Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Spring 2021, Joëlle Walls

The Investigator Research Magazine

Dear readers,

We are proud to present the spring issue of The Investigator and share with you the expansion of diverse research and scholarly activities occurring at Kennesaw State. Although this year was met with challenges, KSU’s research enterprise has thrived and grown.

In this issue, Pamela Whitten discussed the establishment of the Interdisciplinary Innovation Initiative, an internal funding program to spur new collaborations focused on KSU’s research themes. And alumni Carl Saint-Louis and Karen Armstrong, featured in our cover story, have returned as faculty to mentor the next generation.

This publication would not have been possible without the visual …

Ekap Update: Rethinking The Presentation Of Historic Sites, Elizabeth Debord, Joy Gritton

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The Eastern Kentucky Art Project was founded in 2007 as a way to connect communities with resources pertaining to visual arts and music in Eastern Kentucky. One significant type of resources EKAP features is information regarding historic architecture in Eastern Kentucky. Understanding cultural landmarks in people’s own communities can foster an inclusive and healthy community identity, but it became clear through recent efforts to update the EKAP website that information surrounding the preservation of historic sites is often difficult to access and understand for a general audience. Previous efforts to educate and encourage preservation of important sites was often tied …

Virtual Reality Environment Of Excavator Training For Operation License, Victoria Russ, Jorge Ortega-Moody, Kouroush Jenab

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

In 2018 unfilled construction worker jobs rose to 404,000[1]. This was an all-time high, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The government has no restrictions for operating an excavator; however, it is impossible to get a job without any operation and competency documentation. For this documentation, an employer could be looking at about $1000 for the most highly recognized training, which must be reinstated every five years. Excavation operation is a highly sought-after profession, and jobs are expected to rise by over 10% until 2028. The NSF EPSCoR research project is creating a …

Kentucky Soldiers At The Battles Of Frenchtown And The River Raisin Massacre, Christian Wright, Adrian Mandzy

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Research on The War of 1812 has been sporadic over the last two hundred years. In spite of the two centuries which have passed, significant gaps in the scholarship remain. Most individuals recognize that Kentucky troops played a major role in the war, but their participation and the number of casualties they suffered remains speculative. American newspaper accounts of the period, written with an eye to sell more copies, may not be accurate as they historically over inflated the number of dead. At the same time, British accounts have a tendency to downplay the numbers of American troops involved for …

Effects Of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy On Intraocular Pressure In Dogs, Sierra Ott, Lauren Mirus

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a method in which pressurized oxygen is used to improve oxygen delivery to tissues. This treatment has been found to be effective in a variety of disorders in human and animal medicine, however it is underutilized in small animal medicine, in part because veterinary professionals may not be adequately familiar with how it works and when it is worthwhile. There has been hesitancy to utilize this method of treatment due to the fear of the unknowns, one example being a potential for an increase in intraocular. The mission of this project was to expand knowledge …

Relation Among Potential Predictors Of Drug Abuse Risk In Rats, Emma Brock, Wesley White

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Animal models have been used to investigate behavioral processes and mechanisms that underlie addiction. A variety of measures have been developed for rats that are modest predictors of drug abuse risk. The purpose of this pilot study was to begin to assess whether several established and potential measures of drug abuse vulnerability were correlated. The subjects were eight adult male Wistar rats. The rats were run on procedures that yielded measures of anxiety, sensation seeking, short term responsive to acutely administered drug, and sensitivity to conditioned stimuli. These measures were correlated with a potential new measure of drug abuse vulnerability—withdrawal …

Past Sexual Assault, Daily Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms, And Sexual Functioning: The Role Of Pre Sex Drinking, Natalie Fyffe, Elizabeth Neilson

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Women with a history of adolescent or adult sexual assault (ASA) report difficulties with sexual functioning. One hypothesized contributor is posttraumatic stress (PTS), however, for whom and under what circumstances PTS affects sexual functioning is unclear. While ongoing research has found that some ASA survivors may drink to cope with PTS symptoms, little research has examined the association between PTS, pre-sex drinking, and sexual functioning at the proximal level. This study examines the moderating effects of number of standard drinks prior to sex on the indirect association between ASA and sexual functioning via PTS symptoms. Method: First- and second-year college …

Preventing Needle Stick Injuries: A Quality Improvement Project, Adrianna Kerns, Emilea Pitts, Grace Richman, Katie Rawlings, Megan Riley, Mary Suzanne White

