Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.915
Alison Gemberling, Zachary J. Loughman
In herpetoculture, there is debate as to whether ultraviolet-B, UVB, lighting is required for providing adequate welfare for snakes in human care. Many believe this supplemental lighting is unnecessary and is not utilized by the snakes, stating that snakes survive and breed in its absence. Previous studies using pythons and corn snakes have demonstrated that offering UVB lighting appears to have a significant effect on their physiology. These studies focused on the increase of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 concentrations in the blood after UVB exposure. In the present study, false water cobras, Hydrodynastes gigas, were chosen because they are active, diurnal snakes and are therefore more likely to seek out UVB in the wild in comparison with other fossorial snakes. The level of UVB that will be provided is based on the tropical climate of the range for H. gigas. Twelve hatchling H. gigas will be divided into two groups with Arcadia T5 14% UVB lights provided for one group and LED lights provided for the other. The behavior of the snakes will be monitored through video recording to determine the effects of UVB lighting on basking behavior and total time exposed to the UVB lighting. To identify physiological effects, radiographs will be taken to determine any change in bone density. This study aims to find if offering UVB lighting promotes basking behavior and affects bone density in H. gigas. The results of this study can be used to further increase welfare standards for snakes in captivity.
{"title":"Analysis of the effects of UVB radiation on bone density and behavior of hatchling false water cobras, Hydrodynastes gigas.","authors":"Alison Gemberling, Zachary J. Loughman","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.915","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.915","url":null,"abstract":"In herpetoculture, there is debate as to whether ultraviolet-B, UVB, lighting is required for providing adequate welfare for snakes in human care. Many believe this supplemental lighting is unnecessary and is not utilized by the snakes, stating that snakes survive and breed in its absence. Previous studies using pythons and corn snakes have demonstrated that offering UVB lighting appears to have a significant effect on their physiology. These studies focused on the increase of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 concentrations in the blood after UVB exposure. In the present study, false water cobras, Hydrodynastes gigas, were chosen because they are active, diurnal snakes and are therefore more likely to seek out UVB in the wild in comparison with other fossorial snakes. The level of UVB that will be provided is based on the tropical climate of the range for H. gigas. Twelve hatchling H. gigas will be divided into two groups with Arcadia T5 14% UVB lights provided for one group and LED lights provided for the other. The behavior of the snakes will be monitored through video recording to determine the effects of UVB lighting on basking behavior and total time exposed to the UVB lighting. To identify physiological effects, radiographs will be taken to determine any change in bone density. This study aims to find if offering UVB lighting promotes basking behavior and affects bone density in H. gigas. The results of this study can be used to further increase welfare standards for snakes in captivity.","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81839131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.924
D. Graebe, J. Wood
Surface coal mining has been a major economic force in the Appalachian region for hundreds of years. Surface coal mining leads to runoff known as acid mine drainage (AMD) which infiltrates and severely degrades freshwater streams. Acid mine drainage impacted streams often see a marked decrease in biodiversity especially Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera (EPT taxa) which are intolerant to pollution. We researched the water quality in four streams. Two downstream mines were impacted by AMD while the other two served as control or unimpaired sites. Water chemistry of all four streams was measured including sulfate, iron, and magnesium using a YSI 9500 photometer. The pH of each stream was measured using a YSI Quatro meter. We found elevated levels of sulfate and iron in the impaired streams while magnesium levels varied across sites. The pH tended to be lower in the impaired streams but remained fairly alkaline ( pH > 5). These data are useful for understanding the chemistry of impaired streams and how freshwater macroinvertebrates may respond to these chemical parameters. Additionally these data aid in remediation efforts which may be dependent on specific water chemistry.
