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Tommie Tech services Usability Report
Our Usability/UX Design course at St. Thomas partnered with the university’s Tommie Tech Services (TTS) team to conduct usability testing on their website. TTS has made a lot of changes to their website over the last few years, and they want to know if the changes have made a positive impact on how the students of St. Thomas are getting tech help.
Girls Just Wanna Have Aggression: Female Zebra Finch Mate Competition Aggression in Response to D1 Dopamine Receptor Antagonist
Dopamine antagonists are a classification of drugs that bind to dopamine receptors but do not
activate them to block dopamine from binding and having an effect on the body [13]. There are
five dopamine receptors: D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5. D1 receptors are grouped with D5—both couple
to G stimulatory sites [11]. Of the five types of dopamine receptors, D1 receptors are the most
abundant throughout the central nervous system and are responsible for locomotion, learning
and memory, attention, impulse control, sleep, and regulation of renal function [12].
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Therapeutic Copings for Diabetes with Meditation and Mindfulness Interventions
The discovery of insulin over 100 years ago in 1921 instilled hope in diabetic patients that their disease may someday be cured. This dream has yet to come to fruition, however science has made great strides in the treatments and management of the disease. Historically, scientists have focused on medications and technology to treat and monitor diabetes (Lakhtakia, 2013). It is a chronic illness that targets the body and impacts the brain. Treatments should shift their focus on healing starting in the brain. The brain is a powerful machine that has the potential to assist in treatments from the inside. One way to unlock this power is through meditation. This is an intrinsic way to calm the body and combat issues that present themselves in various forms. This literature-based report analyzes the efficacy of meditation and mindfulness on common complications in patients with diabetes such as high blood glucose, hypertension, and coping with diabetic guilt.
Field Work
January 2023
I studied abroad over a January term in San Salvador in the Bahamas. We studied Neuroecology at the Gerace Research Institute. Part of this class was to undertake a research project in a neuroscience topic associated with the wildlife found on and near the island. My group decided to study reef fish’s perception of color. To do this, we placed an electrode in the fish’s pupil and flashed various colored lights. The electrode recorded the electronic activity, which can be associated with the neuronal activity. Fun fact: the fish had the most reaction to blue light!
August 2022
I worked with the National Parks Service in Denali National Park collecting vole population data in August of 2022. We checked live traps three times a day and identified their species, sexed each vole trapped, took DNA samples, weighed them, and tagged voles with a chip. The data used from this was added to a 30-year long data collection project on vole data. Fun fact: it was 20 degrees and snowy the first two nights we were there!
