Category: Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) – OSCAR

College of Humanities and Social Science Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

African American Spirituals, Racism, and Values: The Significance of Music in Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’ Of One Blood

Author(s): Kaden Vultaggio

Mentor(s): Professor Samaine Lockwood, English Department

https://youtu.be/xs7ZoeSTHBI

In Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’ “Of One Blood,” Hopkins represented the struggle of African American musicians in the post-Civil War United States; there was a struggle between these musicians and the established white musical community. Hopkins lacked support from her stage manager Charles Hicks, a manager who advertised her performances alongside blackface minstrelsy shows (Brown 143). To represent this struggle, Hopkins used the characters of Dianthe Lusk, Aubrey Livingston, and Reuel Briggs. Dianthe represents the African American female soloist, Aubrey represents the established white musical community and audience, and Reuel represents the African American community by finding his identity. In this research project, I delve into textual examples of music in connection with African American identity and memory. To further this, I connect historical examples from Pauline Hopkins’ life to the text to provide cultural context.

SLIDE 1: Hello! I will be presenting on my OSCAR sponsored project titled “African American Spirituals, Racism, and Values: The Significance of Music in Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’
Of One Blood.” My name is Kaden Vultaggio, and my mentor is Prof. Samaine Lockwood from George Mason University’s English Department.

SLIDE 2: As a summary of my project, I researched the novel “Of One Blood” and its connection to the life of its author, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Before beginning, I started with two research questions in mind: “What does Pauline Hopkins’ novel, “Of One Blood,” add to the conversation in the post-Civil War United States about cultural values surrounding African American spirituals? How does this affect African American identity and community?” In post-Civil War America, African American musicians had to navigate an established white musical community with systemic racism. This racism could be seen in the popularity of minstrelsy performances, something which Hopkins had to work against in her career in theatre and musical productions. As an African American female soloist, Hopkins represents her reality through the characters of Dianthe Lusk, Aubrey Livingston, and Reuel Briggs.

SLIDE 3: This project is important to understanding the cultural and historical context behind the novel “Of One Blood.” Through this research, students and scholars can gain a better understanding of how this work reflected the life experiences of African American musicians in this time. In media and music, communities can find representation and a voice.

SLIDE 4: To answer my research question, I began by performing research at the Library of Congress, reading scholarly journals related to the novel, and read a biography on Pauline Hopkins’ life. I also attended the Northeastern Modern Language Association Convention to gain professional experience in the scholarly field. When I visited the Library of Congress, I focused on listening to recordings of minstrelsy performances from the time. In my research on Hopkins herself, I found out about her beginnings in the post-Civil War musical industry.

SLIDE 5: What I found is that Hopkins was greatly influenced by her peers but also her experiences with minstrelsy. According to Lois Brown’s biography, Hopkins struggled with a manager by the name of Charles Hicks. Hicks advertised her performances alongside minstrelsy shows, which Hopkins viewed as low brow entertainment. In her performances, such as her work titled “Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad,” Hopkins worked directly against racist stereotypes and narratives present in those minstrelsy performances. “Of One Blood” is a manifestation of Hopkins’ frustration with this established white musical community and audience.

SLIDE 6: In the novel, Dianthe Lusk represents the African American female soloist, an experience that Hopkins could relate to. Dianthe loses her memories and is repeatedly silenced by Aubrey Livingston. From the beginning, Aubrey viewed Dianthe’s music as a “departure” from established music; he establishes himself as the white audience through this perception. Aubrey, a white man who claims to be the friend of the protagonist Reuel, manipulates Dianthe into marrying him and forces Reuel away on an expedition to Meroe, Ethiopia. Reuel is also struggling with his identity as he hides the fact that he is African American from the other students at their college.

SLIDE 7: Throughout the novel, Dianthe’s identity and memory is connected to music. She is unable to sing after losing her memories yet regains the ability after Aubrey informs her of her past. When Reuel returns from Ethiopia, triumphant and reconnected with his identity as secret royalty, he returns with a musical march. As Dianthe lay dying, a condition caused by Aubrey forcing her to drink her own poison for him, her identity and memories are returned to her from Ethiopia. Ai, Reuel’s councilor from Meroe, forces Aubrey to sleep through song and the novel ends in Aubrey’s murder. Through this, Hopkins envisions a musical community without the disparity caused by systemic racism.

SLIDE 8: For future discussions, I would like to explore how these characters or events could be reflective of figures Hopkins knew in her life besides her experiences with Charles Hicks. This could provide an avenue for further research.

SLIDE 9: On this slide, I have listed my resources that I have used for this project. I would like to thank the OSCAR Program for their assistance with the URSP funding. I would also like to thank my mentor, Prof. Samaine Lockwood. Thank you to Barb Gomperts from the GMU English Department. From the Library of Congress, I would also like to thank David Sager and Bryan Cornell for their help finding recordings. Thank you for listening to this presentation. If you have any questions about my research or findings, please feel free to contact me for further discussion. Thank you!

Annual Virginia Emissions Data Via EPA MOVES Model

Author(s): Ryah Nadjafi

Mentor(s): Lucas Henneman, Civil and Infrastructure Engineering

The MOtor Vehicle Emissions Simulator (MOVES) model is an emissions modeling system produced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that estimates mobile source emissions for criteria air pollutants, greenhouse gases, and air toxics. Results can be produced at the national, county, or project level. MOVES combines emissions factors (processed by state-provided data in MOVES) and meteorological data to produce county-level emissions totals. For off-road vehicle data, a national emissions database provided by the EPA is processed in MOVES to produce annual county-level emissions outputs. MOVES data can then be processed in R Studio to produce a visualization, competitively mapping annual emissions amounts in each Virginia county to produce a map of the state.

Today I’ll be walking through how I used the Environmental Protection Agency’s MOVES model to estimate annual emissions for relevant pollutants, as well as show some visualizations produced from the outputted data from MOVES. To give some background, MOVES or the MOtor Vehicle Emissions Simulator model is an emissions modeling system produced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that estimates mobile source and off-road source emissions for criteria air pollutants, greenhouse gases, and air toxics. Results can be produced at the national, county, or project level, such as down to a road or bridge. In my case, it is most relevant to look at the county level in order to analyze total emissions for select pollutants in the state of Virginia. For example, if we want data for the year of 2011 for off-road source emissions, we will first choose the nonroad scale model at the default scale. After that we would select the year 2011, we would choose all months and all days for a 24-time period. We would then choose the state of Virginia, choose all counties, and select all fuel and emissions sectors. We would choose our road type as nonroad, and these four relevant pollutants. We would define our output database, as well as input database, and aggregate the data for each Virginia county with a default aggregation time of day. We would then execute the run. This is an example of what data output may look like if we had analyzed the year 2011 for the total annual emissions for particulate matter 2.5. You have the year ID on the leftmost column, and next to that is the FIPs county ID for each Virginia county, where each of these 5-digit codes correlate to a Virginia county, and then the total annual emissions for that county measured in tons. This is an example of what the MOVES data can be used to create. This is a visualization of total annual PM2.5 emissions for off-road sources for each Virginia county created via R Studio. Each shade of red represents the amount of Pm2.5 emissions comparatively between each county, with the darkest shades of red representing some the highest annual emissions in the state.

