College: Science
Faculty: Craig Thulin
The purpose of this research is to enable the observation and identification of proteins of low abundance within particular biological samples, including blood serum and honey. The primary objective with blood serum is to enable the identification of the many proteins within serum that are low in abundance but would be useful as potential biomarkers of disease. The primary objective of understanding the low-abundance proteins found honey would be better understanding of pollination patterns and inherent foodomic properties of honey itself.
College: Humanities & Social Sciences
Faculty: Gregory Jackson and Ryan Vogel
This project will trace the intellectual history of the 2014 Tunisian Constitution. This includes American and European constitutional thought, as well as Qur’anic teachings and Shari‘a law. The project will dissect which ideas the Tunisian Constitution’s framers chose are of Western origin, which come from the Qur’an, which come from other sources, and how the Constitution blends them together without sacrificing their integrity. This project will examine how to implement Tunisia’s synthesis of democracy and Islamic thought in other Muslim countries.
College: School of Arts and Engineering & Technology
Faculty: Hilary Demske and Jingpeng Tang
The purpose of the Online Piano Notebook project is to increase assessment efficacy for piano teachers and students. The project will disseminate advanced pedagogical resources to community teachers around the world and provide UVU Music and Computer Science students an engaged learning opportunity with real-world application in their respective fields.
College: Engineering & Technology and Woodbury School of Business
Faculty: Jingpeng Tang and Qianwen Bi
The proposed research is in the interdisciplinary research area in computer science and personal financial planning. The purpose of this research is twofold. The first purpose is to foster research interest among students, and engaged learning by providing the opportunity and create interesting research topics for students, and promotes student success. This research will provide computer science students and personal financial planning students with cutting-edge knowledge and skills to qualify them to function as professional computer scientists,software engineers, or personal financial planning advisors in the workplace.The second purpose is to research on how Blockchain and AI will affect financial software architecture design.
College: Woodbury School of Business
Faculty: Maureen Andrade
This study gathered insight regarding business schools hosting large numbers of international students who speak English as a second language to understand their perspectives regarding the screening and admissions of international students as well as challenges and opportunities they face in working with many non-native speakers of English. This study targets business school deans of schools which host the greatest number of international students.
College: Science
Faculty: Moana L. Hopoate-Sitake and Craig D. Thulin
Preeclampsia is a significant complication of pregnancy – the number one killer of expectant mothers – about which unfortunately too little is understood at present and too little can currently be done to prevent or treat the disease. A very promising line of research has suggested that modulation of the activity of the Na/K-ATPase in the placenta may be a causal factor in the development of the condition. Nature has produced several compounds – such as digitalis from the foxglove plant and oubain from Strophanthus and Acokanthera plants – that modulate the activity of this critical enzyme.
College: Science
Faculty: Olga Kopp
To optimize biofilm formation in two of the most common etiologic agents of fungal disease, namely, Candida albicans and Rhizopus oryzae (both of them are biosafety level I). Subsequent biofilm disruption will be tested using extracorporeal shockwave therapy, laser/LED photobiomodulation and antimicrobial compounds. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that these two methodologies are applied to these species. This is novel research is based on the previous accomplishments of biofilm formation in our lab.
This research will facilitate the initiation of a research collaboration with Dr. Paul Slezak (from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Experimental and Clinical Traumatology in Vienna, Austria, and with Dr. Cyrill Slezak (Department of Physics at UVU). We will provide the biofilm expertise acquired in our lab and they will provide their expertise in shockwave and LED/biomodulation therapy.
College: Humanities & Social Sciences
Faculty: Steven Sylvester and Jay DeSart
This project undertakes to understand and explain the variation in political behavior, political identification and attitudes toward minority social groups within the American Queer community through data collection and analysis. This project includes four key areas: first, political behavior; second, political identification; third, social attitudes toward minorities; and fourth, the links between social attitudes, political identification, and political behavior.
College: Science
Faculty: Olga Kopp
The purpose of this work is to address two questions: the micropropagation of Lepidium ostleri and Arctomecon humilis and biofilm formation in bacteria (Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus).
Biofilm Project: In this project, we were able to develop robust biofilm formation in Staphylococcus aureus but Escherichia coli showed poor biofilm formation. For this reason, the work concentrated on S. aureus. We treated the biofilms of S. aureus with shockwave treatments of different intensities and duration. We found that the number of shockwaves applied and the intensity have an important role in the formation of the biofilms. We also found that there are appears to be a small stimulating effect of shockwaves (not statistically significant) and that addition of Vancomycin in the presence of shockwaves seems to stimulate the growth of the biofilm. These are surprising results and corroborate some of our previous studies.
