Summer 2020 Undergraduate Research Symposium

SURE 2020 Summer Symposium

Presenter Last Name

What primary discipline describes your research?

Presentation Title:

Drew

Mindell

Arts and Creative Expression

The Untitled Theresienstadt Project: Understanding the Artists of the Theresienstadt Camp-Ghetto through Yiddish Theatre

Andrea Lucia

Alfonso

Biomedical Sciences

Understanding and Characterizing the Effects of Arterial Morphologies, Mechanics, and Hemodynamics in a Transgenic Mouse Model of Sickle Cell Anemia

Nahum

Arefeayne

Biomedical Sciences

Role of Histone Gene Mutations in Tumorigenesis

Zirui

Chen

Biomedical Sciences

Characterizing an Image Property Relevant for Human Cortical Scene Processing

Jocelyn

Chow

Biomedical Sciences

Predictive Factors of Shunting after Posterior Fossa Tumor Resection

Isabelle

Cullen

Biomedical Sciences

Distribution and Numbers of Motoneurons in a Mouse Model of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Julia

Fuller

Biomedical Sciences

Oral Wound Healing: a Systematic Review of Current Regenerative Therapies in Preclinical Models

Cameron

Hedden

Biomedical Sciences

Cystic Fibrosis-Related Diabetes: Determining Ways to Study, Manage, and Prevent Cystic Fibrosis’s Most Common Comorbidity

Whitney

Holmes

Biomedical Sciences

Manipulation of Wing Color Reveals a Trait Critical for Male Mating Success in Monarch Butterflies

Kimwai

Mo

Biomedical Sciences

Investigating the Mechanism by Which Mutations in Histone H3 at the G34 Residue Impact 3’-end mRNA Processing

Presenter First Name

Noah

Okada

Biomedical Sciences

A Virtual Reality Framework to Study the Neural Correlates of Déjà Vu

Anna

Voss

Biomedical Sciences

Quantitative Identification of Ligand/Receptor Pairs that Drive Astrocyte Maturation

Befkadu

Walthour

Biomedical Sciences

The Effectiveness of Paired Associative Stimulation on Neural Plasticity and Motor Functions Post-Stroke

Charlotte

Wang

Biomedical Sciences

Quantitative Analysis on the Deletion of Self-Reactive T Cells Against Dendritic Cell Endogenous sp-MHCs

Julie

Wechsler

Biomedical Sciences

Mapping Splicing Regulatory Elements in Coagulation Factor V

Jordan

Brown

Humanities

Cropped Out of History: American Portraits of Black Nannies with White Children, 1850 – 1950

Audra

Davison

Humanities

African Spiritual Consciousness and African American Christian Culture in the Southeastern Lowcountry

Allayna

Ford

Humanities

Colored Amazons: The Stereotype Weaponized Against Black Woman During the Postbellum Era

Carissa

Martin

Humanities

Subverting Sexual Symmetry: Reading Power and Gender in the Didactic Patterns of Callirhoe and the Ephesiaca

Anjanay

Nangia

Humanities

Arthur Rundt's "Marylin" in Translation: A Study in MixedRace History in the United States During the Early 20th Century

Omar

ObregonCuebas

Humanities

Spectatorship of Film and Dasein: an Afropessimist Critique of Heideggarean Film Analysis

Jeremy

Slater

Humanities

Beginners’ Persian-English Bilingual Dictionary: A Lexicographic Study

Bryn

Walker

Humanities

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, State Government, and the Creation and Maintenance of Lost Cause Memory in Georgia

Jack

Wolfram

Humanities

Centering the Middle: A Proposed Investigation of ADHDIdentifying Peer Tutors in the Writing Center

Stewart

Zelnick

Humanities

Nationwide Anti-Mosque Activity: How Muslim Communities Protect Their Right To Religious Exercise Under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person’s Act (RLUIPA)

Michelle

Bardales

Natural and Physical Sciences

Emissions of Fine Particulate Matter from Domestic Open Burning of Plastic Waste in Rural and Urban Areas of Guatemala

Sequoyah

Bell

Natural and Physical Sciences

Neural Correlates of Social Interaction

Nick

Berg

Natural and Physical Sciences

Putative transmission of influenza A H3N2 Defective Viral Genomes Between Household Transmission Pairs

Becky

Cloud

Natural and Physical Sciences

Modeling Parasite Transmission in Size-Structured Host Populations

Taylor

Dover

Natural and Physical Sciences

Catalytic Alkyne-Epoxide Couplings for the Synthesis of Polyol Macrolides

Kary

Fang

Natural and Physical Sciences

Connecting Structure to Function in Recurrent Neural Networks

Hasty

Natural and Physical Sciences

Identifying Sources of Internal and External Loading of Nutrients for Two Southeastern US Reservoirs

Park

Natural and Physical Sciences

Childhood Chemical Exposures: Developing More Precise Methodologies for Assessing Exposure Through Soil and Dust Ingestion

Richards

Natural and Physical Sciences

Effects of Male Body Size on Monarch bBtterfly (Danaus plexippus) Mating Behavior

Yanbo

Wang

Natural and Physical Sciences

Analysis on “Winter Fog” Phenomenon in Hindu Kush Himalayan Region

Karista

Colwell

Public Health

Marlon

Gant

Public Health

Detecting Industrial Sites Associated with Slag in West Atlanta

Jordan

Caleb

Synéja

Assessing the Legal Need for Medical Evaluations of Asylum Seekers in Metropolitan Atlanta.

Joanne

Choi

Social Sciences

Maternal Childhood Adversity and Epigenetic Aging Predict Offspring Emotional Reactivity: Implications for Intergenerational Transmission of Risk

Malachi

Chukwu

Social Sciences

Pro-state Militia and State Alliance: How this Partnership Influences Civil War

Dusty

Dang

Social Sciences

Posted Price with Quality Guarantee in Sparse Mobile Crowd Sensing During Certain Natural Phenomenon

Rosseirys

De La Rosa

Social Sciences

Detecting the Genetic Affinity of the Lost Indigenous People of Uruguay and Living Individuals from the Americas

Avery

Hampton

Social Sciences

Examining the Reliability of an Online Platform in the Assessment of Autism-Related Traits in Adults

Zoey

Jiao

Social Sciences

Metaphor Detection in Chinese Using Machine LearningBased Classifier

Chris

Kopreski

Social Sciences

Variations in Clinicians’ Perspectives on the Impairments, Needs, and Goals of Mild Stroke Survivors

Eva

Kuzyk

Social Sciences

The Moderating Role of Childhood Environmental Quality and Emotion Dysregulation on the Relationship between Childhood Sexual Abuse and Depression

Zijin

Lei

Social Sciences

The Determinants of the Volume of Initial Public Offerings from a Historical Perspective

Ronaldo

PatiĂąo Flores

Social Sciences

Academic Stress in College-Aged Students: Resilience and Risk, & How It Relates to Adaptive and Negative Coping Mechanisms

Belicia

Rodriguez

Social Sciences

It's A Small World After All: Co-authorship Networks in Academic Publishing in Economics

Samantha

Vasquez

Social Sciences

How the Presence of British Armed Forces Affect the Levels of Violence in Late 1900s Northern Ireland

Xinyan

Xie

Social Sciences

Trump on Twitter: Chinese Reactions

Arts & Creative Expression Abstracts PRESENTER: Drew Mindell TITLE: The Untitled Theresienstadt Project: Understanding the Artists of the Theresienstadt Camp-Ghetto through Yiddish Theatre AUTHORS: Mindell, Drew; McManus, Donald The Theresienstadt camp-ghetto was used primarily as a smoke screen to placate the general public enough to prevent them from further investigating the mistreatment of the Jews and other prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. When shown that elderly, veteran, and famous Jews were being spared the rumored hard labor, German civilians could look away from the rising deportations with a clean conscience. My research aimed to explore the lives of the prisoners of Theresienstadt through the lens of the Yiddish theatre with which they would have been familiar. Inspired by the work of playwrights such as Sholom Ash, Avram Goldfaden, and David Pinski and informed by the diaries of Philipp Manes, I put together a full length play about the Jewish artists forced to film Nazi propaganda. The final product is a lighthearted, yet heartfelt examination of life, loss, and the importance of art in dark times.

Biomedical Science Abstracts PRESENTER: Andrea Lucia Alfonso TITLE: Understanding and Characterizing the Effects of Arterial Morphologies, Mechanics, and Hemodynamics in a Transgenic Mouse Model of Sickle Cell Anemia AUTHORS: Alfonso, Andrea Lucia; Song, Hannah; Platt, Manu O. Sickle cell anemia (SCA) is one of the genetic disorder manifestations of a broader class of prevalent hemoglobinopathies known as sickle cell disease (SCD), which affects millions globally. SCA specifically is characterized by the hemoglobin polymerization and subsequent sickling of red blood cells after deoxygenation which causes significant vascular complications, including strokes in children. These complications are as a result of the hemolysis, which causes chronic and systemic inflammation. In terms of arterial mechanics, it is hypothesized that there is a trend between the early and accelerated age- dependent degradation and remodeling of arterial extracellular matrix and the likelihood for stroke in mice homozygous for SCA. These morphological changes consequently affect the mechanics and blood flow in sickle cell disease models, as compared to controls. In order to understand the possible key sources for these arterial changes, past literature was reviewed, along with the work currently being done in the lab. Using the Townes sickle cell transgenic mouse model, both morphological and cerebral blood flow changes were defined using a combination of live imaging with ultrasound and microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) to quantify circumferential dimensions in the left and right common carotid arteries (CCA) and the extracranial internal carotid artery (eICA).

Additionally, the intracranial internal carotid artery (ICA), the middle cerebral artery (MCA), and the anterior cerebral artery (ACA) were all measured in order to obtain a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. These studies collectively identified increased circumferential dimensions in the left and right CCA of 12- and 24-weeks old mice and higher time- average maximum-mean velocity (TAMMV) in the right ACA of 12-week sickle cell mice as compared to controls. Although further work is needed, determining the pathological mechanisms for these vascular morphologies and blood flow velocity increases may aid in developing therapeutics for preventing strokes.

