Dedrick Barkley Mentors: Dr. Martial Longla & Dr. Donald Cole
On the Importance of Dependence in Population Mean Estimation
Deja Boler Mentor: Dr. B. Brian Foster
Black Racial Identity and its effect on Academic Achievement
Brittany M. Brown Mentor: Dr. Simone Delerme
The Latino South: Migration, Identity, and Foodways
Jessica Cole Mentor: Dr. Erik Hom
Exploring the Capacity of Fungi and Algae to Form Mutualisms
Billy Hall, II Mentors: Dr. Philip Rhodes
Challenges of Data Science with Big Data
Shanta Hill Mentor: Dr. T. Dionne Bailey
Justice Now! A Critical Analysis of the Criminal Justice System and the Long History of Social Justice Activist who have Strived to Eradicate Social Injustice in the United States
Skylyn Irby Mentor: Dr. Maksym Derevyagin
On a Generalization of Lucas Numbers
Kiera Jacobs Mentor: Dr. Allyn White
Natural Leaders: A Content Analysis of Customer Reviews for Market Winners in the African American Female Hair Products Industry
Samantha Knowles Mentor: Drs. Karen Kate Kellum & Emmie Hebert
Stickers as Reinforcers for Credit Card Sign Ups in a Retail Store
Charles Octavius Pennington Mentors: Dr. Wei Yin Chen & Dr. Bahar Sajjadi
Optimization of Biochar Absorption Capacity via Ultrasound Induced Cavitation
Victoria Robinson Mentor: Dr. Maksym Derevyagin
On a Generalization of Fibonacci Numbers
Elizabeth Taylor Mentor: Dr. James Thomas
The Space Between: The Interactional Dynamics between Policy, Organizations, and Social Actors within the Field of Sexual Abuse
Timothy E. Sellers Mentor: Dr. Dwight Waddell
Altered Fractal Dynamics of Gait: Reduced Stride-Interval Correlations with Attentional Demand
DeKayla J. Thomas Mentor: Dr. Stephanie E. Miller
Examining Executive Function and Theory of Mind in a Search Task Paradigm
Jahneesha Williams Mentor: Dr. James Cizdziel
Mercury in Pine Needles Near Three Major Lakes in Mississippi: Is Atmospheric Point Source Responsible for Disparities in Fish-Hg Concentrations Between the Lakes?
Ruby Winters Mentor: Dr. Stephanie Miller
Does Theory of Mind Relate to Moral Disgust Understanding in Preschoolers?
In the process of using statistics, information is vital. Information is taken from a population, called data, interpretations and inferences are made. Histograms, pie charts, bar graphs (descriptive statistics), confidence interval as well as parameters are associated with driving conclusions based on the data. Depending on the data characteristics, such as independence, dependence, and population size, various Central Limit Theorems (CLT) are appropriate to use. Several CLT exist for both dependent and independent data. This paper illustrates the importance of determining the characteristics of the data to ensure the appropriate CLT can be applied and provides an illustration of misuse of the CLT.
Although Black youth have high aspirations and expectations, they continue to achieve less academically than their White counterparts. Previous research explores and explains the many factors that contribute to low academic achievement in the Black community, such as racial identity. This work examines the relationship between racial identity among Black adolescents and the factors that influence racial identity development, which in turn, impacts academic achievement. This researcher expects to discover various factors that link Black racial identity to academic achievement among adolescents in Oxford, Mississippi.
The South has always been one of polar racial identities, but the increased population of Latinos challenges this racial binary. Latinos face racialization and homogenization, but this research will illustrate how Latinos challenge the construct of race. It is important to understand how the South is continually evolving into a more "Latinized" or "Nuevo" South to be tolerant, understanding, and supporting of Latinos in the South.
In the year 2003, Latinos became the largest minority group in the United States (Rumbaut., 2009). The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Latinos will account for 60 percent of the United States’ population growth from 2005 to 2050, and by 2050, Latinos will compose approximately one-third of the United States’ population (Rumbaut., 2009).
