APEX Abstracts

Synnove Ask, Nursing

The Relationship between Occupational stress and Burnout in CRNAs in Boston Hospitals

APEX Faculty Mentor: Marni Kellogg

Background: Stress is an individual's mental, emotional, and physical demands that can be beneficial and detrimental. This study focuses on the damaging effects of stress. Excessive or prolonged stress can lead to burnout. Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) are a profession known to be stressful due to its fast pace, amount of entrusted liability, and the critical thinking necessary to provide safe patient care. Burnout threatens both the health of CRNAs and the safety of patients. Purpose: This study aimed to identify the main stressors within the work environment that may lead to burnout amongst CRNAs in Boston hospitals and the interventions CRNAs find most beneficial for them. Methods: Snowball sampling was used to recruit CRNAs working in Boston. The Perceived Stress Scale was used to assess the stress levels of CRNAs. Participants were also asked about the most common stress factors, if they feel burnout, proposed interventions, and the effectiveness of interventions. The analysis compared the results of this study to the literature. Results: This study shows that participating CRNAs are more stressed than not, and some suffer from burnout. The data collected may help address everyday stressors in CRNAs and prevent burnout amongst this group.

Luke Bala, Finance

How has the widespread availability of mobile technology affected the stock market over the past ten-years?

APEX Faculty Mentor: Christopher Jacobsen

Investing in financial markets is essential for building wealth for Gen Z’s future. Colleges and Universities have not put an emphasis on teaching their students how to manage their investments or even how to enter the market. This study examines the investing behavior of members of Gen Z. Findings show that gender, field of study and use of social media all impact members of Gen Z’s investing behavior. The results of this study can help develop strategies about how to better educate members of Gen Z to prepare them for financial investment decisions.

Joshua James Bañez, Mechanical Engineering

Manufacturing Engineering Internship: Utilizing Additive Manufacturing in Pre-Established Industrial Workflows

APEX Faculty Mentor: Hamed Samandari

This Apex project was conducted as part of the Applied/Service track, completed through an internship where I applied my background knowledge, relevant theories, scholarly literature, and previous experience to learn and develop industrial experience in an academic way. The focus of the project was on the application of additive manufacturing in pre-established industrial workflows. Additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing) is a relatively new technology that has recently gained new levels of viability in industry. However, current industrial workflows may face challenges in implementing these technologies due to preconceived notions and insufficient information. The internship focused specifically on implementing additive manufacturing into one of these environments by convincing corporate stakeholders of its value through prototyping, fixturing, showcasing its features, projecting cost savings through production replacements, fixing broken components, and mitigating the impact of unexpected delays such as those caused by Covid-19.

Katelyn Barlow, Nursing

The Operation of Pyramid Schemes in the US

APEX Faculty Mentor: Steven D White

Multi-level marketing has been a business model for a very long time, it consists of a company that produces a product and multiple sellers who distribute that product to customers on an individual level. These sellers are paid by commission based on the amount of sales that they have made within a period of time. But there is also a very similar business model that is not legal in the US known as a pyramid scheme, the differences between these two models are slight but very impactful. It involves many of the same elements as an MLM except for how profit is made, in a pyramid scheme the only way to really make any money is to recruit other people to the company, product sales don’t really make an impact on profit. This is what makes it illegal, sellers almost exclusively profit from those underneath them rather than product sales. Sellers very rarely turn a profit or break even while they are part of the company, those that do make very little money, sometimes only a few dollars a year. I looked into some companies that reflect this business model to see how they operated in the past compared to current day after dealing with backlash and legal trouble. I looked through multiple articles, interviews, and legal documents to gather data and come to a conclusion on how things have changed and what can be done to improve regulations and prevent people from being negatively affected. 

Vanessa Barreto, Nursing

The Effect of Stress on the Cardiovascular System in Nurses

APEX Faculty Mentor: Kristen Sethares

Background/Purpose: The leading cause of mortality in the United States is heart disease. Stress, among other factors, contribute to the risk of the development of heart disease. Due to their occupation, nurses are exposed to high levels of stress. The purpose of this study is to identify if there is a relationship between stress in nurses and their susceptibility to heart disease. Methods: A cross-sectional correlational survey study was completed using the following measurement tools: Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and questions assessing environmental stress factors. Results: There was a weak positive correlation between increased levels of stress and incidence of cardiovascular disease, including a diagnosis of hypertension. Increased levels of stress and a diagnosis of hyperlipidemia showed a weak negative correlation. Additionally, there was a weak positive correlation between increased levels of stress and hours worked per week. Increased levels of stress and the amount of overtime worked showed a weak negative correlation. The correlations from the variables in the study remained the same whether it was stress at work or stress at home. Conclusion: This study suggests that there is a relationship between increased stress levels and incidence of cardiovascular disease, including hypertension. This correlation implies the need for stress reduction interventions specific to the nursing population. Further studies should be done to understand what other factors are causing negative correlations between increased levels of stress and a diagnosis of hyperlipidemia as well as negative correlations between increased levels of stress and the amount of overtime worked.

Renée Bernier, College of Nursing

The Nurse’s Role in Prevention and Intervention in Postpartum Depression through Visiting Nursing

APEX Faculty Mentor: Melissa Desroches

Nurses play a significant role in patient care and education, and there is a gap in research on how nurses can help the rising issue of postpartum depression. The goal of this project was to identify how nursing can help to prevent postpartum depression among women who have recently given birth through home visits. We discovered that many mothers lacked one-on-one interactions with their postpartum nurses and were left with many questions about their newborn health as well as their own. Over half of the mothers in this study were not educated on postpartum depression at all before being discharged after having their baby. Many desired further education and saw the benefit in having a visiting nurse come into their home in the postpartum period to enable open, honest conversations.

Miranda Besse, Accounting

Importance of Internships and Connecting in Class learning to the Workforce

APEX Faculty Mentor: Christopher Jacobsen

One of the first statements we hear when starting college is the importance of internships. However, are internships really that helpful when applying to jobs and can internships make you a better student? To answer this question I got internships in my field of study in the summer of 2022 at Bristol County Savings Bank as their accounting intern and as their fall 2022 audit intern. When starting classes in the fall of 2022 I made note of any changes in me academically after having my internship. Then when starting my job search in fall of 2022 I compared my success rate of interviews and offers of jobs to when I was looking for an internship to see if there were improvements.

Emily Brawley, Nursing

Knowledge regarding Oral Contraceptives among College-Aged Women

APEX Faculty Mentor: Kristen Sethares

The oral contraceptive (OC) pill is one of the most widely used forms of birth control in the United States, especially among college-aged women. The purpose of this study was to identify the level of knowledge regarding proper use of OC among college-aged women and to compare levels by major and receipt of prescriber education. An online descriptive study using a 27-item Qualtrics survey adapted from a published study was used. After IRB approval and informed consent, demographics, information about OC use, current level of knowledge (0-10 scale); and knowledge of side effects and contraindications, and procedure for taking OC (0-16 scale) was collected from 46 college-aged women from various universities. Data were entered into SPSS 28.0 and analyzed using descriptive statistics, t test and ANOVA.  The sample of 46 primarily health-related majors (34%) were 19- 26years of age. The most frequent duration of OC use was > four years (39%) and the most frequent OC prescribers were pediatricians (41%). Most participants (54%) received education from their provider prior to OC prescription. Mean knowledge score overall was 12.6 (1.2) and did not differ by major (health related: 12, engineering or math: 13, business: 11, arts and sciences: 12, F=.69, df = 3, p = .57) or between those educated by a provider or not (12.2 vs 11.6, p = .21, respectively).  College-aged women have some knowledge but are not receiving the proper education from providers to practice the safest and most effective behaviors surrounding OC use.

Dante Broggi, Computer Science

On the Interoperability of Programming Languages via Translation

APEX Faculty Mentor: Yi Liu

Interoperability between systems written in different programming languages is difficult. The only common case is interoperability with and via C; however, C is an unsafe language and does not promote consideration of abstractions independently from their implementations. This study aims to investigate the extension of general interoperability beyond C by examining the current suitability of tools and languages for transpilation, which is the compilation of code into another source language instead of machine code. Specifically, we focus on the transpilation of the runtime of one language into a target language. This study focuses on preserving safety invariants between Pony and Rust, two programming languages that have similar but distinct high-level language semantics. Rust was chosen as a target language because of the C2Rust project, which attempts to transpile C programs into Rust's unsafe dialect. Pony was chosen as the source language because it also makes strong safety claims and has an open-source runtime written in C, allowing evaluation of both the transpilation process and result. Two phases are involved in translating the Pony runtime into Rust: improving the C source to better represent the invariants as allowed by C and working around the insufficiencies identified in the tooling, and refactoring the Rust result to identify where the code is incorrect due to misuse. The findings indicate that this methodology is potentially useful but not currently reasonable for immediate use due to insufficient available tools and the existence of significant capabilities in these languages that are not surfaced to their users.

Hannah Carvalho, Nursing

Correlation among Perceived Risk for Cardiovascular Disease, Physical Activity, and Dietary Intake in Young Adults

APEX Faculty Mentor: Brian Ayotte

Cardiovascular disease, or CVD, is consistently the leading cause of death in the USA (Kochanek, 2019). CVD is an umbrella term for a plethora of health complications regarding the cardiovascular system, such as hypertension, high cholesterol, stroke, heart attack, or heart failure. Over the years, researchers have devoted endless hours and billions of dollars trying to understand how to decrease the incidence in CVD. They have found that a majority of the risk factors of CVD are modifiable, or, in other words, can be prevented through lifestyle changes (Hajar, 2017). The present study investigated the relationship between perceived risk of cardiovascular disease and modifiable risk factors in adults ages 18-25. A survey was sent out to current Umass Dartmouth students and assessed their demographic data, lifestyle habits, and perceived risk for cardiovascular disease. The results serve to provide knowledge on the relationship between perceived risk of cardiovascular disease and modifiable risk factors in young adults. This knowledge can be used to produce more effective educational interventions to be instilled by healthcare professionals and educators, which will promote better health outcomes across the country.