PRESENTER: Nahum Arefeayne TITLE: Role of Histone Gene Mutations in Tumorigenesis AUTHORS: Arefeayne, Nahum; Pavlick, Dean; Spangle, Jennifer; Corbett, Anita Abstract not available.

PRESENTER: Zirui Chen TITLE: Characterizing an Image Property Relevant for Human Cortical Scene Processing AUTHORS: Chen, Zirui; Cheng, Ruu Harn; Dilks, Daniel

Humans are incredibly good and fast at recognizing places, or “scenes”. How are we able to do that? Despite an intuitive assumption that we recognize a scene by the objects within or the actions we perform in that environment, recent neuroimaging studies suggest that the brain actually differentiates scene images mainly by some visual properties in the scene images themselves. But what are these image properties? In this study, we identified a potential image property and tested its relevance for cortical scene processing. Specifically, we analyzed an image set of highly variable scene images (Konkle et al. 2012) and found that the dissimilarity between scene images is best explained by the “blue intensity”, namely the average amount of blue light across the pixels of each image. Thus, we hypothesize that blue intensity is an image property that enables the brain to differentiate between different scenes, and predict that if so, then the human cortical scene processing system will show a similar neural representation for scene images that share a similar blue intensity. To test our hypothesis, we extracted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from BOLD5000, an fMRI dataset collected on human subjects observing scene and object images (Chang et al., 2019), and correlated the recorded neural activity of three known scene-selective cortical regions with the image properties of the images these subjects viewed. As predicted, we found a significant correlation between the blue intensity and the neural activity in all three scene-selective regions. By contrast, there is no significant correlation between the blue intensity and the neural activity of an object-selective region, the lateral occipital complex. Together, these results suggest that the blue intensity underlies the neural representation of visual scenes, and shed light on the relevance of image properties for human scene recognition.

PRESENTER: Jocelyn Chow TITLE: Predictive Factors of Shunting after Posterior Fossa Tumor Resection AUTHORS: Chow, Jocelyn; Alawieh, Ali; McMahon, Tanner; Yarmoska, Steve; Saad, Hassan; Philbrick, Brandon; Agam, Matthew; Adeagbo, Segun; Bray, David P; Pradilla, Gustavo; Olson, Jeffrey J; Hoang, Kimberly

After patients undergo brain tumor surgery, sometimes they develop hydrocephalus, a condition in which the cavities of the brain fill up with fluid, and will require permanent cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) diversion. This surgical process allows the fluid in the brain to drain out through a shunt into the abdomen. Although it is currently difficult to predict patients who will need a shunt after brain tumor surgery, our study aims to report predictors of shunting in patients that have undergone resection, specifically with posterior fossa tumors (PFT), to better understand the need for permanent shunting.We reviewed 146 patients from the Emory Healthcare system database that were ≼ 18 years and had undergone PFT resection. Their charts were evaluated on gender, age, complications (cerebral stroke or excess fluid/edema, CSF leakage, and wound infection) etc. Radiological features including tumor location, intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), and transependymal flow were identified as well.Overall, 19 of the 146 patients that were reviewed for PFT resection required permanent CSF diversion.

Based on the univariate analysis, there was a significant difference between patients that needed a shunt versus the ones that did not based on preoperative hydrocephalus (53% vs 29% , p=0.03), rates of complications (53% vs 20%, p<0,01), and length of stay (33 vs 7 days, p<0.01).

Additionally, one independent predictive factor for patients that went through CSF diversion prior to PFT resection was the presence of transependymal flow (aOR=29, p=0.02).Around 13% of adult patients that underwent PFT resection needed a permanent shunt after surgery. The predictive factors of shunting included severe hydrocephalus with trans-ependymal flow and cerebellar edema. By identifying these factors, complications such as longer hospital stays, infections, and CSF leakage can be prevented by performing CSF diversion before they occur.

PRESENTER: Isabelle Cullen TITLE: Distribution and Numbers of Motoneurons in a Mouse Model of Autism Spectrum Disorder AUTHORS: Cullen, Isabelle; Giorgi, Andrea; Perreault, Marie-Claude Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized most commonly by communication and social skills deficits. In addition to these widely known symptoms, children with ASD also suffer from motor deficits such as hypotonia, impaired postural control, and asymmetric gait. Since these motor behaviors are controlled by early developing descending motor systems such as the reticulospinal system (RS), we hypothesize that the development of the RS circuits may be modified in ASD. The Perreault lab aims to investigate the role of RS system in motor deficits observed in ASD. While the RS system may be implicated through changes in RS excitability, strength or patterns of RS connections with spinal neurons, changes in numbers of somatic motoneurons (MNs) controlling muscles may also occur in parallel. My work this summer is to investigate whether the numbers of MNs that control in the trunk and hindlimbs muscles differ in autism mouse models (Valproic Acid/VPAexposed) and typically developing mice (control). To quantify this, I will count MNs in the L2 segment of the spinal cord using a program called ImageJ to see if there are differences in MNs between the VPA model and control. As a control, I will also count sympathetic preganglionic neurons (SPNs). Our working hypothesis that we will see a significantly lower proportion of MNs in ASD than in control animals. Our research will further our knowledge of how the brainstem and reticulospinal cord system may contribute to motor deficits in ASD.

PRESENTER: Julia Fuller TITLE: Oral Wound Healing: A Systematic Review of Current Regenerative Therapies in Preclinical Models AUTHORS: Toma, Afra; Fuller, Julia; Willett, Nick; Goudy, Steven Wound healing is a critical biological process that helps keep organisms alive and maintains homeostasis within the body. It is characterized by three distinct phases: inflammatory, proliferative, and maturation/remodeling. Depending on the tissue type, wound healing processes differ due to changes in structure and extrinsic factors; dermal wounds heal slowly and usually scar, whereas oral wounds often heal slowly or not fully as the oral cavity is under constant stress from eating and talking. Due to adverse healing, nearly 60% of oral surgeries fail, requiring additional intervention to reduce the occurrence of chronic oral wounds. The persistence of poor wound healing can lead to oronasal fistula, which render patients unable to adequately speak, eat, or drink. Despite this burden, therapies for oral wound healing is less characterized than dermal.

Here, we conducted a systematic review of the literature on oral wound healing published during the past twenty years by curating search criteria specific to in vivo studies of oral wound healing therapies. We analyzed 24 studies, with model systems ranging from mice to dogs in which surgical defects were created in the gums, cheek, or palate. Therapies included polymer or cellbased scaffolds used to deliver and retain drugs or cells at the wound site, as well as growth factors or gels applied directly to the wound. Finally, we analyze the efficacies of these therapies by identifying signatures of healing in the proliferation phase and evaluating whether or not healing was observed with each type of therapy. Overall, many of the therapies improved wound closure, angiogenesis, and general tissue regeneration. Through this analysis, we hope to provide a clearer picture of the current state of preclinical therapies for oral wound healing, and further use this information to promote a pro-regenerative oral environment and provide more personalized and efficacious treatment options.

PRESENTER: Cameron Hedden TITLE: Cystic Fibrosis-Related Diabetes: Determining Ways to Study, Manage, and Prevent Cystic Fibrosis’s Most Common Comorbidity AUTHORS: Hedden, Cameron; Cottrill, Kirsten; McCarty, Nael

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a lethal genetic disorder affecting over 70,000 people worldwide.

Although the primary cause of death in CF is lung failure, CF affects many organs in the body, including the pancreas. Treatment options for people with CF have greatly improved in recent years, but as individuals with CF are able to live longer lives, the prevalence of comorbidities become more apparent and of greater concern. CF-related diabetes (CFRD) is the most common comorbidity in CF, affecting roughly half of individuals with CF by adulthood. The development of CFRD is a risk factor associated with early death in CF, and is known to correlate with poorer clinical outcomes and accelerated lung decline. Although there is great concern surrounding the development of CFRD, studying CFRD mechanistically proves difficult for many reasons. The goals of this research are to review the current approaches available to study CFRD, to understand the role of hyperglycemia in modulating the cells of the human airway, and to develop new models for studying CFRD that maintain physiological relevance. Fluorescence microscopy studies coupled with short-circuit Ussing Chamber analysis suggest that hyperglycemia alters protein complexes between human airway cells. Bacterial growth assays will allow us to gain a clearer understanding of if glucose is leaking through these junctions, and what implications this has for chronic bacterial infection that is a hallmark of CF. Furthermore, transcriptomics will allow us to determine how CF cells adapt to systemic hyperglycemia, a condition that we are using 3D fabrication and computer automation to replicate in cell culture.

Due to the link between CFRD and accelerated lung decline in CF, it is absolutely critical that CFRD is studied as a unique form of diabetes, with strategic therapeutic options to improve the quality of life for a large portion of the CF community.

PRESENTER: Whitney Holmes TITLE: Manipulation of Wing Color Reveals a Trait Critical for Male Mating Success in Monarch Butterflies AUTHORS: Holmes, Whitney; Villa, Scott M.

Understanding the traits that underlie male mating success in monarch butterflies remains a mystery. Male monarchs use a coercive mating strategy where they try to force females to copulate. It is often assumed that males always have the advantage and completely determine the outcome of mating attempts. However, contrary to these assumptions, multiple studies have shown that females are especially good at resisting male advances. In fact, a large majority of mating attempts end in failure. This suggests that not only do females have a choice, but they are can be very picky when choosing mates. Here we conduct a mating experiment to determine which traits are critical males mating success. Specifically, we manipulate the black veins of the male’s ventral hindwing to test for its role in female acceptance. Previous work suggests that the vein thickness and darkness is preferred by females. We manipulated the wing veins of males using a black sharpie. Manipulation was of two types: 1) the central veins were made thicker and darker, or 2) the distal color cells were colored in to make the distal portion of the wing much thicker and darker. Manipulated males were then placed in cages with unmanipulated males and allowed to compete for mates. Mating trials lasted five days, during which we continuously filmed mating behavior using high-definition cameras. We found that overall the manipulated male butterflies mated more frequently and for longer periods of time than the unmanipulated males. However, nearly all of this discrepancy was attributed to the males that had their distal cells colored in. Males with thicker interior veins performed similarly to their unmanipulated competitors. This suggests that the thickness of the distal black area of the hind wings is critical for male mating success. Our study is the first to show that hindwing color of male monarchs influences their copulation success.

