Nano- and microscale zinc oxide (ZnO) have demonstrated potential for applications in electronic, pharmacological and chemical industries among others. At these scales, surface properties dominate, rendering surface defects highly influential. Consequently, understanding of defect- related phenomena are crucial to achieving impactful figures of merit. Many optoelectronic properties of ZnO relevant for applications have been linked to defect-related visible luminescence. Its fundamental origins are still being debated, with attributions to oxygen vacancies, zinc vacancies, oxygen antisites, donor-acceptor pairs, etc. In our studies, we contribute to this discussion by probing the relationship between crystal morphology and this luminescence. We conducted optoelectronic studies to characterize the effects of remote oxygen plasma treatment on hydrothermally-grown microscale ZnO samples with controlled morphology as a means to help elucidate the nature of the visible emission. We report on the observed changes in the photoluminescence spectra indicative of the relationship between surface defects, morphology, and electronic structure of ZnO.

Fifty percent of stars in the night sky are actually binary star systems, but finding and characterizing them requires significant data, time, and analysis. Studying the brighter star of the pair is fairly straightforward, but the secondary is commonly hidden. Using the infrared spectroscopy data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey combined with the WIYN Open Cluster Survey, we create a longer baseline with which we can better characterize these stars. The Joker, a new Monte Carlo analysis technique, will help us reveal the hidden binary stars by producing solutions for the orbits of the systems. By finding new binary stars, we can better understand the demographics and composition of our chosen star cluster, NGC 6819, and also learn more about each individual companion of the systems.

Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, increases prosocial behavior. Research has demonstrated that when a former competitive athlete reflects on their time participating in their sport, they experience feelings of nostalgia. Applying the prosocial nature of nostalgia to an athletic domain, it was hypothesized in the current study that sport-specific nostalgia would predict greater sportsmanship attitudes among athletes. To test this, we primed former competitive athletes with sport nostalgia by instructing them to write about a memory from playing their sport. Then they completed items about their sportsmanship attitudes, such as respecting opponents and officials. Results showed that nostalgia-primed participants reported greater sportsmanship attitudes compared to a control group. This is consistent with research showing that nostalgic reflection increases prosocial attitudes and behavior. In future work we plan to examine these findings in current competitive athletes to give further insight into the role that nostalgia plays in sport settings.

Background: Reward loss is accompanied by a stress response affecting emotion and health. Problem: A comprehensive map of brain activity, or connectome, during an episode involving reward loss remains to be worked out. A connectome is being developed using the protein c-Fos expressed in recently activated neurons. Method: Experimental animals were exposed to reward loss (high-to-low sucrose and pellet downshift), whereas control animals had access only to the small or only to the large reward. c-Fos expression was measured in brain slices obtained after the reward loss event using immunohistochemistry. Brain activity levels in experimental and control animals were determined based on c-Fos expression in several key brain areas. Results: c-Fos expression was found to be higher in areas involved in negative emotion and lower in areas involved in reward processing in downshifted vs. unshifted groups. Contribution: This novel approach will continue to help identify the brain connectome underlying reward loss, that is the set of excited and inhibited areas when the organism is experiencing a loss.

Learning and correctly remembering health information is important at all ages, and it can be particularly important in later adulthood (65+ years old). Thus, interventions focused on identifying methods to improve young and older adults’ health knowledge and memory for medication information are valuable. We developed a cognitive intervention relying on methods that have been identified to be effective for enhancing learning. Specifically, prior research has established that retrieval practice (recalling information from memory) can be a powerful tool for learning other kinds of information. Our goal was to evaluate the degree to which a retrieval practice intervention would improve younger and older adults’ self-regulated learning of medication side effects. Younger adults from TCU and older adults from the community were recruited to participate. Participants who received the intervention were given information about repeated retrieval practice that emphasized the effectiveness of this strategy for improving memory. Specifically, the intervention indicated that they should recall each medication’s side effects correctly 3 times during learning, and they should continue to space their retrieval practice until they met this goal. All participants learned medication names paired with a side-effect. They made decisions about when to study, engage in retrieval practice, and stop learning the list of medication-side effect pairs. Younger and older adults’ who received the intervention made better study decisions relative to those who did not. Further, the intervention enhanced both younger and older adults’ memory for medication side effects relative to control conditions. These outcomes suggest that our evidence-based intervention can help young and older adults learn and remember critical health information, which may assist them in monitoring for adverse outcomes during medication usage.