College of Science Honors College Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

BAX Inhibitor-1 suppresses Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) and Protein stress

Author(s): Isabella Meerzaman

Mentor(s): Dr. Geraldine Grant, Biology

Rationale: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis causes chronic inflammation and permanent scarring of the lungs due to the presence of excessive senescent fibroblasts which are resistant to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and oxidative stress. The unfolded protein response (UPR) resolves excessive ER stress caused by unfolded protein. IRE1

For my project I looked at the role BAX-1 plays in suppressing ER and protein stress. We wanted to explore the role of BAX-1 because of its possibility as a therapeutic target for patients with IPF. IPF is a disease that causes chronic inflammation and excessive permanent scarring of the lungs due to the presence of excessive senescent or aged fibroblasts.

If we look at center of the poster I have outline the unfolded protein response pathway This pathway is initiated when there is an excess amount of protein found in the cell. It tries to reduce the amount of unfolded protein present by increasing the amount of chaperones that can fold the new and misfolded protein. We specifically focused on the IRE1 arm of this pathway. As you can see, once IRE1a is dimerized (activated) it splices XBP1 into an active which promotes the synthesis of chaperone proteins and up-regulates pro-apoptotic genes and BIM. The increased expression of BIM and CHOP increase the expression of BAX which then expels cytochrome C into the cell and eventually lead to apoptosis. In this pathway BI-1, a pro-survival gene, is a regulator of IRE1. When BI-1 binds to IRE1 it prevents the up-regulation of chaperones and process of apoptosis since it prevents the dimerization of IRE1.
In order to evaluate the role of BAX, BI-1, and IRE1 in the cell we grew A549 lung epithelial cells and transfected them with siRNAs which silenced BI-1, IRE1, and BAX. Half of these cells were then treated with tunicamycin to observe the effects under ER stress. The results were measured through QPCR which analyzed pro-apoptotic mRNA expression and a cellTiter-Glo assay which measures for cell apoptosis or cell death.

From this we found that in the BI-1 silenced cells there was a large increase in BI-1 gene expression and decrease in the presence of chaperones and therefore a decrease in pro-apoptotic genes. In BAX silenced cells there was a decrease in pro-apototic genes and in IRE1 silenced cells there was an up-regulation of pro-apoptotic genes. We also found that BI-1 silenced cells had an increase in cell viability after the tunicamycin challenge.

We expected our data to show an increase in pro apoptotic genes in BI-1 silenced cells and a decrease in pro-apoptotic genes when IRE1 was silenced. We also believed that cells after the tunicamycin challenge there would be less viable cells for all silenced SIRNA cells.

We believe that these trends were due to the presence of an abundance of chaperones and an increased use of the other UPR arms. If there are more chaperones present then there is a smaller amount of unfolded protein in the cell so apoptosis may not have to occur if it is effectively controlled by the chaperones. The increased expression of pro apoptotic genes in iRE1 silenced cells indicates that another arm is activated and producing these genes. From this we concluded that chaperones play an important role in the regulation of protein. When less chaperones are present the cell is more likely to undergo apoptosis. effectively reduce the presence of unfolded protein and therefore reduce the unfolded protein response and the number of cells that undergo apoptosis

In the future we will replicate this experiment with IPF fibroblasts since there is a higher abundance of chaperone proteins in cancer cells compared to IPF.

Thank you for listening and thank you, Dr Lee and Dr grant for helping me out with my project.

College of Humanities and Social Science Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Building Trust using Algorithmic Transparency in Automation

Author(s): Kayla Herrera

Mentor(s): Tyler Shaw, Psychology

As technological breakthroughs advance, humans will have more interactions and relations with artificial intelligence such as self-driving cars, voice assistants, and social media in their everyday lives. With the normality of using these algorithmic interfaces comes a greater need to implement transparent design so humans will trust and utilize these smart technologies. The present study sought to investigate the transparent design of algorithmic interfaces to cultivate trust in users. Participants were randomized in a computer generator and assigned to two experimental groups: no transparency and transparency. In the no transparency condition, participants were not provided information regarding the credibility of the automated agent; whereas, in the transparency group, participants were given extensive information on how the automated agent is qualified and reliable. Participants engaged in a pattern recognition task with the aid of a computer recommendation agent that produced a high-uncertainty environment where participants decided to consider or disregard advice given to them by an automated agent. Before submission of the final answer on each trial, participants received a recommendation from the computer recommendation agent and were able to stay with their initial response or switch their answer based on the recommendation. Shortly after they made their final answer, feedback revealed the correct answer. Participants filled out a self-reported trust report before and after the task. It is expected that participants who were in the transparency condition will report higher levels of trust. Designing for user trust through transparent algorithms is significant so that users use these interfaces to their highest capability. It is important to note that there is an optimal level of transparency that systems need to provide so that users can achieve a goal under a situation of uncertainty and vulnerability. Future experimental studies should evaluate varying levels of transparency to find the optimal level of transparency.

Hello and welcome, my name is Kayla Herrera, and I am an undergraduate psychology student concentrating in cognitive behavioral neuroscience. The research I will be presenting today investigates transparent algorithms employed to foster trust in technological users. My project diverges from Dr. Tyler’s Shaw’s HEART lab in the psychology department.

Our parents taught us as children to not get in a stranger’s car for obvious reasons such as strangers may not be trustworthy, we do not know their intentions, etc. Today, companies like Uber, Lyft, and other ride sharing options have normalized our parents fear of getting into the car of a stranger. It has become common for people to trust in applications like Uber because these applications successfully foster trust. Uber uses transparency or openness for their users in their algorithm by sharing a certain amount of information like type of car, driver’s name so that users trust their application. This ability to foster trust through using clear and honest algorithms is where my research interests lie.

The present study sought to investigate the transparent design of algorithmic interfaces to cultivate trust in users. Participants were randomized in a computer generator and assigned to two experimental groups: no transparency and transparency. In the no transparency condition, participants were not provided information regarding the credibility of the automated agent; whereas, in the transparency group, participants were given extensive information on how the automated agent is qualified and reliable. Participants engaged in a pattern recognition task with the aid of a computer recommendation agent that produced a high-uncertainty environment where participants decided to consider or disregard advice given to them by an automated agent. Before submission of the final answer on each trial, participants received a recommendation from the computer recommendation agent and were able to stay with their initial response or switch their answer based on the recommendation. Shortly after they made their final answer, feedback revealed the correct answer. Participants filled out a self-reported trust report before and after the task. We are currently still investigating this study but I expect to see that the level of transparency will conclude to higher levels of trust in participants.