Micropropagation Project: Previous work in the laboratory showed successful micropropagation of Lepidium ostleri; however, we needed to work on ex-vitro rooting of this species because we had previously poor results in the acclimatization of this species to environmental conditions. We evaluated different treatments during the summer for ex-vitro rooting. Even though at the beginning the plants seemed to respond well, we had problems trying to eliminate the agar at the base of the rosette of the plant, which led to contamination, and finally death of the explants. We are now testing a different system.
College: Science
Faculty: Dustin Ship
The goal of this project is to make improvements to our Raman spectroscopy system and the software controlling it. At the same time, we want to prepare cancer cells, bacteria, and tissue phantoms for measurement by this system. This will complete numerous preparatory tasks and sets our group in position for a variety of future studies.
As a direct result of our group’s work this summer, the Raman spectroscopy system, control software, and samples are nearly ready for measurements to begin. This moves our group from the initial push of preparation into a steady routine of measurement and analysis.
College: Science
Faculty: Erin Riggs
The goal of this project is to to measure the viability of herbarium extraction and to lay a necessary foundation of protocol and preliminary data to inform future pursuits.
The students have successfully built a strong protocol foundation for DNA extractions from herbarium specimens. This project is a strong candidate for continuation and sustainability as the next steps for my students and following students is high throughput DNA sequencing and sequencing the entire herbarium and submit that data into the barcoding database.
College: Humanities & Social Sciences
Faculty: Jessica Pauly and Stevie Munz
Approximately one in three college students in the United States suffers from mental health issues (Eisenberg, Hunt, & Speer, 2013). The American College Health Association (2017) surveyed more than 30,000 students and reported 51.7% of students felt hopeless at some point within the past year, 39.3% felt so depressed that it was difficult to function, and 12.1% seriously considered suicide. At Utah Valley University (UVU) student health is a serious concern of students, administrators, and faculty. Identifying and addressing the need for expanded mental health support, the UVU student council recently approved an increase to student fees for the purpose of creating a mental health therapist position, “citing an increased need among the student body for psychological health services” (Hilton, 2019, para. 7). While increased support for mental health resources is valuable, scholars have established that identity experiences (e.g., sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious identity) may be barriers or facilitators to communicating about mental health stressors or experiences (see Eisenberg, Hunt, & Speer, 2013; Clement, et al., 2015; Mojtabai, et al., 2011). With this in mind, this research project seeks to understand UVU students’ educational experiences by considering how students’ mental health experiences, and identity/ies intersect within the educational context. Through building on a current UVU IRB-approved (IRB #31) study focused on UVU female students’ educational experiences, this project aims to extend our research by directly addressing student needs as they pertain to mental health.
The analysis process, thus far, has resulted in specific themes identified to inform the findings. These themes include: Gendered parental support [financial/emotional/time]; Choosing UVU [based on family/financial/stepping stone/convenience/open enrollment]; Utah culture expectations of women [education/marriage/career]; Going to school “in case…” [husband dies/never get married/to find a husband]; Hurry up and check off boxes mentality [serve mission-education-marriage]; Being single is seen as unfortunate [not a choice]; Being cautious developing and maintaining relationships [e.g., married vs. single]. This is a work in progress and we expect to continue this process of analysis.
College: Humanities & Social Sciences
Faculty: Maria Blevins
This project is an ethnographic study of the outdoor guiding industry to investigate how individual negotiate their identity in a highly masculine work environment. Guides share narratives about their experiences in the industry, describe the culture of the industry and identify the strategies used to negotiate gender roles. Additionally, it asks guides to consider if they perceive harassment happening in this working environment and to reflect on what organizational systems are in place to mitigate harassment. This paper will proceed by first providing an overview of the literature about harassment in organizations, second presenting the methods used to collect and analyze the date, then describe the work culture of guiding organizations, and finally identify strategies that women in these environments use to navigate the culture and last discuss the implications of this study.
1. The strategies women use to survive in the hyper masculine field are- flirting,
repressing sexuality, being flawless at the job, being tough, using humor, and leaving
the organization.
2. Once a woman has proven her ability as a guide, co-workers leave her alone, however
her abilities are constantly being questioned by customers and individuals from outside
the organization.
3. There are cultural messages about who should be considered competent in the out
of doors and those that do not fulfill the expectations have trouble- for example
small men, people of color, and women.
4. This is a unique culture, and the close living quarters, party culture, and high
adrenalin make it very different from other organizations- there is a resistance to
“professionalism.”
5. The process of reporting issues to management are unclear- and more deliberate
and thoughtful reporting procedures could be helpful.
