Category: Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) – OSCAR

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

Evaluation of sex and stress hormones deposited in elephant toenail

Author(s): Garrett Rich

Mentor(s): Elizabeth Freeman, School of Integrative Studies

Hormone monitoring of at-risk species can be a valuable way for conservationists to evaluate the physiology of an individual. Traditional non-invasive monitoring through urine and feces has limitations; each sample represents a short window in time and poorly reflects long-term hormone fluctuations. We examined toenails of African (Loxodonta africana) and Asian (Elephas maximus) elephants to determine if long-term hormone patterns are preserved in these slow-growing keratinized tissues. We first studied the growth rate of elephant toenails so that we could establish the time period during which hormones were deposited into the tissues, and the delay between tissue growth (at base of nail bed) and tissue collection months later (at the distal tip of the nail). Being able to estimate the specific time period in which nail samples grew allows us to crosscheck our samples with known physiological events and evaluate the method’s accuracy. We found that elephant toenails grow about 1.4mm/week and that a large enough nail can reflect a year or more of physiological changes. Testosterone, progesterone, and cortisol were easily detectable in enzyme immunoassays and all assays passed parallelism validations, indicating that these hormones can be accurately quantified in African elephant toenail extract. Variations in hormone concentrations reflected expected physiological patterns for adult females and males (e.g., estrus and musth). With continued work with Asian elephant samples we expect to corroborate these findings and verify that preserved hormone patterns in elephant toenails can give conservationists a new tool to aid management of elephant populations.

Slide 1
Hi, I’m Garrett Rich a senior biology student here at George Mason University. And over the past two semesters I have worked with Drs. Freeman and Hunt on a project to evaluate the utility of toenails in non-invasive hormone monitoring for elephants.

Slide 2
Hormone monitoring is an important tool for the conservation of endangered species like elephants. But non-invasive hormone monitoring for elephants can have issues.
Non-invasive samples of urine and feces reflect short periods of hormone information. Meaning that the hormones that are deposited in urine and feces resemble hormone patterns from only a couple hours to days before excretion.
This is problematic for elephants as they undergo long-term changes in hormone concentrations. The short-term nature of urine and feces can complicate finding key variations.
Our hypothesis was that slow-growing tissues like elephant toenails may gradually accumulate hormones while they grow and better preserve the long-term changes that occurred.
Toenail samples also have the advantage of being easy to collect and store. Toenails are already trimmed as a normal part of ex-situ elephant care and can be stored at room temperature once dried. The dozens of samples I have analyzed over the last two semesters are currently sitting in a drawer without any special storage requirements.

Slide 3
We received samples from the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore’s African savanna elephants and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute’s Asian elephants.
This semester we focused on creating series of hormone concentrations vs time for the studied elephants. This gives us insight into how the hormones were varying and what those variations potentially mean for the physiology of the individual.

Slide 4
Determining hormone concentrations from elephant toenails is a two-step process.
First, we need to extract the hormones from the toenails. To do this we dry and then dremel the toenails into a fine powder. Methanol is then added to the toenail powder and mixed to pull the hormones into solution. The methanol is then decanted off and evaporated down into a dry hormone extract. The dry extract can then be mixed with an assay buffer and frozen for future use.
The next step is comparing the hormone extract concentration against a standard curve using a commercial enzyme immunoassay (EIA). The results of the assay and standard curve allow us to determine how much hormone was in the extract, which can then be used to calculate how much hormone was in the original toenail.

Slide 5:
This semester we assayed all of our African elephant samples in cortisol, progesterone, and testosterone assays and started preparing our Asian elephant samples for analysis.
We sampled three elephants from the Maryland Zoo. Anna, Felix, and Samson.
Anna is an acyclic female elephant meaning that she does not undergo regular reproductive cycling and the corresponding hormonal variations. As such we expected that Anna’s progesterone would deviate very little over time. This was well reflected in our samples with Anna’s progesterone concentrations remaining fairly constant across all of her sampled toenails.
Felix, the big elephant in this picture is another female elephant. But Felix is still believed to be ovulating and thus we expect to see progesterone concentrations to occasionally spike up when coinciding with reproductive cycling. This was also well observed with Felix having variation in progesterone samples that were 5-10x higher than any of her other sampled toenails.
Samson, a young male elephant, who was the calf of Felix in the previous picture. Was expected to have high testosterone during the male reproductive period called musth. Two of our Samson samples recorded testosterone concentrations over 50x as high as other samples we tested.

Slide 6:
Now hormone data put together can be a little bit messy. But once you’ve navigated through the difference in the concentrations and the variations, you can begin to see things that you may not expect.
Take for example, Anna’s testosterone. Anna’s testosterone for the most part was higher than her progesterone, despite the fact that Anna is a female elephant.
We also see nearly identical changes in Anna’s cortisol and progesterone and they make nearly identical lines.
We also see variations across Felix’s and Samson’s toenails. Showing increases in cortisol, progesterone, and testosterone occurring within the same samples.
Now we’re hoping that with more samples and correlation testing, we can have a better idea of the variations that are preserved in these toenails.
Ideally, we will be able to present the use of elephant toenails as a new way for conservationists and wildlife endocrinologists to better take care of elephants in human care.
Slide 7:
I would really like to the thank the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute along with the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. For not only giving us access to these samples, but also ability to study the growth rate of their elephants
I would also really like to thank the keepers who put in a lot of work collecting and actually taking the growth rate measurements, throughout the year that this study went on.
I would also like to thank Drs. Freeman and Hunt for both supporting me and my professional development.
I would also like to finally thank Dr. Lee, OSCAR, along with the Faculty Research Development Award for supporting both me and the project.