This is just the beginning of transparency algorithms research. It can be the turning point that educates companies, institutions, health care, and government facilities of the importance of transparency.

Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge the graduate mentors, professors, and colleagues that have patiently worked with me, believed in me to become a leader, and continued to support my future endeavors. Thank you.

College of Science Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Carbon Cycle Perturbations at the Frasnian-Famennian Boundary in the Illinois Basin, USA

Author(s): Catherine Lau

Mentor(s): Dr. Geoff Gilleaudeau, Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences

The Late Devonian extinction occurred from ~372 million years ago (Ma) to the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary ~359 Ma. The extinction is characterized as one of five major mass extinctions, as it killed 70-82% of Earth’s species. After years of research, debate for the event’s trigger continues. Positive carbon isotope excursions, measured using δ13C, are seen in many of the strata across the world from Late Devonian extinctions. Thus, this study aims to address this intricacy by providing a more complete record of carbon isotopes in the Illinois Basin to determine if the Upper Kellwasser Event is preserved in the Illinois Basin.

In this study, the samples analyzed were from the Storey Core, housed at the Illinois Geological Survey. The Storey Core is from the southeast depocenter of the Illinois Basin, and covers the Selmier and Grassy Creek members of the New Albany Shale. 30 samples were chosen from ranging from depths of 1518 – 1580 meters. Samples were powdered with a ball mill and acidified multiple times, before being analyzed for organic carbon values of δ13C (δ13C-TOC) using mass spectrometry. At ~1550m, there is a significant +2‰ excursion, similar to other positive δ13C excursions recorded for the Upper Kellwasser Event. Trace element data measured using X-ray Fluorescence support these results. δ13C-TOC values from the Kavanaugh Core – also in the southeast depocenter (~100 km northeast) – show striking similarities. These data indicate a high likelihood that the Upper Kellwasser Event is preserved in the southeast depocenter of the Illinois Basin. Molybdenum and Uranium concentrations increase, and Zirconium decreases, at the same depth as the +2‰ δ13C-TOC excursion. These may indicate expanding marine anoxia and potential marine transgression during this time. In the future, research could continue to investigate other parts of the Storey Core and their relation to Late Devonian events.

Hello, my name is Catherine Lau I’m a geology major and today I’m here to talk about our project which is titled “Carbon Cycle Perturbations at the Frasnian-Famennian Boundary in the Illinois Basin”.

Since the Cambrian Explosion began about 540 million years ago, there have been many extinction events, five of which have been deemed as the most severe. Unfortunately, some scientists have suggested that we are at the beginning of another mass extinction. This is mainly due to rapid biodiversity loss which is linked to anthropogenic climate change. So clearly it’s very important to continue developing an understanding of HOW these types of events can happen, and this leads to me to our project, which is about the Late Devonian mass extinction.

The Devonian was a period in Earth’s history that lasted from about 420 to 360 million years ago, during which many physical and biological changes happened on Earth. It was a really interesting time, with some of these changes including the appearance of forests and soils*, as well as the evolution and expansion of marine invertebrates such as corals.

In the Late Devonian, however, there was a mass extinction which killed about 70% species, and this included a lot of marine life on Earth. However, this extinction is unique because rather than occurring as a single event (which is more common), it’s been shown that the extinction happened in multiple pulses. This has led to debate over what may have triggered these events. Many recent studies on the Late Devonian extinction include marine anoxia as a part of their explanation.

Black shales are sedimentary rocks that have a high organic carbon content. Organic carbon is derived from dead animals and plants, and that’s helpful for learning about what environmental conditions may have been like at the time the rock formed.

This is measured by analyzing delta C 13, which is a ratio comparing two stable isotopes of carbon, namely Carbon 13 to Carbon 12. Carbon 13 is called the heavier isotope because it has an extra neutron. A Carbon isotope excursion is a term that’s used to describe when there is a change in the delta C 13 values. These excursions are usually linked to large changes in the environment that affect where and how carbon is stored in the Earth system. So it makes sense that a lot of the extinction events in Earth’s history coincide with observations of carbon isotope excursions, because mass extinctions tend to involve substantial changes in the composition of the ocean and atmosphere.

One way these substantial changes are observed is through the presence of marine anoxia. When a marine environment is anoxic, the absence of oxygen means the organic matter may be buried without fully decomposing. That burial of organic matter removes the lighter carbon isotopes, Carbon 12, and enriches the oceans with Carbon 13, which over time can be preserved in sediments.

There are two main events in the Late Devonian extinction, known as the Kellwasser Event and the Hangenberg Event. Within the Kellwasser Event there are two parts, but in this project, we only looked at the Upper Kellwasser Event which happened around 372 million years ago at a transition known as the Frasnian Famennian boundary.

Specifically, black shale samples taken from the Southeast depocenter of the Illinois Basin, and they were analyzed to see if the levels of Carbon 13 in those samples changed similarly to other recordings of the Upper Kellwasser Event from studies done in North America and around the world. One of the units in the Illinois Basin is the New Albany Shale, and the samples in this study were taken from a part of that unit known as the Storey Core.

The Illinois Basin was a shallow sea during the Devonian, so if the delta C 13 values changed in the samples, it may indicate that the environment was anoxic when the sediments were deposited.

To analyze this, first the samples had to be crushed and then powdered in a ball mill. After being acidified with Hydrochloric acid multiple times, the samples were rinsed and dried. They were then sent to UC Santa Cruz where mass spectrometry was used to get the data. 30 samples were used here, from depths of 1518 to 1580 meters.

From looking at the results on the graph, we can see that there’s a big change between the two points that are highlighted in the orange bar, around 1550 meters. Based on how quickly that amount of change is happening, as well as similar changes seen in samples from the nearby Kavanaugh Core, we think it is highly likely that these data are in fact recording the Upper Kellwasser Event.

This is also supported by trace element data for Molybdenum, Uranium, and Zirconium from the Storey Core and from the Kavanaugh Core. Additionally, the results here are also supported by international studies on Late Devonian rocks, which show similar trends in delta C 13 values.

To conclude, the results from this study show a high likelihood that the Upper Kellwasser Event is preserved in the Storey Core samples from the Illinois Basin. The data are supported by trace element data and observations from other studies, which show that this positive carbon isotope excursion may have happened during anoxic conditions in the Illinois Basin, as well as a potential rise in sea level. This is really great because not many carbon isotope excursions have been recorded in North America, so hopefully we can continue to examine Storey Core samples to learn more about the variations seen on this graph, and whether the other ones relate to a different part of the Kellwasser Event.

