URSP Student Jacqueline Shaia Researches the Severity of Acute Rhinosinusitis on the Frequency of Neutrophils Present in a Nasal Smear in Patients with and with-out Over-the-Counter Medications

When you first think of immunology research, your next thought is not usually “how are we going to get nasal scrapings?” Then again, most people have not interned in a lab that studies mucus on a daily basis. Our passion for this project began in the Rubin Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University Health Systems this past summer. It was there were we learned that neutrophils are the type of cell the body produces to attack viruses and bacteria.

 

The common cold accounts for millions of days of work lost, health care visits, lost productivity, antibiotics, and over-the-counter medications. With this in mind, we questioned why more research has not been done on the common cold? There has been no research stating that the more severe the cold, the higher the neutrophil frequency. How can researchers use neutrophil frequencies as a measurement for different diseases if this concrete question has not been answered? This has led us to our project titled: The Severity of Acute Rhinosinusitis (ARS) on the Frequency of Neutrophils present in a Nasal Smear of Patients with and without Over-The-Counter Cold or Sinus

Medications.

Collaborations has been the essence to our project! The Biomedical Engineering Department is providing us a lab through which we will be conducting our research, the Biology Department is providing us with continuous education on our project, and the Rubin lab is providing continuous support for our projects growth. With these key figures in place, we are almost ready to begin our research! Through the next few months, we will be consenting participants to volunteer in our study. We will be obtaining nasal smears from them at different times of the illness and then analyzing the neutrophil frequencies. We will also be comparing patients who are not taking any medications to those taking a few select over-the-counter medications.

Our project has definitely had some setbacks the last few weeks, however, this is research. No matter how organized we have been, our timeline has changed. When these difficulties arise, we have to remind ourselves as to why we are trying to conduct this work in the first place. We believe that this project could affect the medical community and therefore impact what we may do as hopeful physicians. Even if our work does not turn out how we hope, it will still have given us an opportunity that will only enhance our education and views as we aim for careers in medicine. Now that, hopefully, all of our business work is complete, we are moving away from the business side and towards the science! See you in the clinic!

URSP Student Chris Mazzullo Processes Images of Coronal Loops to Find the Velocity of the Material in Them

This semester I had the opportunity to research physics in the sun's corona through URSP. I applied last year because I thought that it would be an interesting way to apply some of the material that I was learning in class. Research also seemed like a way to set myself apart from other students when applying to jobs and graduate schools. What sealed the deal was meeting and talking with a professor, Art Poland, about the kind of work that I could do. He made the field of space weather and the physics of the magnetic loops in the sun's corona seem really interesting, so I ended up working on a space weather project this year.

My project was to process images of coronal loops to find the velocity of the material in them. The work was mostly independent programming of software to analyze the images. Generally I'm either implementing something that I think will be useful for analysis or something that I discussed with my mentor the week before. During this semester I met with my mentor twice a week to discuss progress and present any interesting findings. These meetings helped me understand some of the physics of the corona, which I never would have known anything about if I hadn't participated in URSP. A highlight of the semester was identifying a loop of Fe XV on the corona containing material speeding along at 30 meters per second, a high speed for such a hot loop. That's unusual and could be worth deeper investigation. I also overcame differences in formatting between different data sets that should give me the opportunity to work with data from the new IRIS satellite, a high resolution instrument which is revealing some stunning complexity on the corona.

The opportunity to do research this semester gave me a lot of valuable experience working with real-world problems. In my case it involved a lot of programming, which I now feel more confident about. I think that the experience will also be a big plus when applying to grad school. Working on a URSP project gave me an idea of what it would be like to work in physics or astronomy and I got to experience what researchers in these fields actually do on a daily basis.

URSP Student David Mathew Researches Predictors of School Suspension in Elementary School for Low-Income Ethnically Diverse Children

In the second semester of my junior year, I joined the Honors Program in Psychology. As part of the program, our class had the opportunity to have professors in the many subfields of psychology come into our classroom and explain the research they do in their field. One of the professors that came in was Dr. Adam Winsler who discussed his work in Applied Developmental Psychology. One of Dr. Winsler’s many areas of research that caught my interest was his work with the Miami-Dade County Public School System.

After arranging a meeting outside of class with Dr. Winsler, we decided to work on a collaborative project involving the data that he has on the Miami-Dade School System. One subset of data that really caught my interest was on school suspension. After further discussing the data on suspension rates, Dr. Winsler suggested that I look at predictors of school suspension.

