Wilkes University Research and Scholarship

Wilkes University Research and Scholarship

Funded proposal ABSTRACTS from January 2016 submissions

For information on the committee and application process go to Research and Scholarship

Highest consideration was given to projects that hold strong promise to:

• Advance the knowledge in one or more disciplines, by leading to peer-reviewed works
• Advance the scholarly agenda of the faculty member(s)
• Be sustainable
• Support collaboration among faculty wherever possible
• Engage students as part of the project
• Lead to external funding (if applicable)
• Enhance the reputation of the University and/or one or more of the department(s), college(s)/school(s)

Ajay Bommarredy

Prostate Cancer Chemoprevention by -Santalol

Pharmacy

Pharmaceutical Sciences

The current proposal is based on the premise that -santalol can inhibit onset and/or progression of human prostate cancer. We hypothesize that -santalol will effectively suppress growth of prostate cancer by its ability to trigger apoptosis and prevent cell proliferation. In summary, the studies proposed in this application will (a) define the mechanism by which -santalol inhibits growth of human prostate cancer cells, which may lead to identification of mechanism-based biomarkers potentially useful in future studies, and (b) determine in vivo efficacy of-santalol against prostate cancer using animal models, which is a prerequisite for initiation of clinical trials to determine its activity against prostate cancer development.

Morgan R. Clevenger

Entrepeneurial Communities Research Initiative

School of Business

ELM Department

The purpose of this research is to explore factors contributing to entrepreneurial community environments. For entrepreneurs and small businesses to be successful, their engagement and recognition in a community has to be welcomed. This research provides an opportunity to better understand contributing factors to entrepreneurial communities such as local leadership, politics, culture, and the entrepreneurial environment. The research will explore the role of place in enabling (or inhibiting) local entrepreneurship, and understanding how entrepreneurship contributes to community development, entrepreneurship, economic development, and social development.

Gregory Harms

Imaging and Lipid Study for Early Detection of Alzheimers Disease in Model Mice

CSE

Departments of Biology/Health Science and Electrical Engineering/Physics/Bioengineering

Alzheimers disease is a cause of neural impairment, is the 6th leading cause of death, and the only major cause that continues to increase. There are currently no known cures for the disease. The best hope is to detect it early. This proposal requests the funds for the completion of a high-resolution, multicolor, small tissue imaging microscope to better image the brains of mice with Alzheimers Disease, for the development of better tissue clearing techniques on mouse brains and for extra funding assistance for our lipidomic study for the early detection of Alzheimers Disease in order to publish these findings.

John Hepp

The American Influence on the Development of International Law

CAHSS

Global History & Languages

My project looks at the key roles that American lawyers played in shaping the development of international law in the twentieth century and my goal is to produce a scholarly study to be published in 2019 (the centenary of the Paris Peace Conference, a key event in this process). My work will differ from prior works on that conference by focusing on how American lawyers began to develop in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries the framework that still governs international law today. My study will go beyond Woodrow Wilson to consider this broader American context of international law.

Del Lucent

Topological analysis of protein dynamics using persistent homology

CSE

Department of Electrical Engineering & Physics, Department of Math & Computer Science

The amount of complex information we gather vastly outpaces our ability to extract knowledge from it. This is particularly true for the study of life’s building blocks: proteins. Unfortunately simulating the physics of protein motion yields trajectories possessing thousands of variables and data points. We aim to use a relatively new data science technique known as persistent homology to uncover natural patterns in protein data. We propose to simulate protein dynamics and apply persistent homology to the resulting trajectories. We hypothesize that topological feature called Betti numbers correspond to physical meaningful protein motions yielding better protein thermodynamics and kinetics models.

Ellen E. Newell

The Beneficial Effects of Feminist Identity on Women's Reaction to Impending Sexism

CAHSS

Psychology Department

In a culture where gender inequality exists, sexism is an ever present reality for women. Scholars postulate that feminist identity may be protective for women who experience sexism, however, research examining this possibility is severely limited. We seek to conduct novel interdisciplinary research examining whether feminism moderates women's psychological, physiological, and behavioral responses to sexism. Across 2 studies, women will interact with a sexist, or nonsexist, man. We predict that women higher in feminism will experience better physiological wellbeing, less psychological anxiety, and better cognitive performance throughout an interaction with a sexist man as compared to those lower in feminism.