To wrap up, I’d like to thank my mentor Dr. Gilleaudeau, our collaborators listed here, and GMU’s Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, & Research for their generous support. Thank you for watching!

[End of transcript]
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*Please note “appearance of forests and soils” refers to emergence of soils similar to what exist on Earth today. Other types of soils existed before the development of terrestrial (land) plants.

College of Engineering and Computing Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Detailed Emissions in Virginia (DEVA)

Author(s): Zainab Syed

Mentor(s): Dr. Jenna Krall, Global and Community Health

Detailed Emissions Virginia

Air pollution’s impact on public health has been a regulatory concern in the US since the 1950s, when the first Clean Air Act was passed. Attempts to regulate and reduce emissions have been undertaken at state and federal levels since then, and the question of whether these laws consider the equity of pollution exposure is increasingly relevant as scientists have documented continuing Environmental Justice issues. This paper, part of the Detailed Emissions in Virginia (DEVA): Identifying air pollution sources for environmental justice project, performs an in-depth analysis of environmental policy passed in the state of Virginia and by the Environmental Protection Agency between 2011-2020 to explore the extent environmental justice is being discussed, monitored, or enforced. The findings of the paper suggest that within this timeframe, dialogue around environmental justice began to increase, leading to the creation of Virginia’s own Office of Environmental Justice in October 2020. Although this state office has not yet released publicly available information as to its own equity measures and criteria, there are promising signs from federal leadership through President Biden’s Executive Order 14008 for integrating environmental justice in “all of government,” that can help Virginia’s OEJ shape its equity approach. This policy analysis supports ongoing quantitative research on linking state and local policies with their impacts on emission proximity disparities in Virginia. The quantitative analysis of the DEVA project includes characterizing inequities in proximity to air pollution emissions sources throughout counties in Virginia using data from the EPA National Emissions Inventory and the MOVES mobile source emissions model. Our team is using multiple metrics such as the Atkinson Index to quantify inequities and determine how these have changed over time.

Take a deep breath. Every breath of air we take contains oxygen, but also a plethora of other chemicals, such as Nitrogen gas, Sulfur Dioxide, Particulate Matter, and Volatile Organic Compounds. Inhaling these chemicals can lead to a multitude of health problems later on if concentrations are too high. However, these concentrations are not always distributed equally or equitably. This is where the role of environmental justice comes in, to ensure that communities of lower income or minority races are not disproportionately impacted. Air pollution’s impact on public health has been a regulatory concern in the US since the 1950s, when the first Clean Air Act was passed. Attempts to regulate and reduce emissions have been undertaken at state and federal levels since then, and the question of whether these laws consider the equity of pollution exposure is increasingly relevant as scientists have documented continuing Environmental Justice issues.

The Detailed Emissions in Virginia project, also known as the DEVA project, aims at Identifying air pollution sources and performs an in-depth analysis of environmental policy passed in the state of Virginia and by the Environmental Protection Agency between 2011 to 2020 to explore the extent environmental justice is being discussed, monitored, or enforced. This was done through both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Computational modeling of air pollutant emissions trends was done using data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Emissions Inventory for the years 2011, 2014, and 2017. It also includes characterizing inequities in proximity to air pollution emissions sources throughout counties in Virginia using data from the EPA National Emissions Inventory and the MOVES mobile source emissions model. Our team is using multiple metrics such as the Atkinson Index to quantify inequities and determine how these have changed over time. The discovered trends were then compared with environmental policies from a state and federal level to determine if these regulations had an impact on overall emissions, and whether these policies discussed environmental justice or equity.

For example, the maps on the right-hand side of the poster are for total sulfur dioxide emissions for the years 2011, 2014, and 2017 based on the available National Emissions Inventory data. The counties in green indicate lower emissions while the areas in red have the highest emissions. Overall, there seems to be an increase in sulfur dioxide emissions, and more so in some counties than others. Sulfur dioxide is an especially interesting chemical to study as its interaction with other chemicals in the air can lead to more dangerous chemicals, such as particulate matter, which can pose dangerous health risks to humans and the environment later on should these emissions increase.

Given that 3 federal level and 4 state level environmental policies were passed between 2015 and 2021, this finding suggests that within this timeframe, dialogue around environmental justice began to increase, leading to the creation of Virginia’s own Office of Environmental Justice in October 2020. Although this state office has not yet released publicly available information as to its own equity measures and criteria, there are promising signs from federal leadership through President Biden’s Executive Order 14008 for integrating environmental justice in “all of government,” that can help Virginia’s OEJ shape its equity approach. This policy analysis supports ongoing quantitative research on linking state and local policies with their impacts on emission proximity disparities in Virginia.

Future goals of the DEVA project include analysis of similar maps developed for Particular Matter 2.5, Nitrogen dioxide, and volatile organic compounds to understand environmental policies along with expanded access to data on pollution emissions and environmental equity through creation of a Shiny App. Thank you for the opportunity to present the DEVA project.

College of Engineering and Computing Honors College Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Detailed Emissions in Virginia (DEVA): Measuring Inequity Using the Atkinson Index

Author(s): Sara Alhassani

Mentor(s): Dr. Jenna Krall, Public Health

Air pollution is a pressing issue, harming the environment and the people living in it. Even more concerning is that air pollution exposure disproportionally affects people of color and low-income populations. These groups are more likely to be exposed to pollution and experience harmful health effects. Particulate matter (PM) is known to cause health complications on the lungs and heart from exposure and inhalation. Policymakers and emission standard regulations need thorough data and research to guide the implementation of regulations to reduce the harm caused by air pollution. To help solve this issue, the “Detailed Emissions in Virginia: Identifying Air Pollution Sources for Environmental Justice” project seeks to provide data on pollutant and inequity in exposure for all counties in Virginia to be used in regulation development. In particular, the Atkinson Index is used to quantify inequity between racial and ethnic groups including Non-Hispanic or Latino White, Black or African American, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino. Combining 2011 NEI data on PM 2.5 emissions and 2010 Decennial Census data on race/ethnicity populations, the Atkinson Index is applied to determine the inequity for two values of epsilon, an inequality parameter. This subanalysis yielded that between the sectors of Wildfires, Coal Combustion in Industrial Broilers, and Diesel Heavy Duty Vehicles, inequity between the 4 racial/ethnic groups is shown to be at a midpoint for Wildfires and Coal Combustion. Diesel Trucks yield relatively low inequity. These results can be expanded and combined with data on other sectors and pollutants to be provided to policymakers as an all encompassing guide for reducing inequity between groups. This is crucial to protect the lives and health of vulnerable and susceptible populations.

