Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Partnerships in Developmental Practice: Understanding the Dynamics of Inter-organizational Relationships in Southern India

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Kyle Nelson and Dr. Ralph Brown, Sociology Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have become one of the foundational mechanisms of social change and development. International NGOs count in the thousands and are the hallmark organizational form involved in poverty alleviation, human rights empowerment, and social innovation. Therefore, understanding these organizations is important in understanding how development impact […]

Using Head-­‐Mounted Displays to Teach Deaf Students in Planetariums

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Holly Mumford During the Summer of 2012 we were able to conduct preliminary tests of HMD’s with deaf children ages 7-­‐17. Many of these were volunteers from EFY. Each subject watched a prepared video segment on the Earth, Sun and Moon, from Evans & Sutherland. They were accompanied by a translator, and ASL fluent facilitators […]

Increasing User Password Strength by Introducing Group Dynamics

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Lee J Hinkle, Arthur Weagel, and Spencer Bean Abstract Password strength is an issue of growing concern. As more and more personal information, including financial information, is stored online, creating strong passwords to safeguard this information is paramount. In this study we draw from Asch’s conformity experiments and other group conformance-related psychology research to develop […]

Maintaining Routine by Co-authoring Repair and Reinforcement

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Lyndon Garrett and Dr. Curtis LeBaron, Organizational Leadership and Strategy Routines within organizations enable members to execute their work plans and achieve their strategic objectives. Because routines involve replication and repetition, some researchers have regarded them as rather mindless patterns of action, but recently scholars have begun to view routines as “mindful” accomplishments—especially routines that […]

The Role of Timing of Dietary Selenium and Isoflavone Supplementation in the Reduction of Prostate Cancer Risk Factors in TRAMP Mice

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Ji Su Park and Dr. Merrill Christensen, Department of Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food Science Introduction Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in American men, with a predicted 29,720 deaths in 2013. (1) Previous studies have shown that both selenium (Se) and soy isoflavones reduce risk […]

A Multi-Faceted Approach to Improving ADAMTS13 Deficiency Prediction Algorithm

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Steven Nevers, David Brandt, and Matthew Biggs 1 Abstract Despite previous work by our group and other researchers, the existing methods to predict ADAMTS13 deficiency are inadequate. Through the use of machine learning techniques applied to mined patient data we have improved the accuracy and efficiency of our existing ADAMTS13 deficiency prediction algorithm. In conjunction […]

ORCA Undergraduate Research Award – Final Report

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Michael Daetwyler While working on my undergraduate degree, I studied an interesting strain of Staphylococcus epidermidis. This particular strain produced an unidentified substance, which was lethal to other Gram-positive bacteria. I immediately thought that this substance might prove advantageous in treating infections caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria. To begin investigating that possibility, I grew the […]

Use of Humanized Mice to Study the Production of Human B Cell Lineage

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German Cuadra and Dr. Bradford Berges, Microbiology & Molecular Biology Department Our study focuses on the development of an animal model capable of reproduce cellular responses as in humans. For years humanized mice have been used in the study of infectious diseases. The goal of this research was to document, characterize and record the existence […]

Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Discovery in Cutthroat Trout Subspecies using Genome Reduction, Barcoding, and 454 Pyro-sequencing

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Derek D Houston, David B Elzinga, Peter J Maughan, Scott M Smith, John SK Kauwe, R Paul Evans, Ryan B Stinger, Dennis K Shiozawa Abstract Background Salmonids are popular sport fishes, and as such have been subjected to widespread stocking throughout western North America. Historically, stocking was done with little regard for genetic variation among […]

Website to Preserve Unique Information on German Composer Luise Greger

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Camila Trujillo Medina and Dr. Michelle Stott James, PhD, Germanic and Slavic Languages The endeavor to preserve the memory of German composer Luise Greger (1862-1944) has taken me and my mentor, Dr. Michelle James, head of the German and Slavic Department, into the almost unexplored topic of early 20th century German music. Since very little […]