Jeff Stratford

Integrative Approaches to Investigating Ecological Complexity in Grasslands: Implications for Management and Conservation of an Endangered Ecosystem

CSE

Biology & Health Science, Wilkes Institute for Environmental Science and Sustainability

Early successional habitats, such as grasslands, are rapidly declining across North America, along with organisms dependent on these habitats. Optimal strategies for creating and maintaining grasslands have not been determined because grassland food webs vary significantly with the planting-mix (warm-season or cool-season grasses, forbs, or a mix). Across Pennsylvania, land managers have employed the entire range of potential plantings, creating an ideal natural-experiment for studying grasslands. Here, we take a highly collaborative/integrative approach by testing the hypothesis that a threshold exists in food webs, whereby warm-season grasses are largely unincorporated in food webs until they are the dominant plant group. To test this, a group of several Wilkes faculty and students, and external collaborators, will map the food webs associated with different management strategies. We will employ DNA barcoding to identify species, Next-Generation-Sequencing to determine diets, and stable isotope analyses to establish food-web linkages between plants, insects and vertebrates.

Adam L. VanWert

Development of Enzymatic and Probiotic Treatments for Kidney Stones through Synthetic Biology

CSE,Pharmacy

Pharmaceutical Sciences, Biology, Physics

We propose a collaboration to continue our work on synthetic biological treatments for kidney stones. These are common and debilitating; accordingly, the NIH has been soliciting grants for novel treatments. 80% of stones are due to excess calcium oxalate, which humans remove by renal excretion since we cannot destroy it. Since about half of oxalate comes from our diet we propose to reduce this source by 1) cloning and expressing candidate plant and bacterial oxalate-destroying enzymes for use as dietary supplements, and 2) modifying probiotic E. coli to express these enzymes in order to destroy oxalate inside the gut.

William Terzaghi

Determining the functions of non-coding RNAs in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana

CSE

Biology

Non-coding RNAs have been shown to function in a wide variety of biological processes. In this study students working with me will explore the functions of Arabidopsis thaliana non-coding RNAs identified in collaboration with Dr. Deng of Yale and Peking Universities. Through this approach we have identified two mutants lacking specific ncRNAs that result in abnormal responses to sugar and gigantism, respectively, in the model plant Arabidopsis. We will further our studies on these mutants and confirm their roles in plant signal transduction. This project will enable Wilkes undergraduates to participate in cutting-edge collaborative research.

Linda A Winkler/Evene Estwick

Community Radio Outreach in Response to Maternal and Newborn Health Outcomes in Rural Tanzania

CAHSS

Global History and Languages, Communications Studies

The project proposed here is a new initiative partnering radio community service with health assessment in collaboration with Nyakahanga Designated District Hospital and community radio stations in Tanzania. This interdisciplinary proposal would incorporate two Wilkes faculty and two Wilkes students into a maternal and neonatal health research project at the hospital examining obstetric birth outcomes. The goals of the study include: examining maternal mortality and morbidity in women who deliver their babies at the hospital 2014-2016, analyzing perinatal deaths during this period, and creating a community health radio program from the results for local public radio broadcasts in Tanzania.

Chris Zarpentine

Affective Engines: affect, moral motivation and virtue

CAHSS

Department of Global History and Languages

The proposed research seeks to defend an original account of human moral agency and virtue. I am requesting funds to provide a stipend for Summer 2016 and a six-credit course release in Fall 2016. This will allow me to complete the research and writing of three papers for submission to peer-reviewed journals and conferences. It will assist me in securing external funding for the next stage of my research: preparation of a book manuscript for submission to an academic publisher. This funding will also support the continued development of interdisciplinary collaborations, promoting excellence in teaching and research at Wilkes.

Yong Zhu

Vision-based Human-Robot Interaction for Reconfigurable Assembly

CSE

Mechanical Engineering

Manufacturing is a vital sector of the U.S. economy. The key concept of a reconfigurable assembly system is avoiding large amount of time consuming programming tasks traditionally done by manual teaching using teach pendants. Sensors and closed-loop feedback controls are required to enable reconfigurable assembly operations. The goal of this project is to utilize vision-based feedback to improve assembly adaptability. More specifically, we will focus on a set of core capability of assembly tasks such as drilling and fastening. The IRB120 robot will work with a person to cooperatively assemble a structure using vision feedback. The merit of this research project has the potential to become one of the key enablers to revitalize inefficient assembly process in manufacturing industry.

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