My name is Sara Alhassani and I am a junior majoring in Applied Statistics with minors in Computational Data Sciences and Social Work. Over the past 2 semesters, I have been an undergraduate research assistant on the “Detailed Emissions in Virginia: Identifying Air Pollution Sources for Environmental Justice” project led by Dr. Henneman and Dr. Krall.

My primary focus for this project has been on measuring inequity in air pollution exposure using the Atkinson Index inequality measure.

With the alarming changes we’ve been seeing in the environment, it continues to be of utmost importance to study the environment. Researching air pollution, in particular, is crucial due to the detrimental impacts air pollution exposure has on the health of people, animals, and the earth. Increasing understanding of how air pollution impacts the world around us is used to guide and improve standards to protect everyone and everything at risk.

This presentation focuses on fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5, emissions. PM 2.5 are very small particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs and pose serious health risks.

The objective of this subsection of the DEVA project is to evaluate the inequity in air pollution exposure between different race and ethnic groups. The upcoming analysis shows inequity between White, Black or African American, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino people.

Using past studies as guidance, we decided to use the Atkinson Index to measure inequity. This measure allows analysis to be done between groups. The Atkinson Index value ranges from 0 to 1 with 0 being complete equality and 1 being maximum inequality.

To determine inequity between races, I first obtained and organized data on all counties in Virginia from the 2010 Decennial Census to estimate inequity in 2011 PM 2.5 emissions using R programming.

Next, I combined that data with clean National Emissions Inventory PM 2.5 data provided by DEVA’s engineering team. I focused on 3 pollutant sectors: wildfires, coal combustion, and diesel trucks.

After this, I manipulated the data to obtain the variables needed to run the R Atkinson Index function for two values of epsilon, and obtained the results shown in the figures.

The bar plots show that when using an epsilon value of 0.75, the Atkinson Index values between groups for all 3 sectors is small and close to 0, not indicating a lot of inequality. However, when using epsilon value of 3, which accounts for sensitive analysis, we see much different results. While Diesel stays small, the Atkinson Index value for wildfires reaches almost 0.5, with coal combustion not too far below. The change in epsilon also appears to switch wildfires and coal combustion for which has greater inequality.

These results suggest that air pollution emission regulations need to be adjusted to lower air pollution exposure inequity caused by coal combustion in industrial broilers. While wildfires yielded similar results to coal combustion, their unpredictability makes it difficult to produce legislation to prevent them. This analysis can be enhanced by looking at inequity between different income levels and education attainment, but there is limited data on these factors at the county level.

Moving forward, DEVA hopes to quantify inequity for additional sectors and pollutants, to be used to support improvements in air pollution and exposure of susceptible and vulnerable populations.

I’d like to thank both Dr. Krall and Dr. Henneman for guiding me throughout this research, as well as the Jeffrees Memorial Trust for their support.

Thank you!

College of Science Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Development of a Novel Granzyme B PET Imaging Agent for the Assessment of Cancer Immunotherapy Efficacy

Author(s): Ralston Smith

Mentor(s): Dr. Lee Solomon, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Immuno-oncology is an increasingly popular area of interest to scientists and the development of combination checkpoint inhibitor therapies have introduced new research questions. Specifically, determining who will respond positively to treatment is currently only possible after the administering of treatment and the methods employed are typically invasive. Furthermore, up to half of negative responders to immuno-oncology treatment have the potential to experience life-threatening severe adverse events. Therefore, there is a current need for the development of a highly accurate, non-invasive means of determining immuno-oncology therapy efficacy in the medical field. We hypothesize that this can be achieved by designing a high affinity granzyme B positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agent.
Granzyme B is a serine protease that cleaves after an aspartic acid residue. Specifically, the tetrapeptide variant Ile-Glu-Pro-Asp (IEPD) has been identified as the preferred granzyme B substrate. Therefore, several tetrapeptide variants containing the general sequence Ile-Glu-X-Asp (IEXD) have been designed using the molecular modeling program, Avogadro, and substituting all the hydrophobic amino acids into the variable X position in the sequence. These variants have been computationally docked to granzyme B using the molecular docking program, Autodock. The results were visualized using the molecular modelling program, UCSF Chimera. The computational data suggest the variants that bind to granzyme B with the highest affinities are IEGD, IEAD, and IEMD. Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) assays are being performed to characterize the binding of granzyme B to each peptide variant in vitro. These data will be compared to the computational data for verification.

Hello. My name is Ralston Smith, I am a student in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at GMU. The title of my project is the Development of a Novel Granzyme B PET Imaging Agent for the Assessment of Cancer Immunotherapy Efficacy. My mentor is Dr. Solomon. I am developing a granzyme B binding peptide that is ultimately intended to be used noninvasively in the assessment of cancer immunotherapy efficacy through radioactive imaging. Let’s begin with some definitions: a peptide is a string of amino acids, and amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Granzyme B is a protease, which is a protein that cuts proteins, and it has important functions in programmed cell death or apoptosis of cancer cells. This is a computational model of granzyme B. Finally, efficacy is the propensity of a treatment to have the intended effects for an individual. One of the main issues with cancer immunotherapy is determining efficacy, and those who respond poorly to treatment have a high likelihood to experience severe adverse events, including death. Reducing this difficulty in efficacy assessment is what this project is about. The mediation of programmed cell death by granzyme B is important because elevated tumoral presence of granzyme B indicates a potential positive responder to immunotherapy. By developing an imaging agent that binds granzyme B with high affinity we seek to monitor these conditions to determine efficacy. This semester, I have been working in the lab with these peptide variants that I computationally identified as the best granzyme B binders. As you can see, all variants have IEXD sequences, meaning that each variant is comprised of a conserved isoleucine, glutamine, and aspartate in the first, second, and fourth positions respectively and a variable amino acid in the third position. We placed an order for these five of the peptide variants to study this semester. To determine the variant with the highest affinity, I am performing a series of surface plasmon resonance or SPR experiments. This technique measures changes in light diffraction to characterize binding. I have recently collected control data from the five peptide variants we purchased to see how they interact with the instrument in the absence of granzyme B. First, the very strong signal to the far left is the response to a bubble in the system, this signal can be ignored. These small signals here and here are representative of the peptide variants interacting with the instrument. These strong signals here represent imidazole washes and nickel injections, not peptide samples, so they can be ignored too. The control data is looking promising because there is little to no observed signal, meaning the signal that will be obtained during the enzymatic trials should be accurate with minimal noise. I will be continuing my work on this project in the Summer, and I am excited to gather more data moving forward. I would like to thank Dr. Solomon for his ongoing support and leadership on this project. Thank you to Dr. Foreman for sharing his expertise in computational data collection and Dr. Veneziano for providing access to his SPR instrument. Thank you to Robert Spaine, Allison Snoderly, and Yewande Oyesola for their extensive laboratory training and advice. Thank you to Zach Beaulac for helping to confirm the purity and identity of our peptides. A special thank you to Dr. Ikotun, Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA, for inviting us to work on this project. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Lee and the OSCAR URSP for funding this project. These are my references. Thank you for listening.

