URSP Student Selassie Fugar Researches Multiple ways to Support the Bailey's Culmore Community

The Culmore neighborhood of Bailey’s Crossroads is an area located in Fairfax County, Virginia. As one of the most disadvantaged places in Northern Virginia, this area consists of many different types of people from the Latinx community as well as other races and ethnicities. Kaiser Permanente plays a big role in fostering the vision to build a better community in Culmore. Due to the grant that was given to George Mason University and CASA de Virginia, creating a vision for Culmore that improves their community based on the social determinants of health is more achievable.

My research focuses on food insecurity and providing what people need and what to eat in the community. My main focus amongst food insecurity is how to make people in the community comfortable with receiving free food and how to reduce unhealthy lifestyles as well. One way of fostering healthy lifestyles is providing access to free or cheaper healthy foods through connections with different farms and gardens with certain faith-based organizations. Another way we could foster healthy lifestyles is to set up cooking classes for people who don't know how to use healthy food.

From this project I have learned how to better communicate with others and how to assume that everyone I interview will be friendly instead of the opposite. Developing conversational skills will improve my outlook on this project and help me remember that it is not what I think is best for the community but what the community wants for themselves.

Reagan Emmerling Researches Gender Differences in those Participating in OSCAR Research Projects

I decided to join a summer research project because I knew how much it would benefit my future. I hope to one day become a college professor with heavy focuses on research and writing. Being part of a summer project was an easy, and highly beneficial, way to know if this career path suited me, and I am happy to announce that it did. I worked entirely virtual this summer in my research project, which completely changed my view on what my work could be and mean. I was able to take my research with me to amazing places, such as Acadia National Park, Myrtle Beach, my home in Ohio, and so much more. My summer would have looked so different had I not been able to work virtually, and I am so thankful that I was able to work remotely rather than being stationary in Virginia.

My original plan for my summer research was to cover on-campus living conditions during the pandemic, but then shifted to issues of housing instability in college student populations. I ended up on a project researching the massive gender difference in who is participating in OSCAR research projects. To briefly wrap up a summer’s worth of work in barely a sentence; roughly 7/10 of researchers in OSCAR over the past 10 years have been women, but George Mason is divided almost 50/50 in terms of gender. This tells us that something is drawing drastically more women to research programs, and we wanted to find out why. It turned out that other universities saw a similar trend in their participation rates as well.

 

My next steps are to return to campus in the fall as a junior, where I am majoring in Integrative Studies with a concentration in Women and Gender studies. I will be working on campus as a MASI peer mentor and as a research assistant mapping the 1926 Religious Bodies Census. I hope to find myself involved with more research projects and gain even more experience in my field. Following graduation, I plan to attend graduate school in Colorado, where I have already started looking at programs with a masters in Women’s History. I am very thankful for this amazing opportunity and hope to work with OSCAR in future projects.

URSP Student Daniel Hernandez Analyzes the Surface Degradation of Additively Manufactured (AM) ABS Polymers for Naval Application.

This summer, I worked with Dr. Ali Beheshti to analyze the surface degradation of additively manufactured (AM) ABS polymers for naval application. The aim of my studies was to determine the viability of AM ABS polymers in a saline environment in comparison to its traditionally manufactured counterpart. As of recently I have been working on a literature review as well as an experimental plan for the project. I also printed 20 rectangular ABS samples and ordered 20 traditionally manufactured parts from a plastic manufacturer. A typical day of research consists of me searching for articles while managing the printing of the ABS samples. In the remaining timeline of the project, the samples will be aged accordingly for a set duration of 4, 8, and 16 days in tanks filled with artificial seawater. The tanks will be heated to 22°C, 27°C, and 105°C accordingly using a water heater. After undergoing the appropriate exposure time, the topography of the sample surfaces will be assessed and compared with the initial data collected prior. If time permits mechanical and tribological evaluations will be done on the ABS samples to observe the change in mechanical strength, wear and friction of the surfaces.