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

Noisy Parallel Data Alignment

Author(s): Ruoyu Xie

Mentor(s): Antonios Anastasopoulos, Computer Science

There are about 7,000 languages in the world. However, at least 40% of them are endangered. Due to
the lack of attention, the current Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software is not reliable on
recognizing endangered languages as machine-readable text. The OCR post-correction systems are
developed to reduce OCR recognition errors and produce more accurate results. In order to train OCR
post-correction systems for endangered languages, we need alignments between the endangered
languages and their translations. While there are some alignment tools for extracting alignments, they
do not produce accurate alignment results due to the noisy data from endangered languages. Without
inputting correct alignments, the OCR post-correction systems would not be able to correct OCR
recognition errors well. This research project is aiming to build a robust alignment model that handles
noisy OCR text from endangered languages and produces accurate alignment results for the OCR post-correction systems.

Hello everyone, my name is Ruoyu Xie, today I will be talking about my work Noisy Parallel Data Alignment.

You must have used Google translation before. Today, Most of the language tools, such as translation apps, speech recognition software are working well with popular languages such as English, Chinese, French. but they are not really doing well with endangered languages, which are the languages that we don’t see every day. there are 7000 languages in the world, but 40% of them are endangered. The reason why these language tools are not doing well on endangered languages is that we don’t have enough data to train the language models for these endangered languages.

In order to train the languages models, we use a tool called optical character recognition (OCR) to digitalize them from books and make them machine-readable.

However, OCR oftentimes makes mistakes in recognizing the text for endangered languages. So we have to make an OCR post-correction which requires the translation alignments between two languages.

This is where my research comes into play, most of the available alignment models are not performing well on noisy data that has OCR errors. My goal is to build a robust alignment model that can produce accurate alignment results regardless of the data noisiness.

In terms of the methodology, I first capture all different kinds of errors that could be made from OCR recognition. And then, based on the probability distribution of these errors, I applied them to some clean datasets and make them noisy. Lastly, I use these synthetic noisy data to train the alignment model and make it more robust in handling noisy data.

Currently, we have reduced the noisy alignment error rate for the English-French dataset from 53% down to 42%. and we are still conducting more experiments and hopefully get better results in the future.

Lastly, I want to say a thank you to my mentor, Dr. Anastasopoulos for guiding me through this project, and also a thank you to the OSCAR office for the sponsorship.

Thanks for watching

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

Evaluating the utility of toenail samples in elephant endocrinology

Author(s): Garrett Rich

Mentor(s): Kathleen Hunt, Biology & Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation

This semester I worked on a project to evaluate the utility of toenails in elephant endocrinology. Toenails are keratin tissues which are non-traditional samples in elephant endocrinology. Traditionally, samples like blood serum, urine, and feces have been used to monitor hormones in elephants. Traditional samples however are limited in the period of hormone content they reflect and can be difficult to collect and use. Tail hairs and toenails on the other hand could contain a history book of hormone variation from throughout the time they grew and can be collected and stored easily. To evaluate their utility, we looked at both the growth rate of the toenails to correlate samples to a period in time as well as their functionality in standard hormone assays. For growth rate we had keepers make a harmless groove in a toenail and track how far the groove moved every two weeks. We found variation in growth rate that could impact the accuracy of correlating samples to a time period. For testing the samples in hormone assays we converted our samples to a powder and utilized a methanol extraction to create hormone extracts. These hormone extracts were then tested in progesterone and cortisol assays. We found that elephant toenails worked in both progesterone and cortisol assays and were able to show variation in concentrations. Variation in progesterone concentrations have so far aligned with the reproductive statuses of their corresponding elephants. More work will be completed in the future to check the accuracy of hormone variation.

Hi, I’m Garrett Rich a senior Biology student here at George Mason University. Over the course of the Fall semester, I worked with Dr. Freeman, Dr. Hunt, along with another undergrad to look at the utility of keratin tissues in elephant endocrinology. But let’s define… what that even means. Keratin tissues are just tissues made of the protein keratin that extend outward from your skin. You would know them best as hairs and nails. Endocrinology on the other hand is just the study of hormones and their corresponding ties to physiology. So, this semester we looked at elephant toenails and hairs to see if there is any utility in being able to monitor hormones in elephants.

Endocrinology can be a really valuable tool when it comes to monitoring the wellbeing of endangered and at-risk species. Endocrinology allows conservationists to keep an eye on key hormones and what changes in those hormones mean for the organism. Keratin sampling is a bit newer, especially in elephant endocrinology. And we are looking at it to remedy some of the issues associated with traditional samples. Blood plasma, urine and feces are all traditionally used for elephant endocrinology but are limited in the hormone period they reflect. This means that some of the key variations in hormone concentration may not always be detectable. Take for example the graph on the right from Ganswindt, et al (2005) where they monitored fecal hormones in male African elephants. It required dozens of samples over the course of months to get variations in hormone concentrations. Whereas a tail hair, a keratin tissue, that grew alongside those variations could also contain those variations and only require the collection of one sample.

This semester our project was divided into two parts. Thanks to the hard-working keepers of the Smithsonian National Zoo and the keepers at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore we got access to both tail hair and toenail samples from their elephant populations, as well as got to investigate the growth rate of those tissues. We got samples from the Smithsonian National Zoo’s Asian elephants and the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore’s African Savanah elephants. I mainly focused on toenails this semester so that’s what I’ll be mostly talking about.

Let’s talk about the growth rate first. We looked at growth rate because we wanted to correlate our samples and their hormones to the period in time in which they grew. This is really important for toenails. Toenails are regularly trimmed as a part of normal care. And we use these trimmings as our hormone samples. The problem is trimmings can only be collected from the bottom of the nail. Whereas the nail grows all the way at the top of the nail in the nail bed. So, you need the growth rate to determine how long it took a sample to leave the nail bed and get into a position where it can be trimmed. So how do you measure this growth rate? We had keepers make a harmless groove in the surface of the nail and then track how far that groove moved every two weeks. You can then take the differences in those measurements and extrapolate a growth rate.