College of Science Honors College Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Developmental Model of the Dose-Dependent Effect of Acute v. Chronic Clozapine Administration on Locomotion and Heart Rate in Embryonic Danio rerio

Author(s): Abbie Mars

Mentor(s): Gwendolyn Lewis, Neuroscience

This work was primarily done to elucidate the cause of discrepancies between past work. Literature about clozapine has detailed that the drug has cardiotoxic effects, but there is some confusion over whether clozapine causes bradycardia or tachycardia in embryonic zebrafish because multiple studies have found evidence of both phenomena occurring following clozapine exposure. Primarily, this study was done to determine whether there was a dose-dependent effect of clozapine over acute (1 hr) and chronic (6 hr) exposure periods on heart rate. Secondarily, this study was done to investigate the effects of clozapine on locomotion under the same criteria as the primary aim.

INTRO SLIDE 1:
This project involves the application of different dose concentrations of clozapine, an atypical antipsychotic, over different exposure amounts over time.

SLIDE 2:
Schizophrenia (SZ) is relatively uncommon compared to other major mental disorders, and is only documented in approximately 24 million people worldwide (1 in 300)
Despite the relatively low occurrence of SZ, the disorder is costly and is one of the top 15 leading causes of disability internationally and is costly, with a review of 56 articles finding that SZ typically cost between $94 mil and $103 bil from low income to high income countries
SCZ typically develops in men earlier than women, with most men showing SCZ symptoms in their later teens to early 20s, with women showing symptoms typically in their 20s and 30s
other mental symptoms include thought disorder and difficulties with emotional regulation

SLIDE 3:
u Research Question:
u How does clozapine applied at distinct concentrations and over varied periods of time affect developmental aspects such as heart rate and locomotion in Danio rerio, and does varying the amount of time the embryo is exposed cause paradoxical results at any point?
u Hypothesis:
u Heart rate and locomotion will be more adversely affected over increased lengths of time when clozapine is applied, with the higher concentration groups showing the most drastic effects of the drug. Both concentration groups will likely show marked decreases in heart rate and normal locomotion from controls over time.
u Discussion of clozapine & SCZ
Clozapine is used mainly for treatment-resistant schizophrenia patients, and it affects several areas of the brain, but it primarily affects serotonin receptors and it weakly blocks dopamine (Meltzer 1994). Previous studies have detailed that clozapine affects certain areas of the brain more than others, and that more research needs to be done on long-term exposure to the drug as there is significant research on acute exposure to clozapine but little work on longer exposure times (Viana 2020). The effects of clozapine are especially fascinating to study because clozapine has such an atypical chemical structure; neuroleptic drugs usually have an extrapyramidal structure and clozapine is so unusual that it was considered first as an antidepressant, but later showed promise as an antipsychotic (Hippius 1989). This model of clozapine administration will be based in embryonic zebrafish between 3 hpf (hours post fertilization) and 72 hpf. Zebrafish embryos are a well-known model organism for assessing neurodevelopmental milestones as they have significant genetic and physiological similarities to humans (Kalueff 2019). Research has indicated that clozapine has a relatively toxic effect on cardiovascular health in humans, which has been mirrored in other studies, and in zebrafish, introduction of clozapine can cause effects such as abnormal heart rate, tail extension, spinal deformation, pericardial oedema, and increased coagulation (Akande 2010).
u
SLIDE 4:
Description of how the experiments are run/set up:
The vivarium beneath the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study houses many kinds of small animals, but I do most of my work in the Aquatics room. As you can see from the photos, the filtration system is extensive and is set up so that no contaminants reach the adult zebrafish, which could ultimately affect their rates of producing embryos and can cause significant issues for anyone attempting to do work with “normal” embryos without confounding variables.

SLIDE 5:
My methodology for this project started with creating stock solutions of differing concentrations to test whether increasing the dosage of clozapine would cause more significant morphological and physiological abnormalities. I used an experimental design where I utilized a 6-well culture plate with the left side covering the “acute” 1-hour treatment and the right side covering the “chronic” 6-hour treatment. I typically would use 30 embryos during one treatment cycle. I left the embryos in solution for their respective “acute” or “chronic” doses and then returned to the lab to wash the solution off the embryos and move them into egg water (slightly salty water that embryos live in). After this was completed, I imaged representatives from each treatment and concentration group and took videos so that I could collect data as needed.

SLIDE 6:
In the top left we can see a “chronic” embryo treated at the high dose (15 mg/ml) – note the pericardial edema caused by clozapine – versus the “chronic” control treatment in the top right (0 mg/ml). The effects of clozapine can be quite drastic on development and on normal cardiac activity, evidenced by the morphological inconsistencies between the control and the treatment embryos. In the bottom left we see a fluorescent image of another “chronic” treatment embryo next to a “chronic” control embryo. If clozapine were affecting motor axons significantly, the damage would be evident between the treatment and control groups, clozapine does not seem to damage the underlying neuronal structure but does affect locomotor aspects in other ways that are evident in touch trials later on.

SLIDE 7:
Touch evoked tail coiling versus spontaneous tail coiling
Spontaneous tail curling shows that the motoneurons along the spine are developing correctly, as the embryos will spontaneously move as these connections are being built, whereas touch-evoked tail coiling is done later after the motoneurons have developed and the embryos have grown nerves that are sensitive enough to react to touch.

SLIDE 8:
After running experiments with the “acute” and “chronic” timeframes, I became interested in investigating the effect of a “long-term” treatment and the effects that were incurred at that point versus the effects I had seen with the “acute” and “chronic” treatments. Therefore, this slide details the average heart rate in LT (long-term) groups versus non-LT (long-term) groups, where the “longest-term” treatment was applied for approximately 40 hours. These graphs detail that the “long-term” treatment caused significant bradycardia, locomotion problems, and unusual morphological characteristics, which was even more marked than in the original 6-hour “chronic” groups.

SLIDE 9:
Future directions could include more detailed studies into the heart rate issue, I found that the clozapine treatments at a concentration of 15 mg/ml had the highest rate of deformity, difficulty with locomotion, and bradycardia. It would be a good idea to continue these experiments with potentially longer or varied length “long-term” treatments to determine the longitudinal effect on embryos over smaller increments (for example, comparing a 10-hour treatment period embryo versus a 40 hour treatment period embryo would almost certainly show marked differences particularly in heart rate.