Acadia Cass, Biology

Integrating Backwards-Chained Shoe-tying Instruction Into School-based Occupational Therapy Treatment

APEX Faculty Mentor: Brian Ayotte

Occupational therapy is a health profession that aims to help people build, improve, and maintain skills that are necessary for activities of daily life (ADLs). For working with children with intellectual disabilities and/or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), backward chaining has shown to be an effective method for teaching these skills when more traditional treatments have not been successful. Backwards chaining protocols break down the task into steps and teach the steps in order starting from the final step and proceeding backwards from there. These studies revealed that backwards chaining is a great method to use when a child has not previously been successful with other teaching methods, but the major downside is that it is much more time consuming than previous methods. This study aimed to determine if a less rigorous protocol would show similar improvements when applied in naturally occurring teaching opportunities such as when children were donning and doffing their shoes before and after regular treatment. 5 children were observed and all but one were able to complete at least one step, but none of the children were able to master shoe-tying within the 3 month period. One child was able to increase their proficiency from a 25% to 50% success rate. Despite the children in this study taking longer to improve than in the more rigorous and time consuming backward chaining protocols, the results are optimistic that long term learning with less frequent treatment might also be effective.

Celina Costa, Cell and Molecular Biology

Risk of Predation Affects Energy Content of Prey in an Intertidal System 

APEX Faculty Mentor: Michael Sheriff

Predators can alter prey populations by direct consumption or through non-consumptive effects. New England’s rocky intertidal shores have been a model system for exploring predator-prey interactions. Although the trophic cascade between the green crab (Carcinus maenas), dogwhelk (Nucella lapillus), and blue mussel (Mytilus edulis) is well-studied there is little information regarding prey energetics. Even less information is available regarding the effects of invasive Asian shore crab (Hemigrapsus sanguineus) on prey populations. To fill the gap in research Celina has extracted tissue from dogwhelk and mussel samples that had been exposed to predation risk and calculated moisture, lipid, protein, and ash content using proximate composition analysis (PCA). Thus, analyzing whole body tissue in a stepwise manner to provide valuable information on how exposure to the risk of predation impacts nutrient assimilation and alters tissue composition.

Trinity Esposito, Nursing

The Highs and Lows of Hospital Care

APEX Faculty Mentor: Amy Shapiro

Student nurses have an incredibly special position with their patients in their hospital placements. It takes a certain tenacity to overcome the challenges that nursing school presents. Students must maintain a deep desire to learn in order to earn the opportunity to care for others. Patients notice this earnest pursuit in students and gravitate towards it. In my clinical experience thus far, patients express how proud they are of nursing students and share their appreciation that we are striving towards a career as important as this one. As participants in their care, we play an essential role even though we are still learning throughout our caregiving. I am passionate about the emotional and personal aspect of nursing, and recognize the importance of of the profound relationship between patients and their caregivers. In acknowledgement of that, I have gathered a collection of short stories about individual patients to share with others. These stories include the highs and lows of hospital care. Stories have always been central to medicine, and they show the vulnerability of the clinical setting. The goal of this project was to give new nurses a foundation on which to build intuition for the experiences they will have as they embark on their first placements, allow veteran nurses to reminisce on their early days, and help patients develop peace of mind.

Eric Faith, Computer Science

Comparing the Accuracy of Neural Network Architectures in Predicting Sea Level Rise

APEX Faculty Mentor: Iren Valova

Neural networks are computational tools used in the process of machine learning, in which the computer can improve its performance at tasks over time by learning from mistakes and adjusting its parameters. Traditional neural networks only make adjustments to their parameters based on the input that they most recently processed. A special class known as recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are capable of remembering data from previous inputs they processed, allowing them to make decisions based on previous data as well as the current input. Long short-term memory (LSTM) and gated recurrent units (GRU) are two types of RNNs that are specifically designed to utilize data stored in the long-term, by employing specific calculations at each iteration to “forget” less important data and “remember” more important data. This prevents the problem that some RNNs have, in which information is treated with the same level of importance at all iterations, which can lead to undesirable outcomes. Bidirectionality is a method of improving an RNNs performance even further, by allowing it to utilize both past data and also future data, which is accomplished by having two RNNs run on the same dataset in opposite directions. This project examines four different RNN architectures: a traditional LSTM, a traditional GRU, a bidirectional LSTM, and a bidirectional GRU, to evaluate which architecture has the best performance when making decisions regarding sea level rise using historical data.

Mckenzie Ferrari, Physics

Mass-Temperature Relation for OBA Stars Based on IUE Spectra of Detached Eclipsing Binaries

APEX Faculty Mentors: Robert Fisher, Nancy Evans (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Accurate knowledge of a star’s fundamental properties, such as mass and temperature, is crucial to understanding the star’s age and evolution. In this work, we measure the masses and temperatures of a large sample of UV-bright hot stars, ranging in spectral types O, B, and early A. Specifically, we assemble a sample of 24 detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs), stellar systems for which our privileged view allows especially precise estimates of the masses and radii of the component stars to be made. We estimate temperatures of the more massive stars in each binary by comparing their ultraviolet spectra drawn from the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite to modern BOSZ temperature model spectra from Bohlin et al. (2017). We then derive an improved, direct mass-temperature relation for OBA stars, which may improve constraints on birth rates of the heaviest stars.

Emily Fontes, Illustration

Creating a Pitch for an Animated Series on Internet Safety

APEX Faculty Mentor: Bruce Maddocks

As advancements in personal technology advance through the 21st century, so has the accessibility of that same technology. Not only are smartphones and other handheld devices becoming more affordable, but they are entering the hands of a younger and younger population at the same time. From 2011 to 2013 alone, young children’s access to mobile devices increased by almost fifty percent, with a third of children being given access to a mobile device before turning two years old (Chang et al. 2015). Because of this, a huge influx of young children are accessing the internet at a younger age than even the current generation of high school and college students, who grew up with the rise of online content. In the year 2000, only 34 percent of children lived in homes with internet access, but by 2009, that number had spiked to over ninety percent (Becker 2000, Tran & Subrahmanyam 2013). This creates a new set of issues and threats for this young age group as they browse the internet at such an impressionable age. My APEX project aims to provide education on these issues by creating an educational children’s show which addresses the topic of internet safety.

Many of the problems which children face on the internet are faced by all ages. Threats of hacking, phishing, fraud, cyberbullying, self-image issues from social media, and internet overuse are prevalent everywhere, but young children are even more susceptible to these issues than most (D'Antona 2010, Finkelhor et al. 2020). Despite this, there is a distinct lack of educational content aimed towards teaching children about how to conduct themselves online. This is due in part to the belief that a child’s parents should be handling discussion of these topics, but children’s experience with the internet is beginning to surpass that of many of their families and educators (Levin & Arafeh 2002). Thus, it has become a difficult conversation for many adults to handle, and attempts to create educational content to help children with online issues has fallen to the wayside. With this project, I am aiming to design a pitch for a show which could fill this gap in education for children, particularly elementary school-age children.

Paolina Fornari, Integrated Studio Arts

Shift-Conscious: A Graphic Novel on Superpowers as Metaphor for Queer Experience

APEX Faculty Mentors: Bruce Maddocks, Jess Worby

Shift-Conscious is a comic about Charlie (they/them), a college student who discovers shapeshifting powers that help them build confidence in their gender identity. The chapter of the comic produced for this project covers Charlie’s discovery and initial experimentation with their new powers and gender presentation. The project’s intention is to add to the wave of web comics that represent the joys of queer self-discovery while highlighting how superpower tropes have significant potential as metaphors for queer experiences and gender exploration. Multiple existing works were studied for visual and thematic inspiration. Peer feedback in the form of in-class art critiques was vital to writing and early visual development. The creation process also provided beneficial insights on setting realistic timeline expectations for future similar projects. As the centerpiece of Paolina Fornari’s portfolio post-graduation, Shift-Conscious represents what she aims to pursue professionally and artistically: vulnerable, relatable stories told in an active, sharp visual style. The comic is digitally illustrated, available online (shift-conscious.neocities.org, Tapas and Webtoon apps), and will be available in print form at the CVPA’s 2023 Art + Design Senior Exhibition opening April 20^th.

Kyle Furtado, Computer Science

Assessing Attitudes and Awareness toward Targeted Digital Advertisements

APEX Faculty Mentor: Firas Khatib

With consumer online data becoming the most valuable and sought-after market in global advertising over the course of the past decade, it is crucial that the general public is fully aware of what this actually entails. Some of the more pressing issues that need to be made clear to consumers are: (1) Who can buy our data (2) How private is the information being collected (3) How safely is our data being stored (4) What else is our data being used for. The public needs answers to these questions to truly understand the footprint that they leave online, because it is their privacy and security at stake.

This project aims to evaluate if/how targeted digital advertisements affect the lives of children, young adults, and middle-aged adults differently, as well as analyze if/how the public’s typical awareness and attitudes toward these ads vary across these three major age groups. The results of this study will be useful in determining the general public’s knowledge level regarding targeted ads, as well as their understanding of the benefits and concerns of targeted ads. In the end, these factors will work together to determine what gaps exist in the general public’s targeted ad knowledge, and how that may affect them. As a result, this study will help devise plans to effectively spread awareness of targeted digital advertisements with the general public’s privacy and security in mind. 

Aidan Goddu, History

Internship at the New Bedford Whaling Museum

APEX Faculty Mentor: Paula Noversa

This project has been focused on working as a curatorial/collections intern at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. My objective has been to learn and understand the day-to-day practices of a museum and familiarize myself with what museum work entails. During my time there, I contributed to a wide range of projects and tasks that are commonplace at the museum. These contributions include, but are not limited to: Assisting in the installation/lighting of exhibits, updating information on the records of items in the museum’s possession, helping move items to storage, and cleaning of items in the museum’s care. I’ve learned that museums need to tackle the logistical difficulties of their collections, which can oftentimes become inflated or filled with items that do not have much information associated with them. Museums are able to handle this workload through their institutional policies and practices, which guide their behavior in order to best serve their interests as a collecting organization. Through this project I’ve not only become more knowledgeable about museum work, but also more prepared to contribute to public history by working with museums in the future.

Alex Goncalo, Finance

Attitude Changes Among College Students Post-Pandemic

APEX Faculty Mentor: Nicholas Zambrotta

Social interaction is a critical aspect of development, and a major part of the college experience. The COVID-19 pandemic forced students across the nation to attend school virtually and stay at home mandates added to the isolation. Although these mandates have been lifted, it is unknown if a lingering effect was left on college students. Recent research has provided evidence indicating decreases in mental health outcomes and increases of problematic behaviors in young adults. The current study hypothesized that college students experienced decreases in happiness, optimism, and psychological well-being that may be a result of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. Data were collected using students at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Initial analyses suggest that college student levels of well-being, happiness, and optimism about the future may be lower now than pre-pandemic levels. Freshman students seem to have significantly lower levels of happiness and optimism compared to more experienced students.

