ReSEARCH Dialogues 2022 features about 250 presentations.
Results of Fly by Researchers competition
Two years after ReSEARCH Dialogues took itself off the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, it has returned.
Fervently.
With the COVID-19 pandemic lessening, about 250 presentations from 575 presenters—undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff—are in the 2022 event, taking place today and Wednesday in the University Center. Lining the Tennessee Room are rows and rows of research poster presentations across many concentrations.
Among the topics are: “Transitional Stress in UTC Freshmen,” “Examining the Perceptions of Voter Rights Denied and Support for Voter Rights” and “Using IBM’s Quantum Experience and Qiskit to Introduce Quantum Computing in order to Enhance Student Learning.”
Projects are as exciting as 2019, the last year the event was held on campus, said Lisa Piazza, director of the Department of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavor.
“It’s not necessarily that the projects are different, but it might be that, during COVID, there was a pause, and now a lot of folks are able to jump back into research,” she said.
One difference may be that there are more projects in social sciences and other subjects that need person-to-person research. The pandemic slammed the door on those, Piazza said.
“Obviously that was a huge barrier. The researchers couldn’t get out and talk to them to do the focus groups, the usual thing that you would do as part of your research,” she said, “but the flip side of that is that there’s been a lot of creativity and innovation.”
Here are a few of the research projects at 2022 ReSEARCH Dialogues.
Social Media’s Impact on Self-Esteem within UTC College Students
Abigail Brezinka, Anna Rachel Blair, Ethan White, Jenna Crabtree, Cara Lewis
Social media has never been known as a particularly terrific place to have your self-esteem built up. Too much teasing, negativity and just plain nastiness.
A hypothesis about the community of college students that have their self-esteem crushed by social media might lead to LGBTQ+ students, whose very existence infuriates some.
The exact opposite was found by this study.
Between straight females and males, and LGBTQ+ UTC students reviewed, the self-esteem of LGBTQ+ students rated the highest, according to the study conducted by five social work majors, all seniors.
“If we were to do further research, you might show that social media could be a place where you could find a community. This could be a place where you could improve your self-esteem,” said Abigail Brezinka, one of the student researchers. “It could significantly improve the way you can be yourself, the way you live.”
The study used a survey that asked students what social media they used, how much time they spent on it, their gender and age, and how they identified as far as their sexuality, said Jenna Crabtree, another of the students who conducted. While the difference in self-esteem numbers weren’t huge between each category, they were significant, she said.
“When we go into social work, we can use this knowledge to better understand the place people may be coming from,” Crabtree said. “With social work, we emphasize empowerment. We want to make sure that people feel valued in the community.”
The Innocent Bystander: How Workplace Gossip Impacts Those Around You
Julia Angin, Katrina Johnson, Samantha Lobins, Kristen Black
So you’re strolling by the breakroom at work when you hear your supervisor talking with another employee. Your name comes up. That can’t be good.
You’re right. It’s not.
Your supervisor is saying how you’ve been late every day that week, and something’s going to have to change.
Julia Angin and Katrina Johnson, both seniors in psychology, wondered how hearing something like that affected the way a person feels about their supervisor, so they gave two scenarios to participants in a study: “How do you feel after you hear your supervisor gossiping about you vs. how you feel when you hear them talking trash about another employee.
“We assumed that those who had the scenario where they overheard gossip about themselves would rate their supervisor more harshly,” Angin said.
Yes, that’s exactly what they discovered. It went deeper than just disliking their boss. It went to disappointment.
“They wouldn’t seek as much comfort from their supervisor. Relationship quality was lower, and they rated the acceptability of the behavior less if it was about themselves,” Angin said.
The motive of the gossip also affected how deep the dislike went, the study revealed. Overhearing gossip about work-related issues could be somewhat justifiable, but revulsion ticked up when watercooler talk turned to personal issues like “Did you hear that so-and-so broke up?” or “Did you see what so-and-so was wearing?” That’s a direction for future research.
“We want to do more on people talking about personal things,” Johnson said.
Ecosystem Function of Urban Bioretention Gardens: A Study of Decomposition
Ashley Preast
“Yuck.”
If you knew the kind of bacteria living in the Tennessee River, that might be your reaction.
That exact word wasn’t what Ashley Preast said when she found those organisms in the river, but it fit.
The levels of bacteria are so high, you probably shouldn’t dip your hands in the river at all, she said, but especially if you have a cut or scrape on them.
“It’s organic material like E coli bacteria that could affect humans, things like that,” said Preast, a senior in general biology. “That really made me realize how important it is finding a way to handle the pollution that runs into our water.”
Her research examined the amount of polluted water that flows into the river from such sources as parking lots, sidewalks and housing developments where water runs along the surface and doesn’t penetrate the ground beneath. At the same time, these locations usually have only plants like fescue grass between them and the river. The skimpy roots of grass don’t go deep enough into the soil to absorb much water, she said.
In turn, she looked at native plants between the impervious surfaces and the river. As might be expected, native plants with their extensive root systems developed over millennia did much better at filtering contaminants in the water.
“Not only are they native plants, but the native plants bring in native insects, which bring in native birds, which make a whole ecosystem where before there was a parking lot,” she explained.
It’s not just bacteria in the water that’s a problem either, she said.
“In urban areas where there’s so much impervious surface, the water just collects everything, all the pollutants, all the chemicals in the trash. It’s on our roads and littered everywhere and goes straight into the river.
An Analysis of the Survival of Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Bacillus cereus on the Surfaces of Occupational Therapy Devices Used During Full Hip Replacement Rehabilitation
Meredith Rippy
Even non-medical people know that instruments such as scalpels, forceps and needles must be sterilized before being used for hip-replacement surgery.
Not everyone thinks about the devices used after the patient goes home.
Meredith Rippy did.
A senior in pre-professional biology, she researched the amount of infective bacteria that can form on devices such as the elastic sock aid pulled up to hold the surgically-repaired hip in place or the grasping device that patients use to reach objects on high shelves.
Without diligent disinfecting, serious problems can arise with staph, E.coli and other contaminants, her study showed.
Starting with hundreds of bacterial cultures grown in a Petri dish, she moved a single culture to another Petri then a single culture from that Petri to another. Even with moving smaller and smaller amounts of bacteria among the Petri dishes, she found that some bacteria survived. Enough to be dangerous “even at a really small percentage,” she said.
“We can assume that one cell is potentially pathogenic, so if you’re exposed to bacteria in any amount, it can be reason for sickness,” said Ribby who, as part of her clinical courses, works 12 hours a week as a shock trauma technician in the intensive care unit at Erlanger Hospital.
In another project to be presented at ReSEARCH Dialogues on Wednesday, she and other students found that disinfecting agents such as bleach and botanical sprays kill 100 percent of the dangerous bacteria, even only 10 seconds after spraying, she said.
“All of this is to provide data that shows our healthcare providers, whether they’re in the hospital, in physical therapy clinics and occupational therapy clinics, wherever it may be, should be taking caution to disinfecting instruments before taking them from patient to patient.”
