World I and World War II provided a classic case to determine whether there were such patterns. In fact, the creation of authoritarian political systems followed a diffusion pattern in some periods under some circumstances. There were also indications that those countries that were at lower levels of economic development were a factor that led to the establishment of authoritarian political systems

A Case Study of Child Development: A Student Teacher’s Perspective

Education of a child is mostly understood as teaching practices in schools, but education is also the child’s complete development. The purpose of this case study was to examine the multiple factors that influence a developing child’s cognitive, social emotional, language and physical development. The study considered the ecological factors based on Bronfenbrenner\u27s Ecological Theory (home, school and community) that contribute to the child’s learning and development (McDevitt \u26 Ormrod, 2016). This case study uses Bronfenbrenner’s theory to examine the contextual influences on a developing child through analyzes of the child’s individual self within the microsystem of school, peers, family and community. This inquiry was a 15-week case study that was conducted at a local school in Fort Wayne Community Schools in which one child was observed in the school setting. During the fifteen weeks of the case study, I did six naturalistic observations of the child in the school setting, engaged in informal interviews with the child, teacher and other school staff and collected anecdotal field notes. As a student teacher intern and researcher, I also spent time working with the child one-on-one in the classroom and got to know him on a personal level. The observations were analyzed using concepts of child development research and theories of child development to learn about one child’s unique experience in the classroom. This case study demonstrated a real-life experience of a child and the influential factors of child development looking at cognitive, social emotional, language and physical development. Knowledge acquired during this study was understanding a child’s thought process of the world and learning, good relationships with peers, socialization, and the importance of active and competitive play in school for boys. This case study demonstrates the importance of not only to teaching and mentoring students in the classroom but accommodating content based on each students’ needs.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1009/thumbnail.jp

Data Governance for Gardeners: Bridging Information Systems and Technical Communication

In this poster presentation, the author examines how core competencies of technical communication incorporate information systems and project management. The presentation explores particular data governance concepts that can be used to expand upon Hart-Davidson’s (2001) “core competencies of technical communicators” and Redish’s (2010) four elements of successful technical communication. Data governance defines roles and “assigns responsibilities for decision areas to these roles,” while establishing standards and ensuring compliance with strategies on an organization-wide basis (Weber, Otto, and Österle, 2009, p. 2). Technical communicators should be versatile and add value to their organizations and products (Dubinsky, 2015), as seen by the growing variety of competencies identified by Brumberger and Lauer (2015). These competencies connect technical communication to information systems and project management, as well as other fields. The presentation explores how this added value corresponds to Nardi and O’Day’s (1999) idea of the workplace “gardener,” an individual who grows productivity in his or her workplace. Specifically, this presentation demonstrates methods of bridging the fields of information systems and technical communication, elevating technical communication from its traditional support role by utilizing data governance concepts and versatile workplace “gardeners.”http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1032/thumbnail.jp

Applied Strength of Materials for Engineering Technology

This edition has been superseded. Please see the current 13th edition (updated January 2018): http://opus.ipfw.edu/mcetid_facpubs/56

Incorporating Active Learning into a One-Shot for Engineering Technology Students: What Worked and What Failed

This short talk will discuss the experience of incorporating active learning to a one-shot information literacy session for engineering technology students. The librarian will cover her reflections from the session, compare that to the student feedback received, and offer suggestions for librarians seeking to incorporate active learning activities into their instruction