OSCAR Celebration of Student Scholarship and Impact

Category: OSCAR

Categories
College of Science Honors College OSCAR

Effects of Anthropogenic Noise on Vocal Communication in the Great Kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus), Rufous Hornero (Furnarius rufus), and Thrush-like Wren (Campylorhynchus turdinus)

Author(s): Anna McElhinny

Mentor(s): David A. Luther, Shawn Heath Smith, Biology

Abstract
Anthropogenic noise produced by car traffic, aircraft, and construction occurs at low frequencies which often overlap with the frequencies used in avian communication, which can limit the effectiveness of vocal signals. Many avian species alter their song to minimize overlap with noise and maximize effectiveness; however, the majority of studies have been on oscine birds in the northern hemisphere that learns their songs and are known to have high vocal plasticity. To understand how suboscine birds with innate songs (i.e., do not learn songs), the largest avian group in South America, adapt to anthropogenic noise, we examined the effects of noise on the song and call characteristics of Great Kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus), Rufous Hornero (Furnarius rufus), and Thrush-Like Wren (Campylorhynchus turdinus). We hypothesized that each species would change the frequency of their vocalizations in areas with relatively loud anthropogenic noise. We recorded vocalizations from each species at 21 sites from Santa Cruz to Samaipata, Bolivia during the summer of 2022. Data analysis is underway, and the preliminary results will be presented soon. We expect they will indicate that suboscine birds that do not learn their songs can also exhibit plasticity in song expression by adjusting the minimum frequency of their song, which addresses a key gap in our understanding of how birds respond to anthropogenic noise in under-studied systems.
Audio Transcript
I have no audio transcript at this time, unfortunately.
Categories
College of Science OSCAR

Phylogeographic analysis of the Saharan striped polecat (Ictonyx libycus) and zorilla (Ictonyx striatus)

Author(s): Autumn Gray

Mentor(s): Klaus-Peter Kopefli, Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation

Abstract
Genetic diversity and habitat distribution of many African mammals are influenced by geographic barriers and climate fluctuations. Comparative phylogeographic studies of larger mammals, like lions and giraffe, show distinct populations and lineages across different regions of Africa. However, phylogeographic analysis is less common for mesocarnivores due to their elusive nature, but because they are smaller-bodied and have a smaller dispersal, they may show more diverse genetic structuring. In the genus Ictonyx, there are only two mesocarnivores, both of which have large ranges in Africa, but little is known about the population genetics of the Saharan striped polecat (Ictonyx libycus) and the zorilla (Ictonyx striatus). To better understand the Ictonyx species phylogeography, whole mitochondrial genomes will be sequenced using 21 frozen tissue samples and 13 museum specimens from the Mammals Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The sequenced genomes will represent localities across their ranges and be the first to analyze their population genetics and phylogeographical patterns using a phylogenetic network method. This study will be used to estimate the genetic diversity of both species while, inferring the influence of habitat type, geographic barrier, and other factors that promote differentiation between the two species. Given the wide-range distributions, limited dispersal distance, and phylogeographic patterns found in other African mammal species, it is predicted that both species will show genetic differentiation across their respective geographic ranges.
Audio Transcript
Hello everyone! My name is Autumn Gray and I am an Environmental Science major. Today, I will be talking a little bit about the phylogeographic analysis of the Saharan striped polecat and zorilla. And the mentor for this project was Dr. Klaus Koepfli.

So the Saharan striped polecat and zorilla are both endemic to Africa with their range being found here. Here is where the, the yellow was where the zorilla is from and then the green is where the polecat can be found. They are lesser-known mesocarnivores and what that means is their primary diet is meat and flesh and they are less than 16 kilograms. They are the only two species to be found within Ictonyx. And they are listed as least concern on the IUCN Red List. And they don’t have much known about them.

So a few semesters ago, I did my research on the first complete mitochondrial genome of the Saharan striped polecat, so we sequenced, assembled, annotated, and analyzed that, um, mitogenome and placed it within the phylogenetic tree. It can be seen here, um, basically that study confirmed its placement within the phylogenetic tree and that it is in fact in Ictonychinae. It is also, ah, the polecat evolved before the zorilla, um, which is uh a species it is related to.

So this study, after that one, I was left with many questions, um, one of which is that there is only three complete mitochondrial genomes of these two species. So two being the zorilla and the one being the polecat I assembled, um, so I basically realized that their range is really large and I wanted to see how its genetic diversity differed across its range. Um, so we predict that both species will show genetic differentiation across their respective ranges just because of how large the their ranges are, along with them being very small species so their distribution ranges are a lot smaller than say megafauna, like an elephant.

So to do this we used the 23 frozen modern samples my mentor had and then we also seeked approval to use 13 historical samples provided by the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center. Um, so we will sequence those and those will be what is used for this study.

