URSP Student Amanda Lee Examines How an Individual’s News Consumption Affects Their Depth of Political Knowledge

My research project was prompted and inspired by a YouTube video I saw in class from the Jimmy Kimmel Live television show. In the clip, someone from the show goes up to random people on Hollywood Boulevard asking them “What do you think is better, Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act?” Each person definitely recognized the terms and chose which one they preferred, giving various reasons for their decision. They actually had no idea, that both choices mean the same thing, and that Obamacare was just a nickname for the bill coined by the media. This made me wonder, with all the bylines, tweets, notifications, updates and statuses that are running rampant in our daily lives, are we more informed or less? Does the way we now consume news- through our smart phones, Twitter and Facebook- affect the depth of our political knowledge? This particular focus was also very relatable to my professional life since I’m an aspiring journalist as well as a student. I have been interning in the news industry for the past year and a half, so I know any type of information that I gather regarding our society and news consumption can greatly aid me in future jobs. The way we consume information is so different from just a couple years ago, and this project motivates me to find out if we’re actually using our technology to gain a better understanding of current events and politics, or if it actually makes us more superficial when it comes to news. Since starting my project this past Fall 2013 semester, my responsibilities and activities for this project have changed on a weekly basis to reflect the development of the research process. Since January however, my weeks have been mainly dedicated to developing and circulating my survey, and collecting the results. The results have just started to come in these past three weeks, so my time right now is spent trying to analyze the data. One thing I learned this week: out of 262 responses, 212 of them could correctly identify a picture of Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked classified documents.

URSP Student Alexandra Johnson Improves the Cell Biology Laboratory Manual

I had a very unique high school experience because I went to a Governor’s School where I was exposed to in-depth research and rigorous laboratory experiences. After I came to Mason, my interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education began to develop through teaching work that I engaged in. One day when I was talking to my mentor, Dr. Schwebach, we were on the topic of how to improve learning within the biology program. I mentioned how I had noticed some areas for improvement in the cell biology laboratory manual. We ran with this idea all the way to the course coordinator, Dr. Madden, who agreed to let me revise it, becoming my second mentor. Some off-hand brainstorming and my interest in STEM education quickly turned into an OSCAR project!

In the future, I plan on becoming a high school biology teacher. Beyond classroom instruction, my goal is to bring more authentic scientific laboratory experiences into public education at this level; this will expose students to what the “real world” of being a scientist is like. My work in education will involve developing labs that include inquiry and critical thinking. This project involves these steps, so this is wonderful preparation for my life as a teacher.

On a weekly basis, I spend a lot of time communicating with my mentors on experiment and question design. What I do each week has evolved a lot over the semester through different stages of my project. Mostly, I spend my time writing up surveys to ask cell biology students, editing the worksheets in the manual further, and researching inquiry labs that have been done successfully.

This week I discovered the intricacies of working with a publisher. There is a lot of work, and thus a lot of obstacles, that come with putting together a large document such as this one. We are muddling through the adjustments so that everything will come together. It is a very gratifying feeling to see something you have poured so much energy into come into existence.

URSP Student Samantha Wilkins Explores the Effects of Dietary Copper Deficiency on Learning, Memory, and Locomotor Control

I have always been burdened with a painfully broad field of passionate interests, and much of my college career has been characterized by attempts to find a way to negotiate between all of them. At a young age I became enamored with chemistry, fascinated by the infinitesimal level on which different forms of matter interact and dictate the manner of daily life. This relationship was only trumped when I discovered the field of psychology, to which I refocused my studies in order to explore the great puzzle of behavior and the brain. Eventually I found myself at home while volunteering in a graduate cognitive and behavioral neuroscience laboratory. Much of the ongoing research in the lab has encompassed the roles of biometals in the brain and their effects on behavior—a perfect blend of my dichotomous love affairs with the soft and hard sciences. Even more, this research is based with animals, one of the few things that I have any patience for. It was a match made in academic heaven, and an easy decision when I was approached by members of the lab and asked to help answer some unanswered questions.