{"title":"Quantifiable Water Chemistry Trends in Streams Degraded by Acid Mine Drainage","authors":"D. Graebe, J. Wood","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.924","url":null,"abstract":"Surface coal mining has been a major economic force in the Appalachian region for hundreds of years. Surface coal mining leads to runoff known as acid mine drainage (AMD) which infiltrates and severely degrades freshwater streams. Acid mine drainage impacted streams often see a marked decrease in biodiversity especially Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera (EPT taxa) which are intolerant to pollution. We researched the water quality in four streams. Two downstream mines were impacted by AMD while the other two served as control or unimpaired sites. Water chemistry of all four streams was measured including sulfate, iron, and magnesium using a YSI 9500 photometer. The pH of each stream was measured using a YSI Quatro meter. We found elevated levels of sulfate and iron in the impaired streams while magnesium levels varied across sites. The pH tended to be lower in the impaired streams but remained fairly alkaline ( pH > 5). These data are useful for understanding the chemistry of impaired streams and how freshwater macroinvertebrates may respond to these chemical parameters. Additionally these data aid in remediation efforts which may be dependent on specific water chemistry. ","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77092706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.868
S. Cantlay, Joseph Horzempa, Christian Kaftanic
Francisella tularensis is an intracellular pathogen and the causative agent of tularemia. The F. tularensis type six secretion system (T6SS) is required for phagolysosomal escape and invasion of erythrocytes. An effector of the T6SS, PdpC, is required for phagosomal escape and we wanted to test if PdpC was also required for erythrocyte invasion. We constructed a pdpC-null mutant in the live vaccine strain, F. tularensis LVS. The pdpC-null strain is required for invasion of both human and sheep erythrocytes and reintroduction of a copy of pdpC, in trans, rescues this phenotype. Differential Immuno-Fluorescence Microscopy (DIFM) showed that the pdpC-null strain is affected in attachment as well as invasion. Further, a fluorescently labelled pdpC-null strain of F. tularensis LVS was unable to proliferate in THP-1 human peripheral blood monocyte cells. Finally, we constructed a fluorescent fusion of pdpC to emgfp and the resulting PdpC-EmGFP fusion protein localizes as discrete foci in a subset of broth cultured F. tularensis LVS cells. Our results confirm previous observations that PdpC is required for infection and virulence in phagocytic host cells and are the first description of an effector of the Type Six Secretion System that is required for erythrocyte invasion. The pdpC-emgfp strain will be a useful tool to further characterize the role of PdpC in both macrophage infection and red blood cell invasion. (This research was made possible by NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium Training Grant #NNX15A101H and by NIH Grant P20GM103434 to the West Virginia IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence).
{"title":"PdpC, a Type Six Secretion System Substrate, is Required for Erythrocyte Invasion in Francisella tularensis LVS","authors":"S. Cantlay, Joseph Horzempa, Christian Kaftanic","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.868","url":null,"abstract":" Francisella tularensis is an intracellular pathogen and the causative agent of tularemia. The F. tularensis type six secretion system (T6SS) is required for phagolysosomal escape and invasion of erythrocytes. An effector of the T6SS, PdpC, is required for phagosomal escape and we wanted to test if PdpC was also required for erythrocyte invasion. We constructed a pdpC-null mutant in the live vaccine strain, F. tularensis LVS. The pdpC-null strain is required for invasion of both human and sheep erythrocytes and reintroduction of a copy of pdpC, in trans, rescues this phenotype. Differential Immuno-Fluorescence Microscopy (DIFM) showed that the pdpC-null strain is affected in attachment as well as invasion. Further, a fluorescently labelled pdpC-null strain of F. tularensis LVS was unable to proliferate in THP-1 human peripheral blood monocyte cells. Finally, we constructed a fluorescent fusion of pdpC to emgfp and the resulting PdpC-EmGFP fusion protein localizes as discrete foci in a subset of broth cultured F. tularensis LVS cells. Our results confirm previous observations that PdpC is required for infection and virulence in phagocytic host cells and are the first description of an effector of the Type Six Secretion System that is required for erythrocyte invasion. The pdpC-emgfp strain will be a useful tool to further characterize the role of PdpC in both macrophage infection and red blood cell invasion. (This research was made possible by NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium Training Grant #NNX15A101H and by NIH Grant P20GM103434 to the West Virginia IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence).","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"93 Pt A 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76180482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.867
