Poster 92 – Undergraduate Research Symposium Abstracts

Early Identity Building in the Boy Scouts of America 1910–1912

Presenter: Charles Steenkolk

Faculty Mentor: Michael Peixoto, Jamie Bufalino

Presentation Type: Poster 92

Primary Research Area: Humanities

Major: History, Spanish

The Boy Scouts of America is one of the most popular, largest, and longest running youth organizations in the United States. Created in 1910, the organization competed with other youth organizations that started around the same time. This article looks at the incorporating documents, the letters and correspondence, and the minutes of the first national meetings, in order to identify and track the initial conceptualizations of the BSA as it asserted itself in the American society. The documents span from 1910 to 1912, the first two years of the BSA. The documents show that the future of the organization was not clear at the time, and that there were significant issues presented to the organization as it formed. The documents also show that the BSA was a composition of the individual people that founded it, and the consensus on a course of action was not present at first. The individual decisions of the leaders of the organization led to a more clear definition of the organization’s niche in society, and its identity as a youth organization.

The UO Veterans Oral History Project

Presenter: Leonie Schulze

Co-Presenters: Jennifer Esparza

Faculty Mentor: Alexander Dracobly

Presentation Type: Poster 92

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: English, History

Funding Source: Tom and Carol Williams Fund for Undergraduate Education; Department of History; Kira Homo and James Fox at Special Collections; Kirstin Hierholzer and her staff at the Center for Media and Educational Technologies

Every person has a story to tell and everyone’s story deserves to be told. These stories can be recorded and stored in archives to be read and possibly used for research in the future. This is exactly what students of the UO Veterans Oral History Project have been doing for the past five years and will continue to do for however long there are veterans out there willing to tell their story. For students, the project is an opportunity to learn about how to prepare and successfully conduct interviews, as well as how to transcribe them in a way that lets the interviewee’s character shine through black letters on white paper. For the veterans who are interviewed, the project is an opportunity to reflect on their military past in a safe environment, to perhaps tell a story they have not told before and to know that their names will not be forgotten. For future researchers this project will hopefully be useful in various ways. During the past five years that this project has been pursued, UO students have collected enough material for researchers to ask a wide variety of questions. Why did people decide to join? How did one individual’s experiences in Iraq or Afghanistan differ from those of another soldier? What did the service mean for the members’ families? Our project will hopefully serve as a public record and as a tool for future researches and historians to find answers to their questions.

Gap Detection in Auditory Cortex

Presenter: Ulysses Duckler

Faculty Mentor: Mike Wehr, Aldis Weible

Presentation Type: Poster 92

Primary Research Area: Science

Major: Biochemistry

Funding Source: OURS Summer Research Program

Strong evidence supports that hearing loss and difficulty with speech comprehension in noisy environments for older adults is the result of temporal processing deficits in central auditory structures such as the auditory cortex. There is a general canonical circuit model of layer by layer serial information flow through the auditory cortex from the thalamus, before information is projected back into inferior colliculus neurons. However the specific cortical circuits and cell types which regulate temporal processing though the auditory cortex are still unknown and not linked to behavior. The auditory cortex is necessary for temporal acuity in receiving auditory stimulus. Temporal acuity is necessary for brief noise gap detection and discriminating between similar phonemes, causing speech perception deficits when impaired. In this study, I tested gap detection in mice by measuring their startle response to noise gaps in white noise, gaps which were paired with a startle stimulus in repeated behavioral trials. The presence of the noise gap attenuates startle response to the stimulus, so that measuring the startle response gives a measure of temporal acuity by assessing gap detection behavior. Optogenetics allows for the gaps to be paired with a laser signal that silences auditory cortex neurons and allowed me to see how gap detection is impaired by temporally precise auditory cortex neuron suppression. By probing cortex circuit mechanisms through layer specific optogenetic silencing before and after gap, I found that layer specific silencing of auditory cortex neuron populations in layers four and five suggests behavior in accordance with the canonical model.

Participant Observational Research Looking At Changes In Traditional Nutrition In Putre, Chile That Includes An Examination Of The Gap Between Programmatic Goals And Practical Realities In Global Health Nutrition

Presenter(s): Paige Plaskoff − International Studies

Faculty Mentor(s): Kristen Yarris

Poster 92

Research Area: Public Health and Traditional Medicine

Global health nutrition is a priority for achieving overall population health and preventing cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and even death (WHO). Healthy nutrition is related to a number of causes of morbidity and overall mortality. In Chile, the Ministry of Health has established a comprehensive plan for the nutritional health of its people by promoting healthy lifestyle campaigns and creating informative nutritional guides. However, there are barriers to achieving the guidelines set out in this plan. This project looks at the divide between nutritional goals and realities of modern day families, using the case study of a nutritionist working at CESFAM (Centro de Salud Familiar), a family health center in Putre, a small town in Northern Chile. The research included participant observation at the health center alongside the nutritionist, interviews with the nutritionist and traditional healers, and participant observation in the agricultural fields of Putre. The project asks: What changes are occurring from traditional to contemporary dietary patterns and practices, and how are these changes linked to changing agricultural practices? I respond to this question in part by analyzing nutritional differences between the large city of Arica and the town of Putre. The project foregrounds the obstacles that the Chilean population must overcome in order to move towards nutritional health, including cultural values placed on different types of food and availability of food for rural v. urban residents. Finally, I examine the recent change in Chile’s public health junk food legislation as a case study for global health nutrition.

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