Once you have the growth rate, you can begin to work backwards. You can take when a sample was collected, how big the toenail was at collection, and then use the growth rate to try and determine when that toenail grew. But what we noticed in the data was that the growth rate was not constant. It actually varied over time. This is important to account for as the longer it takes a sample to come available, say from a longer toenail, the more variations can lead to inaccuracy. This semester we looked at temperature, as elephants are not allowed to go outside if temperatures are low enough. To generalize for the Mid-Atlantic, we divided the year in half with October-March being the colder part of the year and April-September being a warm part of the year. This gave us this graph. So, while we can’t say anything definitive about trends with growth rate over the year, we can definitively say that there are variations. These values may look indistinguishable. They are differences in the fractions of a millimeter. But when these growth rates are extrapolated over large periods of time it can result in differences of weeks to months for determining when a sample grew.

Growth rate is only half of what you need to track hormone variations. We also needed to have hormone concentrations to track. While keratin tissues have been used in endocrinology before, they have never been tested in elephant toenails specifically. So, the first thing we had to do was make sure they would work at all. To do this we would take an elephant toenail like the one on the right and convert it into a powder and then use that powder in a methanol extraction. A methanol extraction is just a process of using methanol to remove hormone from the sample. And then evaporating off that methanol to get us a hormone extract.

A lot of the work this semester was dedicated to us working with our toenail samples to determine a procedure that we not only liked but also produced samples that worked correctly in our hormone assays. Thankfully though, the samples worked quite well and we were able to get ideal assay plates that look like this.

This semester we were only able to test samples from Anna and Felix. Anna and Felix are female African elephants at the Maryland Zoo. Their samples were tested in progesterone and cortisol assays. We found that their toenail samples worked surprisingly well in our assays. And produced decent amounts of hormone concentration as well as variation that may align with physiological status. Female elephants enter what’s called an estrous period when they ovulate which is marked by the production of progesterone and progesterone like compounds. Some older female elephants will stop going into estrous and their corresponding progesterone concentrations will stay roughly around a baseline. When we tested our Anna samples, we found her samples were low in progesterone content. While Felix also had low samples, Felix samples would also occasionally spike up into higher progesterone concentrations. This is a great sign for us as Anna is considered to be post-reproductive and no longer entering estrous. While Felix is still believed to be entering estrus. So, while it isn’t definitive yet, these variations in concentrations are a good sign for us.

The goal of our research was to test this unutilized sample type and provide a base of information for other elephant endocrinologists and animal endocrinologists. In the spring we are looking to continue our work on this project by testing more samples, looking at different hormones, and continuing to try and match hormone variations to known physiological statuses. We hope that our research will be able to provide elephant endocrinologists and other conservationists with a tool to help them save species.

I first would like to the thank the Smithsonian National Zoo and the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore for giving us access to the growth rate and these samples. I would especially like to thank the keepers for all their hard work collecting samples and gathering growth rate measurements for us. Without them this project could not have happened. I would also like to thank Dr. Freeman, Dr. Hunt along with Trent Grasso for all their help this semester both in and out of the lab. And finally, I would also like to thank Dr. Lee, Oscar along with the Faculty Research Development Award for supporting both me and this project. And here are my sources.

Schar School of Policy and Government Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

The History of United States Drag

Author(s): Elijah Nichols

Mentor(s): David Corwin, Women and Gender Studies

When one leans into Queerness as a natural state of being, one may give the human experience the fullness it deserves — and Drag, as a world-making project, does such a thing. Interestingly enough, Drag — a globally criminalized act — has become an artistic expression and performance more-so accepted within the United States than in previous times making it an critical artform for further inquiry. In an effort to understand why criminalization occurs and to uncover the history of U.S. based Drag, I found it advantageous to focus on lesser known Drag artists such as Divine, Pepper Labeija, Gowongo Mohawk, Gladys Bentley, and William Dorsy Swann, as well as the ways in which Drag has shown up in unexpected places such as institutions of higher education. A culmination of Drag experiences provide a basis to better understand the ways in which the social-class making of gender, sex, and sexuality impact Queer expression and how Queerness may be criminalized from such classification.

Hello, my name is Elijah Nichols. I am a Senior at George Mason University studying Government and International Politics with a concentration in Public Administration and Policy. Today, I will be presenting a bit on my research.

Throughout this research process, I have leaned into the sociological understanding of the world: where Queerness is looked at as the natural state of being. Queerness is the leaning into the naturality of our world not of human-created classes — giving the human experience the fullness it deserves.

With such understanding and exploration of the aforementioned sociological understanding, I have chosen to ask the question: What is the unheard history of United States Drag, as a performance art?

With the rise of RuPauls Drag Race, we are seeing Drag become a commodified, straight-and-cis-appealing artform thus putting an unreasonable standard on local Drag artists.

Building an awareness through both a literature review and eventually a production will foster a Queer, historically accurate and creative means of leaning into our Queer reality and the artform of Drag. The intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class will and must be touched on within the research as well.

The importance of focusing on lesser known Drag artists (which are named above) allows for us to build on the idea of Queerness — and that naturality — being restricted through the making of gender, race, and class thus leading to a need for the world-making that is Drag.

The reality of Queer identity and expression being criminalized throughout history, however, creates challenges in the research process. Documentation of figures such as Gowongo Mohawk and Gladys Bentley are scarce, so much of the research came from popular magazines, radio shows and films, as well as some peer reviewed works from Feminist and Drag leaders such as Butler, Torr and Bottoms, as well as Vagistan.

William Dorsy Swann: First documented “Queen of Drag” in both legal and news documents was also the first known riot on behalf of Queer liberation and the first person to use legal mechanisms for Queer liberation. Others such as Pepper Labeija are often flattened in their documented history in films such as Paris is Burning.

Therefore the production will focus more on specific moments, as literature and popular media is scarce for many of the subjects except Divine. The literature review, however, focuses more on the connection between gender and queer theory with the five drag subject’s experiences.