Ethan Bevan, Jason Rafe Miller
Facial recognition using artificial neural networks is a biometric technology currently being used in fields such as cybersecurity and criminal investigation. We sought to automatically distinguish between an image of a happy human face and an image of a sad human face with predictions that are better than random guesses. We trained a machine learning model (VGG16, a type of convolutional neural network) on a public image dataset of 12,000 human faces. The resulting model predicted the emotion label 93% of time when shown a test set of 200 images that the model had never seen during training. The results show that the VGG16 convolutional neural network learned features from our data that produced an output which was sufficient to train the additional layers of the model to perform our task at 93% accuracy. We suspect this is because VGG16 was already familiar with features that it learned from ImageNet (a separate dataset of over 2 million images). It is currently unknown whether our model can predict labels for new images outside of the FER13 dataset, but preliminary tests show promising results. Our model was trained using a cloud computing service and a relatively small amount of data, indicating that these kinds of results are easily obtainable by all.
{"title":"Emotion classification of human facial images by a neural network","authors":"Ethan Bevan, Jason Rafe Miller","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.867","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.867","url":null,"abstract":"Facial recognition using artificial neural networks is a biometric technology currently being used in fields such as cybersecurity and criminal investigation. We sought to automatically distinguish between an image of a happy human face and an image of a sad human face with predictions that are better than random guesses. We trained a machine learning model (VGG16, a type of convolutional neural network) on a public image dataset of 12,000 human faces. The resulting model predicted the emotion label 93% of time when shown a test set of 200 images that the model had never seen during training. The results show that the VGG16 convolutional neural network learned features from our data that produced an output which was sufficient to train the additional layers of the model to perform our task at 93% accuracy. We suspect this is because VGG16 was already familiar with features that it learned from ImageNet (a separate dataset of over 2 million images). It is currently unknown whether our model can predict labels for new images outside of the FER13 dataset, but preliminary tests show promising results. Our model was trained using a cloud computing service and a relatively small amount of data, indicating that these kinds of results are easily obtainable by all.","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83842420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.882
K. Hatipoglu, Sanish Rai, Y. Panta
The goal of the SUCCESS project is to recruit, retain, and graduate low-income STEM students with high motivation and entrepreneurial mindset that will increase the likelihood of employment in technology-based businesses and/or the creation of technology-based start-up ventures in the region. The program will contribute to society by increasing the number of career-ready STEM graduates from low-income and underrepresented populations and strengthening the pipeline of qualified engineers and scientists, improving the home state, the Appalachian region, and the U.S. economic competitiveness. So far, the project provided scholarships to eight (8) student “scholars” for the cohort in year 1. We are currently in the process of recruiting new students for the second cohort in year 2. Faculty mentors from Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) departments are regularly meeting with the scholars to ensure they are making good progress to achieve student success. To facilitate early introduction to research, entrepreneurship, and STEM careers, the scholars were assigned to industrial mentors, encouraged to attend and get involved with campus activities including career fairs, student organizations, senior design seminars, and entrepreneurship courses. SUCCESS team is regularly collecting and analyzing feedback from scholars to ensure that the necessary improvements are implemented. Every semester, scholars’ feedback is collected through pre-, mid- and post- surveys. These surveys provide insights on scholars’ course/program performance, career updates, and also the level of persistence towards their program of study and entrepreneurship minor. This project is funded by NSF DUE S-STEM Program from 2021-2026.