Now the historic samples, I want to give an idea of what they looked like. There was basically just a lot of skulls and skins, um. These photos are not from the Smithsonian, there from some other institution. Um, but on the left is a skull, um this is not what we would be looking for specifically for our samples. The samples we use have a lot more tissue on it since we scrap of the tissue off the skull and that’s what we are going to extract the DNA from. So the skull pictured here too clean for us to use. And then the skin we just use clippings a part of it, um, but we are going to try and use the skull instead of the skin.

So, we haven’t gotten this far, but basically after our DNA is collected or our samples are collected we are going to start sequencing. So we sent out the modern samples to Psomagen for DNA extraction, PCR, sequencing, and library preparation and we will do the same with the historic samples but we will do that in the historic DNA lab and then send them off. We then will get the samples back and I will run FastQC for quality checking. Um we will downsample, map to reference, and then annotate the consensus. And then we will do multiple sequence alignment and then a phylogeny network mapping. Um to see how different the different localities of the polecat and zorilla are. And then we will publish all of the annotated mitogenomes and put them on GenBank so other researchers can use it and we will publish our findings in a journal.

So we didn’t get too far this semester but we still have a lot of work to do. We have to sequence and analyze all of the samples, um and we are going to figure out if the species has a large genetic differentiation throughout its range, like predicted. Um.

So yeah, thank you to all of my mentors and supporters throughout this project. Um Dr. Koepfli, Dr. Figueiró, Dr. Edwards, Dr. Brito, Dr. Hawkins, Dr. Ferguson, Medhini, um, the Smithsonian Institution Museum Support Center, Dr. Lee, OSCAR, um College of Science, and everyone at SMSC.

So yeah, thank you for listening.

Categories
College of Visual and Performing Arts OSCAR

Resurrection: Returning to Roots from Trauma

Author(s): Cynthia Davis

Mentor(s): Heather Green, Visual and Performing Arts

Abstract
My dad always said that there are worse things than being alone. I did not believe him until I suffered through 11 months of “worse things’- which was being in an abusive relationship. These worse things spiraled and the only thing that I could find was that I had lost myself.

How do we discern truth when we are lost in the labyrinths of our own realities?
How do we return to our roots when we have lost all hope?

The Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research at George Mason University granted me the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program grant, with my ambitious proposal of writing a book. In one semester.
Starting in January 2023, I began to scour through my artworks and writings from 2020 until present.
Every week, I took my laptop to the local coffee shop, got some coffee, and sat for a couple hours writing and writing.

My goal was to create an accessible narrative memoir of my experience with surviving abuse, how art and writing made an impact on helping me alleviate symptoms of trauma and post traumatic stress disorder, and craft a section with real research in the growing field of art therapy. I wanted to be part of the conversation in the intersection of art, psychology, and advocacy.

Within 4 months, I finished an 80 page book. With the help of my incredible mentor, professor Heather Green, I was able to find out how to self publish with the funding provided by the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. The book will be available on Amazon and other platforms.

Audio Transcript
My dad always said that there are worse things than being alone. I did not believe him until I suffered through 11 months of “worse things’- which was being in an abusive relationship. These worse things spiraled and the only thing that I could find was that I had lost myself.

How do we discern truth when we are lost in the labyrinths of our own realities?
How do we return to our roots when we have lost all hope?

The Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research at George Mason University granted me the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program grant, with my ambitious proposal of writing a book. In one semester.
Starting in January 2023, I began to scour through my artworks and writings from 2020 until present.
Every week, I took my laptop to the local coffee shop, got some coffee, and sat for a couple hours writing and writing.

My goal was to create an accessible narrative memoir of my experience with surviving abuse, how art and writing made an impact on helping me alleviate symptoms of trauma and post traumatic stress disorder, and craft a section with real research in the growing field of art therapy. I wanted to be part of the conversation in the intersection of art, psychology, and advocacy.

Within 4 months, I finished an 80 page book. With the help of my incredible mentor, professor Heather Green, I was able to find out how to self publish with the funding provided by the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. The book will be available on Amazon and other platforms.

Categories
College of Humanities and Social Science OSCAR

Breaking the Walls: Geospatial Patterns in the Islamic State’s Use of Strategic Soft Targeting

