2,194 research outputs found
Abstracts from Spring 2019 Research and Creative Activities Day Presentations
This is a summary of abstracts from the poster and oral presentations made by undergraduate students during Research and Creative Activities Day at West Chester University in April of 2019. The abstracts describe research and creative activities that the students conducted in collaboration with their faculty mentors who are listed with the abstracts. For more information about the study or the creative activity, please contact the mentor directly using the contact email address.
Student Authors Included:
Emily Rodden, Alissa Grady, Joyce Pour-Azar, Lauren Stricker, MacKenzie Holm, Samantha Bobst, Joelle Buenaventura, Julianne Duko, Angel Jacabella, Taylor Stuart, Liam Pierson, Kathleen Shultz, Amanda Johnston, Justin Gibson, Taylor Potts-Gordon, Sofia Vanderhyde, Ryan Manzo, Natha Helfrick, Olivia King, Rebecca Burr, Mary Ann Blumenthal, Zachary Weaver, Keriann Mosley, Alyssa Allen, Dominique McQuade, Amelia Oberholtzer, Jacquelyn Redmond, Terrence Riley, Kelly OâDonnell, Megan Ray, James Palmer, Tiffany Kennedy, Samantha Walsh, Kateri Sload, Colin Mancini, Erin Walsh, Ali Donohue, Ashley Nielsen, Adam Vanluvanee, Rebecca Spackman, Jenna Cummings, Garrett Compton, James Devor, Emily Feldman, Brady Barley, and Cassidy Tennit
Stop-Signal Reaction Time Correlates With a Compensatory Balance Response
Background Response inhibition involves suppressing automatic, but unwanted action, which allows for behavioral flexibility. This capacity could theoretically contribute to fall prevention, especially in the cluttered environments we face daily. Although much has been learned from cognitive psychology regarding response inhibition, it is unclear if such findings translate to the intensified challenge of coordinating balance recovery reactions. Research question Is the ability to stop a prepotent response preserved when comparing performance on a standard test of response inhibition versus a reactive balance test where compensatory steps must be occasionally suppressed? Methods Twelve young adults completed a stop signal task and reactive balance test separately. The stop signal task evaluates an individualâs ability to quickly suppress a visually-cued button press upon hearing a âstopâ tone, and provides a measure of the speed of response inhibition called the Stop Signal Reaction Time (SSRT). Reactive balance was tested by releasing participants from a supported lean position, in situations where the environment was changed during visual occlusion. Upon receiving vision, participants were required to either step to regain balance following cable release (70% of trials), or suppress a step if an obstacle was present (30% of trials). The early muscle response of the stepping leg was compared between the âstep blockedâ and âstep allowedâ trials to quantify step suppression. Results SSRT was correlated with muscle activation of the stepping leg when sufficient time was provided to view the response environment (400âms). Individuals with faster SSRTs exhibited comparably less leg muscle activity when a step was blocked, signifying a superior ability to inhibit an unwanted step. Significance Performance on a standardized test of response inhibition is related to performance on a reactive balance test where automated stepping responses must occasionally be inhibited. This highlights a generalizable neural mechanism for stopping action across different behavioral contexts
The Lyman-alpha forest at redshifts 0.1 -- 1.6: good agreement between a large hydrodynamic simulation and HST spectra
We give a comprehensive statistical description of the Lyman-alpha absorption
from the intergalactic medium in a hydrodynamic simulation at redshifts
0.1-1.6, the range of redshifts covered by HST spectra of QSOs. We use the ENZO
code to make a 76 comoving Mpc cube simulation using 75 kpc cells, for a Hubble
constant of 71 km/s/Mpc. The best prior work, by \citet{dave99},used an SPH
simulation in a 15.6 Mpc box with an effective resolution of 245 kpc and
slightly different cosmological parameters. At redshifts z=2 this simulation is
different from data. \citet{tytler07b} found that the simulated spectra at z=2
have too little power on large scales, Lyman-alpha lines are too wide, there is
a lack high column density lines, and there is a lack of pixels with low flux.
Here we present statistics at z<1.6, including the flux distribution, the mean
flux, the effective opacity, and the power and correlation of the flux. We also
give statistics of the lyman alpha lines including the line width distribution,
the column density distribution, the number of lines per unit equivalent width
and redshift, and the correlation between the line width and column density. We
find that the mean amount of absorption in the simulated spectra changes
smoothly with redshift with DA(z)=0.01(1+z)^{2.25}. Both the trend and absolute
values are close to measurements of HST spectra by \citet{kirkman07a}. The
column density and line width distributions are also close to those measured
from HST spectra by \citet{janknecht06a}, except for the mode of the line width
distribution which is smaller in the HST spectra. Although some differences
that we saw at z=2 are too subtle to be seen in existing HST spectra, overall,
the simulation gives an good description of HST spectra at 0.1<z<1.6
Exploring taboo issues in professional sport through a fictional approach
While the need to consider life course issues in elite sport research and practice is increasingly recognised, some experiences still seem to be considered too dangerous to explore. Consequently, stories of these experiences are silenced and the ethical and moral questions they pose fail to be acknowledged, understood or debated. This paper presents an ethnographic fiction through which we explore a sensitive set of experiences that were uncovered during our research with professional sportspeople. Through a multiâlayered reconstruction, the story reveals the complex, but significant, relationships that exist between identity, cultural narratives and embodied experiences. After the telling we consider how the story has stimulated reflective practice among students, researchers and practitioners. While there are risks involved in writing and sharing taboo stories, the feedback we have received suggests that storytelling can be an effective pedagogical tool in education and professional development
Sloan Digital Sky Survey Spectroscopic Lens Search. I. Discovery of Intermediate-Redshift Star-Forming Galaxies Behind Foreground Luminous Red Galaxies
We present a catalog of 49 spectroscopic strong gravitational lens candidates
selected from a Sloan Digital Sky Survey sample of 50996 luminous red galaxies.
