Follow

• 

  3-D Visualizations of Terrestial Exoplanet Interiors Generated with MAGRATHEA in Blender

  Tristan Benally and David Rice

  There has been significant progress in simulating exoplanet interiors in the past decade. With the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system in the last few years, there have been many publications presenting models to best characterize specific aspects of exoplanets in study. However, with more parameters and considerations for different characteristics of an exoplanet there will be a need to represent many findings into a comprehensive model in the future. We extend the capabilities of MAGRATHEA from a planet interior solver to start incorporating multi-faceted functions starting with generating 3-D terrestrial planetary visualizations using a 3-D open-source computer graphic software called Blender.

• 

  Poliovirus Detection in Las Vegas Wastewater

  Sage Boss, Hayley Baker, and Ching-Lan Chang

  Wastewater surveillance for poliovirus is a useful tool for spatial surveillance and evaluation of immunization efficacy. Polio testing in wastewater has been conducted since the 1980s in Finland and Israel, and the virus was recently discovered in New York. With increasing concern regarding the vaccination of children against the virus, there has been worry that polio cases could once again present themselves in the Las Vegas Valley. By testing for the virus in wastewater, we can monitor any new cases or outbreaks that occur and inform authorities as to the location and viral count. The wastewater samples were collected at various locations throughout the Las Vegas Valley and brought to the lab for analysis. Nucleic acids from the samples were isolated and purified, and complementary DNA was for further testing. The DNA was tested using quantitative polymerase chain reaction to determine the concentration of poliovirus in the starting sample. After several months of testing, no polio was identified in the wastewater. The qPCR data indicated that no poliovirus was replicated. This data is useful moving forward because it reveals that there were no major polio outbreaks in the areas that were tested. Further research would need to be conducted in order to ensure continuing safety from poliovirus in Las Vegas.

• 

  Microbial Life in Deep-Subsurface Environments: The Role of High Pressure in Biogeochemical Cycles

  Cheyenne Brokaw

  Ocean World: An ocean world is considered any planet or moon currently with a liquid ocean. While the deepest part of the Ocean (Mariana Trench, 11,000 mbsl, 110 Mpa) and the lithosphere host microbial life, it begs the question, How?

• 

  Lighting Little Shop of Horrors

  Arielle Brown

  The assistant lighting designer of a musical is responsible for supporting the lighting designer as they achieve their vision. During the production process for the musical Little Shop of Horrors (produced by the Nevada Conservatory Theatre), the assistant is responsible for creating and updating the paperwork related to the production. The Scene/Song Breakdown, Cue Sheet, and Group List are produced at the beginning of the process. Preset List, Effect List, Focus Palette and Color Palette Lists are produced during cueing and technical rehearsals. During technical and dress rehearsals, changes made to the production are updated in the paperwork. Once the show opens, the paperwork is archived to provide a record of the production for future reference.

  Along with working on show documents, the assistant lighting designer is also responsible for taking notes at production meetings. This aids the lighting designer in the collaborative process with other design departments. The assistant also helps keep track of blocking and changes made to the production.

• 

  Is there an app for that? Social support, depression, and anxiety among users of a digital mental health app

  Bryce V. Brown, Teresa J. Walker, Christine Guardian, and Matthew Schurr

  Perceived social support has been associated with mental health. Social distancing guidelines due to COVID-19 heavily shifted social engagement to digital formats. It is important to understand the role of digital mental health interventions in mental health outcomes.

• 

  Who is gonna see the shrink? Anxiety and depression's relationship to openness and willingness to engage in weekly psychotherapy

  Bryce V. Brown, Teresa J. Walker, Christine Guardian, and Matthew Schurr

  Digital mental health interventions may offer an alternative to in-person psychotherapy. It is important to understand attitudes about traditional in-person psychotherapy among app users to contextualize treatment seeking and better understand treatment options.

• 

  Differences in Negative Symptom Severity Across Bipolar Disorder With and Without Psychosis

  Gia Renemae Calip, Jessica J. Woodyatt, Erik Ringdahl, Sally Vogel, and Gregory P. Strauss

  There was no significant difference between BP+ and BP- groups. Significant difference were found in BP+ and SZ groups when tested for Affective Flattening and Alogia.Significant difference were found in HC and BP- when tested for Anhedonia-Asociality.

• 

  High School Environment in the Clark County School District

  Oscar Canale, John David Reyes, Asia Sunga, and Jay Tumanan

  Our group was interested in analyzing the high school public education system in the Clark County School District. As Las Vegas residents, it is important to know how the schools in our city are being affected, especially since many of us went to school here. It is also detrimental to know as it could potentially be the schools of our future children and generation. We took data from the 2017-2018 school year and decided to model the total index score of each high school based on four different variables. Chronic absenteeism is defined as the percentage of students in the school who missed 10% or more school days in the school years. Proficiency average refers to the percentage of the student body who are proficient in basic science, math, and English. CCR completion, or college career readiness completion is the percentage of students who completed a college and career readiness program. Lastly, the high school graduation rate 4-5 is the graduation rate of students from the high school after 4 or 5 school years attending it. We built a model and used STATA to create the descriptive statistics and eimpirical results. We also created scatterplots and bar charts to clearly see the relationships between the variables if there are any.