Author(s): Delaney Soliday

Mentor(s): Laura Sauls, Global Affairs Program

Abstract
This project analyzes geospatial patterns in the Islamic State’s (IS) use of strategic soft targeting (SST) over time. The Islamic State and its affiliate groups are particularly well-known for using this tactic to target vulnerable communities-a term I use to describe individuals with little to no control over their own physical mobility, including prisoners, detained individuals, internally displaced persons, and refugees. This work examines how the Islamic State’s use of strategic soft targeting has changed diachronically and geographically and how that trend is affecting vulnerable communities across the Middle East and Africa. This study maps trends in the IS’s attacks on prisons, detention centers, and IDP/refugee camps over the past 16 years and contextualizes this data within larger terrorism trends. In this study, I (1) use hot spot analysis to identify trends in attack distribution and (2) conduct a geographic case study of SST activity in the Lake Chad Basin countries. Using ArcGIS Pro to analyze an original dataset constructed for this study, I found that terrorist activity is likely expanding beyond the Middle East and intensifying in sub-Saharan Africa, where groups have access to terrorist safe havens in undergoverned spaces. Most documented strategic soft targeting activity is taking place in the quadripoint border region where Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria meet.
Audio Transcript
Slide 1: My name is Delaney Soliday and today I’ll be presenting my GLOA honor’s project, “Breaking the Walls: Geospatial Patterns in the Islamic State’s Use of Strategic Soft Targeting.” This project was also completed as a part of OSCAR’s Undergraduate Research Scholars Program.

Slide 2: In this study, I asked three primary research questions:
1. How have trends in terrorist attacks on vulnerable communities changed over time?
2. How have trends in terrorist attacks on civilians changed spatially?
3. How do patterns in terrorist attacks on detained populations compare with patterns of attacks on IDPs and refugees?

Slide 3: One of the key concepts I discuss in this study is what I call “strategic soft targeting.’ I define this term as “terrorist attacks on civilians with limited control over their own mobility.’ These types of vulnerable civilian communities include internally displaced persons, refugees, prisoners, and detained individuals.

Slide 4: These two maps compare SST activity in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. On these heat maps, the warmer a color is, the denser SST activity is in that location. It is interesting to note that much of this activity is clustered around border regions and major cities in both regions, but attack distribution in the Lake Chad Basin is much denser than it is in the Middle East.

Slide 5: This map identifies statistically significant hot spots utilizing the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic. The test revealed that most SST activity conducted by the Islamic State and its affiliate groups between 2006 and 2022 is located in the border regions where the four Lake Chad Basin countries- Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad- meet. That yellow bullseye we saw in the previous heat map is a statistically significant hot spot.

Slide 6: This map looks at the same cluster of four countries, but color codes local government areas or provinces with recorded SST activity by aggregate number of deaths. I found that each LGA saw an average of 32.5 deaths due to SST activity. A March 14, 2014, attack on the Giwa Military Barracks resulted in at least 622 deaths, though total casualties vary by source (BBC News 2014), which significantly skews the overall average deaths per LGA. That attack occurred in the local authority of Konduga, which is represented by the darkest shade of red on this map. When the Giwa attack is excluded, the average number of deaths drops to 18.67. This figure confirmed that the highest numbers of deaths are also occurring in the region with the highest numbers of SST attacks on civilian targets.

Slide 7: My analysis resulted in four primary findings.
• Terrorist attacks on civilians are, on average, three times deadlier in sub-Saharan Africa than they are in the Middle East and North Africa.
• Strategic soft targeting activity tends to center around 1) major population centers and 2) border regions in both the Middle East & North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
• All statistically significant hot spots of SST activity in sub-Saharan Africa are located in the border regions where the four Lake Chad Basin countries-Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad-meet. Most attacks resulting in casualties occur in this region, as well.
• Attacks on detained persons and prisoners are primarily confined to Nigeria.

My findings demonstrate that security studies scholars can better understand trends in terrorist activity using GIS methodologies. My results also have potential applications in the policymaking sphere when it comes to determining U.S. counterterrorism priorities. We have historically placed a lot of emphasis on CT operations in the Middle East, but we may need to pivot our focus to sub-Saharan Africa, where groups have much more latitude to operate in ungoverned spaces.

Slide 8: I would like to thank my two project advisors, Dr. Sauls and Dr. Ashley, for their support throughout the research process, as well as the Global Affairs Department and the library’s Digital Scholarship Lab. Many thanks as well to OSCAR and the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program for providing not only funding for this project, but mentorship and community.

Categories
College of Humanities and Social Science College of Science Honors College OSCAR

