Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) have a high rate of comorbidity. While this comorbidity is well documented, its neural correlates are still poorly understood. Recent studies have shown that anxiety disorders and AUD are similarly characterized by altered amygdalar structure and activity but less is known about the specific circuits within […]
A22: Impact of Nicotine and Alcohol Individually and Concurrently in ChAT-MOR Knockout Mice
Alcohol and nicotine are common substances that impact individuals individually and concurrently. This project aims to investigate the impact of nicotine and alcohol in ChAT-MOR mice individually and concurrently. Nicotine and ethanol both affect dopamine release through different mechanisms. We are specifically studying the impact of cholinergic interneurons on dopamine release within the striatum. CHAT-MOR […]
A23: The Effects of Lead Exposure During Early Development on Fentanyl Addictive Behavior in Mice
This study investigates a potential causal relationship between developmental lead (Pb) exposure and fentanyl addictive behavior with male and female mice in a Drinking in the Dark (DID) paradigm. Developmental Pb exposure and fentanyl use disorder (FUD) are critical issues in public health. With similar underlying neurological and demographical characteristics between Pb exposure and FUD, […]
A24: Evaluation of Sustainability within the Construction Industry in Cincinnati, OH
This research is an overview of the sustainability and wood waste management practices of the construction industry with a focus on Cincinnati, Ohio. Waste reduction at the source and wood recycling are solutions to overfilling landfills and wasting construction materials, while also providing a best practice example for sustainable management within the construction industry. Interviews […]
A30: NFL Injury Analysis
This research aims to analyze recent injuries that occurred in the National Football League (NFL) to identify patterns and variables that increase injury incidence. Our analysis of injuries spans from the 2019-2020 season to the 2020-2021 season. Throughout the semester, we have been pulling, scraping, and analyzing NFL data from multiple sources. We have been […]
A28: The Impact of Elevated Salinity on Palmelloid Formation and Disruption in Chlamydomonas Species
Soil salinity is a foreign term to most, yet it is now a global issue. With an increase in farming and irrigation worldwide, soil salinity is stunting crop growth and inhibiting its ability to produce viable yields. Salt exposure to photosynthetic organisms can severely inhibit their growth rate and cause cell damage, however, mesophilic green […]
A27: A Community Under Siege — Salinity Impact on Phycosphere Communities
The lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valley in Antarctica represent a stable environment with minimal external inputs and highly stratified aquatic ecosystems as a result of perennial ice-covers that prevent wind-mixing and atmospheric gas exchange. This environment imposes various stressors on its microbial communities such as low light, low temperature, and osmotic stress. Microorganisms within […]
A26: Phage of Enlightenment: What Has Been Learned from the Isolation and Characterization of Bacteriophages of Microbacterium foliorum and Streptomyces lividans
First-year students in Miami University’s Microbiology 223 and 224 class are among participants at over 100 colleges and universities in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s SEA-PHAGES program. This program is aimed at providing young scientists with an opportunity to carry out discovery-based science. In MBI 223 in the fall 2022 semester, students collected soil and […]
A25: Aligning statistics teaching and statistics usage in undergraduate neuroscience education
Statistics in the field of neuroscience is crucial for comparing brains from distinct populations, studying variability in the structure of the brain, and wrangling data on the large scale that it is gathered today. Requirements for statistics differ when submitting work to various journals, however the common denominator is that you must be prepared to […]