As of now, I have not finished the research and hope to continue the work into the Spring, but I am confident that the conclusion and results of will highlight the historical repression and criminalization of Queer peoples, as well as the fullness of the subject’s artform. Otherwise known as the subject’s process of world-making through Drag.

I’d like to thank both the Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, & Research and my mentor, David Corwin, as they’re actively aiding in Queer liberation through the support of this project.

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

Study of mechanical and tribological properties of 3D printed HA-PLA composite manufactured through different methodologies

Author(s): Violetta Rostobaya

Mentor(s): Ali Beheshti, Mechanical Engineering

https://youtu.be/l2UYn-6W4mY

PLA polymer is one of the most widely used materials in 3D manufacturing industry. Pure PLA has limited mechanical and tribological properties; however they can be enhanced by adding nanocomposites such as Hydroxyapatite (HA). Even as small portions as 1wt% of HA can make PLA brittle, durable and biocompatible, which is advantageous for biomedical applications like inner body bone and join prosthetics. The mixing manufacturing method is also a factor in achieving highest quality of resulted composite material. The objective of this research is to outline which out of four manufacturing methods: wet mixing, dry speed mixing, magnetic stirring and dry mixing is the most effective in yielding most desirable mechanical properties. Wet mixing and magnetic stirring methods require to liquefy PLA with DCM dissolvent and then add HA into the mixture. Dry speed mixing and dry mixing require dry PLA pellets to be mixed with HA powder. The filament for each of methodologies is prepared with extruder and is used to 3D print testing samples. After manufacturing is finished, the samples are tested for roughness, strength, young’s modulus, hardness, compression, creep, scratch and wear. The testing methodologies are profilometry, indentation, tensile and compression tests, tribometry and SEM scanning. Based on analyzed data the conclusion is drawn about effectiveness of manufacturing method.

My name is Violetta Rostobaya, I am a senior mechanical engineering student at George Mason university and I do undergraduate research under mentorship of Dr. Ali Beheshti. The topic of my research is Effect of different manufacturing methods on mechanical and tribological properties of 3D printed PLA and HA.

Let’s start with definition of a polymer. A polymer is any of a class of natural or synthetic substances composed of very large molecules, called macromolecules, which are multiples of simpler chemical units called monomers. We see use of polymers in our daily life: plastic bottles, toys, pens, plastic bags, cups, disposable utensils, food and hygiene products containers, and, really, anything that is made out of plastic or resin. But why is this material so popular? Well, there are multiple reasons. Polymers are relatively cheap, they are light, and most importantly there are manufacturing methods, which allow us to easily shape the material into desired form. Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is one of such methods.

Unfortunately there are downsides to polymers too. They are not as strong as metals and can not withstand high loads, which means it is easier to break a part made out of polylactic acid or PLA, a common polymer, then the same part made out of brass or copper. The limited mechanical properties of pure polymers enables us to use them in advanced technological solutions, for example 3D printed joint or bone implants, however it isn’t impossible to find a solution and make the material stronger.

We can use nano composites, such as hydroxyapatite, or HA, to alter molecular structure of PLA and make it more brittle and stronger. It is not that easy though and there is a nuance of how two components are mixed, since the manufacturing method is also a factor in the quality of the produced material.

My research focuses on four different methods of manufacturing of PLA and HA filament for 3D printing and how those methods effect mechanical properties like strength, Young’s modulus, roughness and hardness.the differences of the methods are show on 2 by 2 matrix of how fast we can mix two components (fast or slow) and in what state PLA is in (liquid or solid). For fast or speed mixing I use speed mixer and for slow mixing I use magnetic stirrer. To achieve solid state of PLA no actions are required: PLA already comes in form of solid pellets, and to achieve liquid state, PLA is dissolved using very strong dissolvent called DCM.

After the materials for all four methods are ready, they are fed into the extruder, which shapes the polymer into filament. The filament then is used to 3D print the samples for indentation and compression testing.

The results of this research will show which manufacturing method is the most successful and effective in yielding the desired properties and hopefully will contribute to the knowledge of growing and expanding 3D printing technology.

Thank you for watching and I hope this video was informative!

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

Teakeyland

Author(s): Aishah-Nyeta Brown

Mentor(s): Jenn Sklarew, Environmental Science and Policy

In the 2020s, Tasha is an adventurous six-year-old with nothing on her mind except for creating a beautiful harmonious world from her bedroom. Tasha creates an imaginary world called Teakeyland, where she uses her stuffed animals (Budda & Michelle) and toys to create worlds where anything is possible. Climate change may not be something that a six-year-old can wrap their head around quickly, but sometimes all you need is a little hope and imagination, and the changes you seek in the world can quickly happen. Would this impact the way young children do view themselves in the world and how powerful visualization truly is?

“Hello everyone, my name is Aishah-Nyeta Brown, and I am in my last semester here at George Mason University. I study environmental sustainability studies with a concentration in climate change and society. My research project for this semester has been all about A children’s animation show that I am dedicated to working on beyond this semester with the OSCAR office. And that project is called Teakeyland. So this video will be a short rundown of What Teakeyland is all about and some of the research and creations that came out of this semester.

So to start out Teakeyland Is a row and I completely imagine the world not only to me as the creator and producer of Teakeyland but also in the realm of our main character Tasha. Teakeyland is a space that she creates inside of her childhood bedroom where anything is possible, including solving climate change. Now Tosha is our main character, but we have two other main characters named butterscotch and monkey Michelle. Who are Tasha’s two stuffed monkeys Who spring into life once Tasha builds a world around where she wants them to go? Within these alive places and realms that Tasha creates butterscotch and monkey Michelle get hard to work solving issues that are placed in front of their path. For example one of our locations is Indonesia Indonesia has really really really big issue with deforestation.