LGBTQ+ Representation in Education

Author(s): Cameron Hunt, Emma Ealley, Isabella Roman, Skylar Leih

Mentor(s): Toni Farris, Honors College

Abstract
There is current debate surrendering policies in primary education on whether to allow LGBTQ+ material in history and social science classes or not. Some deem it as liberal indoctrination, inappropriate for children, too difficult and complex to teach, or disrespectful to religious students and families. Others see the implementation of LGBTQ+ representation in education as productive, inclusive, diverse, and vital for students to learn in order to expand their knowledge of types of people, allow them to understand themselves and one another better, and create a supportive, accepting environment. After researching current legislation and the benefits and concerns of implementing LGBTQ+ education, as well as reading of the wants, needs, and emotions of the parties involved in this conflict. The information has been compiled into a website with blog posts detailing the effects of LGBTQ+ representation on students and parents, and how schools and policies relate to this issue. These blog posts aim to inform students, parents, school employees, and any other readers on LGBTQ+ representation in the educational system and approach it considering the concerns of both supporters and deniers equally.
Audio Transcript
Hi my name is Isabella Roman. Hi, my name is Skyler Lee. I’m Cameron Hunt and not present with us today but editing our video is Emma Ealley. So, in our Honors 130 project we were assigned to research an identity conflict because our class is Resolving Identity Conflict and so the topic we chose to do is LGBTQ plus Representation in Education. So, there’s current debate in the United States right now on the representation of the LGBTQ plus community in local education should be promoted or avoided altogether. Studies showed that students feel safer when seeing their identities represented in school curriculum but there is parent and administration pushback due to conflicting values. So, many teachers feel hesitant to approach the topic because it could have a very significant impact on their careers, so this conflict mainly boils down to conformity versus diversity and identity and self-expression. In our conflict analysis we identified main interests and needs as well as positions. So in our interests and needs we identified things like self-expression, representation, conformity and autonomy as well as things like access to information, healthcare, and safety. We identified major positions being Pro-LGBTQ plus representation groups, Anti-LGBTQ plus representation groups and third parties. All right and now we move on to the categorization and complexity of the parties involved. In this slide we’ve included the grassroots level of parties involved such as parents, students, and teachers and more. Each group can essentially be split into Pro-LGBTQ plus supporters and Anti-LGBTQ plus supporters, however parents hold the most variation in terms of relevant positions for this conflict. It should be considered that there are parents who may have children who are part of the LGBTQ plus community and this may affect their positions, priorities, and interests. Next slide please. And as you can probably tell, the situation is very complex. There are many ways to break down the parties and each have their own needs wants and desires, although these mostly overlap. There’s also division within those parties due to different patterns of thinking and the knowledge that they have on various topics. This would be due to cognitive bias, which essentially means that your brain is confronted with two very different perceived truths and thus, cannot decide which is actually true. Positioning is whichever side the a person chooses to align with in a particular conflict. And cognitive bias and positioning in an argument lead to dehumanization on both sides there are the immediate biases that are based on emotion but there are also deeper biases that lead someone to disregard information that does not fit with what they already know or believe about something. All this leads to one side being considered less than human for their beliefs and position which is dehumanization. Next slide please. Our group has created a conflict map for our project that includes the other parties involved, more than just the grassroots parties listed in our conflict analysis. this map includes the middle-range and top-range leaders as well as the parties of the grassroots we already mentioned as well as delving into each party’s interests, needs, values, and rights, which is linked in our website. Next slide please. Alrighty, to address this situation we came up with an advocacy plan. Our plan was to create a blog educating the public on the importance and key elements of LGBTQ plus representation in primary education. As a result, we created this website on Google sites; we had four blog posts “How to Implement LGBTQ Representation,” “The Importance of Representation,” “The Role of Parents”nd “Schools and Curriculums.” The main goal of this was for people, at least a couple people, to read it and just kind of understand the other view, even if they don’t necessarily agree, just to understand that this topic is a lot more complex than it looks on the surface. As a result, one of the biggest challenges for this situation as a whole was trying to remain neutral. We all hold an opinion on this, we’re all cognitively biased towards one party, and so to be able to split those apart and write concisely in a neutral position was very hard. although it did allow us to learn to mediate between others in ways that involve all of the parties involved. And that was our project for our student advocacy. Thank you so much for watching!
Categories
College of Engineering and Computing OSCAR

A Continued Study of Manufacturing Methods for PEEK/HA

Author(s): Elijah Pointer

Mentor(s): Dr. Shaghayegh Bagheri, Volgenau School of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering)

Abstract
Polyether ether ketone (PEEK) possesses characteristics such as biocompatibility, non-toxicity, radiolucency, corrosion resistance, incredible toughness, rigidity, and an elastic modulus similar to bone, all of which make it a promising material for orthopedics. Despite its many favorable qualities, pure PEEK must be supplemented with a compound like Hydroxyapatite (HA) to boost its otherwise low osteogenic capabilities. The only difficulty with utilizing PEEK/HA composite material is the elaborate process required to manufacture it. This research is a continued study of different methods to produce PEEK/HA for orthopedic usage.
Audio Transcript
Hello, my name is Elijah Pointer and my research this semester was a continued study of manufacturing methods for PEEK/HA under Dr. Bagheri.

In this video, I will first explain what PEEK/HA is and how it can be applied. Next, I will describe the filament extrusion process and different manufacturing methods of the material. Lastly, I will provide my results, difficulties, and progress since last semester.

*
PEEK/HA is a composite material composed of polyether ether ketone and hydroxyapatite. In short, a composite material is a combination of different materials with the intent of combining or improving specific attributes.