PRESENTER: Kimwai Mo TITLE: Investigating the Mechanism by which Mutations in hHstone H3 at the G34 Residue Impact 3’-end mRNA Processing AUTHORS: Mo, Kimwai; Lemon, Laramie; Corbett, Anita

Multiple cellular processes must be coordinated to properly regulate gene expression. The eukaryotic genome consists of chromatin, a complex structure made up of 147 base pairs of DNA wrapped around histone proteins. Post-translational modifications on the tails of histone proteins affect DNA transcription, which influences gene expression. In human disease, mutations in both histone modifying enzymes and histone-coding genes are associated with oncogenesis.

Interestingly, a mutation in histone H3 at the K36 residue (K36M) occurs in approximately 95% of pediatric chondroblastomas, while H3G34W/L and H3G34R/V mutations are present in approximately 94% of giant cell tumors of the bone and 31% of gliomas, respectively. How these single amino acid changes alter biology is a point of controversy. Recent work in Drosophila melanogaster suggested a link between a modification on histone H3 at the K36 residue and the stability of the transcribed RNA: H3K36R mutant larvae had decreased levels of mature, polyadenylated RNAs of highly expressed genes. This finding suggests that histone modifications are closely linked with post-transcriptional processing of mRNA. As these factors and processes are evolutionarily conserved, our work will utilize the budding yeast S. cerevisiae to study the functional consequences of cancer-associated histone H3 mutations. I am currently working to identify suppressors of these mutant growth defects by using a high-copy suppressor screen. I have constructed yeast strains expressing the H3G34R mutations. The spotting assay of H3G34R mutants showed growth defects on formamide and hydroxyurea. By comparing different mutants, we can determine if distinct amino acid changes at the G34 residue result in different growth phenotypes and compare the genetic interactions of different H3G34 mutants.The results of this study will help us uncover a novel mechanism of how histones regulate gene expression and will contribute to our understanding of oncohistone-associated cancers in humans.

PRESENTER: Noah Okada TITLE: A Virtual Reality Framework to Study the Neural Correlates of Déjà Vu AUTHORS: Okada, Noah; Cortez Cuevas, Rogelio; Hewitt, Kelsey C.; Shade, Taylor; Neisser, Joseph; Drane, Daniel L.; Cleary, Anne M.; Pedersen, Nigel P. Rationale: Déjà vu is a phenomenon that has been recorded across the general population, with a modified form prominent in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The ability to study the neural correlates of déjà vu has been limited due to the rarity of spontaneous déjà vu and the difficulty of replicating the distinct experience of novelty and familiarity in a laboratory setting.

Previous studies have supported the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis as a means of eliciting this experience by exposing participants to spatially similar scenes using an early forerunner of virtual reality. We sought to develop a modern immersive version of this task for use in patients during intracranial monitoring to better understand the neural correlates of this phenomenon.

Methods: Utilizing the frameworks available within the Unity Game Engine, we developed an immersive VR experience following the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis for eliciting déjà vu in patients with TLE. The task was designed to be presented on the HTC Vive-Pro head-mounted display to fully immerse participants while recording eye-tracking (ET) data.

Results: We have succeeded in developing 64 parallel immersive scenes with spatial configuration scored using a binary Hamming distance metric to ensure identical spatial

mappings between scenes with categorically dissimilar objects. The framework can record continuous ET data and pushbutton responses at high temporal resolution in order to understand how scene scanning relates to experiences of familiarity.

Conclusion: This framework combines advancements in VR and ET technology to develop a robust and ecologically valid tool for studying déjà vu. We will next modify head-mounting for use in patients in our epilepsy monitoring unit with scalp and/or intracranial electrodes. This will permit elicitation of déjà vu, time-locked to neurophysiologic signal, with a particular interest in the perirhinal area and hippocampal formation. We can then compare this spontaneous activity to experiences elicited by direct electrical stimulation of the perirhinal area and superior temporal gyrus, as has been previously described to elicit déjà vu. Due to the VR-based framework’s multi-platform versatility, it will be useful in studying the experience of déjà vu in both clinical and non-clinical populations.

PRESENTER: Anna Voss TITLE: Quantitative Identification of Ligand/Receptor Pairs that Drive Astrocyte Maturation AUTHORS: Voss, Anna; Sloan, Steven Astrocytes, the most abundant cell-type in the central nervous system (CNS), are starshaped cells that have numerous roles in CNS physiology. These include neurotransmitter uptake at the synapse, the formation of the blood brain barrier and regulation of neural circuit formation.

We have a broad understanding of astrocyte function; however, much less is known about astrocyte development. While we know that astrocytes are derived from early neural ectodermal progenitors, their origins and process of maturation remain less defined, especially in humans where the progenitor landscape differs significantly from rodents and other species. An important open question about astrocyte development asks what signals cause immature astrocyte progenitors to transition into mature, quiescent cells. We hypothesize that ligands, signaling molecules secreted by other cell types in the brain, could regulate astrocyte maturation by binding to receptors on astrocyte progenitors and activating downstream mature astrocyte genes.

In this study, we use quantitative, genome-wide identification of these ligand/receptor pairs to determine the most plausible ligand/receptor candidates that can be tested in vitro. Using RNASeq data of purified CNS cell populations and NicheNet, a software that computationally matches the regulatory potential of ligands and receptors, we identified potential ligand/receptor pairs that are candidate drivers of astrocyte maturation. Using this data, we can systematically test these drivers of astrocyte maturation via knock-outs of the cognate receptor or overexpression of the ligand to observe their effects on maturation. Understanding how astrocyte maturation occurs may help elucidate their contribution to neurodevelopmental disorders, and the tools we develop in this research can be applied more broadly to understand how cell-cell communication drives cellular processes throughout the human body.

PRESENTER: Befkadu Walthour TITLE: The Effectiveness of Paired Associative Stimulation on Neural Plasticity and Motor Functions Post-Stroke AUTHORS: Walthour, Befkadu; Lin, Shiyu; Palmer, Jacqueline A.; Borich, Michael R

Stroke is the leading cause of long-term motor function disability in adults. Therefore, substantial research has been dedicated to the improvement of motor functions in stroke survivors. Despite substantial research efforts, most stroke survivors still experience lasting motor dysfunction. A technique called corticocortical paired associative stimulation or cc-PAS, a non-invasive brain stimulation procedure, has the potential to improve motor functions in stroke survivors. Cc-PAS uses transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) applied to both hemispheres of the brain to change cortical activity and induce neural plasticity, which is a crucial factor in the recovery of motor functions after a stroke. The primary objective of this study was to characterize cortical activity evoked by TMS prior to cc-PAS in stroke survivors with chronic arm motor impairment. The clinical trial included 17 participants with chronic stroke. For each participant, cortical activity was measured in each hemisphere of the brain using a TMS-EEG tool before cc-PAS. Raw EEG data were processed using a custom made EEGLAB and MATLAB pipeline to extract beta power and mu power. All data were analyzed using a threeway ANOVA with an alpha level of 0.05. The results demonstrated that TMS was effective in inducing higher neural activity in the stimulated region compared to the non-stimulated region only when it is applied to the non-stroke hemisphere. This result suggests that applying TMS in one hemisphere is not effective at inducing cortical excitability in the stroke hemisphere.

Therefore, if there is an observable increase in neural activity in the stroke hemisphere after the application of cc-PAS, it can be attributed to neural plasticity induced by the cc-PAS intervention. The outcomes of this clinical trial have the potential to change the current model of using non-invasive brain stimulation for post-stroke treatments and improve arm and hand motor functions for stroke survivors.

PRESENTER: Charlotte Wang TITLE: Quantitative Analysis on the Deletion of Self-Reactive T Cells Against Dendritic Cell Endogenous sp-MHCs AUTHORS: Wang, Charlotte; Moore, James; Ahmed, Hasan; Antia, Rustom

During T cell development, T cells are clonally deleted by negative selection in the thymus in order to provide tolerance against self-reactive lymphocytes. The large number of possible self-peptide MHCs (spMHCs) and the relatively short period for negative selection in the thymus impose a quantitative constraint on the efficiency of clonal deletion against selfreactive lymphocytes. It is, however, particularly important to delete T cells specific for dendritic cell endogenous sp-MHCs -- this is because DCs play a central role in the activation of T cells and the generation of immune responses. Since DCs in the thymus have very similar patterns of gene expression as DCs in the periphery, Matzinger has hypothesized that it may be possible to reliably delete all T cells specific for DC-endogenous sp-MHC (DC-self). Here we use quantitative models to explore Matzingers hypothesis. We begin with a simple model where the rules for stimulation of a T cell in the thymus is the same as that in the periphery. In this scenario, we find that it may be difficult to reliably delete T cells specific for rare DC-self. We then explore how differences in both the threshold and dynamics of T cell activation in the thymus vs. the periphery may allow us to reliably avoid stimulation of T cells against DC-self.

Our results suggest that the complex pattern of T cell priming in secondary lymphoid organs may arise, at least in part, to prevent the stimulation of autoimmune T cells responses to DC-self.

PRESENTER: Julie Wechsler TITLE: Mapping Splicing Regulatory Elements in Coagulation Factor V AUTHORS: Wechsler, Julie; Zimowski, Karen Coagulation factors are proteins which work together in the blood clotting cascade. Coagulation factor V (FV) is a cofactor in the prothrombinase complex, which cleaves prothrombin to thrombin. FV is inactive until proteolytic processing removes the B-domain. Mutations in F5 exon 13, which encodes the B-domain, lead to alternatively-spliced transcripts and produce shortened FV proteins. FV-short, as originally described in East Texas Bleeding Disorder (ETBD), forms a stabilizing complex with TFPI-ďż˝ (a coagulation inhibitor), resulting in clinical bleeding symptoms. FV activation intermediates and platelet FV produce isoforms similar to FVshort; the alternative-splicing seen in ETBD is thus thought to have physiologic relevance beyond this rare bleeding disorder.