An endless episode we talk about we talk about orangutans habitat deforestation, did I say palm oil.? And we break it down in away… or we plan on breaking g it down when we have full episodes which will be no more than eight minutes. They will be given a challenge, challenge to come up with a cool creative realistic solution, and they will solve it does bringing the episode to an end. Next I will play you are concept trailer that myself and my animator came up with so I wrote and produced everything you see was once paper and I don’t know how to animate so I had an anime to help out and the music is written and produced by myself and you’ll hear a harpist and clarinetist who are my buddies who were able to help out on this project but these are all written by myself so I am the primary artist on us and I hope you enjoy and I’ll be back after.

Thank you all so much for watching my concert trailer and listening to what I’ve learned including the research but which I found very helpful. To take such a prominent a PhD level topic like the climate crisis and break it down in a bite-size elementary school way for young audiences to be able to comprehend and consume and maybe spark their own great ideas about how to solve the climate crisis. And if you have any interest in this project please leave a comment down below and if you have any questions also leave those and I hope to hear from a lot of you and I look forward to conversating with you all once I see your comments all right, thank you! bye!

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

The Soccer Pitch as a Societal Identity Workspace: The Case of the Athletic Club de Bilbao

Author(s): Eric Guardado-Avalos

Mentor(s): Sarah Wittman, School of Business

Athletic Club de Bilbao has played a role in the Basque culture in ways other than entertainment. Even by suffering and experiencing the trauma produced by the Franco dictatorship and the ETA’s murder campaign, Athletic has maintained its traditional identity by only equipping players with connections to the Basque County. The goal is to analyze the rhetoric of Athletic and Basque Country newspaper articles, interviews, and member stories to find out about the specific role of Athletic within the Basque community. Interviews already conducted contain the sentiment of empowerment, and the view of the club as a family.

Hello everyone, my name is Eric Guardado-Avalos, and my research project is titled as The Soccer Pitch as a Societal Identity Workspace: The Case of the Athletic Club de Bilbao.

I am working on the project with Doctor Sarah Wittman, a member of the Mason School of Business.

In 1898, Athletic Club de Bilbao was founded. Since then, it has maintained its identity within La Liga, the first division of soccer in Spain, even with a series of events which has impacted the Basque Country and other areas of Spain.

The Basque Country of the past century has straddled the terrors imposed by both Franco’s far-right, Spanish-nationalist dictatorship that accorded the world’s first carpet-bombing in Gernika and outlawed Basque language and customs, and by the ETA’s reactionary left-wing kidnapping, extorsion and murder campaign—in the name of Basque “liberation”.

Within this milieu has been the Athletic, rejecting (and suffering) both extremes while adhering to its own norm of defining top-level football in Spain, training and hiring only players with deep connections to the Basque Country.

In the present day, the Athletic continues as one of only three Spanish teams to have always held a place in the elite first division (alongside Barcelona and Real Madrid).

This lead us to ask this research question, what purpose does the Athletic Club de Bilbao serve apart from entertainment, in a fragmented Basque Culture post-Franco and post-ETA?

Our methodology is focused on researching and analyzing the rhetoric of Basque Country newspaper articles, interviews, and member stories. We plan to conduct surveys, questionnaires, and interviews of fans and folks who may not be fans. We also plan to utilize statistical charts and tables to take note of common terms and phrases used to promote Athletic.

Based on interviews which have already been conducted, one finds that the pride of being a fan of athletic goes along with being part of a family. It is all about family, and the players are seen as heroes and gods.

Overall, one of the outcomes of this project is to reflect on the societal impacts of rhetoric from Basque culture folks and its media. The desired product of the project is to compose a scholarly article which would include our observations, literature, transcriptions of interviews, tables of comparison, and graphics of Athletic’s history and its overall role in the Basque Country.

I would like to share a phrase which is found hymn of the Athletic Bilbao.

The phrase is “erritik sortu ziñalako” which means “because you born for the village.”

Thanks so much for your time, and best regards!

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

When do children start to use syllogistic reasoning?

Author(s): Sydney Foss

Mentor(s): Sabine Doebel, Psychology

Deductive reasoning is typically associated with adolescence although some literature is pointing to children being able to use it in certain contexts. This effect was first demonstrated by Harris and Dias (1988) who found evidence that children are able to use syllogistic reasoning in a playful context compared to when premises are read to them in a matter-of-fact manner. For example: All pigs fly; Percy is a Pig; Does Percy fly? The current study seeks to test an alternative explanation for what is occurring: in a play context, children may be more likely to base their answers on the content provided to them in the premises, whether or not an answer follows logically from those premises. Children ages 4 and 5 years will be randomly assigned to hear premises and conclusions that are presented in either in a play context or a serious context. The conclusions will either follow logically from the premises or not. Children will also be asked to justify their response. It is expected that children in the play context will be more likely to respond in ways consistent with drawing an inference that follows logically from the premises than children in the serious context, as previously found; however, they will also be more likely to respond inaccurately when the conclusion does not follow (e.g., All pigs fly; Percy flies; Is Percy a pig?). Additionally, children in the play condition will use ‘theoretical’justifications of the kind reported in previous research even when affirming the consequent, suggesting that these justifications are not indicative of deductive reasoning.

