A Qualitative Process Evaluation of a Meal Service Program

This study serves to evaluate the process of a meal service program, local to Northeast Mississippi, in response to the need to evaluate methods of alleviating food insecurity as it continues to be a growing and evolving issue in the American South. The researcher chose to employ qualitative research methods in order to understand the program guests, volunteers, and board members’ perceptions of the program’s processes using data from interviews with members of each group, a focus group composed of program guests, and photovoice projects completed by program guests. The researcher used thematic analysis to interpret the data and defined three themes relevant to understanding the processes of the meal service program. The themes include viewing positive social interaction as an indicator of program success, expanding the program’s resource offerings as a vision for improvement, and recognizing the program’s shift from its foundational purpose to serving its current niche

Building the Beginnings of a Beautiful Partnership

The authors describe the process leading to, and the outcome of, their partnership to build and operate a 76,000 square foot public/ community college joint use library. Located in Westminster, Colorado, the College Hill Library serves a population of approximately 70,000 Westminster residents and 6,000 Front Range Community College faculty and staff. The partnership began in 1994 to investigate the feasibility of building the facility, which opened in April 1998 and continues to be successful today. The authors provide information on the main points of the Intergovernmental Agreement to build and operate the facility and relate their experiences during the planning, construction, and initial year of operation of the library. They discuss issues relating to combining staff, automation systems, and collections as well as special challenges in publicizing the library to the community. An update on the current state of the partnership is provided by the current co-directors of the library.published or submitted for publicatio

Investigating an Acoustic Measure of Perceived Isochrony in Conversation: Preliminary Notes on the Role of Rhythm in Turn Transitions

In a preliminary investigation of isochrony, the rhythmic integration of talk, we evaluated rhythmic phenomena previously theorized to coordinate turn-transitions for correlates in the acoustic signal. Rhythmic sequencing is one of many elaborate contextualization cues regarded as facilitating a successful turn-transition. Previous studies of rhythm in conversation have attended only to its perceptual and interactional facets. In addressing this gap, our study finds quantitative justification for such claims of rhythmic turn-taking. We selected for acoustic analysis the twelve non-task-based, dyadic conversations of the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE). Following Marcus’s (1981) assertion that the onset of the vowel is the closest acoustically-measurable location to the perceptual center of the syllable where the rhythmic downbeat occurs, duration was measured between vowel onsets to create prosodic syllables. Not all prosodic syllables can contain a rhythmic beat, and those that can are characterized as “prominent” in nature (Couper-Kuhlen 1993). Out of 42,807 prosodic syllables measured, our methods yielded 15,972 prominent prosodic syllables. The units of duration between prominent syllables, hereafter intervals, were judged to form an isochronous sequence when the durations between at least three consecutive intervals varied by less than the conservative measure of the perceptual threshold for tolerance of isochrony, up to a 30% variance (Couper-Kuhlen 1993). This measure revealed 564 rhythmic sequences across the twelve SBCSAE conversations, which ranged in duration between one and ten seconds and consisted of up to eleven intervals. Of these, 208 or 37% appeared within turn-transitions, and results from our preliminary analysis indicated that rhythmic sequencing was significantly more likely to appear within a turn-transition than outside of one. Our analysis shows that isochrony is not simply perceptual in nature, but that it has a quantifiable correlate in the acoustic signal. Our findings of significant isochrony in the turn-transitions of the SBCSAE, a corpus often used in discourse analysis, confirms what many interactional sociolinguists have long argued: that rhythmic cues aid the coordination of talk between speakers in turn-transitions. We can confirm that these rhythmic cues are a component of turn-transitions not only perceptually, but acoustically as well

Alexithymia Symptoms Are Not Associated With Childhood Trauma or CRHR1 rs110402 Genotype

Alexithymia is associated with difficulties in emotional self-regulation, and alexithymia is specifically associated with an absence of emotional experience and cognition of emotion. Past research has indicated a potential association between alexithymia and the CRHR1 gene . Situational factors may also impact the expression of the CRHR1 gene within an individual. Berenbaum (1996) found associations between PTSD/childhood trauma and alexithymia. This study examined these associations using the Online Alexithymia Questionnaire-G2 (OAQ-G2) as well as DNA samples gathered from 657 participants at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (72% women; 78.6% white; mean age= 20.34; standard deviation of 2.6). It was hypothesized that possessing at least one G allele of rs110402, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), which has previously been associated with higher scores on the alexithymia questionnaire would result in higher scores on the alexithymia questionnaire. It was further hypothesized that when the risk allele is present, a history of childhood trauma would be association with a higher score on the alexithymia questionnaire. No association was found between any of the variables within the population. Future research into other potential biological association could lead to a better understanding of the origins of alexithymia

