Students Present Undergraduate Research

Ten Fairmont State University students presented their research findings as part of the third annual Undergraduate Research Day at the Capitol on Thursday, Feb. 8. The event's purpose is to familiarize state legislators with research activities involving undergraduate students on campuses across the state and the educational impact of those activities.

FSU students invited to attend were Robert Ball, Jeff Bean, Eric Bee, Nathan Cleaver, Stephen Cook, Jeffrey Jacobs, Scott Keener, Nick Newman, Chris Sedlacek and Nick Simmons.

Robert Ball, a Computer Science/Information Technology student, presented "Classification of Steganography Applications." His faculty advisor is Don Tobin. Steganography is the science of hiding electronic data files inside other electronic data files, often used in conjunction with encryption to hide and protect the data. Many of these applications leave behind digital "fingerprints' in a system's registry or hard disk. Ball's research is aimed at creating a taxonomy of these applications by using a classification tree, an artificial intelligence technique useful in identifying clusters of similarity.

Scott Keener, Nick Newman and Jeff Bean, Computer Science/Information Technology students, presented "Building a Self-Defending, Secure Network for Small Business." Their faculty advisor is Holly Yuan. The goal of their research is to help small businesses to build a self-defending secure network cost effectively. They studied both attack methods and defense mechanisms in order to compile a cost-effective set of defenses using risk management for small business.

Stephen Cook, Eric Bee and Jeffrey Jacobs, Computer Science/Information Technology students, presented "A Prototype Stock Market Simulation System." Their faculty advisor is Rebecca Giorcelli. The product permits users to recreate the capital markets in a small scale and to deconstruct their actions and the actions of other players in a simulation that takes less than 90 minutes. The product provides game-based training software on capital markets for educating students and members of the general public.

Nick Simmons, a Biology student, presented "A Comparison of Physiological Responses to Running at Same Stride Rate in Three Different Water Depths." His faculty advisor is Paul Reneau. Many people utilize running in water for exercise or rehabilitation. The purpose of the study was to compare the physiological responses of running at the same stride rate in three different water depths. Eight subjects participated in a total of four exercise sessions. The results indicated that depth of water in which running is performed does not impact heart rate, rate of perceived exertion or thermal sensation; however, the greater the depth of water, the greater the lactic acid production.

Nathan Cleaver, a Biology student, presented "Validation of the American College of Sports Medicine's Cycling Equation Constant." His faculty advisor is Paul Reneau. Many people undergo a fitness test to determine their fitness level. The "gold" standard of fitness level is maximal oxygen consumption rate. The purpose of the project was to measure the oxygen consumption while riding a cycle ergometer against no resistance for four minutes each at a rate of 50 rpm's, 65 rpm's and 80 rpm's for a total of 12 minutes. The results indicate that the 7 mL/kg constant is appropriate of whether cycling at 50 to 80 rpm's.

Chris Sedlacek, a Biology student, presented "The Effect of Chemotherapeutic Cell Death on Cell Surface Proteins." His faculty advisor is Albert Magro. His investigation has obtained data about the proteins on the surface of brain tumor cells when treated in vitro chemotherapeutically. In addition, it was determined how the density of these proteins on the surface of cells changed as the cell was induced to go into cell death.

Other participating colleges and universities were Bethany College, Glenville State College, Marshall University, Ohio Valley University, Shepherd University, the University of Charleston, West Liberty State College, West Virginia University, WVU Institute of Technology and Wheeling Jesuit University.