PEEK is a high performance polymer with characteristics such as, but not limited to: biocompatibility, non-toxicity, radiolucency, and a bone-like elastic modulus. One of its few drawbacks is its inherent biological inertness. Supplementing it with an additive such as HA, however, reduces PEEK’s inertness and can encourage bone growth.

This in particular opens up the possibilities of utilizing PEEK/HA in orthopedics, and, given its plasticity, even 3D printing bone scaffolds and implants. This could be used to repair bones as you can see in the image on the left. A basic, but real 3D printed PEEK scaffold is shown on the right.

To use PEEK/HA material in 3D prints, the composite material is often made into pellets and drawn into filament using an extruder such as this one. Pellets are dropped into the funnel, where an auger pushes them further into the barrel, where they are melted down and pushed out of the nozzle as a thin filament.

The first manufacturing method I employed to create PEEK/HA material was dry mixing. This method involves mixing the PEEK pellets with HA powder one to two times at 3000 rpm for 30 seconds. I would then extrude the pellets into filament.

The second method, re-extrusion, is really just an extension of dry mixing. Basically, I would create the dry mixed filament but then cut it into pellet sized pieces and run them through the extruder one to two more times to better mix the composite material.

In situ was the final method I employed. Unlike dry mixing, the in situ method chemically forms PEEK/HA in one go. As such, it is the most complex and time consuming of the three. It involves adding various compounds into a heated mixture and gradually increasing the temperature until the solution is formed. It is then poured out into a tray and broken into extrudable pieces.

Each method aimed to improve the thoroughness of the PEEK/HA mixture at the cost of time and simplicity. The original goal of my research was to 3D print mechanically testable samples using each method, but given the inherent difficulty of extruding and printing with a high melting point thermoplastic, I spent most of this semester just trying to print dry mixed samples.

The image on the left details cylindrical PEEK compression samples which I printed for practice before using the composite material. This allowed me to get a better understanding of the intricacies of 3D printing with PEEK before beginning the process with PEEK/HA. The image on the right details my two closest attempts at creating rectangular prism PEEK/HA compression samples. The one on the left failed during printing due to a section of the extruded filament diameter being too large for the 3D printer to use. The one on the right experienced a similar problem in addition to gaps in the layers likely due to the problematic diameter again or uneven cooling.

Overall, practice with regular PEEK filament and utilization of better adhesive techniques brought me one step closer to printing a complete and testable sample compared to the previous semester. However, when I continue this project this coming summer, I might consider using an automated filament winder to obtain a more consistent diameter. I also want to investigate the effects of speed on the quality of the prints as well.

Thank you.

Categories
College of Engineering and Computing College of Science OSCAR

Slot Blot Assay as Method for Testing Sensitivity and Specificity of Antibodies

Author(s): Ewen Crunkhorn

Mentor(s): Caroline Hoemann, Department of Bioengineering

Abstract
Lectin-like oxidized LDL receptor-1 (Lox-1) was recently reported as a marker for myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in the blood circulation of patients with lung disease and COVID-19-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In previous studies, however, there were numerous inconsistencies in the expression pattern of Lox-1, with a variety of commercially available antibodies. This study utilized a slot blot approach to identify antibodies with a specific and high affinity binding to the extracellular and intracellular domains of Lox-1 (ECD and ICD, respectively). In the slot blot assay, protein samples are drawn under vacuum onto PVDF-F membrane then subjected to immunodetection with a horseradish peroxidase-based detection method. Recombinant Lox-1 ECD protein (BioTechne), recombinant Lox-1 ECD with RIPA and Laemmli, and ICD peptide (Biomatik) were used at 3 different concentrations as positive controls, and BSA was included as a negative control. HL60 cells, which were found by our laboratory to express negligible levels of Lox-1, and HEK293 cells expressing abundant levels of full-length Lox-1 protein were used to determine specificity of the antibodies for endogenous Lox-1 protein. Five antibodies previously used in research were tested using these negative (BSA, HL60 extract) and positive controls (recombinant protein, HEK293-Lox-1+ extract, primary antibody). Overall, this slot blot assay shows promise as a quick, qualitative way to determine antibody specificity and sensitivity. More refinement is required to ensure that all samples are properly placed onto the membrane.
Audio Transcript
Hello, my name is Ewen Crunkhorn, and my research project was on validating the slot blot assay as a method for testing sensitivity and specificity of commercial antibodies.

The lab I did my experiment with was studying Lox-1 expression in Covid-19 immune response, specifically in immune suppressive cells. However, during experimentation different antibodies showed conflicting molecular weights, and upon further literature review, these molecular weights were supported in studies that used a specific antibody, but were still in conflict across antibodies. As such, we sought a way to show the specificity and sensitivity of an antibody to Lox-1. The slot blot was identified as a potential avenue for validation.