SUCCESS项目的目标是招募、留住具有高动力和创业心态的低收入STEM学生并使其毕业，这将增加在该地区从事科技企业和/或创建科技初创企业的可能性。该项目将通过增加低收入和代表性不足人口中准备就业的STEM毕业生的数量，加强合格工程师和科学家的管道，提高家乡，阿巴拉契亚地区和美国的经济竞争力，为社会做出贡献。到目前为止，该项目为第一年的队列提供了8名学生“学者”奖学金。我们目前正在招收二年级第二班的新生。来自电气与计算机工程(ECE)和计算机科学与信息系统(CSIS)部门的教师导师定期与学者会面，以确保他们取得良好的进展，以实现学生的成功。为了帮助这些学生尽早进入研究、创业和STEM职业，他们被分配给行业导师，并被鼓励参加和参与校园活动，包括招聘会、学生组织、高级设计研讨会和创业课程。SUCCESS团队定期收集和分析来自学者的反馈，以确保必要的改进得以实施。每学期通过课前、中、后调查收集学者反馈。这些调查提供了对学者的课程/项目表现、职业更新以及对他们的学习项目和创业辅修项目的坚持程度的见解。本项目由NSF DUE S-STEM项目资助，资助期限为2021-2026年。
{"title":"NSF S-STEM Program - Supporting Undergraduate Cohorts of Career-Ready Engineering and Science Scholars (SUCCESS) Project at WVU Tech – Year 1 updates","authors":"K. Hatipoglu, Sanish Rai, Y. Panta","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.882","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of the SUCCESS project is to recruit, retain, and graduate low-income STEM students with high motivation and entrepreneurial mindset that will increase the likelihood of employment in technology-based businesses and/or the creation of technology-based start-up ventures in the region. The program will contribute to society by increasing the number of career-ready STEM graduates from low-income and underrepresented populations and strengthening the pipeline of qualified engineers and scientists, improving the home state, the Appalachian region, and the U.S. economic competitiveness. So far, the project provided scholarships to eight (8) student “scholars” for the cohort in year 1. We are currently in the process of recruiting new students for the second cohort in year 2. Faculty mentors from Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) departments are regularly meeting with the scholars to ensure they are making good progress to achieve student success. To facilitate early introduction to research, entrepreneurship, and STEM careers, the scholars were assigned to industrial mentors, encouraged to attend and get involved with campus activities including career fairs, student organizations, senior design seminars, and entrepreneurship courses. SUCCESS team is regularly collecting and analyzing feedback from scholars to ensure that the necessary improvements are implemented. Every semester, scholars’ feedback is collected through pre-, mid- and post- surveys. These surveys provide insights on scholars’ course/program performance, career updates, and also the level of persistence towards their program of study and entrepreneurship minor. This project is funded by NSF DUE S-STEM Program from 2021-2026.","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"1 4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82714912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.893
A. G. Dodson
A growing number of human pathogens are becoming resistant to most common antibiotics. Each year, antibiotic-resistant infections are responsible for 35,000 deaths in the United States and billions of dollars in health care costs. This problem is magnified by the fact that very few new antibiotic therapies have been developed and approved for human use in recent years. Historically, plants and other products found in nature have served as essential sources for the discovery of novel antibacterial agents. Piper species are aromatic plants whose secondary metabolites have been shown to have wide ranging human health effects including anti-tumor, anti-diabetic, and anti-inflammatory activity. In collaboration with Dr. Claudia Ospina at Inter American University of Puerto Rico, we generated a crude chemical extract from Piper leaves and will be assessing the antimicrobial activity of this extract against a broad range of bacterial species known to exhibit multidrug resistance. Future studies will involve isolating the active compounds (and/or fractions) from the Piper crude extract using column chromatography and/or HPLC. The pure compounds will be characterized using different spectroscopic techniques such as NMR, IR and MS. We anticipate isolating and identifying several bioactive compounds from the crude Piper leaf extract that exhibit antimicrobial activity.
