URSP Student Abigail Lash Conducts a Comparative Evaluation of Services for Survivors of Human Trafficking

My name is Abigail Lash, and I am a senior studying social work. In Fall 2014, I took a social work course on Human Trafficking taught by Dr. Laura Tsai. The course opened my eyes to modern day slavery, and allowed me to explore my passion for international social work. Dr. Tsai has practiced in the anti-trafficking sector of social work and done several research projects in Southeast Asia. She has been able to provide an international context for understanding the devastating issue of human trafficking. When Dr. Tsai shared that she was working on a project to evaluate support services for survivors of trafficking in the Philippines, I jumped at the opportunity to join her.

I have always been interested in international social work, and, in recent years, have honed in my focus on Southeast Asia. This experience has given me an incredible opportunity to learn about the anti-trafficking sector in the Philippines, and has given me a glimpse into the culture surrounding the issues of poverty, migration, and religion. For this project, I am specifically looking at the factors of trafficking survivors’ environments and housing situations that either provide them security, or produce risk factors that make them more vulnerable for re-trafficking. I am conducting research on trafficking survivors living conditions, by analyzing data from a financial diaries study that was completed in the last five years. Each week, I am looking at five different participants from the financial diaries study, and compiling a case study for each one of them, focusing on their housing situations and surrounding environments.

In looking at these participants financial diaries, I am amazed by the complexity of the family systems in the Philippines. All of the participants are from a low-income background, but some of them are from families with over 15 children, and may also have step-siblings and half-siblings. The Philippines is roughly 80% Roman Catholic, and so birth control is difficult and can be very expensive to access. Looking at the family systems is very interesting, because it helps provide an understanding for what support services are needed for survivors of trafficking.

URSP Student Bobby Graham Discovers a New Type of Neuronal Tissue

I have been drawn to the nervous system more so than the other systems since early biology classes in grade school. While other systems were certainly interesting, the nervous system perplexed me in ways I still cannot comprehend. From one individual neuron to an enormous conglomerate of information pathways, the methods in which the nervous system contributes to our thoughts, feelings, motion, and essential underlying processes has captivated me more than anything else I’ve studied. This ultimately led to me wishing to work in George Mason University’s Neural Engineering Lab. I started as a volunteer, and eventually became employed with the lab – assisting in lab studies, and learning experimental protocols and data analysis techniques. This led to the writing and eventual funding of an OSCAR proposal.

The research I have conducted during my undergraduate career at Mason has been invaluable in my development as a student, and as a person. Exploring the unknown has not only furthered my critical thinking and problem solving skills, but taught me a lot about myself. It has shown me my strengths and weaknesses, and helped me develop a stronger work ethic. Aside from the academic and personal development, research experience at the undergraduate level will be essential in my ultimate goal of entering a PhD program. Early exposure into the world of research will make me more attractive to potential graduate schools, and prepare me for the expectations a PhD program entails.

For me, a normal week in the Neural Engineering lab consists of running experiments, sorting and processing data, and interpreting the results.  Ideally, a few times a week I will run several electrical stimulation experiments on the neuron cultures, process the data, and discuss with the grad student I work closely with what the best direction would be to pursue. Usually, that direction is collect more data, and increase the number of experiments we have run in order to make solid statistical claims, but occasionally we need to make appropriate adjustments to our protocol.

This week, I discovered how difficult it can be for the neuronal cultures to be maintained successfully. The lab recently received a new type of neuronal tissue, and followed a new protocol to grow them on a microelectrode array (MEA). Unfortunately, the neurons died, and there is not a clear reason to what caused it.

URSP Student Nisha Kapani Researches if Normal and Traumatic Brain Injured Research Subjects Use Virtual Tools in Similar Ways

Seeing that I am a neuroscience major and premedical student, the comparison between traumatic brain injured (TBI) patients and normal subjects provides an interesting comparison. Haptics technology is increasingly applied to help understand problems of movement and possible treatments.  Thanks to the Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research, I have been funded to study “Do normal and traumatic brain injured research subjects use virtual tools in a similar fashion?” in the upcoming spring 2015 semester.

I was first introduced to haptic devices in my Introduction to Clinical Research class in spring 2014. Another student was analyzing the motor and cognitive differences between research subjects with and without TBI in a virtual environment using haptic technology. During the summer of 2014, I volunteered in the lab and began analyzing the differences between the two groups (normal and TBI subjects).