A large F5 exon 13 deletion was discovered in a patient with severe bleeding (FV-ATL).

Although this deletion is within the B-domain region removed during ETBD splicing, F5-ATL cDNA analysis revealed increased FV-short levels, indicative of enhanced ETBD-splicing. To elucidate the molecular underpinnings of FV-ATL, our lab created cell culture models that express ETBD, FV-ATL, or FV-ATL-variants to investigate the cis-acting elements involved in this alternative-splicing event. To supplement our in vitro work, in silico analysis was performed to identify potential F5 splicing elements. A literature review of known F5 exon 13 mutations and F5 splicing mutations was performed, paying particular attention to mutation location relative to predicted regulatory elements and genotype/phenotype correlation. RT-PCR from our cell model revealed loss of ETBD-splicing with the addition of 100-nucleotides to FV-ATL. RegRNA2.0 identified two potential cis-regulatory elements that may be involved in controlling ETBD-splicing. These elements are largely conserved across mammalian species. The identity of the involved regulatory elements suggests that mRNA secondary structure is key to controlling

ETBD-like splicing. Understanding the elements governing ETBD-splicing may provide insight into an underappreciated aspect of hemostatic regulation.

Humanities Abstracts PRESENTER: Jordan Brown TITLE: Cropped Out of History: American Portraits of Black Nannies with White Children, 1850 – 1950 AUTHORS: Brown, Jordan; Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly

Throughout American history, Black women have been responsible for white children, as both free and enslaved people. During chattel slavery, enslaved women were tasked with caring for their owners’ children; after emancipation, they were employed by wealthy white families across the United States to do the same work. They were typically live-in laborers, responsible for their charges twenty-four hours a day. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, domestic work was some of the only employment available to Black women. Today, women who do this work are generally called nannies; in earlier decades, they would be known by various deprecating titles with “mammy” being the most common. The Mammy is a stereotypical Black woman. Immortalized in Gone with the Wind, she is portly, superhuman in her child-rearing capabilities, and constantly smiling, content to care for white children at the expense of her biological family. Black mammies were often utilized by their enslavers or employers as no more than props for their charges to lean on in professional photographic portraits. These women were rarely acknowledged in any notes for the photographs; if they were, they were usually only listed as “mammy,” “nurse,” or “nanny.” By analyzing these portraits and the Black women featured in them, we are attempting to bring these women out of the shadows and into the light, moving them from the background into the foreground. By doing this, we are contributing significant and necessary historical context to the conversation about labor, childcare and Black/white race relations in America.

PRESENTER: Audra Davison TITLE: African Spiritual Consciousness and African American Christian Culture in the Southeastern Lowcountry AUTHORS: Davison, Audra; Stewart, Dianne M

In the context of African American religious studies, research on Christianity has overshadowed research on African spiritual/religious heritage. The field of Black religious studies emerged to address the disparaging constructions of Black religion, specifically white conceptualizations of Africans as overemotional, docile, and uncivilized. Many scholars of Black religion and theology ignored or showed little interests in arguments about African cultural influences on Black culture and religion. Instead scholars of religion appear to assume that sociohistoric conditions of slavery were more influential than African Americans’ African heritage in the acculturation of African Americans’ culture and religion. Since the formation of the field of Black religious studies, scholars have turned to Christianity to affirm African American religion, identity, character, and citizenship rights. Responding to the dearth of scholarship on African Americans’ African spiritual heritage, this research essay considers how invisible African religious institutions have been crucial to the formation of African American Christianity in the Southeastern Lowcountry regions of America.Black religion developed in Lowcountry Africandescended communities through overlooked spiritual outlets such as weaponry and warfare, the natural environment, cultivation and food preparation, midwifery, folktales, and medicine and healing. This research examines three such outlets, the natural environment, warfare, and medicine, to explore African spiritual consciousness beyond institutional religious spaces.

Through a survey of definitive secondary sources, namely, Mark Smith’s Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt, David Robertson’s Denmark Vesey, Ras Michael Brown’s African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Caroline Lowcountry, and Jason Young’s Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery, this essay explores how elements of African culture heavily influenced enslaved communities in America. Remembrance of African religious heritage allowed enslaved Black communities to harness spiritual consciousness and ultimately contributed to the formation of Black Christian culture.

PRESENTER: Allayna Ford TITLE: Colored Amazons: The Stereotype Weaponized Against Black Woman During the Postbellum Era AUTHORS: Ford, Allayna; Rucker, Walter

In the decades after the civil war, white newspaper reporters characterized black women who exhibited masculine or violent traits as “colored amazons.” Reporters described these “colored amazons” as ruthless, violent black women who terrorized everyone in America from the 1870s through 1940. Previous works conducted by the field of African American women studies focused on the antebellum stereotypes of the mammy and the jezebel or the postbellum stereotype types of the sapphire and the tragic mulatto. With my research I will link the antebellum and postbellum stereotypes to create a wider picture of a black woman in the white mind. Additionally, I will introduce the colored amazon to the narrative as that stereotype has long gone unacknowledged despite its pervasive nature in America. This paper contends that white people manufactured the colored amazon stereotype during the late 19th and early 20th century and used it nationwide to dehumanize black women. Both black and white elites mobilized this stereotype as a way to inferiorize lower class black women who did not fit the Victorian womanhood ideals and to rationalize control over black women. African American women became victims of the judicial system at the hands of their white oppressors who gave them harsh punishments resulting in their indefinite incarceration. Black woman found themselves caught in the crossfire of the “New Negro Woman” movement. White people wanted to disprove the possibility of the “New Negro Woman” as they argued all black men and women would inevitably revert back to savagery. Black elites wanted to prove they could turn destitute black women into more respectable citizens, but in doing so they ultimately proved lower class black women did live up to the colored amazon stereotype.

PRESENTER: Carissa Martin TITLE: Subverting Sexual Symmetry: Reading Power and Gender in the Didactic Patterns of Callirhoe and the Ephesiaca AUTHORS: Martin, Carissa; Perkell, Christine This project analyzes patterns within the narrative structures of the Ancient Greek novels Callirhoe and the Ephesiaca and how these patterns function in the portrayal of gendered power dynamics in the novels. I map patterns of repeated words and symbols in each novel’s beginning and end, and then I argue that these patterns create an implied didactic message for the audience.

These patterns allow the reader to infer that behaviors which subvert traditional expressions of gender and power can in fact be adaptive and constructive in conventional societies as represented in the novels. At the beginning of each novel, norms are established at public and private levels; these norms then break down when the hero and heroine enter a liminal, dangerous space where they must subvert conventional gender roles to survive. At the end of each novel, the hero and, more surprisingly, the heroine retain these otherwise-transgressive behaviors when they return to a conventional society. Contrary to the expectations of an audience familiar with the circular structure of epic poetry, the societal norms rebuilt at the end of the novel do not mirror those established at the beginning, and conventional society warmly welcomes the still-subversive protagonists upon their return. This twist invites the audience to derive meaning from their thwarted expectations and suggests to the reader that subversive expressions of gender function not only in the lawless space of adventure but also within conventional society. Earlier readings of the ancient novels, especially the Ephesiaca, labeled them cheap, unsophisticated entertainment. However, this project reveals that structural patterns in both Callirhoe and the Ephesiaca offer nuanced commentary on the limitations of conventional gendered power dynamics, thereby demonstrating that feminist readings still have much to reveal about the ancient novel.

PRESENTER: Anjanay Nangia TITLE: Arthur Rundt's "Marylin" in Translation: A study in Mixed-Race History in the United States during the early 20th Century AUTHORS: Nangia, Anjanay; Hoeng, Peter Abstract not available.

PRESENTER: Omar Obregon-Cuebas TITLE: Spectatorship of Film and Dasein: an Afropessimist Critique of Heideggarean Film Analysis AUTHORS: Obregon-Cuebas, Omar; Warren, Calvin

In this project I aimed to see how using Heidegger's truth-focused analysis of art could help me gather said truth from "classic" american artwork. Heidegger's analysis of art is not focused on aesthetics/beauty but rather on how the artwork is a locus for the disclosure of truth at a level of ontology. The question that drove this project is: how does the universalization of Heidegger's human subject "Dasein'' affects (excludes) Black participants from being spectators of a film?

That is, considering the subject matter of Birth of a Nation, how in the very act of spectatorship is Blackness already excluded from said spectatorship? To attempt to answer this question I turned to Frank Wilderson III and his book on film Red, White & Black. Utilizing an afropessemist analytic I found it was clear that Heidegger’s analysis of art rests upon an antiblack assumption of the universal human. With an afropessmist analytic we can understand that Blackness is always already excluded from the category of human; that the very notion of human rests upon the existence of Black as slave. So from confronting Heidegger’s art analysis from Wilderson’s orientation there is a deeper understanding of the exclusion of Blackness and film spectatorship. This project is important because of the lack of philosophical analysis of Birth of a Nation, meeting of Heidegger and film, and the exploration of film spectatorship and race.

PRESENTER: Jeremy Slater TITLE: Beginners’ Persian-English Bilingual Dictionary: A Lexicographic Study AUTHORS: Slater, Jeremy; Samei, Hossein Abstract not available.