College: Engineering & Technology
Faculty: Matthew Hasara
The goal of this research is twofold, #1 testing tire wear on UTQG 200 tread wear tires for inconsistencies in the tire life and #2 testing different price category racing brake pads for wear and performance. We wanted to show that the government UTQG, (Uniform Tire Quality Grading) is not an accurate way for an individual to determine tire wear. It was formed to help customers determine which tires to buy but since its formation the tire manufacturers have taken over the rating to help them sell tires.
We concluded that the Nitto tires out lasted the others by a long way. The driver feel was good and the grip was good also. They did not perform quite as well as the Bridgestone tires but they were very close in feel and grip. These tires helped us win this race. After the 8-hour test session we still had 35% of the tread left on the tires. We actually used these tires for a total of 12 hours and they still had tread left after we were done racing. These would be excellent tires for very long races. These could possibly last for a 24-hour race if the driver was easy on the tires. We also concluced that there is a very large difference in pricing of these brake pads. We had some surprising results with the brake pads. As we expected our most expensive pads performed the best and lasted the longest. The R4-E pads were excellent. The braking feel never changed for the entire testing period. The biggest surprise were the Hawk Blue pads. These pads had a terrible braking feel. They were grabby and hard to control. We had a hard time preventing tire lock up which is very dangerous on the track. Lastly our Track Day pads which were the least expensive pads performed very well. They had a predictable feel and had absolutely no fading. They did not wear quite as well as the more expensive R4-E but overall for the money we would definitely recommend these pads for the racer on a budget which is almost everyone.
College: Sciences
Courses: STAT 4710 Mathematical Statistics-Probability and Statistics; STAT 4720 Mathematical Statistics: Statistical Inference
Faculty: Mohammad Islam
The goal of this project is to investigate two methods to detect trend in the time series data. We have named the first of the proposed methods “ADM- Average Difference Method” which gives the estimate of trend. We named the other method “AMD-Absolute Max Difference.” This method determines if there is any trend in the time series data. Both methods are applicable to linear and nonlinear time series data. We will assess the quality of our proposed methods and compare our methods with nonparametric Mann-kendall test through Monte Carlo simulation by calculating the power of the tests.
We have successfully developed and investigated two alternative methods to detect the trend in the time series data. The simulation studies show that one method- the Average Difference Method has more power in detecting the trend compared to the MK Test when the observations are independent and there is no monotonic sequence with autocorrelation. Like the MK Test, our proposed ADM to detect trend will be applicable in both linear and nonlinear models. However, our approach is applicable even the observations are dependent. This study helped the research students understand statistical simulation, how to use bootstrap techniques to construct the sampling distribution of the test statistic under the null hypothesis, how to calculate the power of a test, and the importance of writing own-code using statistical software R to study the properties of statistical methods. Moreover, this project provides students with the opportunity to conduct statistical research in their field of interest.
Faculty: Steven Sylvester and Jay DeSart
The goal of this project is to help them learn the process one needs to go through to conduct a survey. In addition to learning the process of constructing a survey, the students also learned the art of writing survey questions and writing a literature review. Their learning has continued pass the summer and students will learn how to submit an IRB request, analyze data, write a conference paper, and present their findings as a political science conference.
The project evolved throughout the summer and we expanded our scope of interest to not only include issues on school security, but we also are going to examine how anti-intellectualism influences how individuals evaluate candidate characteristics and the decrease of political efficacy within Utah due to the state legislature overturning ballot initiatives involving medical marijuana and Medicaid expansion.
College: Woodbury School of Business
Faculty: Susan Madsen
This project is a research snapshot focused on Utah women in terms of voting and civic engagement, a research snapshot on Utah women and finances, and a research project focused on women and identity.
Voting snapshot: Utah women’s voting rose to 11th in the nation in 2018, we are top of the country in terms of women volunteering in the community; finance snapshot: we are still in the information gathering stage with this one, and we are finding there isn’t much published data on this topic. Identity project: still in early stages of gathering data. Both students were very helpful in working hard to find the resources needed for future articles, other publications, and a book.
College: Science
Faculty: Erin Riggs
The goal is to more directly engage in museum-based interdisciplinary pedagogy.
Museum-based pedagogy is not a pedantic, monolog. It is creative, complex and this project in particular stretched the students multiliteracy skills. They are applying art in the service of communicating science. Not just to botanists but the drawings are an excellent tool for the citizen scientists as well, especially the watercolors, people really connect with the vibrancy and depth of that medium.
College: Woodbury School of Business
Faculty: Yang Huo
The object of this study is two-fold. First, it is to discuss the current bankruptcy prediction models. This is done in the context of pros and cons to determine the appropriate factors or failure phenomenon in cases involving restaurants that have filed for, or are currently in, Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Second, it is to compare these factors to similar restaurants that are either operating successfully (not in bankruptcy) or no longer operating due to financial failure.