This research examines the demographic changes that result from the migration of Latinos to non-traditional settings in the American South. This project will document the incorporation of the incoming population, and determine if Latinos are challenging the South’s historic Black/White racial binary using anthropologic research methods.
Mutualisms are ubiquitous throughout the natural world. This research used fungi and algae isolated from the environment to probe for potential patterns of mutualism formation. To do this, endophytic fungi with the model alga, Chlamydomonas reinhartii were co-cultured. These co-culture assays were performed in parallel with monoculture controls so that co-culture growth could be labeled antagonistic or mutualistic. Preliminary data shows differences in growth between fungal strains, however patterns in mutualisms formation have not been analyzed. Additional fungi and algae will continue to be tested and trends in mutualism formation based on phylogeny and environmental metadata sought.
Data science and Big Data have both been major topics of interest in modern day engineering and computer science. Big data is datasets that are being collected at an unprecedented scale and cannot be processed on a single computer (Jagadish, 2014). With the increase of Big data, challenges arise where data is surpassing capacity and yet still increasing at an uncontrollable rate. Research challenges abound, ranging from heterogeneity of data, inconsistency and incompleteness, timeliness, privacy, visualization, and collaboration, to the tools ecosystem around Big Data (Patel, 2014). With these challenges becoming more complex, there is a need to understand the process of data science and how to correctly manage data to increase performance.
A tool that would enhance the performance of big data within a cluster is the Hadoop file distribution system in combination with Spark. The Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is designed to store very large data sets reliably, and to serve those data sets at high bandwidth to user applications. In a large cluster, thousands of servers both host directly attached storage and execute user application tasks. By distributing storage and computation across many servers, the resource can grow with demand while remaining efficient at every size (Kuang, 2010). By adding enhancements to the system such as increasing disk size and adding more data nodes, large data volumes can be processed at a more efficient rate.
Although the 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in 1865, the amendment left the possibility that African Americans could find themselves in a new state of servitude in the form of the criminal justice system. Beginning when Africans were first brought to America and continuing through the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, people of color were enslaved and treated as less than human. This subjugation changed drastically following the Civil War and during the period known as Reconstruction. However, African Americans found that their newfound freedom was immediately being fringed upon. White northerners and southerners, alike, implemented laws to limit the freedom of men, women, and children of color. Thus, born was a system of systematic inequality that sought to restrict and in many instances take away freedoms that legally African Americans were due. Ultimately, a system of social injustice developed that would unjustly classify African Americans as criminals. Southern states including Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas began to implement laws and racial codes to restrict the freedoms of African Americans while developing a criminal justice system that thrived as a result of the sweat and labor of incarcerated African Americans.
In this paper, a generalization of Lucas numbers is considered. Recall that Lucas numbers are the sequence of integers defined by the recurrence relation: Ln = Ln-1 + Ln-2 with the initial conditions L1 = 1 and L2 = 3. That is, the classical Lucas number sequence is 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, …. The goal of the present paper is to study properties of the following generalization of the Lucas sequence: ln = (-1)nln-1 + ln-2 for n = 3, 4, 5, … with the initial conditions l1 = 1 and l2 = 3. More precisely, numerical simulations are made and relations are proven using the Principle of Mathematical Induction.
There is a growing trend toward natural hairstyles—embracing chemical-free styling—among African American females. A review of marketing research suggests that marketers are behind in meeting market needs for African American consumers, leaving opportunities to serve a segment with growing numbers and discretionary income. The current research identifies leading products in the natural hair care category reviewed by opinion leaders, and conducts a content analysis of online customer reviews on a leading web retailer’s site. Results identify important product attributes associated with highest and lowest leader performance.
