Past SROP Scholars
Desmond Adenyi
The objective of this study is to test neck strength by analyzing the maximum torque that can be produced from the neck. The marines are experiencing neck pain/injury which could possibly be due to the helmets and night vision attachment design. The goal of this study was to create a normative data set of neck muscle strength. Healthy individuals between the ages of 18-45 were collected through the University of Iowa and the surrounding area population. Strength test were performed using a Biodex System 3.0 Isokinetic dynamometer (Biodex Medical Systems, New York).
Alexis Ashby
Mental health is, ""a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community (Center for Disease Control in Prevention, 2011)."" The number of adolescents with a mental health disorder is on the rise. A recent report showed that roughly 1 in 5 children have a diagnosable mental disorder (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2013).
Jessica Caballero Feliciano
Emotions are fundamental factors driving human behavior. Understanding how one's subjective experience of emotion translates to behavior is one of the central goals of cognitive neuroscience. Previous research has revealed differences in the expression and experience of emotions between racial groups. For instance, previous research has shown that African Americans are more emotionally expressive compared to individuals from other racial groups (e.g., Caucasians, Hispanics, and Asians). However, more research is needed to clarify these differences.
Mercedes Cambric
The purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between academic success and adaptive functioning among high ability children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Academic success was measured by the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement (3rd Edition) on broad reading, math, written language and oral language scales, and adaptive functioning was measured by the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, 2nd Edition, on communication, socialization and daily living skills scales.
Yanique Conie
Upregulation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling is observed in most head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC) which makes it an attractive candidate for molecular targeted therapies. EGFR inhibitors have demonstrated clinical effectiveness in a subset of patients, however, many HNSCC tumors respond poorly to EGFR inhibitors leading to local recurrence and distant metastases. The purpose of this study is to determine if the glycolytic inhibitor 2-Deoxy-Glucose (2DG) enhances response of head and neck squamous cancer (HNSCC) cells to the EGFR inhibitor erlotinib (ERL).
David De La Torre
The idea of consciously re-designing the structures of living spaces has been a recurring yet dynamic practice in the United States. Beginning with the invasive efforts of 19th century social workers and reformers, the application of Urban Redevelopment has been overall deficient at addressing the needs of local areas with respect to heterogeneity.
Rico Duncan
Cancer is the uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a tissue. According to the American Cancer Society about 1 in 8 women in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer during their lifetime, making breast cancer the most common cancer among American women,except for skin cancers (American Cancer Society, 2013). With growing cases in the United States, cancer prevention may be the best means of reducing breast cancer mortality. One means of preventing breast cancer is daily aspirin treatment.
Brandi Fontenot
Functional analysis procedures refer to the assessment of behavior using systematic manipulation of environmental events in an attempt to identity the antecedents and consequence that evoke and maintain problem behavior. Functional analysis procedures were conducted in a clinical setting using an analog approximation of the natural environment. In the current study we first conducted a functional analysis to determine whether the type of attention (high-volume/enthusiastic versus low-volume attention) resulted in behavior change.
Jordan Gaither
Meta DuEwa Jones states it best in his article on hip hop entitled “HIP_HOP NOW: An Introduction” published by John Hopkins University Press “In order to do competent and compelling hip_hop scholarship, one must be present and active in the places where hip_hop happens.” In an interview that Jones with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, explains how rap artist such as Tupac, Nas, and Jay-Z are “rhetoricians” whose linguistic skills are essentially overlooked based upon the morality of how rap is displayed.
Shannon Grumbly
Disaster vulnerability is typically assessed in physical and economic terms, with social dimensions largely ignored. However, there has been growing demand among disaster planners and stakeholders to incorporate social vulnerability, which measures the sensitivity of population groups to hazard impacts. The dominant approaches for measuring social vulnerability generalize it across all environmental hazards, but there also is a need for hazard-specific indicators.
Jose Guadarrama
Renewable energy and alternative fuels have become key areas of interest as a result of depleting fossil fuels. Among these is gasification of biomass; a process that converts biomass material into a rich fuel. Gasification relies on thermochemical principles, which break down the biomass into its basic constituents: producer gas, ash and tar. The presented study focuses on gas composition through a comparison between a mathematical simulation and experimental results.
Jose Guizar Barajas
Microbial biofilms are significant in a variety of settings including the human microbiome, infectious disease, industrial processes, and environmental remediation. Due to the ubiquitous nature of biofilms, there is a great interest in understanding cellular activities within the biofilm matrix. Within a biofilm cells are able to better withstand environmental stress, experience increased horizontal gene transfer, and live longer. The purpose of this research is to grow pseudomonas sp.
Joshua Hill
The Centers for Disease Control and other leading public health organizations have declared adolescent obesity a growing epidemic in the United States. Rising adolescent obesity rates coincide with the growing epidemic of stigmatization and teasing based on weight and size among adolescents. Several studies on weight-based teasing have found slight differences in reporting rates across racial and ethnic groups.