Jacob Harper, Marketing

An Analysis of a Potential Solution to America’s Increasing Internal and External Economic Woes

APEX Faculty Mentor: Steven White

Many economists believe that the United States’ current economic model is outdated and is causing more problems than solutions, such as contributing to the decline in environmental health. Some argue that change is needed, not only for economic reasons but for the planet’s health as well, and one new piece of technology, blockchain, may be key in resolving these issues. This technology is behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency success stories; however, its capabilities are much greater than that of just cryptocurrency. My goal with this research was to find a solution to our current economic and environmental crisis through the adaptation of blockchain technology, specifically in the primary sector of the economy. In order to see if this was a viable solution, I conducted in-depth research on blockchain technology and real-world cases of countries who have begun to use blockchain themselves. With that said, my findings suggest that blockchain has the potential to alter these industries in ways that significantly strengthens them. There is great potential for blockchain in the United States, and to effectively move away from the current problematic model, I recommend that they initially incorporate the technology into the primary sector of the economy, before adding it into other areas. Blockchain is the future, and if the United States wants to stay on top globally, then they must begin to accept and integrate blockchain technology into the economy as this will be key to resolving the many internal and external issues facing the country today.

Christina Hart, Mechanical Engineering

Testing the Drag Reduction of Spherical Super-hydrophobic Surfaces

APEX Faculty Mentor: Hangjian Ling

In a typical marine vessel, hydrodynamic skin-friction contributes to 60-70% of the total drag. The reduction of drag friction, which has been studied actively for decades, can globally impact energy savings and greenhouse gas emission reduction. Many types of drag friction reduction techniques have been explored with some success. Super-hydrophobic surfaces (SHS) can provide a substantial friction reduction according to recent studies. In order to understand this project, an overview of super-hydrophobic surfaces needs to be understood. Super-hydrophobic surfaces allow water to roll off the surface instead of soaking the water in.

Lots of research has been done on flat super-hydrophobic surfaces. Our aim is to provide research on curved super-hydrophobic surfaces. Our goal is to determine how the drag reduction changes for smooth curved surfaces and super-hydrophobic curved surfaces. This will be completed through physical experiments and running MATLAB code to determine the coefficient of drag for both smooth spheres and super-hydrophobic spheres.

Mariana Hebert, Biomedical Engineering

The Effect of Microplastics on Zebrafish and Possible Risks for Human Development

APEX Faculty Mentor: Tracie Ferreira

The presence of microplastics in our oceans and ecosystems is a concerning reality which impacts all biological life on Earth, including humans. Microplastics are present in the water we drink, the food we eat, and were recently discovered in the human placenta. This discovery raises many questions about the negative repercussions of microplastics on fetal development, as the placenta is the organ primarily responsible for delivering oxygen and nutrients to the fetus during pregnancy. While clinical research in reproductive health can be controversial, studying animal subjects and drawing parallels to human health can provide useful insight before determining whether further studies are necessary. This project explores the possible effects of microplastic exposure on human fetal development through studying zebrafish.

Jacqueline Horgan, Bioengineering

Growth Methods of CHO Cells and the Derived Properties Observed

APEX Faculty Mentor: Tracie Ferreria

The use of the body's own immune system to fight diseases has been an up and coming field in recent years with the production of human antibodies from the lab growth and genetic manipulation of different cells. These antibodies can be produced in a variety of ways in the lab, but usually with the growth of genetically modified mammalian cells. The cells being grown will have the gene to make the specific antibody needed added to their genome, and as they grow, the cells will produce the antibodies on their own. The antibody will be collected by the lab workers, purified, and used in patients as a treatment. One of the cell types used- Chinese Hamster Ovary Cells or CHO cells are isolated from the ovary of a female Chinese Hamster. These cells are very often used in the production of antibodies for several reasons. Most importantly the cells are capable of many cell processes that human cells are capable of generating a product that’s very effective for use in the treatments of many diseases and disorders. To be grown in a lab, there are many different methods of growth to generate cells with different properties that align to the needed product- some projects will require fast growth while others require more product production. One of the factors in determining the cell properties is what type of nutrients the cells are given, and how they are given. There are many different methods that exist and the selection of the proper one can make all the difference in the outcome and success of the project. Through the compilation of data and research on the different methods of nutrient supply to CHO cells in culture for antibody production, the effect of different methods on the type of growth observed will be further understood.

Gamaliel Daffeed Janvier, Management: Entrepreneurship

Fast Fashion Products and their Impact on the Environment

APEX Faculty Mentor: Amy Shapiro

The present study gives a background on how Fast Fashion Products have revolutionized the clothing industry and how it negatively impacts the environment. However, since one can’t talk about Fast Fashion Products without talking about Designer Products, a background is also given on the latter to help better understand the difference between different types of clothing companies and their impact. Furthermore, ​​qualitative and quantitative research will be conducted in the form of a survey also known as a questionnaire in order to gain knowledge of consumer awareness of Fast Fashion and whether perceptions of a retailer influence the buyer decision process. The study being done at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, an informative video is also included in the survey to bring awareness on the topic as videos create a more engaging sensory experience than using print materials alone.

The different people taking the survey, (N=123) were randomly picked to take part of the 10 minutes survey which included a 5 minutes educational video as mentioned above.  The research shows that 108 people answered that they knew about Designer Products and 78  answered they knew about Fast Fashion Products. However when it came to answering more thoughtful questions, the data would show that the numbers would change. In addition to that, the data also showed that after watching the video about fast fashion products, they seem to be more aware of their choices and would change their clothing shopping habits which shows the importance of bringing awareness.

Davidson Joseph, Mechanical Engineering

Dynamic Fracture Characterization of Glass Fiber Composites with Through-Thickness Nylon Fiber Reinforcement

APEX Faculty Mentor: Vijaya Chalivendra

A detailed experimental study is performed to investigate the dynamic fracture toughness of through-thickness reinforced glass/epoxy composites. Short Nylon fibers are reinforced on the glass fabrics along through thickness direction using UMass Dartmouth’s wet flocking method and a standard vacuum infusion process is used to fabricate the composites. A double cantilever beam (DCB) specimen is prepared for mode-I dynamic fracture characterization. Two different deniers 1.5D and 3D with two different fiber densities 150 and 300 fiber/mm² are used to fabricate 4 types of composites. One glass/epoxy composite without flocking is used as a control sample to compare with flocked composites. The dynamic fracture initiation toughness is investigated by using a modified split Hopkinson pressure setup with a novel fixture in conjunction with a high-speed video camera. In addition, the effect of loading rate on dynamic initiation fracture toughness is also investigated for (a) control sample, (b) 1.5D – 0.75mm Nylon fiber with a flock density of 300 fiber/mm² both configuration at  = 114 and 180 J/mm²/s. Results shown that composite of 3D – 0.75 mm Nylon fiber with a flock fiber density of 300 fiber/mm² has the highest fracture imitation toughness out of all the other configurations. It was observed that higher the flock density, the higher the dynamic crack initiation fracture toughness. The imagery studies conducted for the mode-I fracture experiments using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images are used to understand fracture mechanisms.

Nathanial Keighley, Bioengineering

Pharmaceutical Industry Contamination: Is it Always as Frightening as it Sounds?

APEX Faculty Mentor: Laura Hanzly

Steven Brand, an American author, once said “if you don’t like bacteria, you’re on the wrong planet.” In every aspect of daily life, whether you are a scientist or a government official, bacteria can be found everywhere. Typically, this word, “bacteria”, is one that most people inherently fear as it comes with a negative connotation. However, bacteria does not necessarily result in harmful effects and can even be beneficial, especially in the field of pharmaceuticals. Often times, bacteria are used as carriers to rapidly produce drugs or drug components, of course with a vast amount of oversight and regulations. Unfortunately, this can sometimes lead to contamination, another frightening word to the majority of the population. Similar to bacteria, contamination is not at all times an issue to be immensely concerned about, though it must be dealt with. Today, due to the advancement of safety protocols and governing regulations for an industry such as the Pharmacy industry, contamination has generally become a part of daily conversation without the instantaneous result of panic. Throughout this literature review, pharmaceutical contamination will be examined, specifically case studies throughout the last century as way to analyze the development of such safety protocols as well hopefully provide a new, less frightening, definition of contamination in regard to the biologics field. In addition, I will provide an insight into the field as having previously worked as a Quality Control Microbiology Intern at Pfizer Inc. with hands-on experience performing contamination testing.

Cameron McAlpine, Computer Science

Analysis of Student Engagement and Interests at The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

APEX Faculty Mentor: Iren Valova

This project aims to explore the relationship between student demographics and their interests in different events at The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. A survey was conducted to collect data on demographic variables such as age, gender, academic major, etc., as well as variables related to event preferences, mainly their level of interest of certain events. Statistical analysis techniques, including correlation matrices, contingency tables, and chi-square tests, were used to analyze the data. The findings reveal significant differences between groups based on demographic variables and event preferences, and suggest that housing status, gender, and academic level can predict interest in different types of events. These results provide insights that can inform the design of better programming and events on campus to meet the diverse interests of students.

Jenna Michaud, College of Nursing

The Effects of Distracted Practice on the Clinical Performance of Nursing Students

APEX Faculty Mentor: Jennifer Viveiros

In healthcare, over 80% of medical errors are attributed to human factors. Distracted practice has been a major issue in healthcare and is constantly growing into a bigger problem as the health care system becomes more complex. Not only are health care professionals at risk for making errors related to distracted practice, but nursing students are also susceptible to being distracted. This creates room for poor learning and performance in the clinical environment. To date, little is known about causes distracted practice for nursing students in the clinical setting is. This project explores what nursing students consider distracting during their clinical practicum and how those distractors impact their perceived clinical performance. It is a qualitative exploratory study. The instruments used were a demographic questionnaire, the distracted practice scale – student adaptation, and a set of guided interview questions administered via interview to identify distractors in the clinical learning environment and how those distractions impact students perceived clinical performance. After a thematic analysis of the collected data, there were four main themes identified as the most distracting and negatively impacting on students' clinical performance. These included, 1) downtime: which led to invasive thoughts, more distractions, and impaired focus, 2) anxiety: which led to decreased confidence, decreased participation, and feeling a lack of control in their actions, 3) sleep deprivation and low energy: which led to decreased motivation, 4) disorganized or underprepared clinical instructors: which led to underprepared students, decreased motivation, and limited opportunities to learn. By understanding what distracts nursing students in clinical and how those distractions impact their performance and learning, educators can work towards preventing these distractions from occurring.

