Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2011 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences Book of Abstracts, our ninth annual issue documenting the work conducted by students in collaboration with their faculty mentors. As you will see by the depth and variety of the projects, these students successfully used their research, critical thinking, and writing skills to produce scholarship that has been recognized by the larger scholarly community.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2008 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences, our sixth Book of Abstracts that features the scholarship conducted in the college by our students in collaboration with faculty mentors. In the above quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson goes on to say the following: “The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself.” Indeed, the high level of scholarship reflected in this book is a testament to the students’ development as scholars and the effective mentorship provided by the Winthrop faculty as they share in the practice of their disciplines.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences Book of Abstracts 2009 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents the seventh Book of Abstracts, highlighting the undergraduate scholarship conducted by students in collaboration with faculty mentors. This collection of abstracts represents many hours of scholarly activity in which students further developed their research, critical thinking, and writing skills and engaged in learning well beyond the classroom. We congratulate the students and their faculty mentors for the quality of their work and their willingness to share it with the academic community through publications in refereed journals and presentations at regional, national, and international meetings. We also thank Evan Adams for editing the abstracts and Chris Richter, a visual communication design major, for designing the cover and producing the book.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2003 Book of Abstracts

On behalf of the faculty, staff, and students in the College of Arts and Sciences, I want to thank you for your interest in this collection of abstracts of undergraduate research for 2003. This collection is the first we have published, and we expect it to be number one in a long and increasingly impressive series. The importance of this collection is what it represents. These abstracts are the results of untold hours of hard work by students and faculty. Through that work, students have learned much about the research process, developed important critical and analytical thinking skills, improved writing abilities, and deepened relationships with faculty mentors. Many students have presented their research in classes, through seminars, and at professional meetings. In this work, faculty have been challenged to push students to do the best they can, to let them flounder as they struggle to solve the problems at hand, to hold them to deadlines, and to know how to encourage and when to scold. I know from personal experience that working together on meaningful research is a powerful way to build lasting relationships between students and faculty members.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2004 Book of Abstracts

In his work entitled The Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon expresses the need for students and their teachers to push beyond current knowledge by testing accepted theories, developing new paradigms, and discovering new information. The abstracts in this booklet are clear examples of how students and faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences are advancing knowledge in a variety of disciplines. From the analysis of particular proteins to the examination of various literary themes, the students whose scholarly endeavors are represented in this booklet pursued research projects that have explored new ideas; and their teachers have helped them to achieve their goals by providing expert guidance in the field of study, by challenging students to excel, and by encouraging them as they developed their ideas. Students and faculty should be very proud of the work reflected in these abstracts. These individual efforts and collaborations reveal what is best about Winthrop University as a learning community.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2006 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents our fourth issue of Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences: Book of Abstracts, which highlights the work conducted by students in collaboration with faculty mentors. This collection of abstracts represents many hours of scholarly activity in which students further developed their research, critical thinking, and writing skills and engaged in learning well beyond the classroom.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2007 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents our fifth Book of Abstracts that highlights the undergraduate scholarship conducted in the college by students with their faculty mentors. As the quote by James Russell Lowell implies, the pursuit of knowledge involves more than acquiring facts; it requires posing relevant questions, critically examining information, and clearly communicating conclusions. The high level of scholarship reflected in this book is a testament to the students’ development as scholars and the effective mentorship provided by the Winthrop faculty.

Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences 2005 Book of Abstracts

The College of Arts and Sciences proudly presents Undergraduate Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences, the third issue in our annual book of abstracts, containing the work conducted by students in collaboration with faculty mentors. As you will see by the depth and variety of the projects, these students successfully used their research, critical thinking, and writing skills to produce scholarship that has been recognized by the larger scholarly community. In fact, these collected works illustrate the students’ ability to communicate at a professional level; in many cases, these students have presented and defended their scholarship to the greater academic community at regional, national, and international meetings. We congratulate all the students and faculty mentors who are represented in this collection for their dedication to learning. This book is also the first designed and edited by Winthrop University undergraduate students. For their good work, we thank Kristen Jeffords for editing the abstracts, Paul Jones for creating the cover art, and Stephanie Sheldon for the book design and layout.

