Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne
Opus: Research and Creativity at IPFWNot a member yet
12452 research outputs found
Sort by
Wright Community Learning Center
No full textSettled in the Midwest, Madison is the capital of Wisconsin and a prime location for students and professionals alike to grow and learn as a community. Every day, the community is developing with sidewalk renovations, improved ways of transportation, and keeping education a top priority. Madison is a leader in the economic world providing many social activities, galleries, museums, quaint shops, unique restaurants, and an upbeat nightlife. Along with the prominent economic status of Madison, employers are exceedingly interested in the amount of college educated workers. Many of those people who reside in Madison are employed by the college, creating a large support system for graduate and undergraduate college students, and those students in high school wishing to further their education. More in tuned to the design field, Madison is within close distance to many of the famous Frank Lloyd Wright’s structures. Some of the structures close by that inspired the design of the Wright Community Learning Center are Falling Water and the West Lawn House. Wright was known for creating spaces not only beautiful in design, but also for keeping his spaces functional and efficient. As a collaborative team of designers, we have come up with an educational center geared towards teaching and educating about creative interior design. Since property taxes in Madison are high, the design center will focus on educating professionals and students to effectively conserve space. It is essential to the community of Madison that designers learn to find ways to keep spaces small, yet functional and efficient to the end user. The Wright Community Learning Center provides a space for professionals, students, and the community to gather. By integrating a new concept of vertical learning into the space, we can reach students and professionals of all ages. Vertical learning is learning about a topic or concentrating on a subject matter in a deeper manner. This technique also creates a sense of unity for students to feel a part of larger group, rather than students that are the same age. By incorporating the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and the vertical learning technique, students are inspired to be creative and have the opportunity to network, learn, and produce unique designs as a community.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1020/thumbnail.jp
Modeling Ancient Civilizations: How Emerging Technology is Changing the Way We Explore the Past
No full textFascinated with building “living” digital representations of past cultures, Bachelor of Arts senior Daniel Johnson has developed a study combining digital visualization techniques with historical, archaeological, and literary records. Seeking to highlight an emerging form of engagement for educational content, Daniel is exploring the application of computer animation and simulation technology in an effort to bridge the gap between creative disciplines and historic archival. His research thus far has focused on current digital technology and media used in museum exhibits, including life-size physical panoramas and interactive working models, to assemble strategies for their transformation into interactive digital worlds. Daniel hopes to team with the research communities of educational institutions, museums, government organizations, and talented artists in order to gain access to related projects or resources aimed at archiving ancient cultures. By combining reconstructed artifacts with archaeological research and historic records, artists and programmers may someday work together to create digital models of civilizations that explore the prominent physical, social, and economic status of a people. Daniel hopes to see the development of large-scale interactive exhibits in the near future that make use of virtual/augmented reality to take users back in time with a fully-immersive experience.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1015/thumbnail.jp
The Response Regulator Npun_F1278 is Essential for Scytonemin Biosynthesis in the Cyanobacterium Nostoc Punctiforme ATCC 29133
No full textFollowing exposure to long-wavelength ultraviolet radiation (UVA), some cyanobacteria produce the indole-alkaloid sunscreen scytonemin. The genomic region associated with scytonemin biosynthesis in the cyanobacterium Nostoc punctiforme includes 18 adjacent co-transcribed genes. A two-component regulatory system (Npun_F1277 and Npun_F1278) directly upstream from the biosynthetic gene cluster was identified through comparative genomic analysis and is likely involved in scytonemin regulation. In this study, the response regulator Npun_F1278 was evaluated for its ability to regulate scytonemin biosynthesis using a mutant strain of N. punctiforme deficient in this gene, hereafter strain Δ1278. Following UVA radiation, the typical stimulus to initiate scytonemin biosynthesis, Δ1278 was incapable of producing scytonemin. A phenotypic characterization of Δ1278 suggests that, aside from the ability to produce scytonemin, the deletion of Npun_F1278 does not affect the cell morphology, cellular differentiation capability, or lipid-soluble pigment complement of Δ1278 compared to the wild type. The mutant, however, had a slower specific growth rate and the amount of phycocyanin yielded by Δ1278 differed from the wild type. Given the inability of Δ1278 to produce scytonemin, this study demonstrates that the response regulator Npun_F1278 in N. punctiforme is essential for scytonemin biosynthesis. While most of the evaluated effects of this gene appear to be specific for scytonemin, this regulator may also influence the overall health of the cell and specifically, phycobiliprotein synthesis. This is the first study to identify a regulatory gene involved in the biosynthesis of the sunscreen scytonemin and understanding the transcriptional regulation of scytonemin biosynthesis may allow for mass production in future applications.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1001/thumbnail.jp
Web-based Visual Interfaces Designed for Searching on Collections of Research Papers