Jackson Miller, Marketing

Designing a Questionnaire to Examine Ways of Improving the Alumni Database and Boosting Alumni Engagement

APEX Faculty Mentor: Steven White

The increasing focus on alumni donations and engagement necessitates a strong database that can help in effectively marketing to alumni for the above purposes. UMass Dartmouth finds themselves among the many universities across the nation facing this very situation. Through informal conversations with key stakeholders, we determine the abilities and limitations of the current system. With this information in mind, we work to develop a questionnaire that could be sent out to alumni that would help the university know what changes it may need to make. Due to inconsistencies in record keeping and issues related to emails, we realize that UMass Dartmouth does not have a complete inventory of their past students and can’t always contact the people who are in their records. The questionnaire design revolves around the objectives of how to best improve the record keeping of alumni, and how UMass Dartmouth can more effectively communicate their marketing strategies to alumni compared to what they are currently doing. The importance for the university to implement this questionnaire into a developed survey is as follows: a high alumni engagement rate can have major, positive effects on current student bodies. Alumni can act as mentors for students, and their donations help fund important projects, resources, events that give students opportunities they otherwise would not have.

Nicholas Monroe, Mechanical Engineering

Biases in the Modeled Air-Sea Interaction During the Year 2017-2018 in the Arabian Sea

APEX Faculty Mentor: Amit Tandon

Within the study of Monsoons, use of computer models to predict the variables that relate to the state of the atmosphere and ocean (e.g. sea surface temperature and heat fluxes) is important to weather forecasting. These variables are calculated using different methods and algorithms and hence discrepancies could exist between observations and various model outputs. Considering the non-linearity of the system, small errors in such outputs could lead to different outcomes in terms of monsoon prediction. In this study, we investigate the annual patterns of these variables collected in the Arabian Sea from October 2017 to September 2018 and describe four different seasons: transition period, northeast monsoon, spring and the southwest monsoon. The southwest and the northeast monsoons are usually characterized with strong winds of 8 m/s and extended periods of heating and cooling (also called the break and active phases), with tropical cyclones commonly observed during the northeast monsoon period. Spring period is marked by periods of clear skies and consistent ocean and atmosphere warming by about 3oC, while the transition period serves as a shift between the two types of monsoons. We further describe the biases between the model outputs (MERRA-2 from NASA and ERA-5 from Copernicus-an EU program) and the observations collected from a mooring in the Arabian Sea, with large biases existing during the monsoon periods. Correction of these biases in model outputs will lead to better predictions of monsoons, thus protecting human life and reducing economic loss.

Daniella Niles, Marketing

Title of APEX: MADWEC (Maximal Asymmetric Drag Wave Energy Converter) – A Revolutionary New Ocean Source

APEX Faculty Mentor: Steven White

The blue economy has seen a rise in renewable energy (RE) over the past ten years as the globe looks for the best RE generation and storage methods to tackle climate change. These systems, however, are primarily land-based and contain components like solar panels and battery-based energy storage. There are marine based RE technologies like tidal, wave, marine current, ocean thermal, and osmotic power on which MADWEC is built. The use of such generated energy is still meant for the land, even with wave power and its current cohort of wave energy converters (WECs).

Yet, a movement to employ wave and other types of ocean energy for remote power operations at sea, like unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and aquaculture, has recently emerged. Several sectors currently use expensive or environmentally harmful technology and processes to tackle their energy problems, such as diesel generators or recurrent site visits with pricey seagoing boats and crew. The need for these technologies and their power requirements will only grow as humanity continues to explore and comprehend the ocean.

Companies who require remote power at sea can use MADWEC virtually universally as a remote electrical generation and storage solution. The MADWEC has the potential to become the ocean’s all-purpose power source for projects including gathering meteorological data, monitoring whales, mapping the bottom, tracking fish migration, and even serving as an emergency backup power source for lifeboats.

Efe Oboh-Idahosa, Political Science

Racial Disparities in the Child Welfare System: An Apartheid-like Institution that Perpetrates Racial Oppression Against the Black Community

APEX Faculty Mentor: Tryon Woods

The child welfare system has negatively impacted the African American community since its establishment on April 15^th, 1991. The agency is structured to function in two different ways, one as an apartheid-like institution used to perpetrate racial oppression against the black community, while the other works in its originality helping to protect predominately Caucasian children from dangerous living situations, giving them a chance to experience a safe and healthy living. Racial disproportionality and disparities in the child welfare system causes critical racial harm that has been destructive to the development of black families for generations. However, lack of concern from policymakers about this issue has prompted them to continuously create policies that worsen the problem. This allows the government to continue its discriminatory treatment and in turn sustaining the ability to maintain control over the black community. The purpose of this study is to expose the ways that the child welfare system functions as an apartheid-like institution and analyzes its toxic and abusive relationship with the black community. This study concludes by considering the implications of this system of racial control for black family sovereignty.

Payton Parker, Mechanical Engineering

Development of a Thermoplastic Polymer Electrolyte-based Structural Supercapacitor

APEX Faculty Mentor: Cawei Shen

Through the continually evolving world of energy usage, new ways to store energy are becoming increasingly important. For instance, in space technology, finding new ways to store energy in lighter and smaller packages is highly desirable. If weight can be reduced and the amount of stored power can be increased, the space mission durations can be lengthened significantly. To do so, devices called structural supercapacitors were built. These devices can store electrical energy while being able to support a load. These two properties allow components which originally would be used solely for structural support to also have energy storage capabilities. Unfortunately, the state-of-the-art structural supercapacitors are unable to have both high electrochemical performance and mechanical performance at the same time. In this project, research was conducted to increase our understanding of this technology by first developing a injection molding manufacturing procedure for the electrolyte, performing material characterization of the electrolyte, and establishing an activation procedure for the electrode portion of the device. It was found that humidity levels greatly affect the quality of the electrolyte, and the injection molding procedure must be closely monitored. It was also determined that the best activation procedure for the electrode was done at 950°C with a weight ratio of 3:1 KOH to Carbon Fibers.

Elsie Perry, Biology

Determining Frosted Elfin Population Structure Using the EF1-a Gene

APEX Faculty Mentor: Genevieve Kozak

Frosted elfin butterflies (Callophrys irus) can use two different larval host plants: wild lupine (Lupinus spp.) or yellow indigo (Baptisia tinctoria). For this project, we used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify and sequence DNA from the elongation factor 1 alpha (EF1) gene. Genetic samples were collected from indigo and lupine populations from different locations across the eastern United States. We were able to collect EF1 sequences (sanger sequenced both in forward and reverse) from 37 different samples. We identified 7 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the EF1 sequence and used these SNPs to construct phylogenetic relationships among the samples. These phylogenies allowed us to see how genetic variation is common within populations. This suggests that the frosted elfin butterflies have genetic variation present (as a whole and within subpopulations), meaning the subpopulations of this at-risk species should still be considered a part of the same conservational unit.

Lily Pearl Poirier, Marketing

Creatives’ Creative Space: Creating and Testing the Viability of a Novel Business Model

APEX Faculty Mentor: Peter Karlson

Creative’s Creative Space was built to be different, to help connect small business owners and makers of handmade goods. This business, affectionately shortened to CCS, is a dual sided e-commerce platform built to provide a wholesale option for makers and retailers who deal in handmade goods. It might be easier to think of it as a wholesale version of Etsy. On CCS makers of handmade goods are able to upload their products in bulk quantities to be sold directly to retailers to become inventory for a store. It is an opportunity for both makers and retailers to expand their business, as well as ease the process of breaking into retail and stocking a storefront with quality handmade goods.

Every week the project grew by developing the business through analyzing and brainstorming the following categories: business models, product overview, value proposition, customer segments, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key activities and resources, costs, and partners. All the while gathering evidence to support the business’s viability as a real venture. Deliverables such as a working website, logo, and other marketing materials were also developed.

At the conclusion of the project, it was determined that the business model was viable based on interactions with potential users.

Rebecca Rodrigues, Mathematics

Software Package for Computing Far-Field Gravitational-Wave Signals

APEX Faculty Mentor: Scott Field

This project centers around finding a way to accurately propagate gravitational-wave signals over large distances. Through a technique we call gravitational-wave kernel propagation, we can teleport, or propagate, a gravitational-wave signal recorded at a distance r1 (close to the black holes) to a radius r2 (the location of gravitational-wave detectors, effectively infinity). This teleportation technique has typically been carried out in the time-domain. However, this requires knowing the residues and poles defining the kernel, which is not always possible. Therefore, we implemented the frequency-domain teleportation algorithm and explored its applications on test problems using gravitational-wave time series. In this poster presentation, I will also discuss the progress made towards making our Python code implementing the teleportation technique publicly available by writing code tests within a continuous integration framework, adding documentation, and packaging our kernel data into hdf5 files.

Alyson Stellato, Business Management

Arguments for Veganism and their Effectiveness on UMass Dartmouth Students

APEX Faculty Mentor: Laura Hanzly

Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practical, all forms of exploitation and cruelty to animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. When an individual adopts a vegan lifestyle, it is often followed with questioning or backlash from family, friends, society and even media, but why? Perhaps, these reservations from loved ones and society may come from a place of concern for the new vegan’s health. However, The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has confirmed “It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes” (Melina, 2016). So, if not for concern for the vegan’s health, then where does the opposition of the vegan lifestyle stem from? Arguably, it is a mixture of misinformation and cognitive dissonance. The purpose of this study is to educate on the implications of animal agriculture, identify the most common arguments for a vegan lifestyle, find which of these topics: human health, environmental health, or animal welfare, is most impactful to UMass Dartmouth students, and acknowledge what makes the vegan message so difficult to receive. The findings will then be applied to the marketing realm and could potentially be extremely beneficial to the future of the food industry and consumerism. 

Jack Sullivan, Physics

Studying the High Abundance of Iron Group Elements in Supernova Remnant 3C397

APEX Faculty Mentor: Robert Fisher

Type Ia supernovae are the thermonuclear explosions of white dwarfs composed of a carbon and oxygen core. These supernovae are essential for use as standardizable cosmological candles to determine distances throughout the universe, and for the nucleosynthesis of iron group elements, including manganese and iron, key to life on Earth. Although type Ia supernovae have been studied extensively, there are still many mysteries surrounding the structure of the white dwarf itself, specifically the detonation mechanism. The supernova remnant (SNR) 3C 397 was observed by the XMM-Newton satellite to have clumps of titanium and iron group elements. We aim to answer important questions about the nature of the explosion mechanism and stellar progenitor of 3C 397 by calculating the nucleosynthetic yields from several hydrodynamics models, focusing on type Ia supernovae from near-Chandrasekhar mass white dwarfs. In order to determine the nature of the detonation mechanism, we simulate these models of exploding white dwarfs, using the FLASH adaptive mesh refinement code. These models include a detonation to deflagration model, and both high density and standard density pure deflagration models. These models let us obtain the nucleosynthesis yields of the remnant and compare it to observations. The outcome of this investigation will facilitate a better understanding of the nature of the progenitor white dwarf of 3C 397, and the nature of the population of type Ia supernovae as a whole.