PRESENTER: Bryn Walker TITLE: The United Daughters of the Confederacy, State Government, and the Creation and Maintenance of Lost Cause Memory in Georgia AUTHORS: Walker, Bryn; Morgan Ward, Jason

The murder of George Floyd – an unarmed Black man – at the hands of the State has prompted a renewed debate over the role of the United States’ government in perpetuating structural racism. Protestors have called attention not just to highly visible forms of racial violence but also those that take other forms. Across the United States, protestors have begun toppling monuments to Confederate soldiers and generals to combat the celebration of slaveholders. I argue that these memorializations are not merely symbolic homages to the Confederacy, but themselves constitute a subtler, more concrete form of State-sanctioned violence against Black individuals. Following the Civil War and throughout Reconstruction, white Southerners violently regained political power from Black Americans. Solidifying their strength, white Southerners turned a military loss into a cultural victory through the creation of the Lost Cause – a cultural mythos that absolved white Southerners and obscured the horrors of slavery. Using Georgia as a case study, this paper demonstrates the role of State Government in the perpetuation of Lost Cause memory. Although an abundance of previous historiography addresses the Lost Cause, this paper will utilize materials from Georgia’s legislative record and Georgia United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) chapter histories to firmly establish the relationship between private memorialization groups and formal political institutions in the process of Confederate memorialization. Through working in conjunction in schools, State archives, and on monument building projects, the State of Georgia supported the “Confederate celebration” of the UDC in strides, directly and indirectly. Emphasizing this clear, explicit, and urgent connection elucidates the important role of the State in commemoration, the lobbying prowess of the UDC, the extensive efforts of Southern white elites to maintain power following the Civil War, and most importantly, contextualizes the political nature of symbols and memorialization as a fundamentally political process.

PRESENTER: Jack Wolfram TITLE: Centering the Middle: A Proposed Investigation of ADHD-Identifying Peer Tutors in the Writing Center AUTHORS: Wolfram, Jack; Elion, Leigh.

Writing centers (WCs) occupy a “middle ground” between professors and pupils – instructional sites that aren’t classrooms, operating via individualized sessions in which student writers and tutors collaboratively address writers’ specific projects and/or concerns. These tutors are often students, too, inhabiting middle-ground identities themselves as student-educators.

However, I argue that peer WC tutors identifying with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder —an under-accounted for population—occupy a special kind of middle space. Grounded in a review of contemporary scholarship in critical disability, WC, and rhetorical studies, this project contends that while ADHD peer tutors’ roles necessitate both rhetorical skill and recognition thereof, the legacy of ableism in higher education nonetheless marginalizes ADHD students (including peer tutors).While universities today often enroll numerous disabled students, ideas about model scholars do not account for the hyperactive, distraction-inclined, impulsive, and/or oftentimes over- or under-stimulated minds of ADHD individuals. ADHD tutors’ “disabled” faculties complicate their inclusion and capacity to participate as expected in WC work and academia. They need to be able to help others “make sense” (in writing and as writers) as quasirepresentatives for institutions in which they themselves aren’t rightfully included. The same institutionally-acknowledged ability to “make sense” that lands one the WC job is a standard against which ADHD individuals are often deemed incompetent, incomprehensible, and somehow unworthy of inclusion. Furthermore, while the writing center is seemingly well-suited for ADHD academics, given the individualized nature of each tutorial session, Center administrators’ and writers’ expectations could present difficulties for them instead. It is clear through these early findings that additional research about the lived experiences of ADHD WC tutors is needed. This project additionally proposes an upcoming qualitative study of undergraduate and graduate peer tutors.

PRESENTER: Stewart Zelnick TITLE: Nationwide Anti-Mosque Activity: How Muslim Communities Protect Their Right To Religious Exercise Under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person’s Act (RLUIPA) AUTHORS: Pohl, Florian ; Zelnick, Stewart For the past twenty years, nationwide anti-mosque activity has played out in the shadow of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which aims to protect religious exercise. The purpose of this research is to analyze how RLUIPA has shaped Muslim communities’ abilities to secure their rights to free exercise. Engaging with scholarship on the history of religious freedom legislation, this research asks: How has RLUIPA functioned for Muslim communities, how effective are RLUIPA claims, and what consequences has RLUIPA had for Muslim communities and their efforts to secure their legal rights and cultural inclusion?

To answer these questions, we trace continuities and changes in how Muslim communities have protected their right to build houses of worship through a study of significant cases of mosque opposition before and after the passage of RLUIPA. To chronicle anti-mosque activity, we created a digital archive of cases, including a subcollection that contained cases involving legal complaints under RLUIPA. Based on research in publicly available databases, we identified over 130 cases of mosque controversies since 2000. Around thirty of these cases include a direct claim under RLUIPA. While the outcomes of these cases reveal significant victories for Muslim communities in protecting their religious exercise, questions for the future of Muslim legal and cultural inclusion remain when considering, for instance, the high rate of Department of Justice

interventions in successful cases. The presentation concludes by bringing these results in conversation with scholarship on the history of religious freedom legislation that highlights the often ambiguous results that emerge from the use of the legal system both to empower and to question Muslim identity and Muslim rights in the United States.

Natural & Physical Sciences Abstracts PRESENTER: Michelle Bardales TITLE: Emissions of Fine Particulate Matter from Domestic Open Burning of Plastic Waste in Rural and Urban Areas of Guatemala AUTHORS: Bardales, Michelle; Saikawa, Eri

Open burning of plastic waste can occur in areas, such as Guatemala, that lack access to effective waste disposal. Garbage burning contributes to the emissions of air pollutants and other harmful substances, such as fine particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 microns or less (PM2.5), into the atmosphere. The purpose of this research was to determine the per capita emissions from plastic garbage burning in the rural area of Jalapa, Guatemala as well as Jutiapa and primarily urban Guatemala City and to determine its contribution to local and regional air quality. We created a distribution of emission factors (EFs) for each pollutant and the amount of plastic burned per household, based on the mean and standard deviation from observational data. We then randomly drew the EF and the amount of plastic waste from the two distributions, respectively, 1 million times to create a new distribution of emissions estimates from plastic burning per species of interest. The Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) was also set up for modeling regional air quality. The average emissions of PM2.5 from open burning of plastic in Jalapa (725±379 g/capita/year) made up 9.45±4.94% of the total annual per capita PM2.5 emissions in Guatemala. Using the average plastic waste generated in Guatemala and the percent of waste burned in different areas, the contribution to PM2.5 emissions from open burning of plastic in Guatemala was 19.5±3.0% in Jutiapa, 17.9±2.7% in Jalapa, and 3.40±0.51% in Guatemala City. Our research results suggest that rural areas openly burn more plastic waste domestically and that a significant portion of their contribution to emissions comes from garbage burning. This also informs the need for better resources for waste collection, which could mitigate the impact of open garbage burning towards air pollution and the environment in Guatemala.

PRESENTER: Sequoyah Bell TITLE: Neural Correlates of Social Interaction AUTHORS: Bell, Sequoyah; Murugan,Malavika

Social interactions form a crucial aspect of animal behavior and is critical for the survival of most mammalian species. In fact, social interactions drive and shape most aspects of the human experience. Mice, like humans, engage in positive social interactions with other mice – a behavior that is often characterized by sniffing and grooming another mouse. Importantly, mice often find interactions with other mice rewarding and is correlated with increase in dopamine release in the reward circuitry, such as the nucleus accumbens. However, social interactions are complex and high dimensional and therefore, accurately relating activity in the brain to specific behavioral actions can be challenging. To overcome this challenge, as a first step we did a frameby-frame annotation of the mouse behaviors in a home-cage assay. In the home-cage assay the mouse of interest (test mouse) is allowed to freely interact with a juvenile mouse (target mouse) introduced into his home-cage. We classified the behavior of the test mouse into various categories. Some behavioral categories involved the test mouse actively engaging the target mouse. For example, behaviors such as pursuit (chasing the other mouse), sniffing and grooming.

While other behaviors were solitary in nature, such as walking, rearing or sitting still. The amount of time the test mouse spent engaged in each behavior was quantified. We observed that there was considerably heterogeneity in which behaviors were expressed the most when between. In the future, we hope to compare these manually annotated behavioral measures to results from novel fully automated behavioral annotation methods to determine the usefulness and accuracy of these new methods. Ultimately, having a detailed understanding of behavior mice engage in will help better relate activity in various parts of the brain to specific aspects of behavior and in understanding how the brain drives complex social interactions.

PRESENTER: Nick Berg TITLE: Putative Transmission of Influenza A H3N2 Defective Viral Genomes between Household Transmission Pairs AUTHORS: Berg, Nicolas; Martin, Michael; Koelle, Katia Influenza defective viral genomes (DVGs) are virus mutants with large deletions in one or more of their eight gene segments, rendering them unable to yield viable progeny. However, coinfection of a cell by a DVG and wild-type virus can lead to replication and proliferation of the defective genome by means of the components produced by wild-type virus. Through this mechanism, DVGs act as viral parasites on the wild-type genomes and can interfere with wildtype viral replication. Putative transmission of DVGs between human subjects has previously been suggested. However, it is currently unknown how commonly this occurs. Here, we identify defective viral genomes (DVGs) in influenza sequences collected from human-to-human, household transmission pairs. DVGs were bioinformatically identified from deep sequencing data using a recently developed pipeline. We identify DVGs in all samples, most commonly in the polymerase-encoding segments, consistent with previous studies. Through cross-examination of deletions within transmission pairs, we identified shared defective viral genomes between all donor and recipient pairs, consistent with transmission between human hosts. These results pave the way for further inquiry into the mechanism by which identical DVGs arise between host pairs, be it an intrinsic mutability of the deleted region or actual heritability of the deletion via co-transmission. Since dosing with DVGs is a promising new antiviral therapeutic, transmission of these viral attenuators could provide secondary benefits to contacts of treated hosts.

PRESENTER: Becky Cloud TITLE: Modeling Parasite Transmission in Size-Structured Host Populations AUTHORS: Cloud, Rebecca; Shaw, Kelsey; Civitello, David Parasite transmission can be influenced by many host characteristics, including body size.

However current models of parasite transmission dynamics often exclude host characteristics despite their known role in transmission. For the parasite Schistosoma mansoni and its intermediate host snail, Biomphalaria glabrata, larger snails experience higher rates of exposure to parasites but are less susceptible to infection. The relationship between size and transmission in the snail-schistosome system has been found at the individual level, but its influence on population level transmission dynamics remains unexplored. To test this relationship, I will create mathematical models of size-structured S. mansoni transmission in B. glabrata and test these models against experimental data. I will model transmission amongst three size classes of host snails at three varying parasite densities for five population size structures. I will simulate data for these populations and assess the fit of several competing transmission models using maximum likelihood estimation. I will also conduct transmission experiments in snails in a fully factorial design with the same snail sizes, population size structures, and parasite densities as I used for my model. I hypothesize that models accounting for differences in exposure and susceptibility with snail body size will outperform current or null models. Additionally, I hypothesize that populations with differing size structures will differ in overall prevalence due to these differences in exposure and susceptibility with body size. New models for human schistosome risk that incorporate body size and population size structure may enable researchers to improve decision making surrounding schistosome control in endemic regions.

