Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is a common, contagious infection of the lungs and the respiratory tract. Syncytia are multinuclear cells that have fused together. It is so common that it effects all ages, but most people have experienced RSV by age two. Symptoms typically present similar to the common cold, with minimal effects and are easily treatable. RSV can, however, have detrimental effects on young children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems. As an individual infected cell can produce virus, so can syncytia cells. But, because of experimental limitations, it is difficult to measure characteristics such as viral production and lifespan of the syncytia cells. We will use mathematical models to study how different assumptions about the viral production and lifespan of syncytia change the resulting infection to determine whether less direct measurements can be used to determine syncytia viral production rates and lifespans.

Rhinovirus is the most prevalent virus in humans and is often the cause of the common cold. Modeling the dynamics of rhinovirus can allow us to observe important aspects of the virus including the general growth of the virus, the remaining target cells, the number of cells in the eclipse phase, and the number of infected cells. Following that, we can attempt to estimate parameters such as how much virus an infected cell produces or how long it takes an infected cell to start producing virus. We can use a method called Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to try and gain more accurate estimates of those parameter based off observed data. Modeling rhinovirus will give us deeper insight into the workings of rhinovirus and allow us to try better and more accurate models of the virus.

Non-invasive temperature sensing is necessary for the analysis of biological processes occurring in the human body including cellular enzyme activity, protein expression, and ion regulation. Considering that a variety of such biological processes occur at the microscopic scale, a mechanism allowing for the detection of the temperature changes in microscopic environments is desired. Although several such techniques have been developed involving nanomaterials, there is still a need in deterministic non-invasive biocompatible approach allowing for temperature measurements both outside the cells and in the intracellular compartments. Here we develop a novel approach utilizing graphene quantum dots (GQDs) as agents for such detection. Because of their small 2-5 nm size, non-invasive optical sensitivity to temperature change and high biocompatibility, GQDs enable biologically safe sub-cellular resolution imaging. Both bottom-up synthesized nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots and quantum dots produced from reduced graphene oxide via top-down approach in this work exhibit temperature-induced fluorescence variations used as sensing mechanism. Distinctive quenching of quantum dot fluorescence by up to 19.8 % is observed, in a temperature range from 25℃ to 49℃, in aqueous solution, while the intensity is restored to the original values as the temperature decreases back to 25℃. A similar trend is observed in vitro in HeLa cells as the cellular temperature is increased from 25℃ to 41℃. Our findings suggest that the temperature-dependent fluorescence quenching of bottom-up and top-down-synthesized graphene quantum dots can serve as non-invasive reversible deterministic mechanism for temperature sensing in microscopic sub-cellular biological environments.

Habituation occurs when responding to a stimulus decreases with repeated exposure. This decrease can be seen in an array of behaviors, including wheel running. In this experiment, rats ran in four different contexts (i.e., running wheels with different backgrounds/scents) for 30 minutes every day. One group ran in the same context daily while the other alternated between contexts. Rats running in different contexts should habituate less and run more consistently and at a higher rate. By increasing our understanding of the influence of habituation on exercise, results will have important implications for those wanting to maintain interest in an exercise routine.

Abstract SRS: Effects of Cross-Situational Generalization on Memory and Attitude Polarization Toward Social Groups

Serena Avitia, Akua Jonah, & Kaleigh Decker

When people generalize about others, they go beyond the information they are given and infer a level of cross-situational consistency that may polarize their attitudes. The current study investigates how cross-situational generalizations about a group’s traits can affect subsequent attitudes and memory. We predicted that participants who generalized about a fictitious groups behavior across various settings will rate the likelihood of cross-situational trait consistency as significantly higher than the scale mid-point, and report more negative attitudes toward the group than participants who reviewed the initial information they were given. Generalizers will also write paragraphs that more depict group members as displaying the original traits in general rather than only in the given situations, mistakenly recall and recognize some of the situations they rated as part of the initial information, and mistakenly report that their reported attitudes (after they generalized) were the same as their impressions immediately after reading the initial information. The predicted results will increase our understanding of the processes by which attitudes toward an entire group can polarize without any additional information.