Spencer Taylor, Marketing

The Effects of Covid-19 on Independent Restaurants Marketing Practices: Downtown New Bedford

APEX Faculty Mentor: Steven White

The Covid-19 Pandemic has had a major impact on the restaurant industry, which caused a shift of focus from the inside dining experience to offering takeout and needing third-party delivery services to stay in business. This presented a large challenge for these small businesses that previously focused on providing a positive dine-in experience for the customer, because now they had to find a way to stay in business with the focus being delivery and takeout. The objective of my project is to gather more research data on the effects of Covid 19 on independent restaurants marketing practices and identify the marketing trends that they all have in common. To gather the required data for this project I will be using the qualitative data collection method, informal phone interviews, with owners or managers about changes in the independent restaurants marketing tactics. This study was able to quantify the degree of change that were forced upon these independent restaurants marketing strategies that were needed for these businesses to remain open and identified three marketing trends that the independent restaurants in the study had in common.

Arune Vickneswaran, Bioengineering

Impact of Vitamin C on Mechanical Properties of Human Cortical Bone

APEX Faculty Mentor: Lamya Karim

Bones are essential organs that maintain structural balance in the human body through their unique composition of protein and minerals. As individuals age, bone mass decreases, leading to increased fragility and risk of bone fractures. Type 2 diabetics are more susceptible to bone fragility due to accelerated osteoclast activity and the formation of AGEs. Therefore, this APEX project in the form of a pilot study aims to investigate compounds that can improve osteocoupling and inhibit AGE formation to enhance bone stability. Vitamin C has shown promise in improving osteocoupling and reducing fracture risk, but its effects on bone mechanics and in vitro incubation dosage are unclear. Thus, this study investigates the mechanical properties of human cortical bones using a calculated Vitamin C dosage. The two primary objectives of this pilot study are to determine if Vitamin C increases bone mechanical properties and the feasibility of 112.5 mg Vitamin C dosage. The physical methodologies involved preparing bone beams, performing microCT analysis, incubating the bone samples, and performing cyclic Reference Point Indentation and 3-point bending tests. The results showed that the 112.5 mg Vitamin C dosage improved some mechanical properties compared to the Ribose group, however, were not significant enough to make definitive conclusions. Thus, future research should primarily focus on increasing the dosage level, retesting mechanical properties and assessing AGE-inhibition. Overall, this study shed new light on the effects of Vitamin C on bone mechanics and highlights the need for further investigation into the appropriate dosage levels.

Jack Vreeland, Accounting

The Future of Accounting

APEX Faculty Mentor: Michael Griffin

My project explores the future of the accounting field and questions if it is possible that artificial intelligence will take over within the next decade. After doing a lot of research, I was able to confidently find a conclusion. My research thesis is as follows; Artificial Intelligence can’t take over the accounting field due to its lack of human decision-making abilities, creativity skills, emotional intelligence, and its ability to follow ethical standards. There has not been much research done specifically about my findings and I hope you find this information informative. I had the help of a few employees at an accounting firm along with a mentor who was able to help add some key points to my findings. I really enjoyed this project and believe my research can be used to inform those interested in going for an accounting profession. It is safe to say you have nothing to worry about being an accounting major.

Christian Abad, Mechanical Engineering

Thermoelectric Generator Computational Analysis of Application for Housing Structures in Cold Environments

APEX Faculty Mentor: Sankha Bhowmick

As the world phases into mitigating the effects of climate change, alternative energy sources have become the forefront for scientific and engineering study, where technology that removes inefficiencies and harmful particulate emissions are a priority. It is for this reason that the utilization of thermoelectric generators, also known by the abbreviation TEG, is a promising prospect for the mitigation of thermal losses often found in the production of useful energy utilized for work such as electric production, heating, fuel ignition, etc. TEG’s work by a temperature differential from two sides at opposite ends that are connected. This temperature differential induces a voltage, known as the Seebeck effect, and thus the device can be used as a waste energy recovery unit or a passive self-sustainable power source under the correct environment. In consideration of these characteristics a computational analysis of the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica base outer wall module set at its standard outer temperature of -49  and inner room temperature of 23  and an American home in the northeast of the United States is also computed at a standard outer wall temperature of -5  and inner wall temperature of 23   is studied to theoretically calculate the maximum power able to be produced from a single unit of a TECI-12710 Peltier TEG within an inhabited outer home wall and whether it would be appliable to power charging stations, lights, or sensors within the structure.

Olivia Aguiar, Biology

Impact of Risk-Induced Trait Changes on Survival During Predation

APEX Faculty Mentor: Michael Sheriff

Predation risk effects are impacts on prey caused by predators that do not include consumption of prey. These can include changes in prey behaviour, physiology, and morphology (i.e., risk-induced trait responses), which can have consequences to individual fitness and population dynamics (i.e., non-consumptive effects). While these risk-induced trait responses can lower individual fitness as compared to times without predation risk, they are assumed to increase fitness in the presence of predators. However, this assumption has been poorly studied. Here, we test the hypothesis that risk-induced trait responses increase fitness in the presence of predators. We tested this hypothesis using Nucella lapillus as prey and Carcinus maenas as our predator, and including mussels as a basal resource in a mesocosm experimental set-up. Nucella were placed into either a control or risk treatment (exposure to non-lethal Carcinus) for 28 days, after which a lethal Carcinus was added to all mesocosms. We found significant changes in behaviour during the risk-period, which led to changes in survival between the treatments. These results add to our growing understanding of the benefits of risk-induced trait responses to individual fitness and to non-consumptive effects generally.

Busola Awobode, English

Digital Literacy and the Digital Native: Language, Attitudes and Proficiency

APEX Faculty Mentor: Elisabeth Buck

Though research in digital literacy and its application to academics has gained traction over the years, much focus is still lacking on digital literacy across various modes, particularly in tertiary education. At the University of Dartmouth Massachusetts, the First-Year English Curriculum, which provides all incoming students with a baseline for English and communication in preparation for their college career does not directly include digital multimodality. Thus, this project aims to determine the levels of proficiency of and attitudes towards digital multimodality among these students to determine how digital multimodality is currently implemented and areas for improvement. A survey was conducted on First-Year English students wherein they answered questions relating to their knowledge, use and attitudes towards digital multimodality within and outside their classrooms. It was determined that while students are adequately exposed to digital multimodality, this exposure occurs predominantly out of the classroom. Additionally, they are not being required to produce digital content across various modes which could impact their proficiency. Finally, students endeavor to interact more with digital multimodality than they do at present.

Salvador Balkus, Data Science

Language AI That Teach Themselves: Transfer Learning for Short Text Classification

APEX Faculty Mentor: Donghui Yan

Short text data such as instant messages and social media posts are a relatively untapped well of potential for businesses. New large-scale natural language models such as GPT-3 can be taught to perform many tasks on short text data, including classifying its topic. Exploring practical issues in short text classification, this study uses GPT-3 to predict whether a question is related to data science using data gathered from the UMass Dartmouth Big Data Club. Although billed as "few-shot learning" with only a small number of examples required to teach a task, in practice GPT-3 requires examples to be either of exceptional quality or of a higher quantity than easily created by hand. To overcome this problem, we can augment the training set by leveraging GPT-3’s generative capabilities to add additional examples. Evaluating two potential models, this study finds that training data augmentation significantly improves model accuracy, and that real-world deployment should employ data quality control measures to select only non-subjective examples for augmentation.

Alexis Belval, Nursing

Assessing Feelings of Loneliness and Social Isolation in Long-Term Care Residents due to COVID-19 Regulations

APEX Faculty Mentor: MaryBeth Sosa

Background: Social isolation and loneliness are major health issues that both community-dwelling older adults and older adults who reside in a long-term care facility (LTCF) face. Loneliness and social isolation are associated with negative health outcomes including depression, increased risk of suicide, cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease, and stroke. Feelings of loneliness and social isolation in the older adult population have increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of the safety regulations put in place requiring individuals to be isolated. Purpose: The purpose of this project was to design an educational tool to help health care providers assess and intervene with older adults who live in a long-term care facility at risk for loneliness or social isolation. Methods: Information was gathered through content analysis and literature review regarding definitions and assessment of loneliness and social isolation and interventions that can be used to reduce these feelings. An educational tool was created and presented to caregivers in a long-term care facility. Results: Positive caregiver feedback indicated that there is a need for caregiver education and intervention regarding resident loneliness and social isolation. Conclusions: Education and intervention are vital in the LTCF population in regard to loneliness and social isolation to prevent negative health outcomes.  Caregiver staff is in a good position to assist with this process.  Further research utilizing the developed educational tool is recommended.

Natalie Burgos, Psychology and Crime & Justice Studies

The COVID-19 Pandemic and its Effect on the Inside-Out Program and the Future of Programming at the Bristol County Jail

APEX Faculty Mentor: Erin Krafft

The nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic led to the transition to online programming at jails/prisons. This was to ensure that people in prisons had limited exposure to outside individuals to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Specifically for the Bristol County Jail, this meant that the Inside-Out program was moved online. The Inside-Out program is an opportunity for students at a college/university (Outside students) to take a class with people who are currently incarcerated (Inside students). Participants of this study included professors at UMass Dartmouth who have taught the Inside-Out course before and during the online programming period. The Participants were interviewed about their experience teaching the Inside-Out course online and their thoughts about the future use of technology in the program. Results of this study concluded that while online programming is possible, it does not allow the Inside-Out program to reach its full potential as an experience for Inside students. However, online programming is better than no programming at all. Future studies would involve more Participants with differences in where they teach their classes, age, gender and how they have adapted their class to fit an online structure.

