| CAS research ranges from anger to zebra fish BY SALLY ACHARYA Machiavelli and ancient Pueblo Indians. George Eliot and the stars. Anger and diabetic zebra fish. A heady mix of science, social insight, and many centuries of grand ideas could be found at the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) when 160 students brought their research projects to the Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Conference. “CAS is a very diverse group of students, so there was a rich range of subjects,” said Michael Manson, CAS, who oversaw the 17th annual conference. Ruth Burley, for instance, has been spending her time in the biology lab, with her own setup of fish tanks, where she raised the level of sugar to induce hyperglycemia in zebra fish. Then she caught them, anesthetized them, decapitated them, and removed their eyes. Her project did make for some raised eyebrows among friends. But Burley, who plans to go to medical school, was looking at capillary growth in the retinas of the zebra fish as a way of understanding diabetes. “Can we use zebra fish as a preliminary test subject for drug research?” she asked. “So far, my research says yes.” The junior biology major did her research under a summer research grant and received an award for Best Visual Display in the morning poster session. Students presented their work through academic papers, performances of their writing or stage work, and posters designed to present information visually. “One of our goals is to prepare students for professional life,” Manson said. “Posters are how scientists often present information at professional conferences. If they do go into grad school—and some are already in grad school—this is part of what they’ll be doing at conferences.” Susan Wenze, another award winner, has already had her research accepted by a professional journal. Her research topic: anger. “Anger is a particularly stressful emotion for depressed people. They may worry they may not have control over their anger, or may push people away,” Wenze says. Anger is often seen as the result of a stressor. But could it also be a stressor in itself, and act, in effect, as a trigger for negative moods afterwards? If someone felt anger over the course of the day, could that moment of anger impact mood later on? She designed a research project in which about 100 undergraduate volunteers were supplied with palm pilots and, four times a day over the course of a week, were beeped to complete a 3-minute assessment
of their emotional states. The students who were more dysphoric—in other words, prone to moods of sadness—did indeed appear to be more affected by passing waves of anger. They were less able, in effect, to “get over it” than nondysphoric peers, and anger was more predictive of negative moods later on. Wenze’s paper, “Effect of Anger on Subsequent Mood in Dysphoric Individuals,” has already been accepted for publication in a professional journal. Her visual presentation of her statistical findings was lauded as Best Visual Display in the afternoon poster session. This being a CAS conference, the scientific realm was well represented. Posters and papers illuminated “beta-lactamase inhibitors” (Simon Stilwell ’09), gazed at “nucleosynthesis in intermediate mass stars via planetary nebulae abundances” (Johanna Teske ’07), and probed “spherical harmonics in relation to angular momentum in quantum mechanics” (Amit Kapadia ’07). Other CAS realms were also explored with presentations on everything from novelist George Eliot (Tom Joudrey ’07) to volunteerism (Katharine Barry ’07) to Machiavelli (Walter Glazer ’07) and Pueblo Indians (Paula Massouh, graduate student). CAS students filled Battelle-Tompkins and the Kay Spiritual Life Center with creativity—whether it was the creativity of an actress, or the creativity of psychology student arming 100 students with palm pilots, or the creativity of a would-be doctor with a tank full of zebra fish. |