{"title":"Investigating the antimicrobial activity of a crude leaf extract derived from Piper species.","authors":"A. G. Dodson","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.893","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.893","url":null,"abstract":"A growing number of human pathogens are becoming resistant to most common antibiotics. Each year, antibiotic-resistant infections are responsible for 35,000 deaths in the United States and billions of dollars in health care costs. This problem is magnified by the fact that very few new antibiotic therapies have been developed and approved for human use in recent years. Historically, plants and other products found in nature have served as essential sources for the discovery of novel antibacterial agents. Piper species are aromatic plants whose secondary metabolites have been shown to have wide ranging human health effects including anti-tumor, anti-diabetic, and anti-inflammatory activity. In collaboration with Dr. Claudia Ospina at Inter American University of Puerto Rico, we generated a crude chemical extract from Piper leaves and will be assessing the antimicrobial activity of this extract against a broad range of bacterial species known to exhibit multidrug resistance. Future studies will involve isolating the active compounds (and/or fractions) from the Piper crude extract using column chromatography and/or HPLC. The pure compounds will be characterized using different spectroscopic techniques such as NMR, IR and MS. We anticipate isolating and identifying several bioactive compounds from the crude Piper leaf extract that exhibit antimicrobial activity.","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74231368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.865
L. Cutright, Amanda M. Smith, Erica Harvey
Gateway math courses can be a major hurdle for students to get over in order to continue on with their majors, especially STEM majors. Previously, students could have taken up to four semesters of remedial math before being able to place into the first gateway math course needed for their major. With Math Support, students no longer have to take those remedial courses; the remediation is built in to the course in addition to the regular level content. These co-requisite courses allow students to start into their major courses much sooner than in the past, therefore allowing them to stay on track in their major and finish successfully. Developmental math courses have been replaced with co-requisite and accelerated learning models. All students can now progress through gateway courses within their first year, regardless of test scores. Gateway courses are offered with additional support to aid students in learning and understanding and fill in any gaps. Fairmont State was one the first colleges in WV to offer these services at full-scale. Attendees will be given an overview of Math Support at Fairmont State and how we have adapted our course to meet the changing needs of students as a result of the COVID pandemic. More data will be reported.
{"title":"Integrating co-requisite math for STEM student success.","authors":"L. Cutright, Amanda M. Smith, Erica Harvey","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.865","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.865","url":null,"abstract":"Gateway math courses can be a major hurdle for students to get over in order to continue on with their majors, especially STEM majors. Previously, students could have taken up to four semesters of remedial math before being able to place into the first gateway math course needed for their major. With Math Support, students no longer have to take those remedial courses; the remediation is built in to the course in addition to the regular level content. These co-requisite courses allow students to start into their major courses much sooner than in the past, therefore allowing them to stay on track in their major and finish successfully. \u0000 Developmental math courses have been replaced with co-requisite and accelerated learning models. All students can now progress through gateway courses within their first year, regardless of test scores. Gateway courses are offered with additional support to aid students in learning and understanding and fill in any gaps. Fairmont State was one the first colleges in WV to offer these services at full-scale. Attendees will be given an overview of Math Support at Fairmont State and how we have adapted our course to meet the changing needs of students as a result of the COVID pandemic. More data will be reported.","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81951389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.856
Alyssa Pettry, J. Bow, Kristy Henson
Human skeletal remains are important teaching tools in natural science courses. Many teaching skeletons at universities tend to be forgotten and stored away as they become damaged and are replaced with plastic models. Today, controversy over the ethical acquisition and treatment of skeletal material directly affects many museums and educational institutions. Skeletons tell us a substantial amount of information about each individual and how they lived, giving us an insight into different populations and lifestyles. An unknown number of teaching skeletons were discovered disarticulated, damaged, and stored in a backroom at Fairmont State University. As we do not know the exact means by which these teaching skeletons were acquired these individuals should be analyzed, repaired, and stored properly. For this project, we determined the minimum number of individuals (MNI) and completed standard osteological analyses for each individual. The MNI discovered was 44 while only 16 had enough bones to complete a standard osteological analysis. Standard osteometric and macroscopic analyses were performed on the individuals using Data Collection Procedures for Forensic Skeletal Material 2.0 and the Modified Istanbul Protocol. Age, sex, ancestry, height, metabolic bone disease, and potential cause of death were determined using standard paleopathological techniques. Preliminary results show that all individuals are over 20 years old, 3 individuals between 20-35 years, 3 between 35-50 years, 2 35+ years, and 6 20+ years old. Two individuals were of indeterminate sex, 3 probably male, and 5 probably female. Nine individuals were of Asian ancestry.