Okan Canaran, Bioengineering

Extracting Collagen from Fish Skin

APEX Faculty Mentor: Tracie Ferreira

The goal of this project encompasses a quality and cost-effective extraction of collagen by using fish skin as its source. This is achieved through subjecting the fish skin through several treatments of different variables to produce a cost-effective collagen extraction yield from fish skin. This is performed by soaking the fish in several solutions to facilitate a pure extraction. The desirable end-product of collagen powder can be relayed into a further adaptation of the project being its implementation into a hydrogel as a biomaterial dressing to help accelerate skin wound healing. To proof this clause, the status of the collagen extracted should exhibit qualifiable properties that would facilitate a proper biomedical application on a patient. In order to test this project’s hypothesis being that the collagen treatments can be tuned tailored to an optimal production, characterization will be necessary to analyze the properties of this collagen. Out of the tests currently performed, one run looks promising, which is composed of the digestion by the variables of 1M acetic acid and 0.5% pepsin, quantitatively generating an 11.54% yield. This can serve as a trend for determining proper variables, while being used as a comparative analysis subsequently to go further. In addition, characterization tests will infer further details about the collagen itself, the quality aspects of the collagen and whether it is biomedically acceptable. Out of the current runs, this run’s FTIR results indicate proper absorbance compared to literature and higher peaks in comparison to the prior runs. SDS-PAGE hasn’t been conducted currently but will be soon to determine if the proper bands are broken up through digestion. All in all, this is not the only simple answer; this project requires more testing to determine proper trends, so continuous testing is in progress. Further optimizations are also in consideration for implementation in this way. At the conclusion of this project, there will be determination of the optimal variables that will lead to the cost-effective and qualifiable extracted collagen, supporting its further application into skin wound healing.

Alecsander da Silva, Bioengineering

Organic Biocompatible Scaffolding for Treatments of Spinal Cord Injuries

APEX Faculty Mentor: Tracie Ferreira

Each year, there are hundreds of thousands of spinal cord injuries worldwide, which leave many with some level of paralysis. While the level of incidence remains high and the medical consequences are life-altering, effective clinical solutions remain sparse. This research project aims to evaluate the potential to develop an organic biocompatible scaffold for the treatment of spinal cord injuries. During this study, a comprehensive literature review was performed to obtain more knowledge regarding the terminal differentiation of nerve cells, the pathophysiology of spinal cord injuries, and current research regarding the treatment of spinal cord injuries using organic and inorganic materials. Following the literature review, preliminary experimentation was performed to study the potential effectiveness of a nanotube array scaffold to act as a conductive stent to bypass damaged tissues, while also providing regenerative capabilities. The use of organic materials will alleviate any biocompatibility concerns and increase the amount of cellular interactions between nerve cells, leading to higher rates of proliferation and differentiation. In this study, di-peptide nanotube arrays were synthesized via PECVD and cell viability was tested via various MTT assays. Preliminary results have shown that organic materials with conductive properties are both biocompatible and have the ability to form the basis of viable cell scaffolding. Further research will be required to continue evaluating the effectiveness of such a scaffold for the treatment of spinal cord injuries, but preliminary research, in-vitro, is positive.

Brooke DeSimone, Bioengineering

Advanced Glycation End-Product Measurement in Vertebral Bone

APEX Faculty Mentor: Lamya Karim

Advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) are harmful crosslinks that form in bone collagen. The accumulation of AGEs can have adverse effects on the mechanical properties of bone and make it more susceptible to fractures. Total AGE content has been measured in femurs and tibias, but this study aims to validate the method for the measurement of AGEs in vertebrae. Vertebral bone specimens were obtained from a healthy human subject and first defatted, lyophilized, and hydrolyzed. The hydrolysates were then diluted 150 times. The fluorescence of quinine standards and the diluted sample hydrolysates was measured with a spectrophotometer. The concentration of quinine in the samples was determined using a standard curve. Then, the absorbance of hydroxyproline standards and the diluted sample hydrolysates was measured, and a standard curve was used to calculate the hydroxyproline concentration for each of the samples. From the concentrations of quinine and hydroxyproline, the amount of collagen in each sample and the total number of AGEs were calculated. The total AGE content of the vertebral bone specimens ranged from 198.5 to 351.1 ng quinine / mg collagen.

Maranda Dutra, Nursing

Undergraduate Nursing Student’s Attitudes toward Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB) versus Transgender Patients

APEX Faculty Mentor: Shannon Avery-Desmarais

Previous research indicates that LGBTQ+ individuals have experienced stigma and discrimination throughout their healthcare experiences by all levels of providers. It is important for nurses to create a safe and welcoming environment for all patients and to do so, nurses must be culturally competent in caring for minority populations. The purpose of this study is to better understand nursing student's attitudes, knowledge, skills and overall cultural competence in working with the LGBTQ+ population. Forty-one undergraduate nursing students participated in the study. The Sexual Orientation Counselor Competency Scale (SOCCS) versions two and three were used to compare knowledge, attitudes, skills and overall cultural competency toward LGB versus transgender patients. Nursing students have worse attitudes, skill sets and overall cultural competence in caring for transgender patients in comparison to LGB patients. Nursing students have more general knowledge regarding transgender patients than LGB patients. Nursing students with prior healthcare experience had no difference in LGB or transgender cultural competence. Nursing students overall LGB and transgender cultural competence did not consistently improve with year of schooling.

Lizette Fontes, Bioengineering

Optimization of fish-gelatin based hydrogel for rapid wound healing

APEX Faculty Mentor: Tracie Ferreira

A fish-gelatin based hydrogel can serve as a great advantage in the use of medical applications. The creation of a three-component hydrogel is based off recent literature involving the use of Nile Tilapia fish skin as a skin substitute in the treatment of superficial burns. The scope of this project is to gather information from literature to create an antimicrobial and mechanically robust wound healing hydrogel. This hydrogel was tested for ultimate tensile strength to compare it to the tensile strength of healthy human skin. A three-component hydrogel made up of fish gelatin, sodium alginate, and glucomannan was created using literature. Five individual samples from three 1% fish gelatin, 1% sodium alginate, and 1% glucomannan were used to access for tensile strength. Stress strain curves were created, and the average ultimate tensile strength of the hydrogel was found. The ultimate tensile strength found does not align with the ultimate tensile strength of healthy skin found in literature. For future works, several modifications can be made to improve the hydrogel to make it mechanically robust.

Luanna Goncalves, Crime & Justice Studies

How Undocumentation Results In A Justification Of Human Rights Violations

APEX Faculty Mentor: Heather Turcotte

The strong presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States has led to questions concerning whether they deserve the same rights as U.S. citizens or if there is a valid justification for being treated differently due to one's legal status, and it has become evident that their lives have been disregarded through laws put in place that only contribute to more prejudice and diminishing of their value as a human being. How is it that we live in a country where liberty and justice are promised for everyone but we are constantly witnessing prejudice and violence against those who don’t fit the standards of white America? This distinction between US citizens and undocumented immigrants is exposed when analyzing the policies that were made to exclude immigrants from the rights and benefits that are essential to having a good quality of life. From factors like social media, the healthcare system and restrictions of stimulus checks have all done a small part in making sure that undocumented immigrants are seen as people who need to be pushed out of a country that doesn’t belong to them. Citizenship is treated as if it were a privilege to have and the lack of it has been used as a weapon for decades in attempt to dispose of those who are not deemed worthy and in order to fully understand the reasons behind it, we must analyze the history of interpersonal violence between the people and the state, along with the construction of our borders.

Peyton Houghton-Papas, Political Science

Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare Outcomes of the Pandemic: The Equity of Intersectional Feminism

APEX Faculty Mentor: Peter Sandby-Thomas

Over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has had drastic consequences on healthcare in the United States. Women’s sexual and reproductive healthcare (SRH) access has become one of these many overlooked aspects that have faced damaging effects. This research explores to what extent women have been impacted by their relationship with SRH throughout the pandemic. Additionally, it investigates how policies that incorporate intersectional feminist approaches could mitigate these short and long-term impacts. To effectively evaluate these topics. I have utilized a mixed-methods case study analysis which primarily employs a qualitative and quantitative analysis of secondary sources. My analysis found that limited access to SRH has deeply affected economic and social opportunities for women in the United States. Furthermore, the enactment of an intersectional feminist recovery plan stands to benefit both women and society overall. In conclusion, the U.S. must thoroughly address the importance of women’s sexual and reproductive healthcare access while acknowledging the role of intersectionality to provide equity.

Anna Kerwood, Biology

Regulation of Two Genes During the Clownfish-Sea Anemone Symbiosis

APEX Faculty Mentor: Robert Drew

The Clark’s anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii) produces mucus that protects it from sea anemones that differ widely in adhesiveness of the tentacles and toxicity of the venom. The Drew Lab is testing the hypothesis that anemonefish regulate gene expression in skin to adjust their protective mucus to suit different sea anemone species. An RNA-seq analysis by the Drew lab identified over 600 genes that were differentially expressed between fish interacting with strongly adhesive and toxic Haddon's carpet sea anemones compared to naïve fish with no sea anemone. I investigated three of these genes: von Willebrand factor and EGF domain containing protein (VWDE), disheveled-associated activator of morphogenesis 1-like (DAAM1), and an uncharacterized protein. Using BLAST, I verified the sequences and mapped exon boundaries. Then I measured the expression of each gene using quantitative PCR and compared them to the RNA-seq results. Although the Clark’s anemonefish regulates the expression of these genes, it is not known whether these genes contribute directly to the protection or whether these are a symptom of interacting with a more dangerous species of sea anemone.

Brianna Ko, Art Education

A Craft Based Approach to Art Education in K-12

APEX Faculty Mentor: Kathy Miraglia

In this study, the researcher, Brianna Ko, explored the use of a craft-based approach to art education in K-12 classrooms. A craft-based approach to art education uses various mediums (woodworking, textiles, jewelry, glass working, paper, ceramics etc.) in the art curriculum. The research questions were: 1) how well informed are teachers on the use of craft as an approach to art education, and 2) does learning about craft change students’ perceptions of craft. A review of the current literature was used to gain background knowledge. A qualitive and demographic method was implemented for this study. Data were collected using a national general survey, and pre and post lesson questionnaires for the visual arts classroom teacher at New Bedford High School and her five classes. Observations and reflections were also noted about the students and the lesson. The procedure for this study was as follows: IRB approval, school district approval, student and teacher consent/assent, distribution of national general survey, pre lesson questionnaires, lesson implementation at New Bedford High School, observational notes/reflections written, post lesson questionnaire. Results were presented through themes and categories that were created through the analysis of student pre and post lesson questionnaires, and the general survey were presented in the form of pie charts. It was concluded that many of the researchers’ findings match those in the review of literature. Also, adopting craft as a teaching approach can enrich the way art educators design a lesson. Recommendations for teachers to use this approach in their classrooms were given.