SLIDE 10:
Thank you to Dr. Lewis, my mentor for this project, who provided endless assistance and support, along with housing the adult zebrafish that were needed to create embryonic zebrafish for experimentation in this project. Thank you as well to Dr. Karen Lee and the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program for giving me the opportunity to do this work and learn more about research.

SLIDE 11:
References

College of Science OSCAR Top Presenter Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Differences in Post-Mortem Interval Estimation Determined from Dismembered Remains Versus Intact Bodies Using Forensic Entomology

Author(s): Sonja Kline

Mentor(s): Dr. Anthony Falsetti, Forensic Science, Biology

ABSTRACT
Insect succession studies on human remains has increased following the University of Tennessee’s early 1980’s work. (Rodriguez & Bass, 1983, 1985). Several factors complicate using Forensic Entomology to determine Postmortem Interval (PMI). Insects demonstrate a wide temporal range and spatial diversity, making it difficult to predict which species will be present. Additionally, consistent patterns in carcass size preference with carrion insects has been observed. (Kuusela & Hanski, 1982) This study compares data collected from 5 dismembered porcine remains in Central Virginia to data collected from the University of Tennessee and other sources used determining PMI in whole corpses.

In a far corner of George Mason University’s Science and Technology campus is a plot of land set aside to allow students to study taphonomy – the decomposition of remains.

With the help of my mentors, Dr. Rebecca Forkner and Dr. Anthony Falsetti, I am using this “Remains Laboratory” to study the succession of insects that consume a body as it decomposes.

My goal is to apply this information on species abundance and time of arrival to the estimation of time of death.

Many previous studies have determined the order of insect succession on full body remains, but few have examined insect succession on remains set out into the environment in pieces.

Law enforcement has identified this as an unfortunate but needed area of study because recent gang-related activity has involved dismemberment.

When remains are found out in the elements, a timeline of events is an important part of the investigation.

The ability to determine time of death can be difficult if the remains have been outside long enough for them to have gone through a significant amount of decomposition.

Sometimes, the only way to determine a Postmortem Interval or PMI, is by examining the insects present, their ages, and the number of generations they have produced.

Forensic Entomology is the area of forensic science that uses these insects and when they arrive at remains to determine PMI.

I’ve begun my research using pig remains, as a close comparison to the composition and structure of humans. However, I intend to continue the study with human remains as soon as the Forensics Department can fund cadaver use and accept donations.

My investigation is composed of five pairs of remains. Each pair consists of several pieces of pig limbs, and one set is placed on the soil surface, and the second set is buried approximately 30 cm deep. Each set is then covered with a protective wooden box. The boxes are open to the elements with two layers of chicken wire to protect the remains from scavengers.

I set up two mechanisms, other than hand collection, to capture and record the insects visiting each pair of remains. Pan traps and fly traps collect the insects that come into contact with the remains.

My volunteers and I then collect insects on a daily basis and identified them in the lab to record succession and quantify insect diversity. In the lab we sort and identifying the insects collected into families and orders by date and individual remains.

This will provide a timeline of which insects arrived at what time and in what numbers.

We will then compare the data we have collected to data that has been compiled from past published students.

I am looking for the clear distinction of a different type of succession from what will arrive at fully intact remains. Generally, insects that are attracted to full bodies include blow flies and flesh flies that attack open orifices like the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears.

My prediction was that some insects will arrive sooner than on full bodied remains because tissue is already exposed and that some may be present for a shorter period of time because less tissue is present at the start.

So far, I am seeing an increase in the beetle population, as well as a different arrival time of those beetles. In my study, they have arrived earlier than anticipated.

The blow flies, house flies and flesh flies arrived first on to lay eggs on the remains.

The succession of those insects has followed a consistent pattern and been predictable based on prior studies.

However, the remains decomposed at a faster rate because they have open wounds.

This caused the duration of time that the main carrion fly species were present to be much shorter.

The remains are now in the active decay stage.

The larvae of the flies who have visited and laid eggs are now prevalent, as are beetles. We are still in the process of compiling the data collected, but so far it has been a successful and interesting in results compared to previous studies.

Much of this information is important because it will show the types of carrion insects prevalent in the area of Northern Virginia at this particular time of the year.

It will be useful data to compare to when we are able to use human remains in the near future.

It will be information that can aide in death investigations in Northern Virginia to determine how long remains have been out in the elements and will be helpful in determining time of death.

I would like to thank the Office of Student Scholarship and Creative Activities at GMU, without whose for the guidance and funding, this project would not have been possible.

College of Science Honors College Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Effect of Foraging Crumbles on Aggression in Mice

Author(s): Marie Bennett

Mentor(s): Dr. Jane Flinn, Psychology

Environmental enrichments are used to simulate a more natural environment for laboratory animals and ideally improve their welfare. This improvement includes decreasing inter-animal aggression.

This study investigates whether Bioserv’s foraging crumbles decrease or increase aggression in male laboratory mice populations.

Behavioral assays will also be run at the end of the experiment to determine the cognitive effects of both aggression and foraging crumbles on the animals.

Imagine hundreds of lives being directly in your hands. Make that, thousands – make that, millions. This is the life of an animal researcher. 8 breeder mice that you care for will produce around a hundred offspring over a couple of litters, and the findings from these offspring will then be replicated in thousands more animals to model diseases that millions of humans are affected by. From there, you can do the math on how many people are affected every time just two of these mice fight, an event that not only is harmful for the animals but also influences data validity.

This is where studies such as those on environmental enrichments come in. Studies such as these aim to find materials that will simulate more natural environments and prevent detrimental effects, such as violence, from occurring. Dr. Flinn’s laboratory in the Krasnow Animal Facility at George Mason University, for instance, uses Bioserv’s foraging crumbles in attempt to prevent aggression in their mice. These foraging crumbles are little bits of food that mice can dig around and search for instead of just getting in the form of nuggets in a basket. While mice still have the option of getting nuggets, they have a new available activity they can choose to engage with. Ideally, this will prevent boredom, and thus aggression, seen in the mice. Although, this has not yet been shown in studies, and studies on other enrichments so far have confounding results. Whereas some studies show a decrease in aggression from a given enrichment, the same enrichment is found to increase aggression in other studies!

What happens when this aggression isn’t prevented, though? How does this impact data validity? Mice must be isolated if they cause injuries to other mice. It is known that social isolation causes cognitive impairments in social species such as mice. For laboratories looking at cognitive performance as Dr. Flinn’s does, this can make a significant difference, especially when certain experimental groups are more prone to violence. So, will mice that are isolated perform worse on cognitive-behavioral assays? On the other hand, having more opportunities for stimulating activities improves cognitive performance. Will mice raised with crumbles perform better?