{"title":"Osteological Analysis of Rediscovered Teaching Skeletons at Fairmont State University","authors":"Alyssa Pettry, J. Bow, Kristy Henson","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.856","url":null,"abstract":" \u0000Human skeletal remains are important teaching tools in natural science courses. Many teaching \u0000skeletons at universities tend to be forgotten and stored away as they become damaged and are replaced with plastic models. Today, controversy over the ethical acquisition and treatment of skeletal material directly affects many museums and educational institutions. Skeletons tell us a substantial amount of information about each individual and how they lived, giving us an insight into different populations and lifestyles. An unknown number of teaching skeletons were discovered disarticulated, damaged, and stored in a backroom at Fairmont State University. As we do not know the exact means by which these teaching skeletons were acquired these individuals should be analyzed, repaired, and stored properly. For this project, we determined the minimum number of individuals (MNI) and completed standard osteological analyses for each individual. The MNI discovered was 44 while only 16 had enough bones to complete a standard osteological analysis. Standard osteometric and macroscopic analyses were performed on the individuals using Data Collection Procedures for Forensic Skeletal Material 2.0 and the Modified Istanbul Protocol. Age, sex, ancestry, height, metabolic bone disease, and potential cause of death were determined using standard paleopathological techniques. Preliminary results show that all individuals are over 20 years old, 3 individuals between 20-35 years, 3 between 35-50 years, 2 35+ years, and 6 20+ years old. Two individuals were of indeterminate sex, 3 probably male, and 5 probably female. Nine individuals were of Asian ancestry. ","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84331739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.862
John Little, Nathan T. Workman, Zachary Spiggle, Davis Teigeler, Davian Hester, W. Liao
The objective of the study is to provide undergraduate students an opportunity to conduct research and engineering design in the area of autonomous robotics. The engineering design aspect of the project involved the reengineering of a powered wheelchair and the design of electrical, electronic, and software interfaces. Application of path planning algorithms took the form of a modified A* implementation for indoor autonomous travel, and a PixHawk autopilot system for outdoor autonomous navigation. The testing of the modified A* algorithm was conducted by using the hallways of Shepherd University as a real-world representation of the rover’s virtual map. The rover’s internal understanding of the map was an outline of the local space and required the robot to respond to the unknown objects in the environment to appropriately navigate from its starting point to the endpoint. The goal of the outdoor autonomous navigation was to implement GPS-based navigation in a large open area like a parking lot without any obstacles. The initial findings are that the engineering design for the rover is a success and that it initially shows the capability of receiving and responding to autonomous navigation cues. This project remains ongoing and will continue to be available to future computer science and engineering students at Shepherd University who are interested in autonomous robotics design and research. Funding and support for this project are provided by JLG Industries, Inc., Professor Jason Miller, and Prof. Weidong Liao of Shepherd University’s CME Department.