Joshua Letizia, Mechanical Engineering

Effects of Flocked Reticulated Foams on Air Filtration and Purification Methods

APEX Faculty Mentor: Tracie Ferreira

For the past year, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Bioengineering Department was awarded funding to carry out research and development of an ovel air-scrubber/filtration media material based on Flocked Reticulated Foam (FRF) structures. A patent application has been filed on this UMD created FRF technology. The initiation of this project was inspired by the opportunity presented to UMD by Ocean State Shields, (OSS) LLC, a start-up company (Providence, RI). OSS is involved in the commercial development of low-cost unitary air-purification devices for human habitation areas (single rooms, offices, school-rooms, healthcare facilities). OSS needs an effective air-scrubber filtration media onto which they can coat their proprietary air-contact induced biocide surface active material. UMD’s research is dedicated to helping OSS with their air-scrubber filter materials needs and beyond. This OCTV funded research will focus on developing FRF as the key base material in this application. This research has been a focus point in the terminology of air pollution filtration and other forms of purification, however, due to the pandemic, it has seen an increase in research on its capabilities.

Sophia Maloney-Buckey, Biology

The Effects of Carcinus Presence on the Morphology of Nucella

APEX Faculty Mentor: Michael Sheriff

The phenotypic plasticity of prey allows them to increase their chances of survival when experiencing predation risk by making predator-induced morphological transformations (Bourdeau 2011). Nucella have been observed to respond to predation risk in such a manner, i.e., by thickening their shells in the presence of predators (Donelan 2020). Here we tested the hypothesis that the morphological changes that prey make as a result of predation risk help to improve their fitness. First, we conducted an experiment that compared growth (changes in tissue and shell weight and shell length) of Nucella that were either exposed to non-lethal Carcinus (green crabs with their claws banded; experimental group) or that had no predator present (control group). We then examined if these morphological changes in tissue and shell mass and length improved individual survival by exposing both groups to lethal Carcinus predators (free to consume prey). We found that changes in tissue and shell weight and length were very small and did not differ between the groups, nor did they predict the probability of survival in predator exposed Nucella. This is likely due to the problem of not including food during my experiments, as subsequent experiments testing similar hypothesis found the predation risk did reduce growth in the presence of food.

Isabella Mancini, Biology

The Impact of Resource Availability on Prey Responses to Predation Risk

APEX Faculty Mentor: Michael Sheriff

Predation risk is a pervasive force in ecology, shaping species interactions and community dynamics. When prey are exposed to predators they may alter their behavior, physiology, or morphology. Risk-induced behavioral changes can include changes to prey refuge use and risk aversion behavior. I hypothesized that the strength of these non-consumptive effects and prey behavioral decisions may depend on resource availability or prey state. I tested this by either exposing the dogwhelk, Nucella lapillus, to non-lethal green crabs, Carcinus maenas (rendered non-lethal by gluing their claws together) or not, for 28 days while varying food availability using the basal resource, Mytilus edulis. We measured individual behavior of Nucella every 3 days throughout the experiment. We also measured initial and final tissue weights, shell weights, and shell lengths of each Nucella in order to track growth. We found that risk-exposed Nucella were more risk averse. We also found that food availability increased risk aversion regardless of risk treatment. Food availability also significantly increased individual growth compared to non-food treatments. I found that there was a cost of predation risk on individual growth when compared to non-risk treatments, however initial prey state did not significantly impact risk aversion, nor did growth. These findings support the hypothesis that resources increase prey state enough to decrease risky behavior when faced with predation risk.

Christopher McGuire

Using Self-Care Behaviors as a Mediator of Health Anxiety for Nurses during the COVID-19 Pandemic

APEX Faculty Mentor: Brian Ayotte

The COVID-19 pandemic is related to psychological struggle in nurses, including health anxiety. Data were collected from 148 nurses via an online questionnaire to measure health anxiety symptoms and self-care behaviors. There was a significant difference in health anxiety between nurses who treated patients with COVID-19 versus those who did not, but engaging in self-care behaviors attenuated this difference. This study demonstrates the importance of self-care behaviors for nurses managing mental health outcomes.

Erin Murphy, Sociology/Anthropology

Representing Native Peoples in a Colonized Film Industry

APEX Faculty Mentor: Isabel Rodrigues

The representation of Native Peoples within the film industry has been plagued by deep rooted stereotypes and imaginings of American heroism that pre-date the inception of the mainstream film industry. The film industry is dominated by and perpetuates a white male narrative that treats Euro-American culture as the standard from which storytelling derives. Moreover, this same industry has had a history of discriminatory hiring practices and exclusion of roles that do not fit the white American dominat views. Only recently have we seen an emerging alternative film production that is struggling to compete with the predominantly white industry and create film narratives where representation and authorship of their own images and identities are not exclusively defined and controlled by white dominant culture.  Therefore, analyzing the differences in representation within films by white filmmakers and Native American filmmakers has the potential to reveal how Native peoples are reclaiming their own narratives about their polyphonic stories and histories as well as gaining insight into how oppressive structures are slowly being dismantled by the communities being oppressed.

Chase Parenteau, Applied Mathematics

A Development and Analysis of a New Statistic to Calculate Player Value and Team Building Ability

APEX Faculty Mentor: Yanlai Chen

A deep dive into the development of a new statistic in the NBA that hopefully will build towards a new analytical wave in basketball that more fairly evaluates the value of role players

Benjamin Pfeffer, Data Science

Generating Cancer Images to Improve Cancer Diagnosis Accuracy

APEX Faculty Mentor: Donghui Yan

The lack of publicly available medical data has been negatively impacting Artificial Intelligence in its ability to be used in the medical field [1]. Generative Adversarial Networks, or GANs, have been used to create similar, but novel images using real images [2]. Hence, GANs may be used to produce images that can augment a small amount of publicly available medical data in a way that leads to the improvement of Artificial Intelligence’s accuracy. Here, breast cancer tissue images and their corresponding h-scores were scraped from Stanford’s TMA database and converted into GLCMs, which were then read by GANs for each h-score to produce novel images of each score. Then, the new and generated data were used to train an Ordinal-Convolutional Neural Network (O-CNN), whose results were compared to a network that was trained without the generated data. The O-CNN whose training data consisted of the generated images as well as the base images had an increased accuracy and a decreased MSE when compared to the O-CNN whose training data consisted only of the base images. These results provide a method for improving Artificial Intelligence’s ability on smaller datasets and may help provide a slight improvement when dealing with the issue of a lack of publicly available medical data.

Aubrey Pickard, Biology

Patterns of Protandry and Protogyny in Lepidoptera

APEX Faculty Mentor: Genevieve Kozak

Lepidopteran (moth and butterfly) species can exhibit two opposing emergence strategies. These emergence strategies are protandry, when males emerge before females, and protogyny, when females emerge before males. Which emergence strategy any given species uses depends on the life-history characteristics and operational sex ratio. While protandry is thought to be more common in Lepidoptera, no systematic evaluation of protogyny has been done. In addition, emergence strategies may shift in changing climates, as increased temperatures might alter development in sex-specific ways. In this study, we performed a literature review of emergence strategies in Lepidoptera, and recorded changes in emergence strategies at differing temperatures if available. From this review, it was found that introduced/invasive species may have a bias for being more protogynous compared to non-invasive pests, common species, or those of conservation concern. We also found that for one species, reports in the literature were inconsistent among studies. We experimentally tested the species Ostrinia nubilalis—a pest that was introduced to North America 100 years ago—in the laboratory. We found that individuals collected from the field less than 5 generations ago were very slightly protandrous, while those that had been raised in the laboratory under constant temperatures for many generations were protogynous. Although development time was reduced at higher temperatures, the order of emergence did not change. These findings have two-fold importance as they show that protogyny may be correlated with invasiveness in Lepidoptera and that mating strategies can change after long periods in benign captive rearing conditions.

Timothy Powers, Physics

Optimizing the Calculation of the Strange Attractor's Correlation Dimension

APEX Faculty Mentor: Jianyi Jay Wang

Physicists frequently work in situations with an integer number of dimensions, such as lines, planes, and volumes. However, there are structures that exist in specially defined parameter spaces which have non-integer dimensions. One such structure is the Strange Lorenz Attractor, a special case of the Lorenz flow model. The choice of specific system parameters yields a model with non-integer dimensionality due to its fractal structure. One numerical method of calculating the attractor's fractal dimension involves choosing a point near the attractor and counting how frequently a particle moving within the structure enters a defined neighborhood of the chosen point. For a set of several of these neighborhoods, the log of this frequency vs. the log of the neighborhood size yields a linear relationship whose slope is an approximate correlation dimension for the attractor. This work applies the described method to the most famous set of parameters for the attractor, with the goal of verifying the method's ability to determine the fractal dimension. Additionally, modifications are made to the process to seek improvement of numerical accuracy and computational efficiency.

Natalia Reyes, Marketing and Management - Leadership

The Effects of Implementing a Marketing Plan on a Small Construction Company

APEX Faculty Mentor: Steven White

One of the biggest threats posed by small businesses is not focusing enough on marketing. Marketing is one of the many keys to ensuring that companies grow and succeed. It allows for brands to maintain and keep current customers satisfied while also building upon their customer base and engage with potential customers. Without marketing an amazing product may never succeed because it is not heard of by the public. Social media has changed the way in which the world communicates. It enables companies to reach their target market in a much easier, efficient, and successful manner. Marketing plans, especially those that incorporate social media, are a big part of what assist small businesses in success and allow them to continue stimulating and diversifying the economy while also providing thousands of new jobs.

Austin Sa, Mechanical Engineering Major

Fracture Mechanics of Adhesively Bonded 3D Printed Bi-Materials

APEX Faculty Mentor: Vijaya Chalivendra

During this experimental investigation, fused deposition modeling (FDM) is used to create bi-material single leg bending samples (SLB). The printer selected is an Ultimaker 3 and using determined polymers, which include Polylactic Acid (PLA) and Nylon Polyamide, the fracture toughness and strain prior to crack initiation is examined. The samples are designed in Solidworks and extracted into Cura slicer where a G-Code is generated. The sample crack initiation is triggered by the placement of a Kapton Tape strip on the bi-material adhesion layer. This creates a pre-crack and a predictable interfacial fracture location. The fracture can then be observed using a high-resolution camera at this location. Unique combinations of these samples are created with the use of abrasive polymer filaments reinforced with carbon fibers along with the standard PLA and Nylon 6 polymers. This allows the bi-material mechanical interlocking to be observed during SLB quasi-static testing. This testing is completed using an Instron 5569.