PRESENTER: Taylor Dover TITLE: Catalytic Alkyne-Epoxide Couplings for the Synthesis of Polyol Macrolides AUTHORS: Dover, Taylor L.; McDonald, Frank E. The coupling of terminal alkynes and epoxides using mild catalytic methods is a longstanding challenge in synthetic chemistry. Herein, we describe initial developments toward a methodology employing dual activation of the alkyne nucleophile and the epoxide electrophile.

We are also completing an extensive review of fluorinated alcohol solvents in the formation and ring-opening reactions of epoxides. Fluorinated alcohol solvents enhance the efficacy of epoxide reactions with neutral nucleophiles, arising from the unique physical properties of these solvents.

Additionally, fluorinated alcohol solvents are compatible with several organometallic reactions, representing an intriguing option for our studies. Ultimately, an effective and mild method forming alkynyl alcohols represents a major advance toward the synthesis of polyol molecules, including natural products with medicinal potential.

PRESENTER: Kary Fang TITLE: Connecting Structure to Function in Recurrent Neural Networks AUTHORS: Fang, Xiaotong; Berman, Gordon

Machine learning algorithms are often inspired by neuronal function. Synaptic gaps connect and modulate neurons. In machine learning, however, the synaptic gaps are replaced by connectivity functions within and between layers of the network. For sequential data, Echo State Networks (ESNs), a frequently used type of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), have been an important means to model nonlinear time series prediction and spoken digit recognition (Lymburn, et al., 2019). How these networks actually model data, however, is not well understood. ESNs are structured with a non-linear state equation applied to a linear combination of states, inputs, and outputs, and an output transformation that makes the current output a linear function of the states. Each time the data set is being trained completely once, the network will yield a reduction in computational cost (Bugliari, et al., 2019). Since the ESN is known for its ability in analyzing sequential processing tasks such as nonlinear time series prediction (Lymbur n, et al., 2019), we used fly (Drosophila melanogaster) behavior data to train and optimize the ESN and to learn the relationship between structure and function of ESN. ESN with structures of randomly generated connectivity weights can be optimized to predict a fly’s future behaviors based on the animal’s behavior. A random connectivity matrix was generated based on a Gaussian distribution. A range of mean and standard deviation values for the random values was used to find a combination that can optimize the ‘vanilla’ (memoryless) ESN in modeling the fly behavior data. Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) units were used within the ESN. The optimized ESN from previous steps was restored and then used to generate new sequence of data frames. We then compared these simulated sequences to actual data. The mean validation loss is minimized when the mean for the connectivity weight matrix generated using Gaussian distribution is around 0 and the standard deviation is in the range of 0.08 and 0.12. As ESNs have the property that their outputs are driven by the input information, using a randomly generated weight matrix, there are possibilities that the ESN can be a general tool to analyze and predict other animal behavior dynamics. If this can be accomplished, in the future, we will be able to develop machines that can observe animal or insect behavior and use that input and previous history to analyze and predict its condition based on its current behavioral dynamic.

PRESENTER: Jordan Hasty TITLE: Identifying Sources of Internal and External Loading of Nutrients for two Southeastern US Reservoirs AUTHORS: Hasty, Jordan; Hage, Melissa Reservoirs are often constructed with the main purpose of providing clean drinking water to local populations. A primary concern for water quality is the concentration of nutrients, which can lead to eutrophication and algal blooms, possibly resulting in the production of toxic compounds by algae, increased processing costs, and a decrease in habitat quality for aquatic life. Phosphorous is often the limiting nutrient in freshwater systems, though nitrogen can also be limited. Nutrients enter reservoirs through external loading processes, as pollutants within the watershed drain into the reservoir, and through internal loading of nutrients from sediments at the bottom of the reservoir. Internal loading processes are dependent upon the biogeochemical conditions within the lacustrine environment, including thermal stratification of the water column and the development of anoxic conditions. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the sources of nutrients within two nearby reservoirs: Lake Varner, established in 1993, and Hard Labor Creek Reservoir, established in 2018. These reservoirs were chosen for their

proximity to compare differences in age, and the presence of solar-powered mixers in Lake Varner. The external loading capabilities of each reservoir’s watershed were compared through a geospatial analysis which indicated that land use/land cover is similar between the watersheds.

Internal loading capacity was compared through an analysis throughout the water column of temperature data collected over 18 months, as well as nutrient and chemical data collected over 9 months. Thermal stratification occurred from June through October, and the thermoclines between reservoirs were similar at between 3-4 meters depth. The oxycline was slightly deeper at 5 meters in Hard Labor Creek Reservoir compared to 4 meters in Lake Varner. The nutrient data collected was inconclusive, allowing for the exploration of multiple interpretations.

PRESENTER: Caleb Park TITLE: Childhood Chemical Exposures: Developing More Precise Methodologies for Assessing Exposure Through Soil and Dust Ingestion AUTHORS: Park, Caleb; Saikawa, Eri

Chemical exposure of children can be detrimental to growth and development. Due to industrial activities, waste incineration, and the use of various chemicals, environments have been contaminated with toxicants that can be transferred into the human body. Heavy metals like lead can cause permanent neurological damage and behavioral disorders. Children from the ages of 6 months to 6 years are of interest since they can be more susceptible to environmental chemicals as a result of their developmental behaviors. In order to reduce children’s exposure to toxicants, accurate metrics are needed for exposure assessments that will help establish standards for the public and the environment.In this research, ingestion rates from studies provided by the EPA were used to observe how ingestion may impact exposure. The R programming language aided by R studio was used to create a distribution of ingestion rate based on existing studies. We then conducted Monte Carlo samplings and assessed exposure using the EPA Integrated Exposure Uptake Biokinetic (IEUBK) model.When exploring how varying soil lead concentration affects exposure, it was observed that as soil lead concentration increased, exposure increased and the 1-2 year-old children showed the highest exposure. Using the 400 ppm EPA threshold, the highest estimated exposure amongst 6 month to 6 year olds was 5.7 µg/dL, a concentration larger than the CDC reference value of 5 µg/dL. Providing children with a safe environment to grow is imperative for ensuring a healthy childhood. Since there is no safe level of lead, it is necessary to monitor and take preventative measures to reduce exposure.

Considering the fact that we found soil with up to 5000 ppm of lead in West Atlanta due to toxic waste, this issue needs to be shared with the greater Atlanta community and taken care of properly.

PRESENTER: Synéja Richards TITLE: Effects of Male Body Size on Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) Mating Behavior AUTHORS: Richards, Synéja; Villa, Scott

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) are arguably the most widely recognizable butterfly in the world. However, despite its widespread interest, surprisingly very little is known about how their mating behavior. Male monarchs employ a coercive mating strategy, where they force females into copulation. These mating events are very physical and it has been assumed that larger, stronger males have a reproductive advantage. However, contrary to these assumptions, multiple observational studies show that females often copulate with smallerbodied males. Thus, large body size may not actually be critical in monarch mating. Here we experimentally manipulated monarch size to test if smaller males do, in fact, have a reproductive advantage. We experimentally restricted the diet of captive-bred monarchs which led to a 40% reduction in body size. We conducted mating trials where females were exposed to: 1) a single large male, 2) a single small male, or 3) both a small and large male. All trials lasted five days.

Each cage was continuously filmed from which we quantify mating behavior. Our results show that small males can readily mate with large females. However, when forced to compete with large males for mates, they suffer a reduction in mating success. Our study is the first to experimentally reveal the role of male body size in monarch mating success.

PRESENTER: Yanbo Wang TITLE: Analysis on “Winter Fog” Phenomenon in Hindu Kush Himalayan Region AUTHORS: Wang, Yanbo; Saikawa, Eri The research focuses on the “winter fog” phenomenon in Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region, which contains Nepal, Bangladesh, and northern India. The combination of water droplets and particulate matter form aerosols and cause winter fog events, which lead to low visibility. The primary goal of the research is to find out when and how frequently the winter fog takes place, as well as predicting upcoming ones. The main source of data is from ASOS Network (Iowa State University) data. The data are taken hourly at various airports starting from 2011 to 2020 and include variables such as visibility, wind speed, relative humidity, etc. In this research, R is used as the primary programming language to calculate low visibility occurrences over time, compare among cities, and draw correlation between visibility and other factors like wind speed. Our results show that winter fog events usually happen in December and January, and they take place mainly in the night and end around sunrise. Kathmandu suffered from winter fog with a low visibility rate of 8.1% in December 2011 and on average 2.5% in the winter before 2015. The air quality has improved since 2015 due to the government’s policy, keeping the rate under 1%. The case is worse in Bangladesh. The low visibility rate even reached 19% in December 2012 and 17% in December 2014 for Dhaka. Northern Indian cities have fewer observations available but share a high rate of 7.8% for Gorakhpur. The peak of low visibility occurrences is also different in India and takes place in October and November due to agricultural residual burning. The research helps us gain a deeper understanding of the timing of winter fog events and the success of Nepal’s policy in mitigating winter fog.

Public Health Abstracts

PRESENTER: Karista Colwell TITLE: Assessing the Legal Need for Medical Evaluations of Asylum Seekers in Metropolitan Atlanta.A UTHORS: Colwell, Karista; Zeidan, Amy; Evans, Dabney; Gullickson, Cricket; Auguste, Sahadia; Fong, Caitlyn; Gourisankar, Amritha Over the past six years, the number of individuals filing asylum applications in the United States has increased dramatically, with a 150% increase from 2014-2017. Asylum seekers in Georgia face an especially harsh system with a grant rate of less than two percent. One study demonstrated that asylum seekers with an accompanying forensic medical evaluation were 2-3 times more likely to be granted asylum. As a result, the aims of this project were to understand the current case demand including case outcomes and capacity for expansion, explore the challenges faced by key stakeholders involved in the asylum process and develop a medicallegal partnership (MLP) model specific to the context in Georgia. Quantitative data was obtained from the Atlanta Asylum network from 2003-2012 and Georgia Human Rights clinic from 20192020 to analyze case outcomes and demographic data. Qualitative interviews were conducted with key stakeholders and then were recorded, transcribed, and coded by two study team members. Qualitative analysis was performed with MAXQDA and analyzed for prominent themes. A total of 23 interviews were completed, at which time thematic saturation was reached.