JaQuarius Payne
Recent research about the common belief that sound patterns of words and their meanings are only arbitrarily related has been put to the test. The study we performed on participants was a self-paced reading of sentences appearing one word at a time to test the relationship between (sound patterns and word meaning. Participants used the space bar to advance through the sentences. The primary words of interest were classified as either “nouny nouns” or “verby nouns” embedded in noun-biased contexts.
Christine Perez Rosa
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between substance abuse and academic achievement of adolescents in the United States. Previous literature has shown that adolescence is a period of increased substance use (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, et al., 2011) and that individuals who use substances describe themselves as poor academic achievers (Bergen, H.A., 2005). Data from epidemiological surveys highlight the tendency of adolescents to ignore the negative risks associated with underage drug use (Johnston et al., 2008).
Jasmine Porter
The world becomes more diverse from day to day. One problem that currently presents itself is educating people on cultural differences and diversity. The purpose of this study was to examine a training session conducted by the NCBI to improve a Residential Assistant’s knowledge, skills, and awareness of cultural competency. The training session discussed and examined a variety of topics such as internalized oppression, externalized oppression and effectively communicating with people of other backgrounds. The Resident Assistants were from the University of Iowa.
Nicole Pulliam
Hair cells (HCs) are the sole afferent input to SGNs. Following HC death due to aminoglycoside exposure from postnatal day 8 (P8) to P16, rat SGNs degenerate and die over a period of ~3 months (Alam et al., 2007). The reason for SGN death is not clear. Possibly, SGN death is an indirect outcome of HC loss, due to degenerative changes in the cochlea initiated by HC loss. We used immunofluorescent labeling to verify changes in the spiral ganglion (SG), as identified by gene expression profiling, during the SGN death period and gain insight into why SGNs die.
Kenneth Rankins
This study looks at whether increases in the housing affordability decreases residential segregation in the top 100 MSAs or Metropolitan Statistical Area. Housing affordability means that a family spends 30% or less of their income on housing costs. Housing affordability in the MSAs was measured by using the percentage of households in each MSA that was cost-burdened. Cost-burdened households are those that pay over 30% of their income on housing.
Edris Rivera
The electrospun iron(III) oxide nanofibers from Proffesor Cwiertny’s lab will be a critical component to the joint effort of arsenic (As3+) adsorption in Professor Larsen’s lab. Iron(III) oxide nanofibers are synthesized within the Cwiertny lab via electrospinner. The process requires a sol-gel to pump through a needle with applied voltage in order to create a jet that forms the fibers from the sol-gel. Surface area of both parent material (iron(III) oxide nanofibers) and silica coated nanofibers (ESFe2O3) will be measured using BET in order to compare initial and final product.
Justin Roberson
Previous research has found that African Americans continue to experience explicit forms of racism in their daily lives. In addition, it has also been determined that black males have been subjected to extreme prejudices due to sub-conscience racially biased attitudes held by members of other races. However, very little research has explored subtle racism amongst black students in K-12 educational settings. This qualitative study explored the interactions of black female middle school students and their perceptions of experiences with racial microaggressions.
Elaine Rodriguez
The objective of this survey study was to identify exercise barriers that are most strongly associated with motives to exercise to develop health promotion intervention strategies. Physical Inactivity is a major problem that has been associated with chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cancer. Research suggests that low levels of physical activity leads to a greater risk of a heart attack or stroke to occur than smoking, obesity, hypertension, or high cholesterol levels (Blair, 2009).
James Stewart
The Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) is a multi-faceted disease that is prevalent in an estimated 25% of the United States population. MetS presents itself as a chain of disorders encompassing obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and insulin resistance, which collectively increase an individual’s risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. PRCP (angiotensinase C) is a protein coding gene that we have identified as having a possible causal relationship to MetS.
Destinie Thompson
Health literacy is a complex set of skills that allow individuals to obtain, understand and act on health information and services. In addition, health literacy is an interaction between an individual’s skills and the demand that are placed upon them. Health Information on the internet is often written at high literacy levels above the skills of the average person. The purpose of our study is to determine the usability, readability, and audience targeting of three popular websites designed to provide information about anxiety.
Duyen Trang
Depression in adolescents has been strongly associated with enduring behavioral and health effects (Kashani et al., 1987). Depressive symptoms experienced by children and adolescents are not reported uniformly across different racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, there is a strong indication that Hispanics and American Indians report higher rates of depression and anxiety than other populations (McLaughlin et al., 2007; Saluja et al., 2004). However, previous studies are still limited by ethnic and age representations within the sample.
A. Ayanna Wade
There has been a long history of anecdotal evidence that music is strongly connected to emotional, vivid autobiographical memories. Despite the widespread popularity of this belief, there has been little experimental evidence to support this claim. Clinically, it has been shown that music benefits autobiographical memory retrieval in patients with memory disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. However, it is unknown whether music is a better memory-inducing stimulus than other stimuli.