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Pilot Projects |
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Call for Proposals Call for Proposals: Purpose: Funds Available: Eligibility: Summer Pilot Projects - Criteria / Guidelines for Submissions:
Submissions:
Allowable Use of Funds: Funds may be used for a number of purposes:
If you have some application of funds that is not listed here, please call Dr. Louden at ext. 3347 or 3516 or Ms. Walker at ext. 3435. We can check permissibility. Process:
Note: The signature of the department chair is required because of the possible use of department time, facilities, and equipment.
Abstract Anthropologists identify bipedalism
as the first human characteristic to appear. In rapidly changing
environments, they propose that evolutionary pressures for such
things as carrying objects, gathering food, and cooling would have
led to bipedalism. However, if language, both vocal and gestural,
is taken as the starting point of human evolution the significant
pressure for bipedalism may have been the freeing of the hands to
point. By intentionally using the pointing gesture to link a mental
representation via an arbitrary sound to locate an object in their
environment early ‘humans’ produced a primitive version
of language - protolanguage. This provided individuals a new way
of communicating the whereabouts of things to others. Protolanguage
allowed ‘humans’ to develop interdependent social groups
and culture and this enabled them to adapt to new and changing environments
guaranteeing their survival. Language is what made humans human
and this led to bipedalism. Dr. Anna Hull, Ph. D., ASSISTANT
PROFEESOR, BIOLOGY In the fall of 2006 when ORDPC filed a joint application to the Pennsylvania Department of Health with Dr. Philip Lazarus in the Cancer Institute at the Penn State University College of Medicine for a grant in the field of Gene Environment Interaction and Colorectal Cancer in North East Pennsylvania Dr. Hull was an integral part of the application process. When the funding was awarded in the summer of 2007, Dr Hull was immediately engaged in establishing a research training program in haplotyping and genotyping techniques which has allowed her to further her knowledge in the field of genetic association studies. The goal is to provide sufficient training and establish a true collaboration for Dr Hull to be able to perform some of the genotype analysis at Lincoln University during year 1 of the award. In addition, it may be possible for Dr Hull to identify other gene clusters that are suitable for future gene environment studies. Dr Hull’s extensive experience in molecular genetics lends itself to the methods in specific aim 4 – Identification of haplotype-associated potentially-functional polymorphisms and calculation of LD. This will take place during year 2 and thereafter. The goal is to identify novel polymorphisms in haplotypes associated with an increased risk for CRC and characterize these polymorphisms and determine the LD with the original htSNPs. The alleles of interest will be amplified from homozygous individuals and then sequenced for identification of SNPs. While dideoxy DNA sequencing will be performed at the Molecular Biology Core Facility at PSCOM, the PCR amplification and subsequent analysis can be performed at Lincoln University.In specific aim 5 of the proposal, the mutant alleles associated with increased cancer risk will be functionally analyzed. Some of these analyses can be performed at Lincoln University. Dr Hull has participated in weekly seminars with the Lazarus and Muscat labs since the start of the grant. In the fall of 2007 she became directly involved with a research project in the Lazarus and Muscat labs and she has traveled to Hershey nearly weekly since December to conduct research. She presented her preliminary work at a seminar here at Lincoln. Furthermore, she has invited a member of the Lazarus lab, Dr. Carla Gallagher, to present a seminar in the biology department at Lincoln and she facilitated the collection and review of applications for a summer undergraduate research position for a Lincoln student in Dr. Lazarus and Muscat’s lab. It is her hope that the selected student will want to continue working with her during the academic year and she plans to invite the student to present his or her research at the poster presentation at the 58th Annual Human Genetics a Meeting in Philadelphia this fall. Dr. Hull has a passion for research and a genuine interest in providing
research opportunities for Lincoln University students. She is presently
trying to establish requirements for all students who are doing
bio research for credits. They will be required to write a mini-thesis
or make a poster that can be presented at the Science Fair. In addition
she has also provided workshops for students in gaining summer internship
opportunities and has written numerous recommendations in support
to student’s application for internships. Mother is Gold: A Traditional Mother-Centered Community Based Approach to Food Security and Poverty Reduction as the foundation for Public Health among Rural Poor Women of South Western Nigeria. Emmanuel Babatunde, D.PHIL (Oxon.) Abstract This research builds on the recent pronouncement of the World Bank
that nutrition is the foundation of all development. Its approach
is multidisciplinary in nature and preventive in objective. It combines
the expertise of nutrition, economics and anthropology to create
an intervention project aimed at food security, poverty reduction
and wealth generation for self-employment by using the strengths
within the culture such as micro-credit to revitalize the community.