{"title":"Engineering Design and Path Planning Implementation for Autonomous Rover","authors":"John Little, Nathan T. Workman, Zachary Spiggle, Davis Teigeler, Davian Hester, W. Liao","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.862","url":null,"abstract":"The objective of the study is to provide undergraduate students an opportunity to conduct research and engineering design in the area of autonomous robotics. The engineering design aspect of the project involved the reengineering of a powered wheelchair and the design of electrical, electronic, and software interfaces. Application of path planning algorithms took the form of a modified A* implementation for indoor autonomous travel, and a PixHawk autopilot system for outdoor autonomous navigation. \u0000 The testing of the modified A* algorithm was conducted by using the hallways of Shepherd University as a real-world representation of the rover’s virtual map. The rover’s internal understanding of the map was an outline of the local space and required the robot to respond to the unknown objects in the environment to appropriately navigate from its starting point to the endpoint. The goal of the outdoor autonomous navigation was to implement GPS-based navigation in a large open area like a parking lot without any obstacles. \u0000 The initial findings are that the engineering design for the rover is a success and that it initially shows the capability of receiving and responding to autonomous navigation cues. This project remains ongoing and will continue to be available to future computer science and engineering students at Shepherd University who are interested in autonomous robotics design and research. \u0000 \u0000Funding and support for this project are provided by JLG Industries, Inc., Professor Jason Miller, and Prof. Weidong Liao of Shepherd University’s CME Department.","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82222908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-22DOI: 10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.940
Paula Saez-Raez, J. Walters
More than a third of the adults in the Appalachia are affected by obesity, which is associated with diets that are high in fats and cholesterol as well as the development of many diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. These diets lead tochronic inflammation and cellular damage from production of free radicals such as Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). We compared the respirometry outcomes in a 7 days post- fertilization zebrafish (Danio rerio) larvae after different diet conditions. Larvae were either fed nothing at all, a low fat diet (LFD), a high fat diet (HFD), or a HFD plus a drug that mitigates oxidative stress (Anethole Trithione and mito-TEMPO). We expected that the HFD would cause the mitochondria to be put under more stress due to oxidative phosphorylation of lipids and would decrease in the larvae treated with the drugs. Respirometry was obtained using the XFe24 Extracellular Flux Analyzer (Agilent Technologies) and a modified Cell Mito Stress Test. We found basal respiration is higher in the HFD and lower in the other two treatment diets, indicating that high fat diets do produce more oxidative stress in mitochondria, and the drugs tested are able to successfully mitigate it. The analysis of drug interaction readings is in progress. In the future, we will test other drugs that can affect mitochondrial metabolism (i.e. Curcumin, Pitastatin, Mdivi-1 and PPPA). Supported by NIH Grant P20GM103434 to the West Virginia IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence.
{"title":"Respirometry Outcomes in a 7 Days Post-Fertilization Danio Rerio Fed Different Dietary Conditions.","authors":"Paula Saez-Raez, J. Walters","doi":"10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v94i1.940","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000More than a third of the adults in the Appalachia are affected by obesity, which is associated with diets that are high in fats and cholesterol as well as the development of many diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. These diets lead tochronic inflammation and cellular damage from production of free radicals such as Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). We compared the respirometry outcomes in a 7 days post- fertilization zebrafish (Danio rerio) larvae after different diet conditions. Larvae were either fed nothing at all, a low fat diet (LFD), a high fat diet (HFD), or a HFD plus a drug that mitigates oxidative stress (Anethole Trithione and mito-TEMPO). We expected that the HFD would cause the mitochondria to be put under more stress due to oxidative phosphorylation of lipids and would decrease in the larvae treated with the drugs. Respirometry was obtained using the XFe24 Extracellular Flux Analyzer (Agilent Technologies) and a modified Cell Mito Stress Test. We found basal respiration is higher in the HFD and lower in the other two treatment diets, indicating that high fat diets do produce more oxidative stress in mitochondria, and the drugs tested are able to successfully mitigate it. The analysis of drug interaction readings is in progress. In the future, we will test other drugs that can affect mitochondrial metabolism (i.e. Curcumin, Pitastatin, Mdivi-1 and PPPA). \u0000Supported by NIH Grant P20GM103434 to the West Virginia IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000","PeriodicalId":92280,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89947841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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