Factors Affecting the Level of Triglycerides in Black-legged Kittiwake Seabird Chicks (Rissa tridactyla)

Plasma metabolites such as glucose, cholesterol, and triglycerides, may act as health indicators in birds. Many factors can influence metabolite levels such as sex, age, diet, body mass, and glucocorticoid-induced energy mobilization. However, to date, there is a lack of consistency in the patterns of metabolites in early chick development stages. Our study will provide insight into how biological processes including nutritional status, chick rank, age, and sex affect triglyceride levels in black-legged kittiwake chicks. Our experiments were conducted in Middleton Island, Alaska, with known age and rank chicks. Chicks came from two types of nests for nutritional status: fed (experimental treatment) and unfed (control). Whereas the fed nests were supplied with unlimited fish, the unfed nests only had food from parental foraging at sea. The chicks were genetically sexed. We hypothesize that the level of triglycerides differs based on sex, chick ranking, and food intake.

Continue reading Alex Le »

Microtus ochrogaster Exhibit Increased Anxiety Behaviors to a Stressor in the Absence of a Partner
Social isolation has been shown to be detrimental to mental and physical well-being. Its influence has been observed in impaired neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and immune system functioning, and has been implicated in anxiety and depression, as well as in lowered self-esteem and suicidal ideation. Conversely, positive social experiences and meaningful social connections have been implicated in improved mental and physical health, increased immune response, and an increase in lifespan. The prairie vole (M. ochrogaster) has proven to be useful in the laboratory setting for their ability to demonstrate selectivity in their relationships, and, thus, were ideal for the purposes of this study.
The objective of this project was to examine whether social support during exposure to an ecologically significant stressor is capable of reducing the negative consequences of the stressor itself. For the stressor, we utilized an ecologically relevant chemical called TMT, which is a component of fox feces. We explore this topic in the hopes of illuminating the importance of social connection in the face of experiences that elicit a stress response.

Continue reading Kayla Kisthardt »

Psychological Well-Being and Music Among Children

This summer I conducted research under the supervision of Dr. Nicholas Roseth of the Music Education Department at Bucknell. Together, we explored the effect that music had on the psychological well-being of children. I explored this research topic through reading scholarly research articles, enriching myself in books surrounding the fields, completing an annotated bibliography, and crafting a literature review. I utilized Zotero as a source manager and gathered thirty two sources for my annotated bibliography. Ultimately, I found that music aided children in their education and home settings through the lens of positive psychology. I applied the previous research I collected into the PERMA model developed by Martin Seligman, which is an acronym for positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Through this categorization, I organized my annotated bibliography in the same manner. I found that listening, performing, participating, and learning about music aided their psychological well-being. The largest findings I found were that music could be used as a way to develop social skills and navigate social situations, thus strengthening relationships. Besides this, I found that active engagement was particularly significant for children as their participation required focus to obtain the benefits that music has to offer. Regardless of the type of involvement, music gave children enjoyment, confidence, motivation, resilience, and stronger relationships overall. I aim to use this background information to now craft my honors thesis. I learned the vast benefits of music and this research emphasized the importance of music in early childhood.

Continue reading Elle Chrampanis »

Multisensory Statistical Learning: Modality General or Specific?

Statistical learning (henceforth SL) is the unconscious acquisition of structured information from environmental inputs. For example, we can extract word boundaries from the frequency of syllable transitions. SL is a multisensory phenomenon, having been demonstrated in multiple modalities and stimulus domains. However, it remains to be seen whether SL is supported by independent modality-specific mechanisms (i.e. a separate mechanism for vision, hearing, and touch) or a singular modality-general mechanism. In the present study, we test these models by manipulating the rate of presentation for auditory and visual SL. If the mechanism is modality-general, the rate of presentation should not affect learning and performance will be similar across modalities. If the mechanisms are modality-specific, the rate of presentation should affect learning: subjects should learn auditory sequences better at faster presentation rates and visual sequences at slower rates. Preliminary results suggest that auditory and visual sequences are learned most effectively at different rates of presentation, providing evidence of a ‘modality constraint’ on SL. This suggests that multisensory SL may be supported by modality-specific mechanisms, though further research and data collection are required

Continue reading Gwen Radecki »

Collisional Quenching of Vibrationally Excited CO in Non-LTE Environment

The atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is of growing interest to the space science community. However, since its atmosphere is not in local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE), modeling it requires a deep understanding of the natural excitation and relaxation processes that occur there. Our group has studied CO, the primary reservoir of oxygen on Titan, and its rate of collisional quenching, to contribute toward improving atmospheric models. Using transient diode laser spectroscopy, a quenching rate can be elucidated to significantly higher precision than previously documented in literature. Our experimental procedure begins by flowing small amounts of CO, O3 and Ar through a 1 meter vacuum cell, and firing a 266 nm laser through the cell. O3 absorbs this wavelength and causes the mixture to undergo a temperature jump, allowing some amount of the CO to be excited to higher vibrational states. A mid-IR range diode laser is used to constantly measure the population of CO in a certain state, allowing us to determine the rate of change of the population in a state of interest as it collides with other molecules and is quenched. In this project we are exploring the effects of bath gas identity on CO energy transfer measurements. Specifically, we are investigating the effectiveness of Ar vs. Xe in quenching excited photofragments from the ozone photolysis initiating the temperature-jump. The most recent results of our work will be presented.

