Other Undergraduate Research

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The Role of Women in the Church: A Study of the Restoration Movement
(1989-05-10) Kastens, Ronald; Webb, Henry
Ronald Kastens' paper for Dr. Henry Webb's Reformation of the 19th Century class
Relationship Between Masks and Perceived Emotions
(2023-12-05) York, Wheatley; Qualls, Bailey; Matthews, Mark; Drinnon, Joy
The Covid-19 pandemic introduced mask wearing on a global scale. As a consequence, people noticed a barrier in face-to-face communication. Previous studies found just seeing the eyes of a face, like wearing a mask, impaired participant's ability to read the intensity of an emotion (Beaudry et al., 2014). We decided to look further into how face masks impact a person’s ability to perceive emotions. We replicated the study conducted by Teddi et al.(2023) The goal of the study was to understand the relationship between facial coverings and emotional recognition. We gathered data using a repeated-measures Qualtrics survey with 55 subjects. We presented pictures of faces portraying an emotion with and without masks. We hypothesized that participants would rate the faces with masks as more negative and less positive regardless of which emotion was presented. The findings supported our hypothesis. The participants rated the faces with masks expressing negative and neutral emotions more negatively, and positive emotions less positively. This was consistent with the study replicated. Masks seem to present emotions as more negative than the emotion the person wearing the mask is trying to convey.
Climate Related Disasters and Hindsight Bias
(2022-11-30) Aguirre, Suzanne; Mermilliod, Cara Lee; Drinnon, Joy
Hindsight bias is one of the biases that might influence decisions made in difficult situations, commonly known as the knew-it-all-along effect. The purpose of our study is to replicate both the studies of Walmsley et al. (2019) and Yama et al. (2021). A two-group study design was used with a convenience sample of 205 participants. Qualtrics, a web-based survey, was used to randomize participants into either a results group or a control group. We provide evidence of hindsight bias, including how it affects everyday people. We conducted an experiment with two dependent variables, each including three different hypotheses. We hypothesized that if a picture of a muddy riverbed and a photo of hailstorm clouds are shown to two groups of individuals while informing only one half of the group (Group A) of the flash flood and hailstorm actually occurring, then Group A will report that a flash flood and hailstorm will be more likely to occur whereas Group B will rate the likelihood of a flash flood and hailstorm to not be as probable. Two surprising themes emerged within the data collected. First, the results group responded with lower levels than expected in two of the six t-tests conducted – the ratings of the likelihood of a flash flood and the likelihood of a hailstorm. This resulted in a lack of statistical significance in both. Second, the results group rated the remaining four t-tests with statistically significant scores, showing that participants rated these probabilities as expected but did not rate the two main objectives as predicted. It demonstrated that even when posed with weather-related questions, people are frequently led by hindsight bias.
Silence in the Face of Racism: Exploring the Inaction of White Christian Churches/Churches of Christ During the Civil Rights Movement
(2021) Messner, Emily; Dillon, Tim
During the Civil Rights Movement, white members of Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (who made up the vast majority of the movement) took almost no action to support the Civil Rights Movement, despite several prominent adherents advocating for an end to racial prejudice. This silence was due in large part to these writers and speakers simultaneously arguing that new legislation, civil disobedience, or systemic concepts of racism were unhelpful. Instead, they argued that problems of racism in the United States could only be solved through the work of God in individuals, each one solely responsible for their heart. This individualist theology tragically kept almost all members of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ from any notable participation in the Civil Rights Movement, despite vocal calls for an end to racism and prejudice, and this silence continues today.
Analysis of Alpha Helices in the Receptor Binding Domain in Botulinum Types A, B, D, G
(2021) Topp, Dakota; Griffin, Jediddiah
Botulinum toxin is a protein secreted by the bacteria Clostridium Botulinum and has seven types denoted A-G. Human botulism is only caused by types A and B, the other five species are nontoxic to humans. This research used a series of computational programs to analyze types A, B, D and G. The receptor binding domain was analyzed, primarily the main alpha helix of the active site. It was found that this alpha helix had varying polarity and charge consistent with the toxicity, a more polar positive chain was found in types A and B in comparison with a negative charge associated with types D and G. In addition, a computational analysis of the overall structure was completed, however it was found there were minimal differences in structure despite varying amino acid compositions. An inference can be made that the differences in amino acid composition, causing variances in the polarity and charge is a causative agent in the toxicity of different types of botulinum toxin.
Socio-economic factors impacting economic growth
(2020-04-23) Kenjeres, Valentina; Campbell, David
It is a common perception that the economic growth of a country is greatly influenced by the social and economic factors of the country. Factors like corruption, political stability, employment participation rate are related to per capital GDP. Through this research paper I plan to demonstrate the relationship that these indicators have on economic growth of a country and will try to probe further into any disparity that might exist between developed countries and rest of the world. Using a combination of simple regression analysis as well as multiple regression analysis this paper looks at the impact of different social and economic factors on economic growth. It is to be noted that there is a causal relationship between a corruption and the other indicators discussed in this paper. The research approach used in this paper includes gathering the most recent available data from publicly available data sources for each of the economic indicators, followed by a simple regression model for each variable pair. An attempt has been made to combine all the economic indicators discussed in this paper and build a multivariate regression to look at the inter-relationship.
Envisioning a Better Rural Water Supply for Hancock County
(2020-04-23) Burnett, Sterling; Pless, Bo; Williams, Casey; Wyatt, Jonathan; Giesey, Jeff
Jubilee Project sought to collaborate with Milligan Engineering to assess the water quality of a mountain-spring source and improve water availability. This rural water supply provides water to Cedar Grove Baptist Church and surrounding communities in Hancock County. The goal of our collaboration is to produce a reliable supply of clean water. Analysis showed that the source water was contaminated with fecal coliform. Implementation of a sediment filter, carbon filters, and an ultraviolet (UV) light disinfection system successfully provided a sustainable source of clean water. The addition of a feature to monitor UV dosage was developed, utilizing a microcontroller and UV sensor. The improved design also used the microcontroller to monitor the differential pressure across the sediment and carbon filters to detect when they need replacing. An addition of a solenoid valve to automatically trickle water during freezing conditions is specified to increase freeze protection. For safes maintenance, a new hydraulic-cylinder lid design was implemented to assist in lifting and closing the 100-pound lid. Instrumentation for measuring pressure, temperature, flow, and energy consumption was integrated for the assessment of system performance. Improvements to the existing water supply should allow it to reliably provide safe water for years to come.
Path Optimization Through A Bounded Region
(2016-04-28) Sutton, Mitchell
The shortest path between two points is a straight line. However, finding the optimum path from one point to another with the introduction of a given boundary condition on the domain between the two points does not possess such a trivial solution. The boundary condition is expressed in the form of a twice-differentiable function and serves as an upper or lower bound for the desired path depending on characteristics of the boundary function such as concavity and extrema behaviors on the domain of interest. The obtained path that maximizes arc length without violating the boundary function is deemed the Rubber Band Solution. This solution type is named due to its similarities to the path that a rubber band created when it is stretched around an obstacle by minimizing the potential energy from the elastic forces in the band. Since we seek an analytic solution, we first consider using boundary arcs that are circles. We then generalize to boundary arcs that can be described by an differentiable function by finding the circle of curvature at the local max/min of the function on the desired domain. The case where the boundary arcs are circles serves as an approximation for the optimized path around any of the more general boundary functions.

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