The study I am conducting is following up on previous research exploring the effects of dietary copper deficiency on different behavioral constructs in rats, primarily exploring learning and memory, and locomotor control. The parameters of this project truly test one’s proficiency in behavioral measures, conceptual chemistry, and research design, and in heading this project I am fortunate to have the invaluable experience of coming face to face with how much I don’t know. This has been the seed for conducting thorough, dedicated research and approaching this project without reservation. It has been a humbling, yet critical opportunity for me to be exposed to the unprotected world of independent research. I now understand that this is absolutely what I want in the future. I have been relieved of all doubt that I want to continue into a graduate program in neuroscience with long-term goals of laboratory research.

On a daily basis I search and review literature related to my project, trying to obtain as much background knowledge as possible for the basis of my approach to the research question. Once my rats arrive, the pace will dramatically change and I will begin a completely inflexible schedule of handling, feeding, and monitoring the animals. The foundations of animal research are anchored in loyal devotion to the timeline as they age, and critical points in the research must be universally carried out among the experimental groups in order to avoid confounds and complications. This has been the most significant concept that I have discovered in preparing for the animal portion of my study to begin.

URSP Student Patrick Szabo Researches Receding Flashback Screenplay

I became interested in this project when I thought of my two favorite films—Elephant and 11:14. Both are formatted in the flashback design, in which the ensemble of character plots meet at certain points and are seen through the different perspectives of each character.

This is all related to my long-term goals in the sense that I will submit the screenplay to a few screenwriting competitions and maybe gain recognition in the field. I hope to then have the respect of other screenwriters so that I might have the chance to collaborate with them on future screenplays/films.

On a weekly basis, I am either intensely planning the intermingling of plots or writing content. Planning requires me to draw out many different diagrams and critically think about scene placement, while the writing process requires me to put myself in the mindset of each character—there are more than eight main characters in this screenplay. This can be overwhelming because each character must be definitively different from the next, so as to not confuse the audience.

This week, I found out that the writing process is actually a planning process in itself. As I write, I become more involved with the characters and their plots. I almost feel as though I am living in the story that I am writing, which allows me to adapt and add plot twists and character interactions as I go.

URSP Student Zuzy Abdala Researches the Olfactory Communication in Maned Wolves

Last semester (Fall 2013), I took a graduate-level course in Mammalogy, which ended up being my favorite course I’d ever taken. One of my classmates, Marieke Kester, was taking the class to learn more about mammals since her Ph.D. project was about olfactory communication in maned wolves (Chrysocyon brachyurus). Having announced that she would be interested in taking on an undergraduate student for the spring semester for a URSP project, I quickly sent her my resume in the hopes that I would be selected. My interest in this project, as well as many other conservation biology and chemical ecology studies, has grown exponentially since entering the Shared Research Instrumentation Facility (SRIF) lab.

The research that I am conducting currently is creating a clearer path in terms of what future research I may be interested in doing. My long-term goals involve going to graduate school and hopefully having a lab of my own some day. The maned wolf study solidifies my passion for mammalian conservation and I can really see myself studying mammals for the rest of my days.

Each week, I aliquot and prepare the urine samples I will be running that day. While the samples are running through the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GCMS), I am usually learning something new about the programs that I will use to analyze the chemical compounds in the urine. Marieke and I, during our lunch break, discuss the journal articles that relate to chemical ecology in mammals. I also assist in populating the “Maned Wolf Library”, which is essentially a list of chemical compound profiles that we’ve read about in other papers. We include the name of each compound, the chemical formula, and the 10 highest peaks.

This week, we did a lot of troubleshooting with the program Agilent MassHunter. We were finally able to have the program tell us the deconvolution of each peak. The deconvolution of a chromatograph peak is essentially finding all compounds that contribute to the peak. This ensures that we don’t miss any hidden compounds in our results.