Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry

The increasing diversity of the United States raises
the probability that therapists will encounter clients
with a different cultural background than their
own. Thus, evaluating the relationship between the
culturally different therapists and clients is essential
in producing effective cross-cultural therapy. The
objective of this study is to determine any significant
effects that culturally similar or different clients and
therapists have on the therapeutic alliance. The
alliance was measured using the Working Alliance
Inventory (WAI) for both the clients and therapists. By
using this measure in therapist-client dyads, we are
able to evaluate the influences that cultures have
on the overall therapeutic alliance. The results of
the research can be used to show the importance of
multicultural competence in counseling relationships
in order to provide the best outcomes for culturally
diverse clients.

More than 1 trillion barrels of oil deposited worldwide
is heavy oil and natural bitumen. Due to their
high viscosity and high density, extraction efficiency
of heavy oil and bitumen from natural reservoirs
is known to be less than 5% with the conventional
primary recovery methods. To increase their recovery
efficiency, a technique, known as enhanced oil
recovery, has been developed using nanoparticles,
surfactant, dispersant, and polymers. Among these
materials, surfactants and dispersants lower interfacial
tension between oil and the resident fluid; therefore
enhance mobilization of oil. The objective of this
project is to further improve the recovery efficiency
of heavy oil by a combined effect of surfactant and
dispersant. When the mixture of surfactant and dispersant
in an aqueous solution is injected to oil-rich
porous media, microfluidic visualization techniques
will be employed to investigate the overall recovery
rate. The possibility and effectiveness of the proposed idea will be discussed.

Previous studies have shown that the human body is
responsive to rapid temperature changes, particularly
in the forearm region, when determining comfortable
temperatures. The goal of this study is to design
a wristband that can passively cool the user through
a finned design and to test its effectiveness. To this
end, an aluminum finned wristband has been designed
and the Adafruit Flora wearable microcontroller
was used to monitor the temperature and output
the data via Bluetooth. An Android application was
then created to read the data output and save it as a
text file that could be output elsewhere. This project
will be tested by recording the temperature data as
test subjects engage in physical exercise to see if the
wristband can continuously cool the user.

This literature review will analyze the relationship
between media usage and alcohol and tobacco consumption.
Elementary school students, high school
students, college students, and groups of different
races will be analyzed. It is evident that as media
influence increases in the life of the participant, alcohol
and tobacco use also tends to increase. Youth
should be taught to analyze the societal influences
that affect them so they are not deceived about
societal norms. Further research should be conducted
to identify whether social media use affects men
and woman differently in order to get a better view
on how men and women perceive societal messages
sent to them.

Aqueous microdroplets have shown great potential
in various applications such as material synthesis,
chemical reactions, and drug discovery. The
objective of this research is to generate aqueous
microdroplets in water using microfluidic techniques.
Compared to conventional aqueous droplets in an oil
phase, droplets generated from the proposed system
will be more biocompatible and simply manufactured.
To achieve this goal, the research focuses on
understanding fundamental physics behind droplet
generation at various geometries and input conditions.
This understanding can subsequently help us
obtain microdroplets with targeted properties. Several
microdroplet generators made of polydimethylsiloxane
(PDMS) transparent polymer are fabricated
and an aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) made up
of two water-based polymers, polyethylene glycol
(PEG) and dextran (DEX) is used in these generators.
The results successfully demonstrate that the
proposed droplet generators produce aqueous microdroplets
at various sizes at different frequencies.
The controllability and tunability of the properties of
microdroplets will be discussed.

As the country’s population grows ever more diverse,
there is a growing need of cultural awareness in
our elementary public schools. Young children are
coming together from all over the world with diverse
families and experiences and co-existing with each
other in America’s elementary schools. In order to
minimize a negative view towards diversity, this study
implements a multicultural approach that can create
positive cultural interactions in the urban elementary
classroom. Multiculturalism is, in short, the view that
various cultures in society merit equal respect and
genuine interest. In order to incorporate multiculturalism
into the curriculum, I utilized selective multicultural
children’s literature that corresponded with
the current reading standards and objectives. With
a focus on literacy, reading and writing, the students
participated in several activities that helped them
explore the similarities and differences between
characters from diverse cultures.

Gopherus polyphemus (gopher tortoise) is a threatened
keystone species whose burrows benefit over
350 species. Surveys conducted throughout 2010-
2015 at Florida Atlantic University Preserve (FAUP)
have found an age gap of ten years and a lack of
nests. To update the demographic survey and to
examine the population’s reproduction and health,
we conducted burrow and nest surveys from May
to September 2016 and collected fecal samples to
check for endo-parasites. Transects were used to
locate burrows and measurements were taken to determine
population structure. Wire-probing was used
to locate nests and feces were tested for endo-parasites.
From a total of 261 marked burrows and fecal
sampling, results indicated a continuous age range,
one nest, and presence of intestinal parasites. Future
work will focus on health and reproductive behavior
that will improve our understanding of the FAUP
gopher tortoise population and may ultimately aid in
future conservation methods.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), are a unique
class of materials in which metal clusters are linked
together by organic moieties forming porous 1-D, 2-D,
and 3-D structures. MOFs have many applications
resulting from not only the overall structure, but also
the metal center, organic “linker”, or a combination
thereof. The high surface areas and porosity of these
materials have found use in heterogeneous catalysis,
display technologies, semiconducting materials,
and biomedicine. These materials are also currently
being developed as a new sensor technology for
detection of potentially harmful chemicals. Nitroaromatics
are key components in the fabrication of
explosives, however, current detection methods are
time consuming and expensive. Considering this, our
interest lies in synthesizing MOFs that can be used
as a sensor for nitroaromatic compounds. To this
end, our lab has developed a new Er(III) MOF based
on the linker 2-2’-bithiophene-5,5’-dicarboxylic acid
(DTDC). Herein, synthesis and nitroaromatic sensing
studies will be discussed.

On November 4th, 2013, global health care giant
Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries reached a
settlement amount of $2.2 billion dollars. Johnson
& Johnson settled to pay this amount to resolve
the civil and criminal allegations of promotions not
approved as safe and effective, kickbacks to physicians,
and violations based on the False claim act.
This type of offense has been common with pharmaceutical
companies for the past ten years, but
the federal government still gives pharmaceutical
companies tax breaks which represent billions of dollars
in lost revenue for the federal government. With
this type of exemption, pharmaceutical companies
are given an incentive to commit fraud for corporate
greed while neglecting to put funds towards research
and development.

A common feature of breast cancer cells is the
evasion of singular treatments by using the Warburg
Effect, a process of metabolic ATP production
through rapid anaerobic glycolysis. Cancer research
has transitioned to an investigation of combination
therapies to combat cancer. In our study, we seek
to metabolically inhibit cancer cells before application
of immunogenic killing. The Warburg Effect
was targeted with 3-Bromopyruvate (3-BP), which
blocks Glyceraldehyde 3-Phosphate Dehydrogenase
(GAPDH) production. Treatment with 3-BP yielded
up to 86.5% cancer cell death. Glycolytic inhibition
renders cancer cells metabolically stressed, which
may enable an effective immune response. Our
hypothesis was that CpG activated macrophage
will possess tumoricidal potential to target metabolically
stressed cancer cells. Macrophages and
CpG cultivation alone yielded a significant immune
response. We sought to find a synergistic effect of
3-BP induced killing susceptibility with CpG activated macrophages may lead to an effective method of
combination therapy.