2003 Posters

Poster Abstracts

Austin Boyle, Holly Kopp, Katie Olds, Larissa Proscurshim, Jared Reilly
Mineral Content in Dining Hall
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Todd Hopkins

Modern day FDA regulations require that all packaged food items display a Nutrition Facts label which shows the amounts of various components found in the food. However, unpackaged food items lack Nutrition Facts labels. The Honors College Dining Hall serves unpackaged food which lacks Nutrition Facts labels. Samples of such foods as apples, bananas, spinach, carrots, etc. were collected from the Dining Hall, dry-ashed, then chemically analyzed for Ca2+, Mg2+, and Fe2+ ions. Knowledge of what components make up their food may lead students to make wiser decisions regarding which foods they choose to consume.

Susan Deeter, Jun Yan, Greg Springsteen, Binghe Wang*
The Relationship between the Pka of Phenyl Boronic acids and Their Binding Constants with Sugars
Advisor/Professor: Binghe Wang

Boronic acids bind reversibly with diols. This characteristic of boronic acids can be used in the design of biosensors for carbohydrates. Our laboratory has made fluorescent sensors for cell-surface carbohydrates, which are biomarkers for certain pathological events. In order to design fluorescent sensors with high affinity and specificity, it is imperative that we understand the various factors that affect the binding affinity. In this study, we examined a series of 20 boronic acids with various pKa's and their binding with different sugars at different pH, and achieved a much better understanding of the relationship among all these factors examined. 

Dwight Forde
Personality & Child rearing Attitude
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Kevin Lanning

Adam Iglesias
Effect of Native Language on Event Perception
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Julie Earles

Elissa Klein, Samantha Kane, and Professor Earles' Research Methods Class
Confidence and Memory for Actors and Actions: Do Eyewitnesses Accurately Remember People and Events
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Julie Earles

Thirty-eight undergraduate students were shown a series of brief video clips of a person performing a given action. Later, a recognition test was administered in which 5 different types of recognition items were present: old actor/ old event, old actor / old event mismatched, old event w/ new actor, old actor w/ new event, and new event w/ new actor. Participants were asked to indicate whether or not they remembered seeing the actor-event pair in the original clips and to rate their level of confidence. The study provided evidence that younger adults are subject to both binding errors (i.e., a mistake in identifying which two perceptions occurred together) and unconscious transference (i.e., remembering the information but not the source). The study also provided evidence that eyewitness confidence level may not always be a good predictor of identification accuracy.

Jason C. Lane
Age Differences in Event Memory
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Julie Earles and Dr. Alan Kersten

Unconscious transference occurs when a witness identifies a person that is familiar to them outside of the context of the crime as the assailant (Ceci et al., 1994). The present experiment was designed to test how frequently unconscious transference occurs in younger versus older adults. The participants in this experiment were 83 college-age students and 10 older adults (at the time of this writing) over the age of 60. The data collected from the young adults show that they incorrectly identified a new person as having performed an old action 38 percent of the time. The older adults make this mistake more frequently at a rate of 58 percent. This data, though collected from a small sample in the case of the older adults, suggests that younger people make more reliable eyewitnesses and are less susceptible to unconscious transference.

Lauren Myers and Erin Kidwell
An Analysis of Iron Supplement Pills
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Todd Hopkins

Iron can be extremely harmful when taken in large doses. In order to determine the actual iron content of iron supplement pills, we did the colorimetric determination of iron. Our analysis proved that in some instances the actual amount of iron in the pills was different from what the label claimed. The intake of this extra iron can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and heart and liver damage.

Justin Pacific
The Effect of Distraction at Encoding or Retrieval on Event Recognition
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Alan Kersten, Dr. Julie Earles

To explore the general concept of validity and accuracy of eyewitness testimony in the courtroom, this study examined the effects of distraction at encoding or retrieval on accurate recall of specific tasks performed by specific actresses. A total of 63 undergraduate participants were shown 4 s. clips of different actresses performing 30 different actions and were tested a week later on recognition among a pool of 150 video clips. Difference in proportion of correct recognition of old events proved significantly higher than the control for the distraction at encoding group, suggesting distraction at encoding increases binding errors. No significant difference was found between the control group and the distraction at retrieval group, offering evident that once an event memory is successfully encoded, it may be less vulnerable to deterioration in the presence of distracters at retrieval. Practical application can lead to better assessment of encoding environment in judgment of witness credibility. 

