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Eggs, Alzheimer's, and everything in between

June 23, 2014
summer 2014 research meeting
Summer scholars play human bingo at research kickoff

Human bingo?  Nearly 70 窪蹋勛圖厙 participants in summer research recently played a version invented by program director and government professor Bob Turner.

Instead of covering numbers on a card, the students at the kickoff meeting in late May had to identify their peers according to aspects of their research. Berke Tinaz 16 was the correct answer to the clue deconstructing the plant cell wall; Jaya Borgatta 16 is on the team studying the atmospheric fate of fly ash; Emily Kortright 15 is the one analyzing food blogs. Round 2 clues included succinic acid, the interactive Web program Omeka, frog oocytes, Penium margaritaceum, and alcohol modulation of ligand-gated ion channels (see the glossary below).

Before the bingo, Turner sorted students for seating at large tables where they would ask each other questions about their research. First sort: natural sciences and everyone else. Sort 2: studying living things and everyone else. Final sort: frogs, fish, mice; children and people; math and statistics; and plants, minerals, oceans.

The student researchers, from 19 different academic disciplines and ranging from freshmen to 2014 grads, mingled easily, enjoying the opportunity to meet one another and perhaps gain an edge for the bingo contest. Not present by design were the nearly 40 professors who are collaborating with the students. Turner explains, This day was about the students getting to know one another, gaining an appreciation for the cool things their peers are doing, and being encouraged to connect with and learn from one another. (See the complete list of faculty-student teams and topics below.)

An eavesdropper at one table could have discovered that anthropology major John Kolios 16 is working with archaeologist Heather Hurst 97 on a collection of artifacts (projectile points, pottery fragments, fire-cracked rock) from a local residential subdivision. Ultimately, Kolios says, they hope to give a public presentation and create a Web site with a timeline of the finds. He adds that hed like to stay involved with the project for the duration of his 窪蹋勛圖厙 career.

At another table, American studies major Rebecca Baruc 15 describes her co-writing of an article with professor Beck Krefting; theyll submit it in the fall and present in December at the Mark Twain Circle of America and the American Humor Studies Association.  She says, We want to explore how alternative comedic voices are using social media to redefine the production, consumption, and exchange of comedy, which entails interviews with comedians and social media experts, in addition to following the current discourse on social media and comedy.

The Summer Faculty-Student Research program offers students the chance to spend five, eight, or 10 weeks in full-time research, to gain a hands-on appreciation for scholarly work. Outcomes of the summer collaborations varyperhaps a foundation for a senior or honors thesis, perhaps co-authorship on published results. In any case, 窪蹋勛圖厙 alumni who go on to graduate schools consistently report that research experience gives them distinct advantages as scholars.

Glossary
 
Succinic acid:  A colorless, water-soluble crystal used as a chemical intermediate in medicines, lacquers, and perfume esters.

Omeka.net: Web publishing software that facilitates creation of Web sites to display collections and build digital exhibitions.

Frog oocytes:  The unfertilized eggs of frogs commonly used for studies in developmental biology, cell biology, neuroscience, and more.

Penium margaritaceum:  A unicellular green alga used as a model for research into the formation, breakdown, and repair of plant cell walls.

Ligand-gated ion channels: Cell-membrane proteins that respond to chemical signals to prevent or allow the entry of certain chemicals into the cell.