We chose a variety of factors as follows. Two versions of the extracellular domain, or ECD (one denatured to show potential conformational bindings) and one version of the intracellular domain, or ICD, at 3 concentrations to test for sensitivity. Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) , a bovine protein, and cell extracts shown to have negligible amounts of Lox-1 were used as negative controls, while the antibody itself and cell extracts shown to contain high levels of full length Lox-1 were used as positive controls.

Here we have the ICD antibody results. The first antibody is from ThermoFisher, and only a very faint band of the antibody positive control is seen, so it would have to be retested at higher concentrations. The second is Abcam, and shows even binding to the cell extracts, but only faint binding to the ICD. This would also have to be retested as the positive control band is not visible, but does suggest that the antibody is more sensitive to other protein species. Finally the Biorbyt antibody showed very high recognition of the ICD peptide and positive control. It also bound to both cell extracts, though much fainter.

Here we have the two ECD antibodies. The Biotechne antibody shows only faint binding at the highest non-denatured ECD concentration, which suggest a conformational binding to Lox-1. The Sigma antibody only shows binding the negative control cell extracts, suggesting that it recognizes a species other than Lox-1. Both would need to be retested as the positive control bands are not visible.

In conclusion, the slot blot shows promise as a method to validate commercial antibodies for laboratory use, but needs refinement for publication data.

Categories
College of Humanities and Social Science OSCAR

Migration as the Foundation for Political Attitudes in Hong Kong

Author(s): Gabriel Yu

Mentor(s): Byunghwan Son, Global Affairs

Abstract
Much of the established literature on Hong Kong’s political culture is myopic in sociohistorical scope. Commonly-cited forces which inform the political attitudes of Hong Kongers, typically characterized as liberal and democratic, include exposure to Western liberal values via British colonial rule and Mainland China’s pervasive influence as a former neighbor and present sovereign. While these are still relevant factors to consider in any analysis of contemporary Hong Kong politics, to consider them as preeminent in the formation of Hong Kong’s political culture unfortunately overlooks finer details such as the social makeup and origin of Hong Kong’s population and the pluralism present among political attitudes. This paper thus presents a novel view of political socialization in Hong Kong. Underpinning the modern political culture of Hong Kong is the refugee and migrant origin found in the majority of the territory’s population. In Hong Kong, refugee status is often synonymous with political apathy, but in this paper that notion is qualified to a considerable degree. Combining qualitative historical-conceptual analysis and empirical survey data, this paper argues that migrant and refugee influx is what provided the foundation for a postmaterialist development of Hong Kong’s modern political culture and its preference for liberal democratic values.
Audio Transcript
Hello, my name is Gabriel Yu. I’m a Global Affairs major at George Mason University, and my URSP project tackles a question which I’ve been meaning to answer for quite some time. Hong Kong is well-known for its history of mass protest demonstrations. Hong Kongers also strongly support liberal democratic values, and many of their protests have revolved around such values. But how did Hong Kong society come to be like this? Was it the British, their former colonizers, who introduced these values? Has China, which regained sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997, played a role in fueling animosity among Hong Kongers? While I don’t discredit the impact Hong Kong’s colonial past has had on the city’s relationship with China, I think the origins of Hong Kong’s political attitudes actually lie in the very nature of its society’s formation and evolution. What makes Hong Kong quite unique, having few similar cases in this regard, is that its very essence is colonial. When the British gained Hong Kong in 1841, they were also creating Hong Kong. So over the course of its 180 years of history, Hong Kong’s population has grown from a measly few thousand to nearly seven and a half million people. These people had to come from somewhere, and the vast majority of them trace their origins to China. How strongly Hong Kongers feel connected to China is another matter to discuss, but what this means is that nearly all Hong Kongers today either have migrant or refugee origins or are themselves migrants or refugees. So how did Hong Kongers go from starving refugees and wealth-driven migrants to politically-engaged citizens? Through my analysis of the relevant literature, I have found that in leaving China to settle in Hong Kong, people were essentially seeking wealth and/or safety. For much of Hong Kong’s history, China was a very difficult place to live. It has had to deal with violent social uprisings, invasion, and civil war, among many other issues. In Hong Kong, people were largely kept safe from these issues. But while life in Hong Kong was certainly easier than life in China, there was still no democracy in the British colony, and colonial officials largely kept their focus on generating income, not attending to the needs of the population. It was only in the 1970s when the colonial government, under Governor Murray MacLehose, began to take proactive efforts to make Hong Kong a better place to live. Democracy was also slowly being introduced into Hong Kong during this time, and the idea of democracy was not falling on deaf ears in the case of Hong Kongers. By the 1980s and 90s, Hong Kongers were wealthier and more well-educated than they had ever been, notwithstanding persistent issues such as income inequality. The point is, in order to protect the way of life they’ve acquired in Hong Kong, one which was nearly impossible to get in China, the people of Hong Kong must have democracy so that they can rule themselves. As political scientist Ma Ngok says in his 2011 article Value Changes and Legitimacy Crisis in Post-industrial Hong Kong, “the democrats’ major argument for the necessity of democracy after 1997 was that it is the best system to guarantee autonomy, freedom, and rule of law. In other words, a popularly elected government was more likely to stave off intervention from Beijing and defend Hong Kong’s way of life.” But since true democracy has never been implemented in Hong Kong, its people have habitually turned to protest to express their desires. As Australian journalist Antony Dapiran wrote in his 2017 book “City of Protest”, “protests have always had at their core anxiety about Hong Kong’s identity.” Furthermore, survey data from 2018 by the World Value Survey indicates that for the most part, democratic rule is considered to be important by most Hong Kongers. To conclude, I want to point out that Hong Kong remains an unconventional case within democratization literature. Although it possesses the societal foundation for democratization, as I have uncovered, its colonial past left democratization incomplete, and Chinese rule today has been far from diligent in completing this task. The people of Hong Kong have never been in control of their own political fate, and it remains to be seen whether their wishes, whatever they encompass, will eventually be granted. Thank you for watching.
Categories
College of Science Honors College OSCAR