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

"Needlestick injuries (NSI) affect approximately 1,000 people per day across U.S. hospitals. Needlestick injuries cost an estimated $3,042 per victim annually, according to the report. The costs go toward laboratory fees for testing exposed employees, associated labor and counseling and post-exposure follow-ups." (Beckner's Clinical Leadership & Infection Control, 2020). It was noted at an urban teaching hospital that needlestick injuries are an issue. Researchers believe this number is an underestimate of the actual amount of needle stick injuries. The purpose is to increase the education of staff nurses on the topic of needle stick injuries. We thoroughly reviewed 56 studies …

Who Are You? The Evolution Of Appalachian Identity, Kiersten Baum, Ashton Culp

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

No abstract provided.

Analytical Method Development For The Analysis Of Biomass Degradation Products, Calista Dean, Emma Schmittzehe

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The goal of this project is to study the kinetics of hydrothermal liquefaction of biomass. Biomass contains stored chemical energy that can be converted to renewable liquid and gaseous fuels through various processes, but an in-depth understanding of the kinetics of these processes is important in order for them to be feasible on a large scale. Since biomass degradation products depend on the type of biomass used as well as the reaction conditions, this task can be quite complicated. To minimize complications in our initial studies, we will use D-glucose as the starting material. To better understand the degradation pathway’s …

Parental Sensitivity And Children's Emotion Regulation Development, Griffin Newell, Olivia Kee, Shari Kidwell

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Parental sensitivity is critical in the development of children’s attachment to their caregivers. Sensitivity refers to a parent's ability to understand and react synchronously with their child's emotions. Covert hostility is a form of insensitivity in which parents are subtly dismissing. The current study examines both parenting constructs during a frustration task, in relation to child behavior in an emotion interview. As part of a larger longitudinal study, 35 children (average age 6 years) and their parents waited eight minutes for children to be permitted to open a bag of prizes. Parental reactions to their children's behaviors were coded into …

Data Acquisition For Physics With Arduino, Kyle Litton, James Adkins

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Arduino is an open-source electronics microcontroller board that allows us to marry technology with our environment. There are countless modules commercially available that can be easily manipulated with programs written in the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE), giving users full control of input and output. Several of these modules naturally relate to physics and data acquisition. Since physics analyses rely on data, the Arduino is a natural choice for a system where the user has full control of data collection methods. This poster will present our development of a data acquisition system that integrates equipment commonly found in physics laboratories. …

Improving Patient Outcomes With High Nurse To Patient Ratios: A Quality Improvement Study, Abigail Ross, Alexis Bradshaw, Brenna Murphy, Carson Jones, Cierra Connelley, Haley Nyderek, Hannah Dorton, Morgan Minton, Mary Suzi White

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

According to the United States Registered Nurse Workforce Report Card and Shortage Forecast: A Revisit published in the May/June 2018 issue of the American Journal of Medical Quality, a shortage of registered nurses is projected to spread across the country between 2016 and 2030. Surveyed nurses see the shortage in the future as a catalyst for increasing stress on nurses (98%), lowering patient care quality (93%) and causing nurses to leave the profession (93%) (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021). A thorough literature review was conducted, and 40 studies were reviewed. Common themes that emerged include: high nurse to …

Analytical Derivation And Numerical Validation Of The Functionally Graded Arches Under Pressure And Thermal Loadings, Seba Gravitt, Zhaochao Li

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The functionally graded materials (FGM) were developed originally to resist the high temperature of aircraft in the 1980s. With the development and improvement of the manufacturing technology, more and more FGM types have been used and studied in practical engineering applications. The present work focuses on the stability performance of the heated FGM arch subjected to the pressure field. The material properties distribute non-uniformly in the thickness direction of the FGM arch, which may show different buckling mechanisms from the conventional uniform materials. It is found the arch expands when the thermal field is introduced. The uniform pressure is applied …

Preservation Of Morehead State History, Jacob Bush, Alana Scott, Dieter Ullrich

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

This project is being undertaken in an effort to preserve the buildings and history of Morehead State University. It is the goal of this project to make additions to the historic district of MSU by adding qualifying buildings to the National Register of Historic Places. By adding buildings to the Register, they would be recognized on the federal level as historic sites and receive support for their preservation. The Register seeks to protect sites of importance through many ways including the gifting of funding to ensure preservation. The goals of this project will be achieved using historical texts from our …