The complete summer 14 project list:

Ten weeks

John Anzalone, French language and literature, with Luke Conley 14: Visual Resources for Study of Representations of the Great War  

Kara Cetto Bales, chemistry, with William Miller 15: Synthetic investigation and application of a substituted 4, 6-dimethyl-3-cyclohexene compound        

Kara Cetto Bales, chemistry, with Lauren Soong 16: Synthetic Strategies and their Application in the Organic Lab         

Rebecca Brooke Bays, psychology, with Jennifer Wicks 14: An Investigation of Belief in Imagined Childhood Events         

David Domozych, biology, with Berke Tinaz 16: Deconstructing the Plant Cell Wall: In vivo development of selective cell perturbations       

Mike Eckmann, computer science, with Yang Yu 16: Toward detection and recognition of human speakers in meetings  

Margaret Estapa, geosciences, with Melanie Feen 16: Calibrating a new method for measuring ocean carbon fluxes in the presence of high-silicate phytoplankton blooms

Kim Frederick, chemistry, with Sibin Wang 16: Development of a Microfluidic Assay for Analysis of D-lactate in Urine    

Kim Frederick, chemistry, with Sarah Markiewicz 16: Development of an Automated, Portable Device for Water Pollution Monitoring 

Kim Frederick, chemistry, with Meti Debela 16: Development of a Microfluidic Diagnostic Device for Malaria          

Kim Frederick, chemistry, with Julie Bryant 16: Prototyping of a Lab on a CD Player for Portable Chemical Analysis        

Robert Hallock, neuroscience, with Mitch Spring 15: The Effect of Sneezing on Olfaction Threshold      

Rebecca Howard, chemistry, with Thomas Schneider 15: The role of the hydrophobic gate in alcohol modulation of ligand-gated ion channels         

Rebecca Howard, chemistry, with Glenna Joyce 16: Alcohol sensitivity of a eukaryotic ligand-gated ion channel of known structure    

Rebecca Howard, chemistry, with Heather Braun 15, Travers Ruel 16, and Thomas Voigt 15: Conservation of alcohol binding sites in bacterial and human GABAA receptors         

Mark Huibregtse, mathematics, with Adam Winchell 16: An exploration of the geometry of equidistant sets           

Stephen Ives, health and exercise sciences, with Cheyanne Slocum 17: Is the deleterious effect of a high-fat diet on vascular health mediated through vascular mitochondrial dysfunction?      

Rebecca Krefting, American studies, with Rebecca Baruc 15: Prepper Nation: Adapting to Potential Futures/All Atwitter: The Impact of Social Media on Comedy      

Sara Lagalwar,  neuroscience, with Jenny Zhang 16 and Austin Ferro 15: Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Spinocerebellar Ataxia: A Therapeutic Approach

Sara Lagalwar, neuroscience, with Nicholas Toker 15: Cellular Propagation of Spinocerebellar Ataxia

Sara Lagalwar, neuroscience, Mayumi Kohiyama 15: Investigating Normal and Disease-related Degradation Mechanisms in Spinocerebellar Ataxia 

Ela Lepkowska-White, business, with Emily Kortright 15: Meanings of Food: What Can We Learn from Food Blogs?        

Sylvia McDevitt, biology, with Ketan Yerneni 17: Amoebae as model systems to study metal-dependent bacterial killing by macrophages        

Sylvia McDevitt, biology, with Bryan Zepeda-Carranza 17: Copper-silver cross resistancetesting the potential of homolog proteins of CopA from Escherichia coli        

Juan Navea, chemistry, with Matthew Lueckheide 17: Quantum mechanics calculations of chemisorbed nitrate    

Juan Navea, chemistry, with Daniel Lesko 17: Heterogeneous Photochemistry of Nitrates

Juan Navea, chemistry, with Jaya Borgatta 16: Atmospheric Aerosol Dissolution       

Juan Navea, chemistry, with Amanda Paskavitz 17: Atmospheric Fate of Combustion Particles

Javier Perez-Moreno, physics, with Quanhang Chen 16: A toy model for the nonlinear optical response of molecules with modulated conjugation

Flip Phillips, psychology and neuroscience, with Emerson O'Donnell 15: The effect of symmetry and abstraction on aesthetic judgment and gaze patterns       

Bernie Possidente, biology, with Ariana Laszlo 15 and Nicholas Friedman 17: Effects of Social Interaction on Fruit Fly Circadian Activity Rhythmsor, Fruit Fly Flash Mobs           