Hello! My name is Sydney Foss and I am currently a senior majoring in Psychology with a concentration in Development. This semester I participated in OSCAR’s USRP program where I have been studying at what age children start being able to use deductive reasoning, specifically through the use of syllogisms. So, if I were to say something like, “All cows quack. Susie is a cow. Does Susie quack?” You would most likely say “yes” and if I asked you why, you might say something like “because it follows the premise” or “because you said so.” This is an example of a syllogism. Syllogisms are a form of reasoning where a conclusion is drawn from a set of premises. If you were to ask a young child the same thing, they will respond with “no” instead of “yes.” This is because they are basing their conclusion off of past experience instead of what is in the syllogism itself. They haven’t seen a cow quack so how could that be true? But could there be a way that children would reach the correct response? In 1988, researchers Harris and Dias sought out to find just that. What happens if you change the context around the syllogism? They found that by putting the syllogism in the play context by saying “Pretend I am on another planet” beforehand, children were more likely to give the correct response. But is this because the play context helps with deductive reasoning or because of something else? My project investigates whether in a play context children are more likely to base their answers on the information given, even when the information is not logically correct. Additionally, it acts as a replication study to balance out the play and serious conditions which in the original work were unbalanced in representation. We are planning on having children aged 4-5 come into the lab space and hear 8 different syllogisms in a play or serious context. Additionally, we are using two different types of syllogisms that afford different inferences. The first is Modus Ponens which should look a little familiar. This is “All cows quack. Susie is a cow. Does Susie quack?” Saying ‘yes’is a correct deductive inference. The second is affirming-the-consequent. For example: “All cows quack. Susie quacks. Is Susie a cow?” Saying ‘yes’is the incorrect inference. A key question is whether children will be more likely to answer yes to this last type of syllogism in the play context versus the serious context or whether they will instead be more likely to realize it doesn’t logically follow from the premises. If they are more likely to say “yes” in the play context it could suggest that the play context encourages simply responding in terms of the information provided as opposed to deductive reasoning since ‘yes’is the incorrect answer to this reasoning type. Another way we are testing children’s reasoning is by taking the modus ponens statement and having the answer to it be “no.” For example: “All cows quack. Susie is a cow. Does Susie moo?” Saying ‘no’is the correct deductive inference here. After each “yes” or “no” response, children will be asked for a justification. “Why did you say yes?” or “Why did you say no.” We want to see the reasoning behind their answers. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have made it so that the inferences will be said in a video format and a researcher will ask the questions. This is so that children can see the mouth movements and not question that they are just hearing things incorrectly. We predict that children will be more likely to draw valid conclusions from modus ponens syllogisms in the play context versus the serious context, but they will also draw more invalid conclusions from affirming the consequent syllogisms. We also expect they will use similar justifications across modus ponens and affirming the consequent syllogisms. I would like to thank my mentor Sabine Doebel, my lab manager Nicole Stucke, OSCAR for giving me this opportunity, and all of you for watching.

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

Why Do Children Write Letters and Numbers Backwards?

Author(s): Jordan Hassani

Mentor(s): Sabine Doebel, Psychology

Children often spontaneously write letters and digits backwards, typically during early literacy acquisition. ‘Reversals’have been explained as resulting from mirror generalization, which suggests that children do not store the left-right orientation of characters in memory. Previous research suggests children track statistical regularities (e.g., noticing letters tend to face right) and use this to guide their own writing, more often reversing characters so that they face to the right. The current study seeks to extend the account that children spontaneously notice and encode information about the orientation of characters broadly and may use this implicit knowledge to guide their own writing. The study will test whether recently presented stimuli can influence children’s reversal errors. If children do make more reversal errors in the incongruent priming condition of the focal task, as compared to the neutral priming condition, it would suggest that children do implicitly notice left-right orientation of characters and can be primed by this information. We will also test if children share adults’intuitions on which way specific asymmetrical characters face and whether children recognize that individual asymmetrical characters can only have one orientation. Findings from this research may suggest future steps in better understanding children’s language acquisition and shed more light on the evolutionary mechanisms that support language development.

Hello everyone, I’m Jordan Hassani and today I’m gonna talk about my proposal investigating reversals – or in other words – why children write their letters and numbers backwards.

As some background, a reversal error is when a child writes a letter or number backwards, which can be seen here with the 1, the 2, and the 3. Here they are all actually left facing numbers, but the child has reversed them to be right-facing. Children can make reversal errors as soon as they start writing, and research has shown children are significantly more likely to reverse left-facing characters than right-facing characters, as can be seen in the figure.

The evolutionary process of mirror generalization is commonly used to explain why reverse happen, which suggests that young children do not fully encode the horizontal orientation of characters into memory – This means, that when children ‘forget’the orientation of a character/or in other words/which way that character faces, they have to ‘guess’– this process is presumed to be overridden by literacy development, which can be seen with how children make fewer reversal errors as they age – and this process is believed to be evolutionary adaptive, because stimuli in the natural environment are typically invariant across left-right changes – for example, looking at this lion, the two pictures are mirror images of eachother, but whether looking at the left or the right image, the meaning we take away is the same – they are dangerous lions!

Now, looking at these letters, b and d, they too are mirror images of eachother, but each can have different meaning and different uses based on the context their used in. This is a good example of how an evolutionary adaptive process, mirror generalization, can be so detrimental for children learning how to write.

There are a few different theories which attempt to explain why children tend to reverse left-facing characters significantly more often than right-facing characters, but at the core of these theories is that children appear to track and encode task-relevant information, and use this information to guide their writing. An example of this can be seen with how children tend to mimic the orientation of preceding characters when they make a reversal. Looking at the table here, lets imagine that a child is about to write the number 3, and they have just correctly written the number 1 – keeping in mind both 3 and 1 are left facing when correctly written. In this scenario, there is a 31% chance the child will reverse the 3. However, if this 3 were to be preceded by a reversed 1 or a correctly written 5 (both right facing characters), there is a much higher chance this 3 will now be reversed to align with the orientation of the preceding characters, these chances being 86% and 65.5% respectively.

Our current study seeks to extend the account that children spontaneously notice and encode information about the orientation of characters broadly – and that exposure to recent characters may prime an orientation, encouraging children’s nascent representations of orientation to be overwritten – so, essentially, we are trying to better understand whether children are more likely to make reversals when ‘primed’with specific orientations.

We’re going to do this by presenting children with visual streams of characters, attempting to prime an orientation in mind, and see if this encourages a reversal or not. Here, we have an example of what this would look like – and after children have observed the sequence, they would pick between a correctly written target and its mirrored form.