Potentially lensed star-forming galaxies are detected through the presence of
background oxygen and hydrogen nebular emission lines in the spectra of these
massive foreground galaxies. This multiline selection eliminates the ambiguity
of single-line identification and provides a very promising sample of candidate
galaxy-galaxy lens systems at low to intermediate redshift, with foreground
redshifts ranging from 0.16 to 0.49 and background redshifts from 0.25 to 0.81.
Any lenses confirmed within our sample would be important new probes of
early-type galaxy mass distributions, providing complementary constraints to
those obtained from currently known lensed high-redshift quasars.Comment: 23 pages; to appear in The Astronomical Journal, 2004 April. Version
with full-resolution figures available at
http://web.mit.edu/bolton/www/speclens.ps.gz (PostScript) or
http://web.mit.edu/bolton/www/speclens.pdf (PDF
The Reddest Quasars
In a survey of quasar candidates selected by matching the FIRST and 2MASS
catalogs, we have found two extraordinarily red quasars. FIRST J013435.7-093102
is a 1 Jy source at z=2.216 and has B-K > 10, while FIRST J073820.1+275045 is a
2.5 mJy source at z=1.985 with B-K = 8.4. FIRST J073820.1+275045 has strong
absorption lines of MgII and CIV in the rest frame of the quasar and is highly
polarized in the rest frame ultraviolet, strongly favoring the interpretation
that its red spectral energy distribution is caused by dust reddening local to
the quasar. FIRST J073820.1+275045 is thus one of the few low radio-luminosity,
highly dust-reddened quasars known. The available observational evidence for
FIRST J013435.7-093102 leads us to conclude that it too is reddened by dust. We
show that FIRST J013435.7-093102 is gravitationally lensed, increasing the
number of known lensed, extremely dust-reddened quasars to at least three,
including MG0414-0534 and PKS1830-211. We discuss the implications of whether
these objects are reddened by dust in the host or lensing galaxies. If reddened
by their local environment, then we estimate that between 10 and 20% of the
radio-loud quasar population is reddened by dust in the host galaxy. The
discovery of FIRST J073820.1+275045 and objects now emerging from X-ray surveys
suggests the existence of an analogous radio-quiet red quasar population. Such
objects will be entirely missed by standard radio or optical quasar surveys. If
dust in the lensing galaxies is primarily responsible for the extreme redness
of the lensed quasars, then an untold number of gravitationally lensed quasars
are being overlooked.Comment: AASTEX 24 pp., 7 figs; accepted by ApJ. See also the preprint
astro-ph/0107435 by Winn et al., who independently discovered that
J013435.7-093102 is gravitationally lense
Improving Access to Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder in High-Need Areas: The Role of HRSA Health Centers
Introduction: Despite the opioid epidemic adversely affecting areas across the U.S. for more than two decades and increasing evidence that medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is effective for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD), access to treatment is still limited. The limited access to treatment holds true in the Appalachia region despite being disproportionately affected by the crisis, particularly in rural, central Appalachia.
Purpose: This research identifies opportunities for health centers located in high-need areas based on drug poisoning mortality to better meet MAT care gaps. We also provide an in-depth look at health center MAT capacity relative to need in the Appalachia region.
Methods: The analysis included county-level drug poisoning mortality data (2013â2015) from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)and Health Center Program Awardee and Look-Alike data (2017) on the number of providers with a DATA waiver to provide medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and the number of patients receiving MAT for the U.S. Several geospatial methods were used including an Empirical Bayes approach to estimate drug poisoning mortality, excess risk maps to identify outliers, and the Local Moranâs I tool to identify clusters of high drug poisoning mortality counties.
Results: High-need counties were disproportionately located in the Appalachia region. More than 6 in 10 health centers in high-need counties have the potential to expand MAT delivery to patients.
Implications: The results indicate an opportunity to increase health center capacity for providing treatment for opioid use disorder in high-need areas, particularly in central and northern Appalachia
The Effect of Large-Scale Power on Simulated Spectra of the Lya forest
We study the effects of box size on ENZO simulations of the intergalactic
medium (IGM) at z = 2. We follow statistics of the cold dark matter (CDM) and
the Lya absorption. We find that the larger boxes have fewer pixels with
significant absorption (flux < 0.96) and more pixels in longer stretches with
little or no absorption, and they have wider Lya lines. We trace these effect
back to the additional power in larger boxes from longer wavelength modes. The
IGM in our larger boxes is hotter, from increased pressure heating due to
faster hydrodynamical infall. When we increase the photoheating in smaller
boxes to compensate, their Lya statistics change to mimic those of a box of
twice the size. Statistics converge towards their value in the largest (76.8
Mpc) box, except for the most common value of the CDM density which continues
to rise. When we compare to errors with data, we find that our 76.8 Mpc box is
larger than we need for the mean flux, barely large enough for the column
density distribution and the power spectrum of the flux, and too small for the
line widths. This box with 75 kpc cells has approximately the same mean flux as
QSO spectra, but the Lya lines are too wide by 2.6 km/s, there are too few
lines with log H I column densities > 10^17 cm^-2, and the power of the flux is
too low by 20 - 50%, from small to large scales. Four times smaller cell size
does not resolve these differences, nor do simple changes to the ultraviolet
background that drives the H and He II ionization. It is hard to see how
simulations using popular cosmological and astrophysical parameters can match
Lyman-alpha forest data at z=2
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