Nadia Parchment-Lewis
Dissolved Oxygen Levels in Local Water Sources
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Hopkins

Several tests are used to determine the qulity of water; however, conclusions about the qulity of water in the Abacoa area will be based soley on dissolved oxygen (DO) levels. Monitoring oxgen levels in lakes and other water soures is significant because of the devastating impact lowered (DO) levels can have on aquatic life. Furthermore, lowered levels of dissolved oxygen can hint to the presence of heavy metal, pesticides, and other organic matter. Based on preformed tests, the water sources in this area appear to be quite favorable. However, some dissolved oxygen levels are rather low when compared to the (DO) content in other water sources. 

Susana C. Quintana
Beneficial Effects of Gaze Aversion on Recall
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Julie L. Earles

To determine the causes of the age differences in older and younger adult memory, this study investigates age differences in recall after being presented with different levels of distraction. It is hypothesized that younger adults will perform better than the older adults in these recall tasks. Participants were presented with 24 word pairs. In one condition, the participants were simultaneously shown a cartoon to create a distraction that could interfere with encoding. In the other condition, participants were asked to close their eyes during presentation. The participants then listened to a word pair recall tape, in which one word from each pair was read, prompting the participant to recall the corresponding word. Older and younger adults' data were compared to evaluate how much age affects memory, with and without added distraction. Distraction interfered with the memory of older adults more than it interfered with the memory performance of younger adults.

Becky Richter, Amanda McAlister, Candice Aurelus
Total Phosphorus in Various Plants of the Greenway Ecosystem
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Todd Hopkins

Phosphorus, a vital nutrient in virtually all ecosystems, assists in the growth and development of plant life. Too much, however, can spur plant growth to such an extreme level that some plant species may overtake others and cause them to die due to lack of the necessary nutrients needed for survival. The purpose of this study is to determine the levels of total phosphorus in various plants collected from in and around the water of the Abacoa Greenway in Jupiter, Florida. The results of this study explore the total phosphorus uptake in various plants which compose the ecosystem of the Greenway, by way of the chemical analysis of total phosphorus.

Sandra Siller
Evolution of yeast MnSOD with improved activity via error-prone PCR
Advisor/Professor: Kirchman

Antioxidants such as superoxide dismutase, catalase and peroxidase play an important role in preventing free radical damage inside living cells by breaking these radicals down into harmless compounds such as water. The free radical theory of aging postulates that antioxidants lose some function as an organism ages, leading to increased cell damage by free radicals produced by cellular respiration and thereby causing the common signs of aging. This study focuses on creating a form of yeast SOD with higher activity than the form commonly produced in order to determine its effect on lifespan. The experiment involved modifying yeast SOD genes though mutagenic PCR, then inserting them into plasmids and transferring the plasmids into yeast cells to determine the effect of higher-activity SOD compounds on aging. Results pending.

Alexis Stellner, Wendy Martinez, Sona Bhatti, Alexandraxis Reid
Calcium Carbonate in Limestone
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Hopkins

Limestone is a term that refers to numerous species and purity of rock in which calcium carbonate is the major constituent. The complex organic and chemical origins of crabonate sediments lead to a wide range of textures and fabrics in the resulting limestones. These limestone samples are a composite of marines animals' calcium skeletons, which sink to the bottom when they die; this deposit then accumulates as entire pieces, fragments, or calcareous mud. The limestone rocks were formed from compressed layers of calcareous sea deposits, thus the deeper the sea level, the more calcareous sea deposits, which in turn create a higher amount of calcium carbonate. Additionally, deep-water carbonate fossils, also known as limestones, consist of skeletal remains of planktonic organisms composed of calcite. Purity or origin is a composite of high calcium, fossiliferous, or dolimite.