Here we can see all the conditions of the focal task, as I just showed you with one of the incgrongruent conditions, it’s a right facing sequence with a left facing target and its reversed form. With the other incongruent condition, it’s a left facing sequence and a right facing target and its reversed form. And then the 2 neutral sequences are just a bunch of letters where we try to avoid priming any orientation, and then we show them either a left or right facing character and, of course, their reversed forms.

In our second task, we simply measure intuitions about which way children think specific characters face. For each character, children will simply indicate whether they think it is left facing or right facing for each character.

For our final task, we are just trying to better understand where they think its incorrect to make reversals, so we just have them answer whether they think that’s okay or that’s a mistake to stories of others writing letters and digits correctly and backwards.

In the focal task, children will make more reversals in the incongruent priming condition compared to the neutral priming condition. May provide support for Treiman & Kessler’s (2011) statistical learning account. Older children will be more likely to show explicit knowledge that characters have specific orientations. Suggest that they are aware that orientation matters when writing. Children will show general consensus in intuitions about orientations of characters. Support notion that children track orientation early on and may use it to guide their responses (Treiman & Kessler, 2011).

Here we have references.

And that is the end of my presentation, thank you for your time and please feel free to drop any questions below, and I’ll be more than happy to respond. Thank you for your time and have a good rest of your day.

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.

Audio Transcript:

Slide 1: 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.

Slide 2: 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 ridesharing 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.

Slide 3: 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.
I have included relevant research from a SeoClarity chart that reveals how Americans trust big tech companies from Google to Titkok. The results were fascinating by showing Google is the most trusted tech company whereas TikTok is the least trusted tech and social media brand in the US.

Slide 4: 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.

Slide 5: 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.

Slide 6: 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 OSCAR Top Presenter Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) - OSCAR

Cataloging and Analysis of Microbial Communities in the Zebrafish Colony at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study

Author(s): Thomas Lopez

Mentor(s): Dr. Valerie Olmo, Biology

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are important model organisms for studying developmental biology. The Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study (KIAF) at GMU houses a colony of zebrafish in their animal facility. The research presented here is part of a greater review of care protocols in order to reduce mortality rates in juvenile fish. Several samples of microbial biofilm were harvested from the aquarium system housing the fish and cultured in petri dishes at 28℃. The goal was to check for any pathogenic organisms, but none were found. Instead, investigators discovered a high diversity of microfauna that organize themselves into three distinct communities based on water conditions and quality. Type I communities were observed in conditions that zebrafish thrive in, Type II communities were observed in conditions that zebrafish deteriorate in, and Type III communities are neutral to water quality and instead react to ambient light levels. Based on these findings, zebrafish researchers at the KIAF can use microbial analysis to monitor water quality and better diagnose issues with the fish by cataloging the presence of Type I and II communities. Investigators hope that the application of these culture techniques will improve survivorship in both adult and young zebrafish at the lab.

Hello, my name is Tom Lopez and I’m currently a junior biology student at George Mason University. Today I will be presenting the cataloging and analysis of microbial communities in the Zebrafish Colony located in the Krasnow Institute of Advanced Study.

I originally applied for the OSCAR URSP Program with my mentor Dr. Valerie Olmo with an idea for a conservation biology project about an endangered and understudied species of fish. While I set up my own research project, Dr. Olmo invited me to work with the Zebrafish Colony. The researchers there were struggling to raise young fish, so she asked me to help review their care strategies. I tested different factors while raising several clutches of eggs, including water quality, feeding regimes, and disinfection protocols. While investigating the high mortality rate of young fish, I began to look at the microbial organisms that inhabited the aquarium system. I initially wanted to see if there were any pathogens or other harmful organisms which may be affecting the fish. I did not end up finding anything dangerous, but I did discover a much wider variety of biodiversity than I expected. This presentation will explore these findings.

Aquariums support many different types of microhabitats, oftentimes unintentionally. The constant flow of nutrients in the water supports several communities of microorganisms, which form biofilms across surfaces. I sought to identify exactly what organisms comprise these biofilms.

To do this, I collected several samples by scraping the biofilm off the surface, pipetting it into a petri dish, and incubating the dishes at 28 degrees centigrade. After leaving the contents of the dish to settle for 24 hours, I looked at them under a dissecting microscope. Immediately, I saw a huge diversity of life. I began recording them one by one in an effort to identify them. Among the species found living in the system were:

Tetrahymena pyriformis, a single-celled detritivore
Two kinds of rotifers, one in the class Bdelloidea and the other in the genus Euchlanis
An unidentified Vorticella species, which are sedentary filter feeders
Peranema, which are euglenids
Gastrotrichs, which are benthic worm-like animals
Non-parasitic nematodes

As I collected and analyzed more samples, I began to notice that the organisms divided themselves into three distinct communities, which I called Type 1, 2, and 3 for this project. Each community is associated with a different aquatic environment.

A Type 1 community is one which is dominated by an unidentified fungi. This organism grows in a mycelium-like pattern, branching across a surface like a web. This mycelium substrate hosts a variety of species, primarily Tetrahymena, Vorticella, gastrotrichs and rotifers. All of these organisms have been observed attaching to and living within the mycelium matrix, suggesting that the fungi provides some sort of critical factor for this ecosystem to develop.

A Type 2 community is one which is dominated by a bacterial biofilm. This film spreads like a sludge across a surface around uneaten food. This community hosts a lower diversity of organisms, but a much higher density. The primary organism in this ecosystem by a large margin is Peranema. Unlike their more well-known Euglena cousins, Peranema cannot photosynthesize, instead feeding on the bacteria which grow in the biofilm. Type 2 communities are visible with the naked eye, appearing as a brown slime dotted with several white masses. These masses are actually piles of Peranema, which congregate into these areas to feed and breed.