Behavioural Analysis of Asian Elephants at Smithsonian National Zoo

Author(s): Gwendolyne Fields

Mentor(s): David Luther, College of Science

Abstract
Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are classified as endangered species by the IUCN, facing major threats of habitat loss and human-elephant conflicts. With one-third of their population in a human-care setting, research among these environments is important to enable the species’ survival and hopeful reintroduction to the wild. The Smithsonian National Zoo houses seven Asian elephants: six females, Kamala, Bozie, Maharani, Swarna, Trong Nhi and Nhi Linh and one male, Spike. The newest addition to the herd, Trong Nhi and her daughter Nhi Linh arrived from the Rotterdam Zoo in November. To help them adapt to their environment and new herd, I observed and categorized their behaviors through video recordings on the ZooMonitor camera system. I observed 15 hours of video footage, with behaviors marked on an ethogram every four minutes that passed during the observation time. Specifically, Trong Nhi demonstrated stress behaviors, which we investigated when and why this was occurring. Preliminary results indicated that Trong Nhi demonstrated the stress behavior “head bob” before 12:00pm. Although some hours were collected on focusing between the hours 6:30-12:30 pm, there was insufficient data to determine the significance of why it occurred. Future studies will assess the environment around Trong Nhi leading up to the stress behavior which will help better care for her. This can also help the animal team determine when to attempt for Spike and Trong Nhi or Nhi Linh to mate which would be an important step in the conservation of the species.
Audio Transcript
Hi my name is Gwendolyne Fields and you’re joining me here today at Smithsonian’s National Zoo, currently at the Elephant Barn House.

You can join me inside to meet some of the elephants. Here we have Nhi Linh and Trong Nhi, mother and daughter, 19 years old and 9 years old. For my OSCAR Research project, I focused on them and their behaviour.

To tell you more about the elephants here at Smithsonian’s National Zoo, we have seven elephants. So we have six females and one male, Spike. Our other females along with Trong Nhi and Nhi Lhin are Kamala, Rani or Maharani, we also have Swarna and Bozie. These girls came to us in November and they are from Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands. And that’s why I focused on them because we do not know much about their behaviours and it was really important for us to better their care if we understood more about their behaviours themselves.

So to talk more about my research project, I ended up focusing on the stress behaviour that Trong Nhi was showing. She basically would raise her head up and do a big yawn or bob her head. So we wanted to look more into that and see why that was occurring and when it was happening. So we did a preliminary research portion where we looking at video footages for a day and split it between two hours within different parts of the day to see what time of day would she maybe show this behaviour.

So to give you an idea about what the day is like working with the animal keepers. We start off our day feeding the elephants at 6:30 in the morning and then we start cleaning the enclosures, meaning picking up poop and cleaning drinkers, as you can see in this video. The animal keepers do their health checks on the elephants to make sure there are no injuries and they all seem in good condition. Once we have our lunch break, we feed them again with bamboos and green vegetables and fill up on their hay. This is what I help with once a week, on top of doing my research project.

So as you can see here, this is a video of Trong Nhi and Nhi Lihn first meeting Spike. One of the reasons that the girls came to the Zoo here is to eventually get them to mate with Spike. Further along the research, the behaviours seen with other members of the herd, including Spike would be very beneficial.

The data of Trong Nhi and Nhi Lhin were collected through an ethogram, essentially a spreadsheet of the different behaviors that were observed for the elephants. When doing the video footage, I used the ZooMonitor Camera System and was able to view footages of the elephants for up to 2 months in the past.

With the time I had during the semester on top of going to the zoo once a week, I was only able to look through 15 hours of footage during two days. This obviously was not enough to establish a real connection between the stress behavior that Trong Nhi was demonstrating and what was causing it, but we did notice that Trong Nhi demonstrated her stress behavior during earlier parts of the day, before 12:00 pm.