Prominent themes identified included barriers to forensic medical evaluations, barriers to medical access and solutions, barriers to social services and solutions, barriers to legal services and solutions, and essential components of MLPs. Finally, a review of literature was conducted to explore practices of current asylum clinics and MLPs focused on immigration. This data, in combination with thematic analysis of MLPs, will be used to develop an MLP model specific to Atlanta, GA. This project serves to better inform those interested about the medical, legal, and social barriers asylum seekers face, and concludes with recommendations for those seeking to expand on this area of research in hopes of developing and strengthening medical-legal partnerships focused on asylum.

PRESENTER: Marlon Gant TITLE: Detecting Industrial Sites Associated With Slag in West Atlanta AUTHORS: Gant, Marlon; Saikawa, Eri; Seibert, Rachel

West Atlanta, an impoverished urban community with a population of majority African Americans, is exposed to heavy metal and metalloid soil contamination. The average income for an individual in the city of Atlanta is $55,279. In West Atlanta, the average income for an individual residing in the zip code 30314 is less than half of that for the city of Atlanta. After years of industrial activity and slag being dumped, lead, zinc, and arsenic were detected. The slag detected in the soil of West Atlanta was causing high lead concentrations in the soil leading to contamination. Unaware of the dangers of heavy metal contaminants, the West Atlanta community is at risk of the health effects introduced, especially children. In this research project, the Standard Metal directory and Sanborn fire insurance maps were used to analyze and locate industrial sites that were possibly associated with the detected slag in West Atlanta. Google maps were then used to determine the distance of industrial sites from the sampling area where slag was detected (398 and 395 Elm St NW). Because slag is produced from smelting, the objective was to locate historical lead smelters that were in close proximity to the contaminated site. No historical smelters were found within a five-mile radius of the contaminated location. Cotton mills, which are associated with arsenic contaminants, were found approximately 1.0 mile from the slag dump site. Exposition Cotton Mill No. 1 and No. 2 were roughly 0.2 miles north of where English Avenue NW meets Jefferson Street NW. In addition to the research conducted, an informational brochure and short videos were created to inform the West Atlanta community on the effects of heavy metal contaminants and ways to reduce exposure.

Social Science Abstracts PRESENTER: Joanne Choi TITLE: Maternal Childhood Adversity and Epigenetic Aging Predict Offspring Emotional Reactivity: Implications for Intergenerational Transmission of Risk AUTHORS: Choi, Joanne; McKenna, Brooke; Brennan, Patricia

Childhood adversity is a well-known risk factor for psychopathology, including emotion dysregulation and other transdiagnostic symptoms that persist into adulthood. Recent evidence suggests that women’s experiences of childhood adversity may not only impact their own psychopathology, but also confer risk for their offspring’s outcomes. Although the mechanisms underlying this intergenerational transmission of risk remain unclear, preliminary studies suggest that epigenetic alterations may play an important role. The present study examined whether maternal childhood adversity was associated with offspring emotional reactivity during toddlerhood, and whether maternal epigenetic aging may mediate this association. We recruited an entirely African American sample of 180 mother-child dyads in order to better understand how these factors impact families disproportionately exposed to adversity and historically underserved in the mental healthcare system. During pregnancy, women were asked to selfreport objective experiences of childhood adversity via the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) scale, and to provide a blood sample for epigenetic sequencing. During their offspring’s toddlerhood, women attended a follow-up study where they reported their child’s emotional reactivity using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)/1.5-5. Results indicated that greater maternal childhood adversity and epigenetic aging both predicted greater offspring emotional reactivity; however, epigenetic aging was not associated with maternal childhood adversity and thus did not mediate its association with offspring emotional reactivity. Our findings suggest that both maternal childhood adversity and maternal epigenetic aging are risk factors for offspring psychopathology, but further research is needed to identify alternative factors that contribute to epigenetic aging and alternative mechanisms that explain the intergenerational risk conferred by maternal childhood adversity.

Keywords: maternal childhood trauma, African American, emotional reactivity, intergenerational transmission of risk, epigenetics PRESENTER: Malachi Chukwu TITLE: Pro-State Militia and State Alliance: How this Partnership Influences Civil War AUTHORS: Chukwu, Malachi; Gade, Emily

Why do regimes opt to cooperate with and deploy pro-state militias in civil wars and what are the effects of this cooperation? We theorize that states choose to cooperate with militia partners when they hit the limit of the state monopoly on violence, but this de-monopolization increases insurgent violence against civilians, extending the life of the conflict beyond the official end of the war. Existing scholarship on pro-state militias has centered on how civil war can perpetuate militia activity through generating rents for the militia. In contrast, we explore how state cooperation with pro-state militias worsens violence even after the conflict officials resolves. We test this hypothesis through exploring the relationship between state cooperation with pro-state militias and the severity and duration of the violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland by using archival data. This project illuminates the way that the relationship between militias and the state shapes the intensity and long duration of intrastate violence.

PRESENTER: Dusty Dang TITLE: Posted Price with Quality Guarantee in Sparse Mobile Crowd Sensing During Certain Natural Phenomenon AUTHORS: Li, Ting; Dang, Dusty Mobile crowd sensing (MCS) adopts the power of crowd where the sensing data could be collected with less cost compared to traditional methods through the well-deployed sensor networks. For metropolitan areas with large populations, data can be easily collected. However, in a less populous area, the lack of participants will make tasks difficult to be accomplished.

Hence, we name it a sparse MCS. A sparse MCS has the same components as the typical MCS, which includes the task owners, a platform, and a group of participants. The reality of MCS is that data-collecting tasks cannot be completed with such a limited number of participants.

However, we notice that the missing data from one location or entity can be recovered from the collected data of another location or entity based on geographical and demographical similarities.

Our data reflects on the current state of the area in which we conduct our research upon, specifically on the effects of natural disaster such as COVID-19 on the posted price of sparse MCS. In order to show appreciation for the participants’ efforts for accomplishing the tasks, including moving towards the target location, sensing, and sending the data back, we will compensate them with a posted price. The model that we deploy is divide into three stages: 1. kmean partitioning cluster to find the similarity between our entities, 2. data generation or recovery for sparse entity, 3. the deployment of a game theory to determine the rewards that would reflects on the users during certain natural phenomenon. Our model provides a way to collect and review data for sparse MCS during certain phenomenon, and it also provide a solution on how we should deploy our project to guarantee quality data and at the same time the participants’ safety.

PRESENTER: Rosseirys De La Rosa TITLE: Detecting the Genetic Affinity of the Lost Indigenous People of Uruguay and Living Individuals from the Americas AUTHORS: De La Rosa, Rosseirys; Lindo, John; Owings, Amanda

Throughout the Americas many Indigenous populations have been erased from history due to European colonization. This is especially true for Uruguay, where Indigenous populations were completely decimated. The goal of my research is to study the genetic makeup of ancient individuals unearthed in present-day Uruguay and compare their genomes to present day populations from the Americas using the Simons Genome Project. In collaboration with Dr. Gonzalo Figueiro from the Universidad de la Republica de Uruguay, three ancient individuals from the region underwent DNA extraction and next generation sequencing. The complete mitochondrial DNA sequence was successfully assembled from these individuals. Using established methods in population genetics, my study will examine the genetic affinity of these individuals to other populations from the Americas to help elucidate their demographic origins.

PRESENTER: Avery Hampton TITLE: Examining the Reliability of an Online Platform in the Assessment of Autism-Related Traits in Adults AUTHORS: Kang, Erica; Nicholson, Chris; Hampton, Avery; Ousley, Opal As autism spectrum disorder (ASD) grows in prevalence, the urgency for reliable but rapid assessments is becoming increasingly needed. Our pilot study investigated the reliability of an online platform in assessing ASD-related traits in an adult population. The study included an 83% female participant group who were 19-60 years of age (average age = 38.5; SD=11.9).

Adult participants (n=24) answered online questions from the Brief Assessment of Autism Symptoms for Adults (BAASA), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and a background information questionnaire. Responses to the BAASA questions were rated for the presence of ASD-related symptoms based on a 0 to 2 scale and a total BAASA score was generated using a dichotomized 0 to 1 scale. Interrater reliability was examined for 6 individuals across two raters yielding a 94 percent agreement. We then examined BAASA ratings across three groups of individuals: 1) those reporting a prior diagnosis of ASD (n=6), 2) those reporting a suspected diagnosis of ASD (n=8), and 3) those reporting no concern about ASD (n=10).

Raters were blind to group membership. For the total sample, the average score was 9.25 (SD=6.26). The average scores across each group were 14.5 (SD=0.55), 14.3 (SD=1.04) and 2.1 (SD=1.37), respectively. A positive correlation (r=0.56; p-value=0.00443) was observed between the BAASA and HADS total scores, indicating that individuals with ASD-related traits may be more likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. For our final data analyses, we plan to conduct t-tests to examine group differences and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to identify a potential cutoff score for ASD diagnosis or risk. Future studies will include larger samples and examine the reliability of BAASA as a video-interview that allows the collection of ASD-related non-verbal and verbal communicative behaviors.