In this exploratory, mixed methods project, we seek to understand how implementation of Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), a trauma-informed, evidence-based model of caregiving developed by TCU faculty, has shaped systems of care for vulnerable children and youth. The current study reports on the first year of implementation across nine child welfare organizations participating in a county-wide mental health collaborative. Data included monthly implementation process interviews conducted with representative staff of each agency [TBRI Implementation Strategy Use; n = 9 agencies], as well as survey data from a subset of agencies [TCU Survey of Organizational Functioning (SOF); n = 4 agencies]. The data sample reveals overall increases for TBRI strategy use during the first year of implementation. In addition, organizational functioning scores that were above the baseline mean of the sample yielded increased scores in strategy use. Future research suggests further analyzing the complexities of TBRI implementation across the large-scale collaborative.

Hope Connection 2.0 is a therapeutic camp developed by the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development (KPICD) that utilizes Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®), a trauma-informed and attachment-based intervention, to meet the needs of adoptive families. To examine its effectiveness in meeting these needs, data from child and parent measures are collected from participating families during a one-year time period. The current study specifically examines the effectiveness of this intervention in decreasing aggression in adopted children and decreasing relational frustration between the parent and adopted children from pre- to post-camp. The results of this study indicate that both aggression and relational frustration significantly decreased after families participated in the intervention. Additionally, results suggest a significant positive correlation between aggression and relational frustration, suggesting the more a child exhibits aggression, the more relational frustration the parent(s) feels. Results of this study indicate the effectiveness of Hope Connection 2.0 in reducing aggression and frustration in adoptive families, demonstrating the potential benefit of this post-adoption intervention in meeting the needs of adoptive families. 

Institutional care can negatively impact a child's development, leading to developmental delays and emotional and behavioral problems. These issues can be treated through an attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention, such as Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI). The government of Rwanda learned about the effects of institutional care and TBRI and aimed to improve its orphan care. In order to do this, they found families for every orphan and provided TBRI training for caregivers who adopted these children. In the current study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 volunteers who helped train and support these caregivers. A phenomenological approach was used to analyze the interviews. Results revealed five main themes: Rwandans took ownership of the need to care for orphans; they recognized the children's need for connection; they valued the role of family in a child's life; the utilized the power of community in making TBRI use successful; and the volunteers acted as mediators in the adoptive families. This study is the first to examine TBRI use internationally, and the results demonstrate the usefulness of Rwanda's model of orphan care with TBRI implementation that could be replicable in other settings.

In academic environments, the ability to comprehend written text is critical for successful learning. In spite of the importance of this skill, few programs exist for improving comprehension, especially for typically-developing readers. Previous research demonstrated that cervical vagus nerve stimulation (cVNS) is a safe and effective method for driving neural plasticity. However, an invasive and expensive procedure is not practical for a reading intervention. Recent research has demonstrated that the auricular branch of the vagus nerve can be accessed non-invasively through transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) at the outer ear (Frangos, Ellrich, & Komisaruk, 2015). Recent work in our lab provides evidence that taVNS paired with training can improve novel letter-sound learning (Thakkar et al., under review). Thus, we hypothesized that pairing taVNS with reading would aid reading comprehension in typically-developing young adults. We recruited typically-developing young adult readers and verified reading ability using standard assessments. Eligible participants were randomly assigned to receive either active or sham stimulation to the posterior tragus of the left ear while reading passages and subsequently answering standard comprehension questions from the GORT-5 (Wiederholt & Bryant, 2012). Participants were scored on time spent reading, errors in reading, and comprehension. While data collection is ongoing, pilot data suggest a benefit of active stimulation on comprehension, as compared to those receiving sham stimulation. Implications of this work may suggest using taVNS as a novel intervention for reading comprehension, but further studies should extend the methods in a sample of struggling readers.

The purpose of the study was to compare the effects of three instructional conditions on emergent relations between visual stimuli. Participants were 75 college students who were randomly assigned to three groups. Participants in the standard group were trained to relate the visual stimuli they saw to text labels, referred to as tact training, prior to learning to relate pairs of text labels, referred to as intraverbal training. Participants in the reverse group received the intraverbal training before the tact training. The instructed visualization group received the same training sequence as the standard group but were given explicit instructions to visualize the images they learned during intraverbal training. The match-to-sample (MTS) testing format was used to evaluate the emergent relations between the visual stimuli. We predicted that the instructed visualization group would complete the MTS task faster and with higher accuracy than other groups because of their histories of visualizing the stimulus relations during the intraverbal training session. The results showed that the instructed visualization group had non-significantly faster reaction times during the MTS test compared to the standard and reverse groups but performed significantly more accurately (p< .001).