For-profit entities rely heavily on employee performance and are constantly searching for methods to better align employee performance to corporate goals. Businesses accomplish this through reinforcement using tangible incentives; spending millions of dollars per year on these incentives. Stickers could be a cost-effective way for businesses to reinforce their employees’ behavior. The current study sought to determine if stickers have reinforcing properties in the workplace with an adult population. At a large retail store in a small town, employees were given stickers as a method of obtaining store credit card sign-ups. This study used a time series design to assess the effectiveness of this procedure. The data suggest that stickers may be an effective way for retail businesses to increase credit card sign-ups.
Oily wastewater produced by mining, drilling for oil, transportation of oil, machinery production and oil spills is a major pollution source for nearby bodies of water. Adsorbents, whether synthetic or organic have been demonstrated to be a promising treatment for oil-water emulsions. One such adsorbent is biochar, a byproduct of the pyrolysis of biomass, which applications include carbon sequestration, a nutrient supply for plants and the treatment of wastewater. However, limited porosity, surface area and polar oxygenated surface groups such as C−O, C=O, and OH negatively affect the applications biochars. Therefore, physical and chemical modification processes are commonly applied in order to enhance the performance of biochar materials. This study aims at increasing the biochar capacity for crude oil adsorption. To reach this objective, a novel physical activation was employed using low-frequency ultrasonic irradiation. The low frequency ultrasound helps in exfoliating the biochar structure thus exposing greater surface area for adsorption. The adsorbate used was biodiesel which mimics the behavior of light crude oil in terms of viscosity. Experiments were implemented using biochar samples including: raw biochar, biochar that has been sonicated in a N2 environment and biochar that has been sonicated in a CO2 environment. The results demonstrated that the optimal amount of crude oil adsorbed by the raw biochar was four grams and duration of adsorption was not significant to adsorption capacity. It was observed that under the same operating conditions sonicated biochar displayed a higher AC than raw biochar.
Fibonacci numbers have fascinated mathematicians for centuries, and they continue to charm with their beauty and their habit of occurring in surprising and unrelated places. One defines the Fibonacci sequence by the recurrence relation Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2 for n = 3, 4, 5 … and the initial conditions, F1 = 1 and F2 = 1. So one can easily verify that the Fibonacci sequence is 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, … .The goal of the present paper is to study properties of a generalization of the Fibonacci sequence. More precisely, the sequence of interest is defined by the recurrence relation fn = fn-1 + (-1)nfn-2 for n = 3, 4, 5, … subject to the initial conditions f1 = 1 and f2 = 1.
Gait can be affected by many factors, such as age and mental state. These factors can cause gait to fluctuate towards a more random structure. It has been shown that walking, while listening to music, can shift a person’s gait to a random structure. If it is known that a cellphone and music can shift gait to a random structure, what would happen if an attentional demand was added to the equation (?) What would be seen? This researcher hypothesizes that an audio-podcast, serving as an attentional demand, will alter the fractal characteristics of human gait towards white noise.
Data was collected using seven participants, 2 males and 5 females. The participants walked around the Lyceum Circle twice. The first time they walked around the circle twice, at their own pace, and the second time they walked around the circle with a podcast. A device that recorded heel strike (when ones heel connects to the ground) interval data for a specific period, was used. When analyzing the heel strike interval data, detrended fluctuation analysis was used, this way of analyzing gait data can reveal structures within gait. The results yielded the hypothesis to be true. The gait of all participants in the study shifted during the transition from pink noise to white noise because of the attentional demand. In conclusion, the results are significant because only seven participants were used, when it was originally thought it would take 20 participants to reveal a significant difference between the walk, and the walk with pod cast. For the results to be significant, a score of p < .005 must be obtained; the results for this study yielded a score of p < .004, thereby enabling the result to be publishable with using only seven participants.