A Comparative Study of the Information-Seeking Behavior of Bachelor of Science and Master of Science Agricultural Extension and Education Students

This study compares information-seeking behavior of Bachelor of Science and Master of Science students in the fields of agricultural extension and education. The authors surveyed Iranian students in departments of agricultural extension and education at four universities in Tehran, Shiraz, Mollasani, and Kermanshah. This study focused on three aspects: (1) comparison of amounts of information-seeking behavior between Bachelor of Science and Master of Science agricultural extension and education students; (2) comparison of information-seeking behavior varieties in Bachelor of Science and Master of Science agricultural extension and education students; (3) Comparison of amounts of available information resources at four universities and its effectiveness on students' information-seeking behavior; and (4) comparison of research and educational outputs in Bachelor of Science and Master of Science students. Scale free technique, division by mean method, principal components analysis technique, Delphi method, t-test, correlation and regression tools were used for data analysis. This study revealed that Bachelor of Science students' information-seeking behavior is for improving educational output, but Master of Science students' information-seeking behavior is for promoting research output. Among varieties of Internet searching skills, library searching skills, and awareness of library information-seeking methods with students' information-seeking behavior, there are not significant differences between two groups of students.

Employing perichromism for probing the properties of carboxymethyl cellulose films: an expedient, accurate method for the determination of the degree of substitution of the biopolymer derivative

The properties of films of carboxymethyl cellulose, CMC, of different degree of substitution, DS, have been examined by the use of perichromic indicators (probes). The film properties that have been determined are: empirical polarity, E-T(33); "acidity", alpha; "basicity", beta; and dipolarity/polarizability, pi*. This has been achieved by employing the following perichromic probes: 4-nitroaniline, 4-nitroanisole, 4-nitro-N,N-dimethylaniline, and 2,6-dichloro-4-(2,4,6-triphenyl-pyridinium-1-yl)phenolate, WB. The correlations between both E-T(33)- or pi* and DS were found to be linear; that between beta and DS is a second order polynomial; no obvious correlation was found between alpha and DS. The polarities of CMC films are in the range of those of butyl alcohols. As models for CMC, we have employed cellulose plus CMC of high DS; oxidized cellulose with degree of oxidation = 0.5; sodium glucuronate. The former model behaved akin to CMC, but the plots of the perichromic properties versus DS showed different slopes/intercepts. FTIR data and molecular dynamics simulations on the solvation of WB have shown that this difference can be traced to more efficient hydrogen bonding between the film of the model and the probe. This affects the intra-molecular charge-transfer energy of the latter, leading to different responses to the variation of DS. Based on the excellent linear correlation between E-T(33) and DS, for CMC from different origins, we suggest that perichromism is a simple, accurate, and expedient alternative for the determination of DS of the biopolymer derivative.

The influence of the degree of back-mixing on hydrogen production in an anaerobic fixed-bed reactor

This paper reports on results obtained from experiments carried out in an acidogenic anaerobic reactor aiming at the optimization of hydrogen production by altering the degree of back-mixing. It was hypothesized that there is an optimum operating point that maximizes the hydrogen yield. Experiments were performed in a packed-bed bioreactor by covering a broad range of recycle ratios (R) and the optimum point was obtained for an R value of 0.6. In this operating condition the reactor behaved as 8 continuous stirred-tank reactors in series and the maximum yield was 4.22 mol H-2 mol sucrose(-1). Such optimum point was estimated by deriving a polynomial function fitted to experimental data and it was obtained as the conjugation of three factors related to the various degrees of back-mixing applied to the reactor: mass transfer from the bulk liquid to the biocatalyst, liquid-to-gas mass transfer and the kinetic behavior of irreversible reactions in series. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