Efficacy and Safety of a Novel Fusogenic Oncolytic Herpes Simplex Virus

Third Place, Innovations in Medicine Category at the Denman Undergraduate Research ForumIt is important to develop therapeutics to treat solid tumors because of their prevalence and poor survival rates. Oncolytic herpes simplex viruses (oHSV) are promising therapeutics for solid tumors because they can be engineered to replicate theoretically only in cancer cells. Through directed evolution, Mut-3, a highly potent, wild type-like oHSV was developed. By deleting the UL39 locus that encodes ICP6, Mut-3 was attenuated, resulting in a novel fusogenic oHSV: Mut-3∆6. Mut-3∆6 exhibited reduced potency compared to Mut-3 in differentiated keratinocytes in in vitro MTS cytotoxicity assays, establishing its in vitro safety. In vivo safety was demonstrated when all Balb/c mice intravenously injected with 1e8 pfu of Mut-3∆6 remained healthy for the study duration (85 days), whereas mice injected with 1e6 pfu and 1e7 pfu of wild-type KOS died five to six days after infection. Having established its safety, the focus shifted to evaluating the efficacy of Mut-3∆6. Its potency was investigated through in vitro MTS cytotoxicity assays. In Rh30 (rhabdomyosarcoma), SK-N-AS (neuroblastoma), and CHP-134 (neuroblastoma), Mut-3∆6 exhibited significantly higher potency compared to controls, and its potency occurred at low MOIs, which is desirable because the treatment can be translated more easily to the clinic. These cell lines were selected for in vitro viral replication assays. In CHP-134, Mut-3∆6 replicated more than rRp450 at 24, 48, and 72 hours post infection, and Mut-3∆6 appeared to plateau in replication earlier than the other viruses, indicating CHP-134 cells were lysed more quickly when infected with Mut-3∆6. CHP-134 was therefore identified as a model for an in vivo efficacy study. Novel fusogenic oHSV Mut-3∆6 has demonstrated in vitro and in vivo safety and in vitro cytotoxicity, indicating its potential as a cancer therapeutic. The anti-tumor efficacy of Mut-3∆6 is currently being studied in vivo in the CHP-134 tumor model.CancerFree KidsElsa U. Pardee FoundationR21CA223104-022022-2023 Undergraduate Research ScholarshipNo embargoAcademic Major: Biochemistr

Neurotrophic effects of growth/differentiation factor 5 in a neuronal cell line

The neurotrophin growth/differentiation factor 5 (GDF5) is studied as a potential therapeutic agent for Parkinson's disease as it is believed to play a role in the development and maintenance of the nigrostriatal system. Progress in understanding the effects of GDF5 on dopaminergic neurones has been hindered by the use of mixed cell populations derived from primary cultures or in vivo experiments, making it difficult to differentiate between direct and indirect effects of GDF5 treatment on neurones. In an attempt to establish an useful model to study the direct neuronal influence of GDF5, we have characterised the effects of GDF5 on a human neuronal cell line, SH-SY5Y. Our results show that GDF5 has the capability to promote neuronal but not dopaminergic differentiation. We also show that it promotes neuronal survival in vitro following a 6-hydroxydopamine insult. Our results show that application of GDF5 to SH-SY5Y cultures induces the SMAD pathway which could potentially be implicated in the intracellular transmission of GDF5 s neurotrophic effects. Overall, our study shows that the SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cell line provides an excellent neuronal model to study the neurotrophic effects of GDF5

No Association Between an Oxytocin Receptor Genetic Variant and Depressive Symptoms

• Depression has the greatest impact on daily functioning capability of all diseases and adversely effects individuals globally (Flint & Kendler, 2014). • Human capital value of these losses has been about $40 billion dollars annually (Kessler, 2012). • Analysis of the genetic and biological systems associated with depressive symptoms, such as the oxytocin system, could lead to identifying risk variants and possible treatment development. • Genetic Variation in OXTR is associated with a variation in depressive symptoms including low selfesteem, pessimism, and low self-efficacy, etc. (Conner et al., 2018). • The A allele of the SNP rs53576 is considered the risk allele as it’s associated with decreased pro-social behavior and increased loneliness and suicide attempts (Parris et. Al., 2018) • The exact mechanism has not been identified, but G/G homozygotes recorded to have higher oxytocin levels, associated with increased emotional responsiveness (Marsh et al., 2012; Tost et al., 2010) • We hypothesize that: (1) individuals possessing the A allele of the rs53576 SNP of OXTR will have more depressive symptoms on average. (2) Females will have more depressive symptoms on average. (3) There is an interaction between genotype and biological sex, as A allele females will have more depressive symptoms on average

An investigation of a professional development program using industry partnerships and student achievement

This investigation examined the impact on student achievement of teachers who participated in a professional development program using industry partnerships. One treatment and one non-treatment school in a large urban school district served as the sites for this inquiry with teacher participation in a professional development program and the achievement data of their science students being collected during the 2001-2002 school period. The impact of a teacher professional development program with industry partnerships such as Education for the Energy Industry (EEI) on student achievement in science was determined. National and state standardized tests were analyzed using extant data obtained from administering the fourth through the eighth grade Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) test and the eighth grade Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test. The differential influence of a professional development program for teachers on the achievement of students of diversity was determined by the TAAS scores and ITBS scores, which were partitioned by treatment condition and student ethnicity. Findings from this quantitative investigation suggest enhanced student achievement in science if teachers participated in a professional development program involving industry partnerships