A haptic device is one that senses body’s movements and involves physical contact between the computer and the user, usually through an input/output device, such as a joystick or data gloves.  Haptic technology makes it possible to investigate components of movement and determine relative contributions of touch and position sense (proprioception) to better understand how people learn and improve their motor activity. Human movement is, in part a result of what happens in the pre-motor cortex and the motor cortex, how these signals are transmitted into the periphery, and how the person experiences the final interaction.

When I am in the lab, I time the specific movements and calculate both efficiency and accuracy from the data of each subject.  Then, I analyze the differences between the two subject groups and seek a comparison to see if one group performs the tasks more accurately and efficiently. This week in the lab I finally obtained the distance data I need to compare to the timed movements.  This project ultimately seeks to determine if there are fine motor performance and sensory (proprioceptive) differences between people with TBI and those without TBI. This will be measured using haptic devices in virtual environments. Haptic devices can capture position and force data while subjects are performing functional tasks. The main goal of my research is to figure out how to measure proprioception, which is a complex sensation. Proprioception provides us with position sense and knowledge of where we are in space. People with TBI often have difficulty with motor function and coordination.  Loss of proprioception may contribute to this problem. My lab has a haptic device that measures the interaction between movement and objects in virtual space: the Phantom OMNI. This device has a stylus, held by the subject and provides force feedback when in the virtual environment, just like most video game controllers. Movement of the stylus can be recorded in real time so that its positon, and the position of the hand and virtual object, can be tracked in real time.

I expect to be able to differentiate the motor differences between the two patient groups and find what, if any, aspect of this experiment shows a proprioceptive deficit. This study will also help answer the question of how sensitive the haptic is for identifying differences between the two groups. In addition, I hope to learn more about how haptics can contribute to patients with motor deficiencies such as Parkinson’s, make a contribution to the field of haptics, and further our understanding of brain function. 

URSP Student My-Linh Huynh Researches Nonsmokers Perceptions on E-Cigarettes

My name is Linh Huynh and I am a student researcher in the Communication field. My interests vary between multitudes of topics, but regarding academia I am passionate about health and communication. People oftentimes do not realize how they arrive at their perceptions or attitudes about a particular subject. I wish to explore more in depth about how nonsmokers develop their attitudes about electronic cigarettes (e-cigs/vapes). I am always interested in how people think and how they communicate, or convey their thoughts and feelings to others. Originally my interest in my topic stemmed from my own personal life, as I used to be a smoker. Furthermore, electronic cigarettes are a rising trend, especially among young adults and teenagers. However, the lack of knowledge surrounding e-cigs is concerning.

My research project relates to my long-term career goals since I wish to pursue a career in health communications. Many people lack knowledge in a variety of topics that concern their own health, and I want to change that. My investigation has given me the opportunity to thrive in research and facilitate my learning at a graduate level, in order to become more prepared for a higher education.

On a weekly basis I enjoy immersing myself in reading and staying up-to-date on current events and news, particularly news that pertains to health and/or communication. More so, I enjoy perusing the Internet for health-related blogs and learning new information. Additionally, as a communication major and an extrovert I love to interact with as many people as I can.

Learning about interpersonal and intrapersonal communication is something that I have always been interested in. While surveying students for my research this week, I learned that while many people would prefer using e-cigs over cigarettes, they are not actually informed about e-cigs. This only enforced my original belief that an increase in knowledge nationwide with regard to health is crucial to our growth as a nation.

URSP Student Robert Graham Investigation of pattern recognition in cortical cultures

My research topic addresses the so-called decoy selection problem in protein structure prediction. We have algorithms spewing out hundreds of thousands of three-dimensional structures computed for a given protein sequence in a few days on one CPU. These structures are known as decoys. The challenge is how to determine which of them is the native structure. This is a crucial part of the de novo structure prediction problem, where for a given protein sequence, we want to know what its native structure is as the first step to understanding anything about the function of that protein. I became interested in the topic because the protein structure problem has a lot of useful applications. Once we know the relationship between the protein structure and their function, we are able produce our own protein to used in the field of medical science. My long-term goal is to do more research about bioinformatics, and probably apply for the graduate program in this field. I think this research experience is a very good practice chance for me to get familiar with it and also the way of doing research. I think it wil also be useful for me when I want to apply for graduate school. What I do on a weekly basis is achieve the alogrithm I have with computer code. Run the code to get the distance and do the cluster for it using WEKA, we want to see which algorithm give a best and quick approach to solve this problem. So after I got the data I perform analysis on it to compare them with each other. One thing I have discovered this week, is I found the Reducing the dimensionality of the protein-folding search algorithm provided George D. Chellapa and George D. Rose give us significantly reduce the running time than do the cluster for each phi and psi angle.