Mohammed Shonar, Mechanical Engineering

Damage-Sensing in Glass/Carbon Intra-ply Reinforced Plastics

APEX Faculty Mentor: Vijaya Chalivendra

A comprehensive experimental study was performed to characterize the electro-mechanical damage sensing capabilities of Carbon/Glass inter-ply composites with a novel liquid thermoplastic resin, Elium®. This unique thermoplastic resin allows for the matrix to be fully recyclable while maintaining the same fabrication techniques of standard thermoset resins. Unlike thermosets, thermoplastic polymers have the ability to break weak bonds when exposed to high temperatures, which can reversibly melt the plastic matrix. As such, Elium® composites can be recycled by dissolution and thermoforming, as demonstrated in literature. The recyclability aspects of this thermoplastic composite make for a more viable composite to solve the end-of-life issues of discarding composites to landfills. In the present study, a vacuum infusion process was employed to fabricate the laminates. Laminates of four different fabric orientations were constructed: G-0-C-90 (Carbon fibers are in the longitudinal direction), G-90-C-0 (Glass fibers are in the longitudinal direction), G-45-C-45(R) [Both fabrics are at opposing 45 degrees, (R) indicates a repeating layup], and G-45-C-45(A) [(A) indicates alternating layup where direction swaps for each other lamina]. The electrical and mechanical responses were studied under in-plane-shear and mode-I fracture loading conditions. A four-probe circumferential measuring technique was utilized to acquire the piezo-resistive response. In the in-plane-shear experiments, results indicate a two-phase electrical response, in which the electrical resistance remains steady followed by a phase of increasing resistance. The G-0-C-90 and G-45-C-45(A) had the greatest shear strength. Due to non-linear deformation, both G-45-C-45 layups had substantially larger shear strain at failure than other orientations. The mode-I fracture experiments also show increasing resistance in the latter stages of fracture, with crack propagation correlating to load drops and electrical resistance increases. Mode-I fracture initiation toughness was greatest with the G-0-C-90 orientation followed by the G-45-C-45(A) orientation.

Chelsey Silva, Bachelor of Science in Nursing

COVID-19 and the Mental Health of Nurses

APEX Faculty Mentor: Elizabeth Chin

The purpose of this study was to identify the differences between pre-pandemic and current level of self-reported anxiety, depression, and stress within the nursing population who have been working in Southeastern MA throughout the current global pandemic. A secondary goal was to identify work-related factors that contributed to increase anxiety, depression, and stress during the pandemic. The study was a cross-sectional, descriptive-correlation survey design using 3 valid and reliable instruments to measure anxiety, depression, and stress levels in participants.  Participants were also asked to identify work-related factors contributing to increases in anxiety, depression, and stress during the pandemic. A total of 42 participants responded to the survey. This study found a statistically significant increase in the levels of anxiety, depression, and stress in nurses during the global Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, work related factors contributing to the increases were identified and included short staffing (93%), nurse patient ratios (62%), loss of control over workflow (62%), lack of support (58%) and lack of resources (55%) Covid-19 has had mental health implications for nurses working in the Southeastern MA area. More services to support the mental health of nurses need to be implemented in healthcare facilities to promote the well-being of the staff and in turn the safety of patients.  Future research with a larger sample size should be conducted to evaluate the long-term impact of Covid-19 on nurse mental health

Emily Silva, Biology

Effect of microbial communities on root foraging strategies

APEX Faculty Mentor: Tara Rajaniemi

Different plant species display different root foraging strategies, and this may be influenced by their unique soil microbial communities. Plant soil microbial communities were then isolated and used to create soil mixtures where seedlings were grown. The boxes they were grown in contained either one soil type or were split down the center into two soil types. Results show that Plantago grew better in Poa soil, Centaurea favored its own soil over Achillea, and that Plantago favored Centaurea soil over its own, while the other species showed no significant differences. This may be due to species having different foraging strategies.

Hailey Smith

The Effects of Floral Volatiles on Pollinator Foraging Behavior

APEX Faculty Mentor: Robert Gegear

Volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) are signaling chemicals emitted by plants that can serve many purposes, including facilitating pollination and deterring herbivory. Previous work has shown VOC makeup differs across the different floral tissues and nectar in both Impatiens pallida and Impatiens capensis; however, the functional significance of VOC partitioning in flowers is presently unknown. The goal of this research was to understand the relationship between Impatiens VOCs and the sensory system of their main bumblebee pollinator, Bombus impatiens. In a series of controlled laboratory experiments, we assessed the behavioral response of B. impatiens foragers to gustatory and olfactory cues of each VOC at naturally occurring concentrations. Results showed that Impatiens VOCs had varying effects on B. impatiens gustatory responses, with volatiles found in the nectar eliciting a neutral to positive response and volatiles found exclusively in floral tissues eliciting a neutral to negative response. To further explore the functional importance of floral volatile partitioning in Impatiens, we conducted an additional experiment on the individual choice behavior of Bombus Impatiens foragers on artificial floral arrays containing volatiles eliciting appetitive (oxoisophorone) and aversive (linalool) forager responses. As found in the first series of experiments, foragers showed a strong gustatory preference for oxoisophorone and strong aversion to linalool. Collectively, the results of this work indicate that plants partition floral volatiles based on the gustatory preferences of their main pollinator thereby maximize pollination efficiency.

Caitlin Stopka, Nursing

Differences in Anxiety and Stress Levels of Float and Unit-Based Nurses

APEX Faculty Mentor: Monika Schuler

Float nurses are commonly utilized in hospitals to adapt to changes in patient populations. These nurses are not assigned to a permanent unit, and instead, move to a different unit every shift based on the needs of the hospital. Float nurses have reported a lack of support, orientation, and resources while floating. Prior literature has shown that float nurses report increased feelings of stress and anxiety while floating. However, prior literature had not examined if there are differences in float nurses’ anxiety and stress compared to unit-based nurses. A quantitative correlational study was utilized to assess anxiety and stress levels of float and unit-based nurses. The survey was administered through nursing-focused Facebook groups; a total of 113 respondents fully completed the survey. Anxiety and stress were measured using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) scale and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10). Both float and unit-based nurses' average scores were indicative of moderate stress and moderate anxiety levels. However, there was no statistical difference in anxiety and stress levels between the two groups. It appears that stress and anxiety are of concern for all nurses, giving evidence that nurses need more support to improve their mental well-being. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown to have a negative impact on nurses’ mental health, and may be the reason why there was no difference in stress and anxiety levels between the two groups of nurses. Health care agencies should focus on providing support and resources to improve the mental well-being of nurses.

Ian Sullivan, Bioengineering

Effects of Physical and Mechanical Properties of ECM on Activation of Host Immune System for the Purpose of Angiogenesis

APEX Faculty Mentor: Steven Zanganeh

The purpose of this research is to further understand how the innate immune system plays a role with the insertion of a scaffold and understanding how the adaptive immune system activates to promote tissue regeneration and angiogenesis.  This project will utilize macrophages and test how they change phenotype based on the substrate they’re cultured on in the hopes of creating an anti-inflammatory response.  The importance of this topic is to work towards understanding the immune system and how to control it.  In vitro studies of implants have been producing promising results, however, when these studies are tested in vivo, the implant fails because of the lack of understanding of the host immune system.  This creates the need to gain more knowledge of how various immune cells interact with different types of implants in order to improve the field of tissue engineering and medicine.

Lauren E. Talbot

Development of Peer Mentorship Program for College Students with ADHD: A Pilot Study

APEX Faculty Mentor: Heloisa Alves

Although most schools have a counseling center and a student resource center, studies have shown that only 40% of students with ADHD are offered adequate accommodations, and just 45% of students with access to accommodations reported using it (Green & Rabiner, 2012). University of Massachusetts Dartmouth students who have been diagnosed with ADHD do not currently have access to accommodations that specifically target their everyday academic, emotional, and social difficulties (e.g., enhancing self-management skills). In this context, a more appropriate (and practical) support system is needed; one that provides the specific tools and skills that these students need to succeed academically and in life.  The objective of the project was to develop a pilot peer mentorship program for college students with ADHD that will address four main skills: Academic Goal Setting, Time Management, Study Skills, and Wellness.

Alexa Van Voorhis, Bioengineering

Shark Skin Inspired Textured Surfaces for Drag Manipulation Under Laminar Flow to Enhance Wave Energy Convertor Efficiency

APEX Faculty Mentor: Daniel MacDonald

Wave energy converters are gaining traction in the renewable energy industry due to their enormous energy potential and reliable energy source. The Maximal Asymmetric Wave Energy Converter (MADWEC) developed at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth replaces the metal spar in point absorber wave energy converters with a tethered ballast system that reduces the weight and cost of the typical design. To be effective, the tethered ballast must remain in tension as the MADWEC ascends and descends by manipulating drag. Biomimicry can be incorporated to assist in manipulation of drag and in turn making energy conversion more effective. A shark skin denticle-like pattern can be applied to the water columns of the MADWEC which have been hypothesized to assist in drag manipulation. Shark skin denticle-like surfaces have been utilized to decrease drag under turbulent conditions, but no studies have been conducted where effect of drag on the denticle like pattern is analyzed under laminar flow. Denticle patterns under laminar flow could potentially be applicable for the MADWEC; Therefore, seven denticle patterns with varying angles and arrangements on a flat plate were tested in a recirculating water tunnel where the effect of drag was analyzed. Two different flow directions were tested to simulate the ascent and descent of the MADWEC on the waves.  The results showed that the presence of the denticle pattern increases drag under laminar flow compared to a flat control. This could be due to the denticle’s ability to trap eddies responsible for inducing turbulent flow.

Elizabeth West, Marketing & Management

Business Feasibility Study for a Software as a Service (SaaS) Start-Up

APEX Faculty Mentor: Steven White

A business model is a key element for small business success. It is the managerial equivalent of the scientific method—you start with a hypothesis, which you then test in action and revise when necessary. A business model provides insight into what drives customers to a certain business and how can a business deliver value to the customer. This study was conducted to test ETA Wiz’s business feasibility for a software as a service (SaaS). ETA Wiz is a mobile app development designed to provide live-location sharing for businesses and service providers. The business model was an essential component for this research as it allowed for experimentation, testing, and validation of the different elements that would contribute to the business’ success. The project concluded with the 9 validated elements of the business model and a recommendation for ETA Wiz’s go to-market strategy.