T.H. Reynolds, health and exercise sciences, with Daniela Escudero 16: Succinic acid as a potential treatment for type-2 diabetes      

Kelly Sheppard, chemistry, with Miles Calzini 16 and Stephanie Zhen 16: Expansion of the genetic code with pyroglutamate     

Kelly Sheppard, chemistry, with Julia Erskine 17: Dual pathways for asparaginyl-tRNA formation in Bacillus anthracis   

Eight weeks

Nurcan Atalan-Helicke, environmental studies, with Lauren Bosche 15 and Helen Mebrate 16: Alternative Seed Systems and Food Resilience in the US

Erica Bastress-Dukehart, history, with Ryan Crotty 15: The Economy of Desire: Botany and Empire in 17th-century Europe

T.H. Reynolds, health and exercise sciences, with Saada Legesse 15 and Caitlin Sheridan 15: Identifying the Cellular Mechanism for MnTBAP-induced Reductions in Body Weight

Amon Emeka, sociology, with Taylor Sczymecki 15 and Rebecca Datus 15: Racial Identity and Unemployment in US Metropolitan Areas

Denise Evert, psychology, with Renee Schapiro 15: Music and Autobiographical Memory in Alzheimer's Patients

Five weeks

Jordana Dym, history, with Deirdre Schiff 15 and Allie Smith 15: Mapping a City: Saratoga Springs 1819-1915-2015, An Exhibit at the Saratoga Springs History Museum

Ray Giguere, chemistry, with Hannah DeGraaf 15: Synthetic Studies on Tandem Intramolecular Diels-Alder Reactions

Reba Howard, chemistry, with Alex Mola 16: The role of the hydrophobic gate in alcohol modulation of ligand-gated ion channels

Reba Howard, chemistry, with Daniel Manson 15: Computational modeling of alcohol binding sites in ligand-gated ion channels

Heather Hurst 97, anthropology, with John Kolios 16 and Kimberly Snow 15: Archaeological Collections Management and Artifact Conservation

Rebecca Johnson, psychology, with Haley Cirka 16: Serial Processing of Letters or First Letter Advantage?

Matthew Kroot, anthropology, with Priscilla Montalto 15 and Elizabeth Hopkins 15: Artifact trajectories: Following archeological materials from excavation to conservation

Sylvia McDevitt, biology, with Jody-Ann Facey 14: Copper-silver cross-resistance: testing the potential of homolog proteins of CopA from Escherichia coli

Denise McQuade, biology, with Anh Vu Nguyen 17 and Kristina Francoeur 15: Analysis of current methods used in digit-ratio research: Literature review from 2011-13

Scott Mulligan, business and international affairs, with Ramzy Kahhale 15: Innovation, Intellectual Property and Maker Spaces: An Empirical Study of Constrained Creativity in the DIY and Open Hardware Movements

Bernardo Ramirez Rios, anthropology, with Bethany Hunt 17: Visual Representation in the Transnational Lives of Mexican Migrants

Joan Ann Swanson, education studies, with Erica Walker 16, Technology as Skin

Peter von Allmen, economics, with Yinglu Li 16: Building Bridges across Disciplinary Boundaries

Nurcan Atalan-Helicke, environmental studies, with Nahid Paiman 15: Afghan Women in Leadership Positions: Activism and Local Economic Development

Judy Halstead and Juan Navea, chemistry, with Hannah DeGraaf 15: Diffusion of gases: An undergraduate laboratory experiment

Corinne Moss-Racusin, psychology, with Elizabeth Johnson 15: The Consequences of Backlash Against Men: Investigating the Influence of Behavioral Attributions on Male Elementary School Educators

Mehmet Odekon, economics, with Rachel Spring 15: Income Inequality and Vaccine Coverage in Middle-Income Developing Countries

Scott Enderle, English, with Mae Capozzi 15: A Distant Reading of Empire: Topic Modeling the British Raj 

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