Federal and state policy pertaining to sexual assault is broad in its guidelines. In some cases, it is vague. This ambiguity often leads to multifarious interpretations of policy, which can diminish the overall effectiveness. While a great deal is known about how changes in policy shape the outcomes of survivors, very little is known about the context between institutional policy and institutional outcomes: the interpretive practice of social problems within the arena of sexual assault. Therefore, this project will advance knowledge in an area that has very little existing insight. Throughout this organizational ethnography, this researcher observes and documents how organizations negotiate, interpret, and implement institutional policies centered on responses to sexual violence. How these practices and procedures impact the services they offer their clients is also considered. This research design provides insight into the interactional dynamics of policy, organizations, and social actors in the field of sexual assault. Using grounded theory methodology, this research finds that this organization’s framework and its on-going concerns directly impact policy implementation. In addition, it is found that the interactional dynamics between policy, organizations, and social actors within an institution influence the services provided.
Research has demonstrated a link between preschoolers’ behavioral control (i.e., executive function or EF) and understanding behavioral control of another (i.e., theory of mind or ToM). The purpose of the present study was to extend the examination of the EF-ToM link to measuring children’s EF and ToM within the same search task. Using the same task allowed for the examination of potential influences on performance, whether providing children with relevant labels aided EF and ToM performance and whether completing an earlier EF task assisted children with later ToM in the task (and vice versa) was researched. Findings revealed that children performed better on the task for themselves (EF) than for the other (ToM). Also, there was a marginal interaction between age, labeling, and type of assessment (i.e., EF or ToM). More specifically, 5-year-olds performed better than 3- and 4-year-olds on the ToM assessment, but only when the character self-generated the relevant label to aid performance. Results support hypotheses of a directional relationship between EF → ToM and suggest that linguistic labels may aid thinking about difficult ToM questions for older children.
Mercury (Hg) concentrations in fish from three major lakes in northern Mississippi differ, with Sardis, the northern-most lake, having the lowest, Grenada, the southern-most lake, the highest, and Enid, the lake in between, intermediate. It is hypothesized that point sources near Grenada Lake, including a coal-fired power plant, may result in higher Hg deposition rates, which may in turn result in higher Hg levels in Grenada fish. Because foliage is exposed to the atmosphere, this researcher determined Hg concentrations in conifer needles collected near the three lakes as a means to compare Hg deposition rates. For large needles (age 2-3 years) concentrations (ng/g ± S.E., n=6) averaged 25.8 ± 0.4 for Grenada, 22.2 ± 1.5 for Enid, and 34.0 ± 3.7 for Sardis. For small needles (age 1-2 years) concentrations averaged 7.0 ± 0.3 for Grenada, 6.9 ± 0.3 for Enid and 12.5 ± 0.4 for Sardis. These results suggest that the hypothesis is incorrect and that Hg deposition is slightly higher at Sardis Lake. Magnolia virginiana leaves were also evaluated as a passive monitor for airborne Hg, since these leaves may stay on the tree longer than pine needles. Whereas the concentration of older magnolia leaves was higher than young leaves (average 31.8 ± 0.6 ng/g and, 13.5 ± 0.8 ng/g respectively), the concentration of the older leaves was generally not higher than the pine needles.
Keywords: Mercury, Hg concentration, air deposition, biomonitor, bioaccumulate
The goal of this research study was to examine how theory of mind influenced moral disgust understanding in preschoolers. Children completed several theory of mind tasks including a false reality change of location and appearance reality task. Moral disgust understanding was examined via a disgust ratings task in which children rated their disgust level in response to several morally disgusting and negative scenarios. Findings revealed older preschoolers better understood that morally disgusting scenarios should be considered more disgusting than negative scenarios. However, performance on the false reality and appearance reality tasks was not related to better moral disgust understanding, nor did theory of mind understanding interact with age. This research suggests that children develop moral disgust understanding earlier than previous studies have shown.
Dedrick Barkley
Deja Boler
Brittany M. Brown
Jessica Cole
Billy Hall, II
Shanta Hill
Skylyn Irby
Kiera Jacobs
Samantha Knowles
Charles Octavius Pennington
Victoria Robinson
Elizabeth Taylor
Timothy E. Sellers
DeKayla J. Thomas
Jahneesha Williams
Ruby Winters