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Now: Reflection on Furman as it is now
No full textAs a junior public health major at Furman, I\u27ve experienced firsthand how The Furman Advantage combines academic excellence, mentorship and hands-on learning
Seeking Signs of a Better Day : Racial Uplift Strategies in the Works of Reverend Irving E. Lowery
No full textCognitive Consequences of Genre-Specific Video Game Playing
No full textFrom the simplicity of the two-dimensional plane of the early Pong (1972) to the mind-bending vastness of three-dimensional marvels such as No Man’s Sky (2016) or the hyper-realism and heart-wrenching narratives exhibited by Detroit: Become Human (2018) or Cyberpunk: 2077 (2020), it’s no understatement to say that video games—and technology as a whole—have evolved tremendously over half a lifetime. However, despite their rather novel nature, and the lack of a concrete, black-and-white answer to, “Are video games bad?” people are still quick to attribute a simple “Yes” or “No” to such a question when the reality is riddled with ambiguity. The majority of current research contains many facets of either argument. It has already been well established that video games offer many benefits to one’s cognition, but their negative impacts are just as apparent. My research aims to explore the former and compare how different genres of video games can comparatively affect one’s reaction time. Over the course of my research, I conducted a survey to gather participants and establish informed consent. Additionally, participants were asked to complete 3 different cognitive tasks that measured reaction time as a pre-test, were then given the treatment of playing their assigned game for 3 hours a week over a 5-week period, and finally they completed a post-test that was identical to the pre-test. I ran 12 separate Paired t-tests comparing a metric from a task and a group, and the p-values gleaned that there was nothing statistically significant
Star Wars: Disney vs. Lucasfilm
No full textThis research project is about how Star Wars has changed in different topics due to company changes. In the Star Wars community, there is a strong dislike for the trilogy produced by Disney, as it does not follow the same vision that had been started by George Lucas and his company Lucasfilm when the series first began. The reason behind this research is to try and find what exactly had changed, or if nothing had changed at all, and all the dislike is based on bias. I developed a grading scale to grade the results found within 5 different topics within the movie, Story, Character Development, Lore, Effects, and Political/Event References. Each topic was chosen due to being an essential part of movies or topics that are a big part of what makes Star Wars what it is. In the end, I found that there had been a significant change, especially during Story, Character Development, and Lore
PTP1B: Structure and Function in Relation to Type Two Diabetes
No full textInsulin receptors send signals to the cell allowing glucose to enter. When all the glucose has entered the cell, an enzyme called PTP1B binds to the insulin receptors and dephosphorylates them, stopping the reaction. Some type two diabetics have broken insulin receptors, so not all the glucose has entered the cell when PTP1B dephosphorylates the insulin receptor. In this study, PTP1B was used to target type two diabetes treatments through the use of inhibitors. It was hypothesized that if a unique allosteric site on PTP1B could be identified, then it could help protein specific inhibitor development. To achieve this goal, a combination of computational and biochemical techniques were used. First, Molecular Dynamics Simulations were used to mutate PTP1B. Then, E. coli was grown with the mutated PTP1B. Next, the protein was purified using nickel beads, washes, and an Akta. From here, a Bradford Assay was done to determine the concentration of the mutants. Along with this, the time course measurements provided the catalytic range of the mutants. Data was provided for Wild Type, C215S, and S190A proteins. C215S was used as a control. The Madan Lab is in the process of standardizing more assays to expand this to other mutant proteins. Overall out of the eight mutations, S190A and F191A had the most activity confirming that the allosteric and active site communicate to one another. These findings have advanced research for type two diabetes treatments as hypothesized