• 

  A Study of Improvement in the User Experience of UNLV's Campus Safety Mobile Application

  Mayra Carrera, Mustafa Diallo, Cecilia Garcia-Leon, Khristine Le, and Kristine Monsada

  In 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), reported an average of 28,000 crimes on college campuses across the United States. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) has taken measures to address campus safety through their app, RebelSAFE. However, there is little research showing how effective such apps are in aiding students through emergencies. This study aims to evaluate the usability of RebelSAFE through usability testing and surveys.

• 

  Development of a Novel Ionic Liquid-Coated Adsorbent for Treating Emerging Contaminants in Recycled Water on the International Space Station

  Madeline Carroll, Gabson Baguma, and Savanna Vacek

  Synthesize at least 3 biobased ionic liquids. Optimize method for conducting liquid-liquid extractions. Analyze and quantify how much DMSO2 is removed by the ionic liquids. Coat biochar with the most effective biobased ionic liquids.

• 

  Self-Blame Associated with Sexual Maltreatment

  Jessica Castillo and Mallory Constantine

  Sexually maltreated youth are at increased risk for developing thoughts of self-blame associated with their traumatic experiences (Melville et al., 2014). Self-blame increases risk of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies and self-harming behaviors (Gorgi et al., 2019). Self-blame can cause negative side effects in development and adulthood, changing the trajectory of the child who was affected by sexual assault (Ullman et al., 2014). Recent studies suggest we must continue to investigate the role in shame in producing meaning making progress, and how it affects other emotions, cognitive learning, and emotion regulating strategies (McElvaney et al., 2022). In order to continue to improve the quality of life in individuals who have experienced sexual maltreatment, we must continue to uncover the secret nature of shame.

• 

  The Relationship Between Misophonia Sensitivity and Musicality

  Mae Ling Catayong, Sarah Uganiza, William Smithers, Aileen Corral, Sivan Barashy, Solena Mednicoff, and Destiny Gonzales

  Misophonia is a condition characterized by negative emotional reactions to certain everyday sounds. Musicality involves Active Musical Engagement (AE), Self-reported Perceptual Abilities (PA), Musical Training (MT), Self-reported Singing Abilities (SA), Sophisticated Emotional Engagement with Music (EM), and General musical sophistication (GM). Numerous active musicians have self-reported having misophonia, while anecdotal reports have shown that music can help treat misophonia symptoms.

• 

  Expanding the Library of Planet Building Materials in Magrathea

  Rosalie Chaleunsouck and Tristan Benally

  Exoplanets are often modeled with fully-differentiated layers of iron, silicates, water, and gas. The large pressure and temperature ranges within each layer results in changes of phase and mineral equilibrium. MAGRATHEA is an open-course planet interior structure code with a large library of equations of state for planet building materials. This allows for the user to build detailed planet models and test differing measurements of the equation of state. We extend MAGRATHEA's library to include upper-mantle materials and various phases of iron cores. We show the impact of these materials on the characterization of rocky planet interiors.

• 

  Infants' Intermodal Knowledge of Gender Using Faces and Voices

  Bijoux Cheun, Christina Saliba, Alexis Rice, and Marian Espina

  Infants begin to use intermodal knowledge to match male and female faces to the corresponding voice, in their first year of life.

  Infants have more experience with female faces which should lead to greater intermodal knowledge of female faces.

  Previous studies have found inconsistent results. This could be due to the type of stimuli used.

  This study uses several pairs of static and dynamic faces to investigate how methodological differences may impact infants' performance.

• 

  Lesbian Visibility and Censorship in Early Twentieth Century New York City

  Aimee Clouse

  On the brisk night of February 9th, 1927, New York City Police crammed the casts of two Broadway plays, one of which Edouard Bourdet's The Captive, into the back of a paddy wagon. These arrests and the legislation that enabled them were just one step taken by institutions to hide lesbians from the public. The eclectic nature of New York City in the early twentieth century fostered a growing scene of gender and sexual expression unlike anywhere else in the United States. Here, lesbians found freedom to express their sexuality and explore a growing subculture.

• 

  Peripheral Blood Cell Counts as Potential Biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease: A Look at Polygenetic Risk Scores

  Melika Cummings, Yimei Lu, Joan Manuel Cue, Neel Patel, and Jenifer Do

  Blood-based biomarkers for neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) have been extensively researched. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurological illness whose progression has been ascribed to gene expression. However, the pathophysiology of these disorders and its relationship to other abnormalities remain unknown. AD has been connected to PBCs, which include erythrocytes, platelets, and leukocytes and have a complicated interaction with the brain system. The pathogenesis of PBCs has been related to a negative influence on established neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's. Candidate gene association studies have become more common as progress in mapping the human genome has increased their viability. The plurality of candidate genes were selected based on their function or expression in disease-related systems (e.g., dopamine neurotransmitter systems), and this strategy is crucial for defining the nature of internal disturbance. It has increasingly been postulated that, in addition to cell-cell signaling inside the brain, dynamic crosstalk between the brain and systematic mechanisms such as circulation of blood cells may be crucial.