It commences with a pretest research orientation in which primary
data relating to demographics of the community, occupation and public
health facilities are obtained and used to structure the intervention
strategy. It explores, through ethnographic data gathering method,
the beliefs and taboos about food and how these help or hinder adequate
nutrition. Through nutrition education, it employs the concept of
positive deviance to sensitize the mainly women participants of
the project to see the link between adequate nutrition provided
by animal source foods that the local taboos prohibit to the survival
and thriving of their children. It unifies the community women into
a corporate body working together to generate wealth through micro-credit
scheme to keep their daughters in the rural areas, away from the
over-crowded disease ridden cities. Technology Integration in Second Language
Acquisition: Increasing Motivation, Breaking Classroom Barriers,
and Improving Communicative Proficiency. This project is conceived in the context of the demographic change
occurred in the United States in recent years, which has made it
necessary and advantageous for university students to become proficient
in foreign languages in general and Spanish in particular. Interestingly,
the foreign language profession has expressed a concern about the
low numbers of African American graduates in the languages. Therefore,
it becomes imperative for educators to practice culturally relevant
teaching in order to motivate African American students to become
proficient in foreign languages. Theoretically, this project is
based on the latest developments in language acquisition methodology,
which focuses on communication and exposure to comprehensible input
in the language in order to increase proficiency. An additional
line of research that has served as the background for this project
refers to the numerous benefits of the integration of computer-mediated
communication in language courses. Olola Village (Imeko-Afon Local Government
Area of Ogun State, Nigeria) Dr. Emmanuel D. Babatunde, Professor
Dr. Ganga P. Ramdas
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The HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to ravage countries throughout
the world. Of the 34 million people living with HIV/AIDS, 23 million are in
Sub-Saharan Africa. In Africa, particularly the southern African sub-region and
the war-torn areas of Liberia, Sierra Leone and now Ivory Coast, the spread of
this pandemic continues relentlessly, having been compounded by poverty,
instability and food insecurity. Although the infection rate of the pandemic is
less in West Africa as compared to South Africa, the probability is that if
self-employment opportunities and food security are not brought to the
villagers in their villages, healthy unskilled village migrants to the West
African cities will bring back health problems to the village that will
compound the poverty and instability there. The instrument of social
engineering to prevent this from occurring is to use elements of this pilot
project grant to infuse money and new skills of self employment to reinforce
traditional practices of social capital that exist in the culture of farming,
marketing and rotating micro-credits known as Esusu to generate self employment
opportunities in the village.
The critical issues facing health care reform are the rising
costs of providing healthcare services and products to both the employed and
unemployed members of society in an equitable manner. In order to achieve
equity, the health care system has been reformed variously since 1975 for
administered cost control and quality improvements, beginning in 1989 with the
formation of the Agency for Health Care Quality and continuing with proposals
in 1994 for Health Care Quality Regulation covering all health plans. These
efforts are mere patchwork initiatives that do not address the critical
elements of competitive and strategic issues of achieving low cost and high
quality. Relevant public policy research requires adequate databases for
studying cost behavior relationships under different market structures in order
to assess the accuracy and validity of the now popular patient-perception
feedback on complex issues on the cost of providing and using health care
services. This project aims at establishing a comprehensive benchmark model of
cost and quality determinants for evaluating basic services performed within
the U.S. healthcare system. Public domain databases will be analyzed for their
relevance to cost and quality of healthcare service production, utilization,
and distribution of benefits and the incidence of costs among the insured and
not insured members of society. Data sets for ongoing cost, quality-quantity
indicators, and assessing disparities will begin under this pilot project.