Type 1 and Type 2 communities are mutually exclusive, requiring different water conditions and actively repelling each other, as can be seen here. Type 1 communities have been observed in conditions with faster water flow, low nutrients from leftover food and low ammonia waste from the fish. By contrast, Type 2 communities have been observed in low-flow conditions with high nutrients and very high levels of ammonia waste. This distinction allows the communities to be used as secondary indicators by researchers to monitor aquatic health, since zebrafish thrive in the conditions preferred by Type 1 and deteriorate in the conditions preferred by Type 2.

Type 3 is an outlier community associated with high flow and high light. Only two have been observed in the system, but they were the two largest microbial communities documented. Type 3 communities are dominated by diatoms- tiny, photosynthetic ciliates which form silica shells around themselves. Samples from these communities were difficult to culture since the diatoms often died when kept in a dark incubator; however, I was able to identify the glass shells they left behind. The diatom colonies form a brown-red film which acts as a matrix for larger organisms to inhabit, primarily rotifers and a small unidentified plankton too small to record. They also seem to be associated with webs of thin red strands; these structures have yet to be identified, but are speculated to be another kind of fungi.

These are the findings I have compiled by the end of the semester. In regards to zebrafish husbandry in the Krasnow Institute, the ecology of these microorganisms can be used to improve care practices and better provide for the offspring. However, more work must still be done. There are several organisms which have not yet been identified, and the significance of the association with Type 1 and 2 communities and water quality has yet to be quantitatively determined. With further investigation of microbial analysis, researchers can use the health of all organisms in an aquarium system to better provide for the needs of the fish they want to raise. I will continue to move forward with this investigation, and I am excited to contribute to the husbandry of the model organisms upon which so much research relies. Thank you for watching!

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

Clinical Biomarkers Associated with Depressive Symptoms in Chronic Liver Disease Patients

Author(s): Natalie VanderNoot

Mentor(s): Ali Weinstein, Global and Community Health

Patients with chronic illnesses often report feelings of anxiety, depression, or worry associated with their condition. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels have been shown to fluctuate in the presence of chronic liver disease, psychiatric conditions, and alcohol use. This study focuses on the associations between BDNF, its related biochemical compounds, and depressive symptoms in a sample of patients from the Beatty Liver and Obesity Research Program at Inova Fairfax Hospital. The sample consists of healthy controls and patients with either non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) or hepatitis C virus (HCV). Patients will be evaluated for depressive symptoms based on responses to the chronic liver disease questionnaire (CLDQ), medical history of depression, and/or regular use of prescription anti-depressant medications. While laboratory work has been postponed to the spring semester, it is expected that patients with chronic liver diseases and a history of depression will have lower BDNF levels than patients with either liver disease or depression.

Hello and thank you for coming to my presentation. My name is Natalie VanderNoot and I’m presenting my study on depressive symptoms and blood analytes in chronic liver disease patients and are processed to find if there’s an association between these things. My mentor is Dr Ali Weinstein from the Department of Global and Community Health at George Mason University.

Some background from how we got to this question is focused on brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So in my first URSP project in fall of 2020, BDNF stood out as an analyte of interest based on its association with human activity, which was in turn associated with fatigue in our patient population at that time. Brain derived neurotrophic factor is a neurotransmitter in the brain that is associated with neuroplasticity and brain growth in adults, and it is also operating in the rest of the body as myokine which is a compound released from skeletal muscle but its function in the rest of the body is still under investigation. Previous studies have found that patients who have alcohol use disorder and a coinciding liver disease had a lower serum BDNF (this is the BDNF tested in their blood) than those without a liver disease, and that patients who have psychiatric conditions and mood disorders also have lower BDNF but that this can be raised by treating those patients with antidepressants.

So this led me to ask questions about our patient population at Inova Fairfax Hospital which consists of patients without liver disease, patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and patients with hepatitis c virus. And I’m wondering if the patients who have either of those two liver diseases but who don’t have significant fatigue or depressive symptoms have different levels of BDNF in their blood than the controls which might be associated with the presence of the liver disease itself. I’m also wondering if a history of depression in the patient’s medical history correlates with BDNF or any of the other blood analytes that we’ll be testing. I also have to incorporate the use of psychiatric medications because previous research has indicated that those can have an effect on BDNF concentrations so I’m wondering if the use of any sort of psychiatric medications like antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications will affect BDNF levels in NAFLD and and hepatitis c patients and I’m also curious to return to our original focus of self-reported activity and fatigue and I’m wondering if activity will affect BDNF independent of the fatigue and depressive symptoms since we did not consider any history of depression or depressive symptoms in our past analysis.

However this process led to more questions throughout the semester. The questions that I originally proposed were not as easy to answer as they seemed. I learned a lot this semester about how we can accurately answer clinical questions and what needs to go into study design that i hadn’t considered when writing my research proposal. I have to consider how we’re going to define depressive symptoms, and what surveys i’ll take those from, and since patients with different liver diseases take different surveys at our research center I have to figure out how to combine those. I have to figure out what other things I might want to test in the blood that could be associated with mental health, fatigue, or the muscle loss and activity that the research group focuses on. I have to figure out how to actually group the hundreds of medications that the patients in our sample are taking and then I have to look at all of the patients in the research studies at Inova Fairfax at the Betty liver and obesity research program and decide which of those patients are eligible and what criteria I will use to narrow down the sample and what would exclude a patient from the study.

This has been my focus for much of the semester and now going forward with this process I’m almost done my plans for the break and the upcoming semester will be to finalize the patient data set, complete the medication groupings, actually conduct laboratory testing to find the BDNF concentrations in our patient blood samples, to analyze the data, and answer the research questions and then share the results at a conference or in a publication.

Thank you for listening and I would like to also thank my mentors at George Mason Iniversity and Inova Fairfax: Dr Ali Weinstein, Dr. Lynn Gerber, Dr. Michael Estep, Dr. Jillian Kallman-Price, and Dr. Zobair Younossi. And of course a big thanks to Dr. Karen Lee and the undergraduate research scholars program for funding my work this semester.