Overall, we have a better idea of when we should maybe pay more attention to this stress behavior and have the team come up with a solution to better her care. Thank you for watching, I hope you guys enjoyed your day at the zoo with the Elephants at Smithsonian.

Categories
College of Engineering and Computing OSCAR

Modeling the relationship between regulated and unregulated disinfectant-by-products (DBPs) and other difficult-to-measure DBP classes

Author(s): Isaac Amouzou

Mentor(s): Ben Seiyon Lee, Department of Statistics

Abstract
Disinfectant byproducts or DBPs for short are chemical compounds that form when disinfectants in water (ex: chlorine) react with natural organic matter. Chronic DBP exposure can cause significant negative health effects, such as bladder cancer, colon cancer, and pregnancy complications. DBP exposure is difficult to measure so a surrogate is needed to model DBP exposure. The surrogate often used is Trihalomethanes (THMs) but THMs have previously been shown to not be proportional to other DBPs that drive toxicity. This study developed statistical models to evaluate the relationship of a wide array of co-occurring DBPs with other more difficult-to-measure classes of DBPs (haloacetic acids-5 (HAA5), haloacetic acids-6 (HAA6), haloacetonitriles (HANs), and haloketones (HKs)) from a dataset containing over 13,000 measurements from 295 different public water systems. Using feature selection methods such as Lasso regression, this study found that linear mixed models hierarchically grouped by public water systems that took into account combinations of DBPs such as trichloromethane (TCM), trichloroacetaldehyde (TCAL), and trichlorophenol (TCP) (among other DBPs) along with categorical variables like the type of source water, season, disinfectant sequence, and sample location could explain as high as ~95% of the variance in some of the DBP classes. These models show that when considering the water treatment plant and key categorical variables the concentrations of unregulated and hard-to-measure DBPs can be properly modeled with easier-to-measure DBPs.
Audio Transcript
Hello, I am Isaac Amouzou, and I will be presenting my OSCAR URSP research, Modeling the relationship between regulated and unregulated disinfectant-by-products (DBPs) and other difficult-to-measure DBP classes.

What are DBPs?
Disinfectant byproducts or DBPs for short are chemical compounds that form when disinfectants in water react with natural organic matter.
Chronic DBP exposure can cause significant negative health effects, such as bladder cancer, colon cancer, and pregnancy complications.
A person can be exposed to DBPs through highly disinfected water sources, for example, chlorine interacting with organic matter in water. To ensure drinking water safety, it is imperative that DBP levels in public water sources be properly monitored.

Unfortunately, DBP exposure is difficult to measure directly. Instead, epidemiologists have been using Trihalomethanes or THMs, which are easier to measure, as a surrogate for DBP exposure. This was because it was believed that THM concentrations are proportional to concentrations of other DBP classes.
A previous study examined the link between THMs and a DBP class Haloacetonitrile or HANs using over 9500 measurements from 248 public water systems. This study found that THMs could only explain 30% of the variance in HAN concentrations.

For the project, we wanted to create a statistical framework to model the concentrations of hard-to-measure unregulated DBPs that drive toxicity using a wide array of co-occurring DBPs.
We also wanted to take into account the public water system (PWS) of origin for the measurements.

The data used is from the Information Collection Request database from the environmental protection agency or EPA. The dataset has more than 13,000 measurements from 295 public water systems.

For models, Linear mixed models or LMMs were used. LMMs are useful for data with high variability between groups. And in this specific case, the variability between public water systems can be considered.
LMMs allow estimation of the fixed effects (ex: DBP concentration or categorical variables) that can be measured while accounting for the variability among groups (ex: Public Water System) with random effects.

For variable selection, LASSO regression was used, which allows us to select important variables using a penalization approach with a tuning parameter, lambda.
as you can see on the top graph here as we increase lambda the coefficients tend towards 0
and in the bottom graph you can see how we select lambda, by running LASSO regression with multiple lambdas and measuring the mean squared error, which is a metric used to evaluate prediction accuracy.
We select all DBPs that have nonzero coefficients.

Multiple model structures were tested against the selected model structure (Full LMM)
The metrics used to evaluate models included AIC and BIC which are for comparing Goodness of fit (lower is better)
Conditional R-squared which measures the proportion of variance of the response explained by the model. (higher is better)
RMSE which is for comparing prediction accuracy.

We found that for four different DBP classes (haloacetic acids-5 haloacetic acids-6, haloacetonitriles, and haloketones), we can model a significant amount of the variance with a unique group of DBPs when we take into account the water system and key categorical variables.
In the upcoming summer, we plan to conduct an in-depth missing analysis of data and prepare new models for better estimation of the concentrations using the information gained from this model. We also further plan to develop a methodology to classify at-risk water treatment systems.

This is my work cited and thank you for listening to my presentation.