No full textWhen attempting to conduct research on a given subject, finding relevant sources can prove a notable challenge. Current tools, such as online journal databases using keyword-based search, are often lacking, and provide you with a plethora of trivial, only tangentially related papers. Further, these searches also make it difficult to find papers that cross into different domains. The lack of efficiency from existing search engines may be caused by not properly utilizing the document contents and instead just heavily relying on generally superficial metadata, such as the author name, title and user-generated tags. The main goal of our study is the development of a web-based application to enhance users’ search activities with the assistance of visualization and more effective utilization of document content. We aim to both make finding the highest quality source in a set of documents easier and refining searches to be more targeted to a specific area of interest a trivial task rather than a difficult thought process. This poster presents a two tier visual interface for searching collections of documents. Tier 1 presents the results of a three term search, using color, size and position to show the papers’ attributes with relation to the search. Tier 2 is designed to not only show the contents of the documents, but to aid in search term refinement for the first tier. This is accomplished by showing related terms, related compound terms, and synonyms. Related terms are terms that appear in the same sentence as a given search term, while compound terms are created by search terms and their neighbors in text. Both tiers work on an index of research papers scraped from Google Research. The index is constructed using Lucene, a popular, open source search package. The system has two major contributions. First, this research is one of the first studies to focus on visual analytics on unstructured content. Prior work has focused on either metadata or the content of structured documents such as books. Second, the visualization is focused on representing a large amount of information in a way that leverages user cognition and relieves mental overload. Refining the system’s algorithms and interface are ongoing tasks. Usability testing is planned to evaluate system effectiveness, specifically in achieving the project goals. Following the usability testing, we intend to integrate more data in the visualization. For example, document metadata such as conference quality and year are likely to be given visual elements, in order to provide a more fully featured searching interface. Scoring algorithms and term score cutoffs will also be adjusted to guarantee user satisfaction.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1025/thumbnail.jp
The Potential Effects of Glaciation on Creek Chub (Semotilusatromaculatus) Genetics
No full texthttp://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1048/thumbnail.jp
Working in the Music: Continuing to Develop Advance Clinical Skills
No full textThe experiential workshop is for experienced clinicians who want to advance their clinical skills and deepen their therapeutic practice. The presenters will engage in a variety of music experiences, including improvisational, compositional, re-creative, and receptive methods in both large and small groups. Experiential learning exercises will focus on how to leverage and maximize the power of music and all of its elements to best meet the needs of the clients. Presenters will demonstrate and assist participants in developing skills to effectively process the music therapy experiences through verbal and non-verbal methods. Methods and strategies that can be tailored and applied to various clinical and client population settings will be explored
Characterization of the Juvenile Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Microbiome Associated with the Ontogenic Shift from Pelagic Habitats to Inshore Resident Areas
No full textAnimal microbiomes have become increasingly regarded as a system responsible for supporting vital functions, such as digestion, amino acid production, and immune response. Despite their importance, there is limited understanding of the microbiome of sea turtles and the effect it has on their overall health. Green turtles (Chelonia mydas) provide an interesting model of change in these microbial communities since they undergo a pronounced shift from a surface-pelagic distribution and omnivorous diet to a more shallow coastal distribution and herbivorous diet. We investigated the cloacal microbiomes of juvenile green turtles before and after this recruitment to neritic waters to characterize and assess any changes in their microbial community structure. Green turtles were captured among the pelagic Sargassum habitat in the Gulf of Mexico, and within the neritic foraging grounds of St. Joseph Bay and St. Andrew Bay, FL, USA. Additionally, we captured turtles in the surf zone of Santa Rosa Island (SRI), FL, USA with the expectation that the site may harbor an intermediate stage within the shift from pelagic habitats to shallow bays since this is a relatively understudied neritic habitat for green turtles. Cloacal swabs were taken from each turtle and the DNA was isolated for analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequences using high-throughput Illumina sequencing. One fecal sample was also collected opportunistically from a pelagic individual. We found that pelagic and neritic juvenile green turtle bacterial communities were significantly different. However, samples from SRI were more similar to those from the pelagic habitat (ANOSIM; R2 = 0.556) than the bays (ANOSIM; R2 = 0.988). These results suggest that the environment and dietary resources in neritic habitats support different bacterial communities in green turtles than pelagic habitats. Furthermore, the relative similarity between microbial communities from the cloaca of pelagic juvenile green turtles and those from SRI may be due to the beachfront serving as an intermediate habitat during the turtle’s recruitment to coastal bays. This is the first study to characterize the cloacal microbiome of the green sea turtle in the context of their ontogenic dietary shift. Understanding how the microbiome of green turtles can change throughout their ontogeny could provide valuable insight into the origins of their gut bacteria and how the microbial community supports their shift to herbivory