This project has increased my desire to want to work in schools. Through extensive research on school suspension, I have begun to learn how frequently this punishment is utilized. Each time this punishment is used, students miss out on valuable instruction time in the classroom. My sincere hope is that through my future involvement in the school system, I can work to decrease the frequency of the punishment and allow all students to get the most out of their time in school.

On a weekly basis, I spend ten to fifteen hours researching existing literature on school suspension and writing preliminary drafts of my honors thesis. I have weekly meetings with my advisor to review my drafts and to evaluate my status on the project.

This week, I have begun to work with the data set that I will be analyzing. Beginning to work with this data set, has given me the opportunity to refresh my Microsoft Excel skills. This project has given me the opportunity to grow as a researcher and I truly hope that my findings will be able to further research in the field of psychology.

URSP Student Emily Harvey Conducts a Comparative Study on the Amount of Knowledge Students who are Members of NPHC have of their Family History Compared to those Who are Members of the Black Student Community at Mason

The title of my project is The Black Student Community, the National Pan Hellenic Council, and the Role that Knowledge of Family History Plays. I am doing a comparative study on the amount of knowledge students who are members of the National Pan Hellenic Council (NPHC) have of their family history compared to that of students who are members of the Black student community here at Mason. I am also looking into how family is defined by these two groups and the role that it plays in their lives. During my time here at Mason I have had the opportunity to study cultural anthropology and take classes on ethnography and African and African American Studies. Through these classes I have gained a particular interest in studying African American and Black families from an anthropological perspective. Due to the unique and diverse history of African American and Black families in the United States, I find tracking the family history of this group to be fascinating, so when the opportunity to apply for URSP came around I was really excited to employ what I have been learning in class towards a topic that I am very interested in.

After graduation I will be continuing in the Accelerated Masters Program studying anthropology, and I plan to go on to work as an applied anthropologist. The research that I am doing now has helped me narrow down what I plan to study in graduate school. I am passionate about the importance of this topic and I feel that studying it from an anthropological perspective will contribute valuable insights not only to anthropology, but also to universities and the study of Black and African American culture as a whole.

Juggling being in the Accelerated Masters Program, on the Women’s Soccer team, working in the CSSR survey lab, and working on my project this semester has not been an easy task. Time management has been difficult but I am learning it is one of the most important skills I need. I am currently finishing up conducting interviews with students, and with in the next few weeks I will be analyzing my data and compiling it for our final presentations. This week in particular I learned to always have a backup option incase your voice recorder stops working in the middle of an interview. The guidance of my mentor Dr. Hughes Rinker has helped a lot through the process, and discussing my topic with other professors has also given me valuable insights. Every step of my project has taught me something new and I am excited to begin analyzing my data and seeing what the outcome will be.

URSP Student Tyler Fisher Researches European Union International Security Policy and its Impact on the United States

The European Union is an economic powerhouse but not an international security powerhouse.  My research aims to understand why this is.  That essentially is my question.  The European single market, derived from a half century of European Union (EU) integration, allows free trade to occur across 27 countries and common regulations govern how member states act economically.  Through classes, reading books, and following current events, I knew this narrative prior to my research.  What I did not understand about the EU is why member states were not able to act together on international security issues.  In fact, I knew very little of the foreign policy statute of the complex supranational body. 

Research, to me, is all about discovering the unknown and the opportunity to understand a complex global problem was provided by the George Mason Undergraduate Research Scholars Program.  This semester I have been addressing two related questions, what factors determine EU cohesiveness in international security?  And subsequently, under what conditions do the EU and the United States collaborate on international security policy?  Throughout I have reviewed hundreds of pages of scholarly literature, declared policies, and written treaties.  In addition, I conduct interviews with scholars, government officials, and policy makers to determine how both the EU and US address the key issues in international security. 

What’s next?  Perhaps my research experience may translate into positions with foreign policy think tanks in Washington, the Brookings Institute and the Bipartisan Policy Center for example.  Maybe I will combine this research experience with my previous experience as a congressional intern to take the next step, becoming a fellow or staffer on Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  This research could lay the foundation for a dissertation I write when I am pursuing a Ph.D.  No matter what, the experiences that I have had this semester as a scholar have taught me more than I could imagine and will serve me well in the future.