Bachelor's Essays (Embargoed)

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Browsing Bachelor's Essays (Embargoed) by Issue Date "2013-06-05"

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    Facebook Knows You: An Analysis of Facebook, Social Anxiety, and Narcissism in Young Adults
    (2013-06-05) Cifaldi, Olivia; Gutshall, Anne; Kolak, Amy$
    Participants were recruited via Facebook and administered a brief survey exploring Facebook use, social anxiety, and narcissism. Several significant relationships were found including results supporting prior research on social anxiety, friend selection and activity of use; as well as with narcissism and self-promotion. Overall, an individual's persona on Facebook is related to their real life persona. In addition, those with socially anxious and narcissistic qualities also reflect those qualities online. Recommendations and ideas for future research and practice are discussed.
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    Food Deserts in Context: A Look at South Carolina and Charleston
    (2013-06-05) Conwell, Elizabeth; Knotts, Gibbs
    For the history of its study, the concept of “food deserts” has been a difficult one to pinpoint. Various definitional challenges suggest a variety of potential ways to study food (in)accessibility in a spatial context. Because this research aims to lay a foundation in the study of food deserts in South Carolina and the Charleston area, the focus of this paper will use statistical analysis to present a preliminary look at where food deserts are located using data from the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Access Research Atlas. Are there any patterns as to where these areas of low access occur? Next, this paper will examine the demographic features of these areas, pairing the 2000 US Census demographic data to the accessibility data. Can we detect any trends in terms of the defining characteristics of these affected communities? Are there “indicators” of potentially low access? Finally, after calculating results for the various levels of analysis, a comparison between local, state, and national conditions of food accessibility will be discussed. How does South Carolina compare to national trends? How does Charleston stack up to other counties in the state? The answers to these questions represent a first step in better understanding food access in South Carolina and the Charleston area. Findings show that South Carolina and Charleston are consistent with national trends as well as previous localized studies.
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    MKP‐1 LPS-Driven Osteoclastogenesis More Prevalent in Dusp‐1‐/‐ Females Than Males
    (2013-06-05) Browne, Courtney G; Valerio, Michael S; Kirkwood, Keith L; Morrison, Susan$
    Periodontal disease is the result of chronic inflammatory bone loss due to a sustained immune system response to pathogenic invasion. Osteoclasts (OC) are multinucleated, bone resorbing cells that play a vital role in bone turnover. Receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa B ligand (RANKL) is the physiological regulator of osteoclastogenesis (OCgen) in naïve progenitor populations. Gram-negative bacteria involved in pathogenesis of periodontal disease contain the endotoxin, lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which increases RANKL expression by activating innate immune inflammatory cascades including mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK). MAPK activity is negatively regulated by MAPK phosphatase (MKP)-1 which is encoded by the gene Dusp-1. The current study aims to investigate the role of Dusp-1 when driven by LPS and primed with RANKL OC progenitors (OCP). Based on the role of MKP-1 as a negative regulator of activated MAPK, we hypothesize that Dusp-1 deficient OCP will form more OCs in response to LPS stimuli. OCPs were isolated from male and female hematopoietic stem cells via magnet-activated cell sorting (MACS) and plated (5x104/well) based on expression of CD11b (CD11bhigh, low and neg), from Dusp-1+/+ and Dusp-1-/- mice. Cells were primed with macrophage colony stimulating factor (M-CSF) and RANKL for 48 hours and were then stimulated with 10ng/ml of A. actinomycetemcomitans LPS for up to 4 days. A tartrate resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) assay was used to visualize formation of OCs at day 0 (M-CSF +RANKL only) and days 2 and 4 post-LPS. Images generated from TRAP were used to determine the number of OCs, number of nuclei per OC, and area per OC. Day 0 cells lacked any exposure to LPS, resulting in minimal variation between Dusp-1+/+ and Dusp-1-/- for all CD11b populations. By Day 2 there was a significant trend of increased female Dusp-1-/- OCgen, with CD11bhigh having the greatest difference (p<0.05). Male data followed an opposite trend, with Dusp-1-/- having less OCgen for all CD11b sorted populations. By Day 4, female CD11bhigh (p<0.0001) and CD11blow (p<0.05) had significantly more OCs for Dusp-1-/-. Day 4 of the males showed a large decrease in Dusp-1+/+ cells, specifically in CD11blow. The data show that LPS induced more osteoclast formation in female Dusp-1-/- mice than Dusp-1+/+ mice. The male Dusp-1+/+ populations show a preliminary increase in OCgen. However, by day 4 there are substantially more Dusp-1-/- cells that are larger than their Dusp1+/+ counterparts. Therefore, these studies indicate that MKP-1 is key negative regulator of MAPK and the subsequent increased OC differentiation promotes inflammatory bone resorption.