PRESENTER: Zoey Jiao TITLE: Metaphor Detection in Chinese Using Machine Learning-Based Classifier AUTHORS: Jiao, Jieyu (Zoey); Miller, Benjamin Metaphoric language plays a significant role in humans’ cognitive system, allowing people to understand abstract concepts through references to more familiar concrete concepts. Detecting

these relationships and the metaphors that encode them has been a popular research area in the field of linguistics since early landmark studies by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). By employing machine learning models and computational tools, we are able to make predictions on whether a sentence, or a word in a sentence, is metaphorical or literal, thereby gaining better understanding in how people convey abstract concepts. However, the majority of research on this topic focuses on English metaphor detection. In this project, I propose detecting metaphoric language in Chinese using a machine learning-based classifier. We used a semi-supervised method that leverages an existing dataset annotated for metaphor and non-metaphoric language for tokens from each sentence, and an unannotated dataset with pretrained Wikipedia word vectors, for which each word is represented by a vector. To create a design matrix from this data, I implemented K-Means clustering, which is an unsupervised learning method that aggregates similar words into one cluster, using an elbow method. I then fed the clusters generated from the K-Means algorithm into the random forest classifier. The best model achieved 0.796 F1 score (scaled from 0 to 1), which indicates the precision and robustness of the classifier.

PRESENTER: Chris Kopreski TITLE: Variations in Clinicians’ Perspectives on the Impairments, Needs, and Goals of Mild Stroke Survivors AUTHORS: Kopreski, Christopher; Krishnan, Shilpa Nearly half of all strokes are mild strokes. Evidence suggests that those with mild stroke may have cognitive, motor, and psychological impairments. Accurate identification of mild stroke is important for prompt treatment and intervention; however, previous literature has identified variability in the nomenclature and criteria used to classify mild stroke with current stroke assessment tools. This study aims to determine the extent of variability in clinicians’ perspectives regarding mild stroke. This qualitative study implemented semi-structured interviews with a convenience sample of various clinicians recruited from the community.

Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Thematic content analysis was conducted to determine themes related to mild stroke. The codes were quality checked by two independent reviewers. Depending upon background and training, clinicians identified various physical, cognitive, and psychological impairments caused by mild stroke. Clinicians expressed the need for disparate resources for those recovering from mild stroke, including post-acute care, caregiver support, and adaptive equipment. Clinicians also reported mild stroke survivors having a variety of personal goals, including a desire to return to work, live independently, and walk normally. This study identifies variability and inconsistency in the perspectives of clinicians regarding the impairments, needs, and goals of mild stroke survivors. These differences in perspectives may negatively affect the communication between healthcare providers and patients, complicate critical treatment decisions, and delay patient outcomes. Future research should focus on developing a consensus definition of mild stroke to improve both mild stroke identification and intervention.

PRESENTER: Eva Kuzyk TITLE: The Moderating Role of Childhood Environmental Quality and Emotion Dysregulation on the Relationship between Childhood Sexual Abuse and Depression

AUTHORS: Kuzyk, Eva; Mekawi, Yara; Lott, Abigail

Although the association between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and depressive symptoms in adults is well documented, intraindividual and environmental factors that influence this association are not yet fully understood. The goal of the present study was to address this gap in the literature by examining whether emotion regulation and childhood environment stability influence the degree to which CSA is associated with more severe depressive symptoms.

The current analysis included 1,682 participants (89% female, 92% Black American) who endorsed at least one incident of sexual abuse before the age of 18. We found positive significant associations between CSA severity, depressive symptom severity, emotion dysregulation, and poor childhood environment quality. However, regression analyses revealed that the interactions between CSA and emotion dysregulation, and CSA and childhood environment quality did not account for unique variance in depressive symptoms beyond the direct effects of CSA, emotion regulation, and childhood environment quality. Thus, emotion dysregulation and childhood environment quality did not influence the magnitude of the association between CSA and depression. These findings suggest that both emotion dysregulation and childhood environment quality are important factors influencing adult depression, but do not necessarily mitigate the deleterious effects of CSA severity. Further investigation is necessary to identify other individual and environmental factors that exacerbate or mitigate the effects of childhood trauma and provide insight as to which individuals may be at the higher risk for developing psychopathology. Implications for future research and interventions are discussed.

PRESENTER: Zijin Lei TITLE: The Determinants of the Volume of Initial Public Offerings from a Historical Perspective AUTHORS: Lei, Phoebe; Fohlin, Caroline Initial Public Offering (IPO), the first-time issuance of stocks by a company to the public, has been extensively researched in the field of economics and finance. While numerous studies have been done on IPOs’ abnormal returns, few of them have paid special attention to the volume of IPOs and its causes and consequences, In this work, we use data for all U.S. companies that went public between the year 1933 and 1949 to look for factors that contribute to the size of IPOs in terms of both the number of shares and dollar amount. Following Lowry’s (2001) approach, we first categorized the factors into three broad categories: the overall capital demands, the market risks, and the investor sentiments. Upon time-series analysis using MLRs and ARIMA models, we found that while the volume of IPOs is both statistically and economically significantly affected by the companies’ demand for capital and the level of uncertainty within the market, investor sentiments do not play an important role in the IPO volume. The results imply that favorable market conditions are essential for companies when deciding whether to issue new stocks or not. However, the insignificance of investor sentiments does not totally negate the impact of investor behaviors on the determination of IPO volume. Rather, it could be due to the inability of our proxies to capture the whole magnitude of such sentiments which deserves further investigation. We also analyzed how investment banks affect the size of the IPOs and found that on average, the presence of IBs increases the amount of capital raised in IPOs.

Overall, this research provides new insights on the role of the general market, issuers, and investors in the IPO process and sheds light on the understanding of IPO volume fluctuations from a historical perspective.

PRESENTER: Ronaldo Patiño Flores TITLE: Academic Stress in College-Aged Students: Resilience and Risk, & How It Relates to Adaptive and Negative Coping Mechanisms AUTHORS: Patiño Flores, Ronaldo; Whitney, Barfield; Ober, Jenipher; Bachman, Chelsie; Palmer, Rohan

Background: The MAPme Study is currently expanding its assessments to better examine the relationship between college-students’ scholastic resilience (i.e. ability or inability to cope with academic stressors) and their risk for substance use (SU) development. This study aims to review current validated resilience scales to recommend for MAPme’s future waves. ethods: MESH terms: resilience, coping, academic stress, and substance use were used to search titles and abstracts of articles using PubMed, Google scholar, and EBSCOhost databases. The SPICE tool was then used to assess the strengths and limitations of each included scale. Results : The search yielded a total of 5 scales relevant to MAPme’s overarching goal. The RS-14 scale emerged as the most effective scale for this cohort based on the following criteria: 1) ability to be completed in 3-4 minutes while retaining the same high level of reliability, validity, and resilience core as the original 25 item Resilience Scale (RS) 2) significant positive correlations with protective factors (life satisfaction & meaning in life) (clinical sample r = .46, .67, Ps < .

001; college sample r = .72, .69, Ps < .001) and negatively correlated with risk factors (depression, anxiety, stress, and posttraumatic stress) (clinical sample r = -.25; -.40; -.28; -.31 Ps < .001; college sample r = -.33; -.29; -.22; -.18 Ps < .001), and 3) high internal consistency (Cronbach Alpha in clinical sample .93; college sample .96) regardless of demographic variables (sex, race, ethnicity). Conclusion: This review identified the RS-14 as the preferred scale for MAPme’s upcoming assessments due to its short completion time, supported resilience structure, significant correlations with protective and risk factors, and high internal consistency among various demographics. The RS-14 is the most concise scale to best capture the varying levels of resilience factors that may act as moderating agents for SU development in this cohort.

PRESENTER: Belicia Rodriguez TITLE: It's A Small World After All: Coauthorship Networks in Academic Publishing in Economics AUTHORS: Estrada, Juan; Hyunh, Kim; Jacho-Chavez, David; Rodriguez, Belicia; SanchezAragon, Leonardo

Coauthorship networks show the connections between authors who have a published paper together, and the network grows as more authors collaborate on research papers with various other authors. We study the coauthorship network in the top-five (T5) general interest journals in Economics are small-worldness network models, meaning the coauthors of an author may be connected to each other by their group of coauthors. We collected titles and abstracts of all peer-reviewed articles published in these T5 journals between 2000-2019 and used Python's NetworkX package and Gephi, a network visualization tool, to create per year and per journal, per year networks. We also calculated a small-worldness statistic using Humphries and Gurney's statistic from their paper "Network â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Small-World-Nessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;: A Quantitative Method for Determining Canonical Network Equivalence" to confirm small-worldness. This study uncovers that economics researchers form small communities in the profession, and the study is a precursor into our studying of coauthorship networks using other methods such as Natural Language Processing.

PRESENTER: Samantha Vasquez TITLE: How the Presence of British Armed Forces affect the Levels of Violence in Late 1900s Northern Ireland AUTHORS: Vasquez, Samantha; Gade, Emily Abstract not available.

PRESENTER: Xinyan Xie TITLE: Trump on Twitter: Chinese Reactions AUTHORS: Xie, Xinyan; Semetko, Holli A.

Although President Trump’s tweets have been the focus of considerable extant research, less is known about their effects if any outside the U.S. This study uses computational methods to focus on Chinese reactions on SinaWeibo.com, which resembles Twitter in China. Samples from two dates during the ‘trade war’ where volume bursts were observed--April 24 (n=485) and May 6, 2019 (n=988)--were selected, following King & Pan & Roberts (2013). Preliminary findings reveal different topics and influencers as well as different behaviors and forms of engagement among users. Compared with April, there was more personal engagement by individuals whose portfolios were impacted when the stock market ‘plunged’ on May 6, 2019, which was attributed to Trump’s hostile tweet on Sunday, May 5th announcing massive tariffs to be imposed later that week. Reactions in April focused on the topic of President Trump’s angry tweets about U.S. media and resulted in many reposts that were detected using Levenshtein’s distance, which indicates the syntactical propinquity of two texts (Nam 2019). Adopting the quasi-experiment approach, using LDA topic modeling, we extracted distinct sets of topics from the two sets of high volume Weibo posts, as well as from a third sample from May 7-13 (n=689) during the aftermath of the stock market fall (Boyle 2019), obtained using the search term “Trump” and “Twitter.” We are also semi-manually coding the topics as the machine learning approach only outperforms the dictionary approach for text classification when the dataset is very large (Barbera et al. 2019). Future research will expand the dataset, compare other high volume cases, and assess correlations between different topics and sentiments among Weibo users towards Trump and the U.S.