„This is TZ power! Kenkey can’t do this!“ : Die performative Aushandlung nationaler Kultur ; das National Festival of Arts and Culture in Ghana /// Arbeitspapiere / Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien ; 92

Der vorliegende Artikel beschäftigt sich mit der performativen Aushandlung nationaler Kultur auf dem National Festival of Arts and Culture, das 2006 in Wa, Nordwestghana, stattfand. Die Autorin nahm an der Vorbereitung und Planung des Festivals in lokalen staatlichen Kulturinstitutionen teil, und beobachtete die Diskussionen um die Repräsentation einer (imaginierten) spezifischen Kultur des Nordens in scharfer Abgrenzung zu der des als dominant und diskriminierend empfundenen Südens. In diesem Zusammenhang werden Fragen der Authentizität und Authentifizierung, wie sie in der Planung und Rezeption diskutiert wurden, aufgegriffen und mit der Konzeption des Festivals als gleichzeitig einheitsstiftendes Vehikel für nationale Identität und als Austragungsort eines Wettbewerbs der Regionen um Anerkennung und Ressourcen in Verbindung gesetzt. Das Festival, so die Argumentation, ist eine cultural performance, die das Wesen einer „Kultur“ nicht nur abbildet, sondern auch die Möglichkeit des Wandels und der Subversion birgt. Performance meint hier also gleichzeitig die Aufführung und das Skript der Diskurse, die der Aufführung Bedeutung zuschreiben. Diesen doppelten Ansatz verfolgt der Artikel durch die Verknüpfung von Festivalbeobachtungen und Komiteesitzungsmitschriften im Rahmen der Vorbereitung.

The effect of arts speech therapy on cerebral oxygenation and low frequency hemodynamic oscillations measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy

Introduction: As a previous study revealed, arts speech therapy (AST) affects cardiorespiratory interaction [1]. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether AST also has effects on brain oxygenation and hemodynamics measured non-invasively using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Material and methods: NIRS measurements were performed on 17 subjects (8 men and 9 women, mean age: 35.6 ± 12.7 y) during AST. Each measurement lasted 35 min, comprising 8 min pre-baseline, 10 min recitation and 20 min post-baseline. For each subject, measurements were performed for three different AST recitation tasks (recitation of alliterative, hexameter and prose verse). Relative concentration changes of oxyhemoglobin (Δ[O2Hb]) and deoxyhemoglobin (Δ[HHb]) as well as the tissue oxygenation index (TOI) were measured using a Hamamatsu NIRO300 NIRS device and a sensor placed on the subjects forehead. Movement artifacts were removed using a novel method [2]. Statistical analysis (Wilcoxon test) was applied to the data to investigate (i) if the recitation causes changes in the median values and/or in the Mayer wave power spectral density (MW-PSD, range: 0.07–0.13 Hz) of Δ[O2Hb], Δ[HHb] or TOI, and (ii) if these changes vary between the 3 recitation forms. Results: For all three recitation styles a significant (p < 0.05) decrease in Δ[O2Hb] and TOI was found, indicating a decrease in blood flow. These decreases did not vary significantly between the three styles. MW-PSD increased significantly for Δ[O2Hb] when reciting the hexameter and prose verse, and for Δ[HHb] and TOI when reciting alliterations and hexameter, representing an increase in Mayer waves. The MW-PSD increase for Δ[O2Hb] was significantly larger for the hexameter verse compared to alliterative and prose verse Conclusion: The study showed that AST affects brain hemodynamics (oxygenation, blood flow and Mayer waves). Recitation caused a significant decrease in cerebral blood flow for all recitation styles as well as an increase in Mayer waves, particularly for the hexameter, which may indicate a sympathetic activation. References 1. D. Cysarz, D. von Bonin, H. Lackner, P. Heusser, M. Moser, H. Bettermann. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, 287 (2) (2004), pp. H579–H587 2. F. Scholkmann, S. Spichtig, T. Muehlemann, M. Wolf. Physiol Meas, 31 (5) (2010), pp. 649–662