Quality Of Diabetes Care In Blended Fee-For-Service And Blended Capitation Payment Systems., Mary Aderayo Bamimore, Rose Anne Devlin, Gregory S Zaric, Amit X Garg, Sisira Sarma

Epidemiology and Biostatistics Publications

OBJECTIVES: In the middle to late 2000s, many family physicians switched from a Family Health Group (FHG; a blended fee-for-service model) to a Family Health Organization (FHO; a blended capitation model) in Ontario, Canada. The evidence on the link between physician remuneration schemes and quality of diabetes care is mixed in the literature. We examined whether physicians who switched from the FHG to FHO model provided better care for individuals living with diabetes relative to those who remained in the FHG model.

METHODS: Using longitudinal health administrative data from 2006 to 2016, we investigated the impact of physicians switching from …

An Analysis Of The Interpretability Of Neural Networks Trained On Magnetic Resonance Imaging For Stroke Outcome Prediction, Esra Zihni, John D. Kelleher, Bryony Mcgarry

Conference papers

Applying deep learning models to MRI scans of acute stroke patients to extract features that are indicative of short-term outcome could assist a clinician’s treatment decisions. Deep learning models are usually accurate but are not easily interpretable. Here, we trained a convolutional neural network on ADC maps from hyperacute ischaemic stroke patients for prediction of short-term functional outcome and used an interpretability technique to highlight regions in the ADC maps that were most important in the prediction of a bad outcome. Although highly accurate, the model’s predictions were not based on aspects of the ADC maps related to stroke pathophysiology.

The Absence Or Misuse Of Statistics In Forensic Science As A Contributor To Wrongful Convictions: From Pattern Matching To Medical Opinions About Child Abuse, Keith A. Findley

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The new scrutiny that has been applied to the forensic sciences since the emergence of DNA profiling as the gold standard three decades ago has identified numerous concerns about the absence of a solid scientific footing for most disciplines. This article examines one of the lesser-considered problems that afflicts virtually all of the pattern-matching (or “individualization”) disciplines (largely apart from DNA), and even undermines the validity of other forensic disciplines like forensic pathology and medical determinations about child abuse, particularly Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma (SBS/AHT). That problem is the absence or misuse of statistics. This article begins by applying …

The Wright State – Lake Campus 2020 – 2021 Scholarly Review, Wright State University - Lake Campus

Lake Campus Research Symposium Reports

This report provides a listing of the scholarly endeavors from Lake Campus during the 2020 calendar year, spanning across disciplines.

This document contains the Annual Research Report from 2020 and the Research Symposium Program from 2021.

Interplay Between Social Media Use, Sleep Quality, And Mental Health In Youth: A Systematic Review, Rea Alonzo, Junayd Hussain, Saverio Stranges, Kelly K. Anderson

Epidemiology and Biostatistics Publications

Social media applications are increasingly prominent among youth. This systematic review provides a comprehensive assessment of the literature on the relationship between active social media use, sleep quality, and common mental health outcomes (anxiety, depression, and psychological distress) among youth. MEDLINE, PsychINFO, EMBASE and Scopus were searched for observational studies investigating this relationship among youth (aged 16–25). Thirty-six cross-sectional studies and six prospective cohort studies met the inclusion criteria. Among cross-sectional studies, significant associations between excessive social media use with poor mental health outcomes (n = 33), poor sleep quality (n = 24), and significant associations between poor sleep quality …

Toward Improving Understanding Of The Structure And Biophysics Of Glycosaminoglycans, Elizabeth K. Whitmore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are the linear carbohydrate components of proteoglycans (PGs) that mediate PG bioactivities, including signal transduction, tissue morphogenesis, and matrix assembly. To understand GAG function, it is important to understand GAG structure and biophysics at atomic resolution. This is a challenge for existing experimental and computational methods because GAGs are heterogeneous, conformationally complex, and polydisperse, containing up to 200 monosaccharides. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations come close to overcoming this challenge but are only feasible for short GAG polymers. To address this problem, we developed an algorithm that applies conformations from unbiased all-atom explicit-solvent MD simulations of short GAG polymers …

J Mich Dent Assoc April 2021

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

In the April 2021 issue of the Journal of the Michigan Dental Association, we offer a comprehensive range of original feature content showcasing the latest developments in dental practice and knowledge, including:

1. AI in Dental Care Delivery: Explore the groundbreaking role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning in dental care, revolutionizing efficiency, safety, care outcomes, and treatment planning consistency.
2. AI in Dental Claims Processing: Discover how AI is employed by third-party payers to streamline dental claims processing, resulting in cost containment and the proactive identification of potential fraud, waste, and abuse.
3. Evidence-Based Dentistry: As part of …

Ai Use In Claims Processing And Utilization Review, Robert Rosenthal Dds

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This paper investigates the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in claims processing and utilization review in the dental industry. This article aims to explore the potential benefits of AI in this area, such as increased efficiency, accuracy, and fraud detection. The paper begins by providing an overview of the current state of claims processing and utilization review in the dental industry. It then discusses the potential applications of AI in this area, such as automated claims adjudication, predictive analytics, and image recognition. The paper then presents a case study of P&R Dental Strategies, LLC, a leading business intelligence solutions provider …

A University Forest Fire: Examining The Spread Of The Coronavirus Through College Social Networks Using A Modified Forest Fire Probabilistic Model, Raechel Griffin

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Digital Sustainability And Its Implications For Finance And Climate Change, Gerard George, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As the pandemic forced the entire world to a virtual standstill, nature revived a little. The US emitted 10.3% less CO2 in 2020 than in 2019 and other regions similarly experienced emission declines. Depending on the source, global carbon emissions were down between 4 and 8% in 2020.2 Consumers globally have expressed more concern about sustainability, an observation confirmed by large survey research by Accenture, Kantar, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Ipsos.3 In its latest Emissions Gap Report4 , the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) explicitly connected the pandemic to climate change, nature loss, and pollution. Besides the acceleration of business …

Scholars Day Program Of Events 2021, Carl Goodson Honors Program

Scholars Day

This is the program of events for the 2021 Scholars Day Conference, where undergraduates across disciplines present their scholarly and creative works.

Modeling Covid-19 Infection Rates Using Sir And Arima Models, Janelle Domantay, Ilya Pivavaruk, Victor Taksheyev

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become of increasing interest to both monitor and predict the growth of its infection rates. In order to analyze the accuracy of epidemiological prediction, we consider two different models for prediction, the Susceptible Infected and Removed (SIR), and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models. Using a dataset of Clark County COVID-19 infections, we create various ARIMA and SIR models that attempt to predict the progression of COVID-19 infections whilst comparing these predictions to the dataset. We observed that the ARIMA model performed more accurately overall, having a much lower Root Mean …

Combine Cryo-Em Density Map And Residue Contact For Protein Structure Prediction: A Case Study, Maytha Alshammari, Jing He

College of Sciences Posters

Although atomic structures have been determined directly from cryo-EM density maps with high resolutions, current structure determination methods for medium resolution (5 to 10 Å) cryo-EM maps are limited by the availability of structure templates. Secondary structure traces are lines detected from a cryo-EM density map for α-helices and β-strands of a protein. A topology of secondary structures defines the mapping between a set of sequence segments in 1D and a set of traces of secondary structures in 3D. In order to enhance the accuracy in ranking secondary structure topologies, we propose a method that combines three sources of information …

The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence On Dental Care Delivery: A Comprehensive Review, Robert A. Faiella D.M.D., M.M.Sc., M.B.A., Shaju Puthussery M.S.

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This comprehensive review explores the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the evolution of dental care delivery. As oral health specialists, dentists continually seek to enhance their ability to prevent, diagnose, and manage oral diseases while maintaining and improving patient oral health. The integration of AI offers unprecedented opportunities to revolutionize dental practice and patient care.

AI is rapidly advancing in healthcare, including dental care, with a projected global healthcare AI market value of $45.2 billion by 2026. This technology can potentially revolutionize prevention, diagnosis, treatment planning, and treatment outcomes.

Aspects of AI in dentistry include:

· Diagnostic Accuracy …

10-Minute Ebd: Artificial Intelligence In Orthodontics, Jayne Kessel Dds

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This Ten-Minute Evidence-Based Dentistry Article provides an example of the implementation of the EBD search process with trusted search engines for the identification of the best literature through critical appraisal to answer a clinical question. "For patients receiving orthodontic care, is an AI-generated treatment plan as likely to achieve acceptable outcomes?" Orthodontic treatment planning is a complex and time-consuming process that requires a high degree of expertise. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to assist orthodontists in this process by automating some of the tasks involved, such as cephalometric analysis, surgery decisions, extraction decisions, and anchorage decisions.

A recent systematic …