• 

  An Illustrated Metamorphoses

  Alexandria Devlin

  This project was a comic consisting of five different myths from Ovid's Metamorphoses. My goal was to make it easier and more enjoyable for audiences to read classical myths, and give these stories a way to shine in the 21st century. Myths from many different cultures have been adapted into comics, but direct depictions are much less common than shaping mythological figures to fit a new story. I have yet to find a direct comic adaptation of Metamorphoses. Ovid's Metamorphoses is full of rich and interesting stories and deserves to be represented alongside other mythological tales.

• 

  How Children and Adults Make Judgments About Who To Trust

  Rachel E. DeWald, Jennifer L. Rennels, and Kindy Insouvanh

  "Beauty is Good Stereotype": Higher attractive individuals are thought to be more intelligent, more successful, and happier overall. They also obtain more visual attention and are deemed more trustworthy.

  Making a choice based on a person's appearance and attributes might lead to dangerous consequences and lead to being deceived.

  We investigated how the appearance of male and female experts influence whether children and adults trust statements made by the expert, establish what that expert knows and determine that expert's attributes (warmth and competence). The results of this study will help us better determine what cues children and adults use when making trustworthiness decisions.

• 

  Electrochemical Inactivation of Tobacco Mosaic Virus: A Novel Vaccine Method

  Angelica Diaz

  We tested the effectiveness of using electrochemistry to irreversibly damage Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV). Hypothesis: By utilizing the acidic properties of DNA and RNA, viral genetic material can be irreversibly and selectively damaged using electrochemical methods. Technique could assist in development of highly targeted and effective vaccines.

• 

  Horizontal Ladder Task: Assessing the Effect of a Walking Intervention on Mobility in People with Lower Limb Amputation

  Chelsea Domingo

  Hundreds of thousands of people struggle with mobility due to lower limb amputation. Learning how to do something you have never done is a difficult task for anyone. Practice is important when person with amputation uses a prosthesis because each environment they encounter could vary. Across settings, different textures such as even and uneven terrain require different skills to maintain balance. The purpose of this research is to determine if practicing walking on uneven terrain will help people with amputation improve their ability to walk in different environments. We will use a horizontal ladder task (Christie et al., 2020) to test this ability.

• 

  The Relationship Between Masculinity & Friendships: A Thematic Analysis On The Qualities of Male Friendships

  Dulshi Fernando, Valeria Aguilera, Kristin Vierra, and Diana Gutierrez

  Certain masculinity norms such as toughness, emotional stoicism, and homophobia appear to be barriers to forming intimate friendships between boys and men.

  Boys and men who do not successfully build close connections may experience low self-esteem and impaired psychological health.

  Boys and men who effectively build intimate relationships benefit from peer support and companionship as well as a decrease in anxiety and depression levels.

  Scholars have yet to conduct a meta-synthesis exploring the relation between masculinity and friendship.

• 

  Correlational Analysis Between Self-Esteem and Selective Mutism

  Janelle Ferraris, Karina Carrillo-Juarez, Alexandra Caballero, and Melanie Rede

  These results demonstrate that children who score higher in being self-conscious or easily embarrassed are may be more likely to present more severe symptoms of selective mutism. These results also suggest that, in treating or identifying children with selective mutism, it is beneficial to understand the severity to which these children feel self-conscious or embarrassed.

• 

  Portrayals of Characters of Color in Teen Media

  Janelle Ferraris, Lindsay Denecker, and Kristin Vierra

  Some teen television shows are actively addressing race and racism.

  Teen television shows are highlighting the development of ethnic-racial identity. This is promising considering scholars label the development of ethnic-racial identity to be an essential product of the development of older children and adolescents (Syed & Azmitia, 2008, Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014).

  Teen television shows are emphasizing factors in a person of colors' community or interactions with peers that may influence their overall well-being. This is encouraging considering research suggests that hearing stories from individuals of various backgrounds can help individuals better recognize systems of oppression and discrimination (Freire, 1995).

  Future research should continue to explore how race and racism are depicted in teen television.

• 

  A Comparative Analysis of Community College Governance in the Mountain West and Policy Proposals for Nevada

  Peter Grema

  Purpose of Research: 1) To explore the role of community colleges in workforce development. 2) To understand the current structure of higher education in Nevada. 3) To compare Nevada's community college governance and administration to neighboring Mountain West states (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah). 4) To offer policy recommendations for updating Nevada's workforce development capacity for its community college system. 5) To present findings to Nevada policymakers during the AB450 Study Committee period.

• 

  Trapping and Cooling of Ca+ for Cold Ion-Radical Collisions

  Bernardo Gutierrez

  Free radicals are molecules that contain an unpaired valence electron which induces high reactivity. Ion radical reactions are typically exothermic and have low (or zero) activation energy. It is for these reasons that ion-radical reactions are believed to dominate in interstellar clouds where temperatures hover around 3-10K. State-to-state measurements require precision control of both reactants.