"32 companies listed with 5812 SIC code in Stock Exchange Commission (SIC) filed the bankruptcy. By reading from 8-K report which is a current quarterly company report and a very broad form used to notify of specified events (such as bankruptcy information) that may be important to shareholders or the US SEC ; results of operations & financial condition. Each 8-K quarterly report must show item 1.03 – Bankruptcy and 9.01 – Financial Statement and Exhibits we determine and find 12 financial ratios are important ratios/factors in a business failure."
College: Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty: Rachel Arocho
"Family science education likely stands to benefit from incorporating game-based learning strategies (GBL) into undergraduate education. Evidence in other fields suggests GBL can be used to engage students and develop skills beyond content acquisition, though it can help with that too. To date, it is unknown how game-based and game-related instructional designs and strategies are being used and reported in family science. We have identified 14 initial key articles and generated thematic codes from this collection, which we will continue to refine and apply to additional literature in the coming academic year."
So far, we have confirmed our suspicions that there has not been an abundance of work using game-based learning in family science. Despite returning over 131,000 hits on the first tier of searching alone, through refining our searching and results and removing duplicate and irrelevant results we have come to a set of 14 articles that have formed our initial coding sample. We used that set (initially 17, but through this process we reduced it by 3) to generate thematic codes through individual reading and group discussion. We are currently in the process of applying those codes through a focused-coding process to refine our coding strategy before applying it to the next set of articles.
College: Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty: Steven Clark & Jay DeSart
The goal of this project is to help students learn the process one needs to go through to conduct a survey. In addition to learning the process of constructing a survey, the students also will learn the art of writing survey questions and writing a literature review.
Several of the factors the students believed would be largely influential in identifying schisms in support for consent education among demographic groups were determined to have either little or no influence. Factors in this category include: age, proximity to sexual assault, income, gender, political party identification, political ideology, and religiosity. These findings illustrate that the provision of a comprehensive and accurate definition of assault increases support for consent education programs among the American populace. Further, while the students hypothesized that only one of the two comprehensive and accurate definitions of consent would garner wide support, the findings actually indicated that both of these definitions received near equal support; there was a less than 1% margin between the two.
College: Woodbury School of Business & Engineering and Technology
Faculty: Qianwen Bi & Jingpeng Tang
In the finance world, stock prediction is always a popular yet challenging task. Without involving cutting-edge computer technologies, scientists use historical data and advanced statistic regression models to identify factors that have an impact on stock prices. In the 21st century, the combination of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are reshaping the landscape of predictive analysis in the big data research area, especially in the financial analytics domain. We concern primarily on how these technologies will impact on Personal Financial Planning software design in this proposed research. It is becoming increasingly important that computer science professionals and personal financial planning advisors understand ML and AI technologies and its implications. According to the feedback from the FinTech companies, it is beneficial to introduce these technologies to both personal financial planning and computer science students to better prepare them to meet the challenge and competition in the real-world.
"(1) A four-layer Machine Learning (ML) neural network model integrated in personal financial planning software for investment price prediction is built. The model is implemented in Python that can handle varies inputs. A front-end data acquisition interface is designed and implemented. (2) Among the twenty eight variables added to the AI model, we find some of them have positive impact on improving the accuracy of the prediction while some of them have negative impact. The exact prediction accuracy matrix is within 10% of the upper and lower directions of the actual price of the investments. The average direction prediction accuracy is around 55% regardless of the number of input variables added to the model."
College: Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty: Jordan Allen
The goal of this project was to collect and analyze the largest in-depth qualitative research project on twins in higher education. Our students collected 68 in-depth interviews, with precision and enthusiasm.
Qualitative analysis is a dynamic and ongoing process. Unlike quantitative research that can be done quickly with the use of statistical programming, researchers must themselves be the tools of analysis. As we continue to work with this data each student is perfecting their qualitative analysis skills and refining their findings. These students will be able to carry all of these research skills into their profession. All of the students will be applying for graduate school this Fall using the papers they produce in this project for their writing samples.
College: Science
Faculty: Ruhul Kuddus & Sebastien Tauzin
(a) To have undergraduate students learn scientific methods and advanced genome technologies to achieve their career goals, (b) to discover genes involved in liver physiology, and (c) develop preliminary data for NSF or NIH grants.
We observed no difference in genotype distribution in the control and the PCa groups and found no differences in the frequency of the A and a alleles between the control group and the PCa group. We are currently investigating two additional loci of COX-2 and a locus of COX-1 genes and investigate linkage disequilibrium of the three polymorphic loci of the COX-2 gene.