My main interest is robotics with a sub interest of ocean engineering. Additive manufacturing (3D Printing) has had transformative effects on the performance and technology of many industries. In the robotics industries, additive manufacturing has contributed to the development of emerging fields such as soft robotics due to its ability to create flexible and creative designs at high quality. This project was the perfect learning opportunity for me because it has allowed me to gain an in depth understanding of the 3D printing process as well as the corrosive behavior of the ocean. Moreover, since I plan to obtain a master’s in mechanical engineering in the future this research has been an essential step towards that goal.  I have enjoyed learning about the degradation of ABS in a naval application and hope to continue this research in the future.

URSP Student Mounia Hammadi Studies the Potential Effects that Endoparasites Have on Feeding Habits of Their Crab Hosts

The survival of a species of mud crab along the East Coast of the U.S., known as the Rhithropanopeus harrisii (Harris mud crab), is being tested by a multitude of factors, including the continued fluctuations in salinity that result from the estuaries it resides in and the ever-changing levels of parasitism in different locations along the coast. The biotic pressure of parasitism is influential on not only the survival of R. harrisii but also the trophic structure of its community. The two most prevalent parasites that cause a significant role in the survival of the Harris mud crab community include the castrating parasitic barnacle, Loxothylacus panopaei, and the lesser-known parasitic entoniscid isopod, Cancrion sp. Parasitic castration means that L. panopaei inhibits the organism’s ability to reproduce. However, since Cancrion sp. is considered a new species, there is minimal evidence suggesting complete parasitic castration of R. harrisii. This summer I have been working in Dr. Amy Fowler’s lab at the GMU Potomac Science Center answering the question, do these endoparasites affect the feeding habits of their crab hosts? We suspect that the intense energy drain of being infected with these endoparasites leads to changes in the feeding behavior of R. harrisii. Luckily, the COVID-19 restrictions have begun to loosen, allowing me access to the laboratories to run a multitude of feeding trials on a total of 25 uninfected crabs, 8 infected with entoniscid (Cancrion sp.), and 11 infected with L. panopaei where feeding behaviors are accessed for 45 minutes.

The collection of these crabs has been done from three main sites: Boathouse Marina in Colonial Beach, VA, Garrett’s Marina in Dunnsville, VA, and near the Choptank River Bridge in Cambridge, MD. This summer, an interesting observation I had was that the mud crabs can be the host to both parasites at the same time, as shown by an individual crab that acquired L. panopaei externa (sac on the abdomen of the crab that holds thousands of parasitic larvae) as well as released Cancrion sp. larvae. How double infections affect R. harrisii’s feeding habits is still yet to be determined. Another interesting observation was that gravid crabs (those with fertilized eggs) and crab hosts infected with Loxothylacus panopaei in the externa phase will both not molt to minimize loss of its eggs or parasitic externae. However, it has been shown that the crabs infected with the entoniscid do continue to frequently molt where its infection does not inhibit its ability to grow. Although trials are still being run and the data has yet to be properly analyzed, what has been obtained so far is extremely interesting and will further be looked upon during the Fall 2021 semester.

STIP Student Elaine Borresen Creates a Unit Plan and Activities for Physical Education Instruction while Integrating STEM

The goal for this Summer Team Impact Project is to present a unit plan and activities for physical education instruction while integrating STEM content. We found that integrating STEM topics is extremely beneficial for students. Students can get extra time exploring their classroom content. Our hope is that this integration can also pique interest in activities for those who may not usually be as engaged during PE. Using Virginia Standards of Learning, we sought to combine relevant science topics for K-12 students with games to develop their basketball, pickleball and softball skills. This plan is flexible, for teachers to use this unit plan in its entirety, or use lesson activities and games as they see fit. My particular contribution was towards the STEM content in the softball unit.

 This project fits into my future plans as a nurse and an Army officer by contributing how to plan with various factors and reinforcing my knowledge in STEM and biomechanics in particular. An average research day consists of a zoom meeting with all undergraduate and graduate students then breakout sessions with our individual groups to continue work on our unit plans. We had one day in the gym to test out some physical education activities and record ancillary materials for teachers. Something that I have discovered through this project is how complicated it is to create a unit and lesson plans. There are so many things that go into creating them. This project was different than it would have been if it were face to face because a majority of this was done virtually with all of us in different states, this was very cool since we were able to travel and still do research and work on the project. My next steps are to take the knowledge I learned from this project and apply it anyway I can to nursing school and Army ROTC.