Continue reading Jordan Polvere »

Parallel Planning and Verb Tense Errors

Speech errors are a common phenomenon, even in one’s native language. Thus, speech errors have been widely researched in psycholinguistics as a way of understanding the mental processes involved in language production. In this study we investigated the type of errors that occur when a speaker uses a tensed form of a verb when a non-tensed form should have been used. For example, in the sentence “She didn’t meant that,” the tensed form “meant” should be the non-tensed “mean”.
One cause for this type of error is interference from parallel sentence plans, where speakers may be planning multiple sentences in parallel, and errors may arise when elements from a competing sentence leak through. (Brehm et al, 2022).
An example of parallel planning is when a speaker begins activating both “No problem” and “One moment”. They might start responding “One [moment]”, but if the other response is still active, they might actually end up saying “One problem.”
In order to investigate this effect with verb tense errors, we conducted an online behavioral study of English speakers using audio data that participants recorded on their own computers. We manipulated factors such as past/present tense, ir/regularity and non/connectedness to nouns in the sentences to determine whether any of these factors made tense errors more likely. We are in the process of analyzing the data. The results will help us better understand the cognitive processes underlying verb tense production and sentence planning in general.

Continue reading Jimmy Pronchick »

ANALYSIS OF 3D PRINTED METALS USING SMALL PUNCH TESTING
This work focuses on analyzing the fracture behaviors of 3D printed metals. Materials produced using additive manufacturing (AM), such as 3D printing, have varying strengths in different directions as a result of the layering process. To analyze how AM metals fracture, the metals will be deformed using a small punch test, which allows for the use of very small samples, while being scanned with a micro-CT. Since fractures in AM metals may form with fully internal voids and their behavior may depend on the manufacturing conditions, an x-ray is required to image the sample. The micro-CT will use x-rays to image the sample as it is deformed and use computed tomography to produce 3D images of the sample and its fractures, enabling the formations of fractures to be observed as they occur. This research is ongoing. Samples have been tested using a previous small punch test apparatus, which will serve as a baseline for testing materials to use in the final testing apparatus. A method to polish and prepare these samples by hand for testing was developed and refined. The design for the testing apparatus was developed and refined alongside material selection for dies. The materials will first be tested in simulation. The design for the testing apparatus has reached an acceptable version ready for prototyping.

Continue reading Derek Huffman »

Comparative Analysis and Visualization of Campus Sexual Assault Data

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Verb agreement avoidance
Why is it that humans use language the way we do? Humans communicate in numerous ways but one of the most significant components is language. We rely on the words we use and the sentences we compose to communicate but, we also avoid saying certain things, due to taboo or error avoidance. Previous experimental linguistic work has looked for agreement errors and ignored verb agreement avoidance. For example, “the label on the bottles are sticky” would be analyzed as an error, whereas, “the label on the bottles had been sticky” has no agreement at all, therefore, would be thrown out and assumed to have no impact on the data in an experiment.
It is known that humans avoid verbs, the real question is why do we avoid them? We examined data from agreement experiments that had already been collected, looking for patterns of verb agreement avoidance, and whether avoidance occurred in conditions where participants showed evidence of planning difficulty. We determined that difficulty planning does not correlate with verb agreement avoidance, but verb agreement avoidance is more common with certain conditions, such as when the verb comes after an adverb. We are still trying to understand why agreement avoidance happens, and what it means.

Continue reading Morgan Joseph »

Defining the Conditions for an Effective Transition to a Decentralized Currency Standard in Developing Economies

In an increasingly digitized world, there is currently a significant shortage of literature on the benefits and drawbacks of a digital economy, particularly in regards to a national digital
currency standard. This research is designed to research the monetary policy measures designed to establish a Central Bank Digital Currency that fosters greater economic growth and inclusion within developing economies. Economic growth, in this instance, can be defined as increased rates of individual participation within an economy as well as a greater per-capita income for individuals within the economy. The selected method of inquiry for this research is a literature review of existing literature pertaining to individual topics surrounding how digital currency currently functions in developing economies, and how monetary policy could potentially affect a
digital currency standard. Findings from this project include: nationalized digital currencies would allow for more efficient transmission of remittances, Bitcoin differs from a CBDC from a
policy management perspective but could be fairly similar in regards to a technological/manufacturing perspective, and improved individual financial participation in
developing countries as a result of the use of a digital currency is yet to be empirically proven. While these findings are significant, they are largely a baseline of information to inform future
studies in the field. As a result of digital currencies being such a new development for all economies, and the limitations on that country’s economy or economic data as a result of its
political situation, statistically significant findings about the effects of national digital currencies are few and far between. Future research pertaining to the project aspires to provide an empirical correlation between the use of digital currency and improved individual financial participation, resolving the third finding of this study.

Continue reading Salvatore Iovino »