This experiment aims to clarify these questions as well as whether raising mice with foraging crumbles increases or decreases aggression in laboratory mice. With this study, we aim to inform Bioserv, as well as all laboratories conducting animal research, on whether foraging crumbles may be a viable treatment for aggression in mice.

I’d like to thank Dr. Flinn and Rachel Barkey for their continued mentorship in this pursuit, the IACUC Review Committee for their feedback that has helped to shape and refine this study, and last but certainly not least OSCAR for their support, both financially and through structured guidance for this project. I’d also like to thank and acknowledge all the sources from which I gathered the information for this video. Thank you.

College of Humanities and Social Science Honors College Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Effects of Presentation of Pretrial Risk Probabilities on Pretrial Release Decisions

Author(s): Ashley Rodriguez

Mentor(s): Dr. Evan Marie Lowder, Criminology, Law, and Society

As jurisdictions across the United States are using pretrial risk assessments as a component of pretrial reform, one overlooked aspect of risk assessments is risk communication. Risk communication is the examination of how different communication methods (e.g., probabilities, confidence intervals, categories, etc.) effectively relay a defendant’s risk to the community to pretrial decision-makers who decide whether to release or detain a defendant while balancing community safety. Many judicial decisions-makers use risk assessment scores in their pretrial decisions. Accordingly, it is important for risk assessments to effectively communicate what is meant by “risk”. Traditionally, risk assessment tools present fixed probabilities that a defendant assigned a given risk level will engage in misconduct if released pretrial. However, this presentation may overstate the certainty involved in risk judgments. The goal of the current study was to assess whether presentation of risk assessment information as fixed or variable probabilities affects judges’ and pretrial officers’ pretrial decisions, and prosecutors’ and defense attorneys’ pretrial recommendations. We issued online vignettes to 298 United States judges, pretrial officers, prosecutors, and defense attorneys with random assignment to a vignette with a one-value probability or a range of probabilities to accompany the risk level. We quantitatively assessed differences in decisions to order unconditional release and we asked pretrial actors to explain the rationale behind their decisions. This mixed-methods approach provided much needed quantitative and contextual data on pretrial judicial decision-making. Findings may inform changes to risk communication methods to best communicate risk in current and future risk assessment tool development. Findings indicate that variable risk presentation did not affect risk appraisal nor pretrial release decisions. Despite risk appraisal being the second most frequently cited theme in decision-making, it did not affect decision-making. Our findings beg the question of whether court actors heavily consider risk assessment values in their decision-making.

My name is Ashley Rodriguez, and my project is the Effects of Presentation of Pretrial Risk Probabilities on Pretrial Release Decisions. I conducted this project under the supervision of Dr. Evan Lowder.
Risk assessments are being widely implemented across the U.S. as a tool to help decision-makers standardize a defendant’s risk to the community relative to other defendants. This is because numerous studies have found that judges make inherently biased decisions. Risk assessment tools remove some of the bias in decision-making by ensuring that defendants with the same offense and background receive the same decision. Thus far, research on how risk assessment information is presented is often overlooked. There are only two studies that examine risk assessment presentation in the judicial decision-making setting, but both studies suffer from a lack of statistical power. Studies on forensic clinicians demonstrate that risk communication is important for decision-making.
The purpose of this study was two-fold. First, I wanted to examine whether fixed or variable presentation of risk probabilities affected pretrial decision-making along a variety of points such as the decision to release, and the likelihood of release. The second purpose was to examine whether the effect of risk presentation was moderated by whether the offense was violent or nonviolent.
Participants were surveyed via Qualtrics. They were randomly assigned to one of eight vignettes based on a 2 X 4 design of the two independent variables. Following the vignettes, all participants answered the same questionnaire. I recruited participants via snowball sampling. I used publicly available contact information to email government offices and professional associations. I requested that they forward the email to people they knew who would be eligible to participate in this survey.
My sample consisted of 298 participants. The average participant age was 45 years old. Approximately 50.6% of the participants were female, and 78.5% were White. 52% of the participants indicated that they encountered risk assessment information daily. The average participant had 16.3 years of experience in the criminal justice system and 11.2 years of experience handling pretrial cases. Most of the participants were defense attorneys, followed by pretrial officers, prosecutors, judges, other, and unknown role participants.
I used two independent variables to create a 2 x 4 design. First, I varied vignettes by risk probability. Vignettes had either a 30%, 40%, 50%, or 30-50% risk value. I then varied vignettes by whether the offense was violent or nonviolent. The combination of these two independent variables led to eight vignettes.
My first dependent variable examined whether participants would release the defendant on their own recognizance or on bond. My second dependent variable examined the likelihood the participants would release the defendant on a scale of 1% to 100%.
The first research question examined how risk assessment value and offense type interacted to affect release decisions. To answer this question, I conducted logistic regression which contained interaction terms between risk value and offense type. I found no significant evidence that interactions between risk values and offense types affected release decisions.
The second main question asked participants to rate the likelihood they would release the defendant with additional conditions. I used linear regression to examine this question, with interaction terms between risk value and offense type. Similar to the first question, there was no significant evidence that risk values interacted with offense type on the likelihood of release with conditions.
Preliminary qualitative results indicate that the biggest factors in decision-making were case facts, risk appraisal, community stability, and criminal history. In other words, legal factors appeared to matter more to decision-makers than risk assessment values. Interestingly, considerable portions of each criminal justice role considered risk appraisal in their decision-making. However, the actual risk values were infrequently referenced in the open response questions pertaining to the participants’ decision-making rationale.
The purpose of this study was to examine how risk assessment presentation affected pretrial release decisions. My findings did not support any of my hypotheses. This study demonstrates that risk presentation did not have a significant effect on decision-making even when I manipulated the seriousness of the offense. These results were somewhat contradicted in qualitative findings. Despite risk appraisal being the second most frequently cited theme in decision-making, it did not affect decision-making. I expected an interaction between risk value and offense seriousness because people who commit more serious offenses are perceived to be more of a risk to the community than people who commit less serious offenses. My findings beg the question of whether court actors heavily consider risk assessment values in their decision-making.
It is important to note that despite adding in various manipulation check questions, my study has a few limitations. One limitation of my study is that only willing contacts connected the email invitation to participants which may have biased results. Another limitation of this study is that my analysis may have been too underpowered to detect small effects.
Future studies using a similar design should consider varying risk assessment presentation with the defendant’s case facts.
Here are my references.
I would like to thank OSCAR Undergraduate Research Scholars Program for funding this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Sarah Desmarais, Dr. Samantha Zottola, Troy Hatfield, and Honorable Mark Spitzer for providing feedback on vignette drafts. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Allison Redlich and Samantha Luna for providing example IRB protocols.
Here is my contact information for any questions. Thank you for listening to my presentation.