Research Notes
College of Health and Human Sciences
RESEARCH SEEKS GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF CONCUSSIONS
Concussions are a common but unfortunate occurrence in athletics. Georgia Southern researchers are looking into the long-term effects of concussions with a $385,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health.
“Our goal is to help determine how long the effects of a concussion persist,” said Georgia Southern health and kinesiology professor Thomas Buckley. “If a person returns to risky activity while still suffering the effects of a concussion they are more likely to suffer another concussion, which will likely be worse and could potentially even be fatal. We hope that this research leads to a better understanding of how long a person needs in order to fully recover before engaging in activity that could put them at risk for another head injury.”
The research, which will help coaches, athletic trainers and doctors deal more effectively with concussions, builds on three years of ongoing concussion research within the College of Health and Human Sciences. In addition to Buckley, professors Barry Munkasy, Laura Gunn, George Shaver, and Brandy Close are participating in the research in collaboration with University of North Carolina-Charlotte faculty member Erik Wilkstrom.
Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health
ZHANG PLACES TWO ARTICLES IN MAJOR JOURNAL
Public health professor Jian Zhang and an international team of researchers have published two reports on efforts to reduce the incidence of measles and rubella in rural China.
The Journal of Infectious Diseases published their work, “Impact of Supplementary Immunization Activities in Measles-Endemic Areas: A Case Study From Guangxi, China” and “Innovative Use of Surveillance Data to Harness Political Will to Accelerate Measles Elimination: Experience From Guangxi, China,” which was sponsored by the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
“This year may see the historically highest number of cases in 20 years in this country and most of these are imported from outside,” said Zhang. “The most immediate concern to the general public is an increased risk for measles exposure to travelers and potential importation into the U.S. China is the leading country of origin for foreign-born children adopted in the United States. In 2010, U.S. citizens adopted approximately 4,000 children from China.
“Helping the global community to eliminate measles and reducing the potential risk of importation is the top priority in the Global Immunization Division of the CDC,” Zhang said.
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
PROFESSOR INVITED TO SHARE EXPERTISE IN ICELAND
Writing and Linguistics professor and Fulbright Scholar Lori Amy has been invited to Iceland to present her research on non-governmental organizations’ influence on the changing society of Albania.
Her visit is supported by a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies Committee on European Studies.
Amy’s paper, “NGOs and Civil society in Albania: Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, Where We’re Going,” looks at the last of the Soviet-bloc countries to open its borders. It explores the relationship among state, municipality, private enterprise, and the nonprofit sector and how structural realignments in these sectors can work together to advance health, welfare and economic development.
“The communist regime – in power until 1991 – exercised a high degree of state terror,” said Amy. “Eighteen percent of the population was subject to exile, arrest, imprisonment, torture or execution, and it is estimated 20 percent of the population cooperated with the secret police in a surveillance structure that eradicated any possibility of a dissident movement. From this past, what in the West is understood as ‘civil society’ was, under the one-party system, illegal.”
The analysis is part of her ongoing research about traumatic memory under communism in transition.
College of Business Administration
BARILLA TO TEST EFFECT OFECONOMICS STUDY ON THINKING
Grants from PearsonEducation/Publishing and The Georgia Council on Economic Education will fund an investigation of testing critical thinking skills in a Principles of Macroeconomics course.
Economics professor Tony Barilla received the grant and will begin his study this fall.
“It’s been proven in other research that taking an upper-division economics course increases critical thinking,” said Barilla. “I’m going to look at the ‘Principles of Economics’ level to see if an introductory course has the same effect.”
College of Education
PATHWAYS PROJECT RESEARCH
Education professor Robert Mayes wants to be sure there are environmentally literate citizens who can make informed decisions about challenges like fresh water availability and our diminishing biodiversity.
Mayes is leading a portion of a National Science Foundation Mathematics and Science Partnership project or “Pathways Project” – a collaborative of 11 universities, four Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites, and 22 K-12 school districts impacting over 250 STEM teachers and 70,000 students. The goal is to address environmental literacy education through the development of learning progressions across grades 6-12 in the areas of biodiversity, water systems and the carbon cycle.
Mayes leads the Quantitative Reasoning (QR) Theme of the Pathways Project, which is exploring the role of mathematics and statistics in students’ development of environmental literacy. His QR team is examining three practices that might serve as tools or barriers in the environmental literacy learning progressions: quantitative literacy, the intense use of fundamental mathematical concepts in sophisticated ways; quantitative interpretation, which is the ability to use models to make predictions and discover trends; and quantitative modeling, the ability to create representations to explain science.
Allen E. Paulson College of Science and Technology
BIOLOGY RESEARCHER STUDIES HEALTH OF WATERWAYS
Biology professor Checo Colon-Gaud knows that small creatures can tell a big story about the health of streams and rivers.
Colon-Gaud is researching the role of freshwater insects in streams and rivers as indicators of the health of waterways. “In general, my students and I are interested in the role that aquatic consumers, mainly insects, play in ecosystem structure and function,” he said. “Early in their lives many of these insects depend on a healthy aquatic environment where they can develop to play very important roles in the breakdown of coarse materials like leaves and debris from the surrounding forest. However, as both juveniles and adults, they depend on healthy terrestrial environments for food, refuge and dispersal habitats.
“Furthermore, many of these insects can serve as food sources for larger consumers and make their way up the food chain as an important resource for fish, amphibians and even birds,” said Colon-Gaud. “They can also provide important insight into the health and condition of local aquatic systems as many can be sensitive and thus respond rapidly to altered conditions.”
Some of the researcher’s studies look at small streams in the Appalachian mountains and the Puerto Rican rainforest. Others are examining floodplains and wetlands of larger rivers in the Southeastern Coastal Plain.
College of Information Technology
IT PROFESSOR ZHANG EXPLORES ‘YINYANG BIPOLAR RELATIVITY’
The ancient Chinese concept of yin yang describes how polar opposites or seemingly opposing forces are actually interconnected, dependent, reciprocal of one another in equilibrium, harmony or complementarity.
College of Information Technology Professor of Computer Sciences Wen-Ran Zhang has taken the concept to a new level in his book, YinYang Bipolar Relativity: A Unifying Theory of Nature, Agents and Causality with Applications in Quantum Computing, Cognitive Informatics and Life Sciences.
In it, Zhang applies the yinyang concept to make complex theoretical topics like quantum entanglement logically understandable.