Category: Academics

Halmos Faculty Presents at Distance Learning Conference

Santanu De, M.Sc., Ph.D., faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS), presented a 30-minute talk at the Florida Distance Learning Association (FDLA) Conference 2021 held virtually from September 29 through October 1, 2021.

The theme of the conference was “Emerging with New Digital Potentials.”  The title of De’s presentation was “Key Strategies for Effective Pedagogy and Assessment of College STEM Courses Online during COVID-19.”  De collaborated on and co-presented this interdisciplinary project with Georgina Arguello, Ed.D., faculty at NSU’s Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice.

De’s research interests include, STEM education, pedagogy, reproductive physiology, developmental biology, cell biology, and protein biology.

Halmos College Research Explores Mind-Altering Parasite

Research has shown how hyena cubs infected with the toxoplasma parasite become bolder in the face of lions, resulting in higher death rates. Commonly found in house cats, Toxoplasma gondii is the parasite that sometimes spreads to humans who handle domestic cat feces and can cause a disease called toxoplasmosis.

Cats aren’t the only animal to harbor the parasite. It’s also found in wild species, including the hyenas inhabiting a remote region of Kenya. These animals are now helping researchers answer longstanding questions about T. gondii’s impacts on wild hosts. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers from a variety of fields joined forces to look if the parasite impacts the animals’ behavior and survival.

Eben Gering, Ph.D., the co-lead author of the study and Halmos College of Arts and Sciences biology faculty said, “Hyenas turned out to be an excellent model for asking questions about the links between infection and behavior.” Research showed that in hyena cubs, the parasite impacted survival rates. The team found that hyena cubs up to a year old were more likely to be killed by lions if they were infected with the parasite. In fact, all the infected cubs that died were killed by lions. Only 17% of the uninfected cubs died from lion attacks before turning a year old.

Superthin Galaxies Contain Large Amounts of Dark Matter

Examples of blue (EON 32.766 6.667, top) and red (EON 149.150 20.646, bottom) superthin galaxies. The horizontal bar in each panel demonstrates the scale in arcseconds and kpc at the distance of the galaxies.

The thinnest disk galaxies have been studied a long time because of their unusual appearance. Why are they so thin? It is unclear what preserves the disks in this state. These rare galaxies are a mystery.

An international group of astrophysicists, including Halmos College physics faculty Stefan Kautsch, Ph.D., recently published an article on the spectral observations of 138 superthin galaxies (STGs). Using the Dual Imaging Spectrograph on the 3.5m telescope at the Apache Point Observatory located in the Sacramento Mountains in Sunspot, New Mexico, the research group focused on spectroscopic observations of STGs and how those may help explain the resistance of STGs against morphological transformations and disk thickening.

“We discovered that the thinnest spiral galaxies, the so called superthins, contain very big amounts of Dark Matter. It is like this unknown material squeezes the stellar galactic disks in those galaxies into their superthin state,” Kautsch said.

The researchers found that most of the STGs reviewed were dark matter dominated. Their rotational velocity and dark halo mass correlates with galactic color. The blue STGs also have less compact dark halos than the red STGs, whereas the galaxies in both color groups have their halo-to-disk scales ratios under two.

Their results are published in The Astrophysical Journal, published by the American Astronomical Society.

Research Uses Ecology Diversity Analyses in Food Desert Study

“Food Deserts” are usually defined as geographic areas without local access to fresh food. Using community ecology statistics, Halmos Environmental Science alumna Annie Goyanes, ’21 and her faculty adviser J. Matthew Hoch, Ph.D., looked at supermarkets to quantify the availability of healthy food. They tested whether produce diversity is correlated with neighborhood income or demographics. Abundance and diversity of fresh produce was quantified in supermarkets in Broward County.

J. Matthew Hoch, Ph.D.

Their research, conducted while Goyanes was an undergraduate, was recently published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Their research determined that food deserts should not only be defined by geographic measures, but other influential factors such as diversity and quality of food available. Previous food desert studies often involve lengthy interviews, and/or food index surveys, focus group discussions, administered consumer surveys, and an inventory of food. These methods represent a new application of statistics that have been traditionally used in ecology. This is a quick and easy way to identify gaps in food availability in potentially marginalized communities, which opens an easier path to solving those problems.

This research was supported by a President’s Faculty Research and Development Grant from Nova Southeastern University.

Halmos Faculty Present Juneteenth-inspired Panel Discussion

In June, Halmos College of Arts and Sciences writing, arts and politics faculty members joined together to present an interdisciplinary Juneteenth-inspired panel discussion for the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale titled “Looking Forward, Looking Back: Freedom, Afrofuturism and Reflections on Juneteenth.” The free virtual event took place on Saturday, June 19, and featured three Halmos College faculty members: Ransford Edwards, Ph.D., assistant professor of politics for the Department of Humanities and Politics; Kandy Lopez-Moreno, associate professor of art + design for the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts; and Rachel Panton, Ph.D., assistant professor of writing for the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts.

The event launched “Community Voices,” NSU Art Museum’s new initiative supported by the Community Foundation of Broward that focuses on exploring social and racial inequalities and challenging social structures, including representation in museums. “Looking Forward, Looking Back: Freedom, Afrofuturism and Reflections on Juneteenth” kicked off the series and examined the historical context of emancipation, as well as the ongoing tension between the rhetoric of recovery and an imagined and unenslaveable Black future in art, literature, and pop culture.

Learn more about the panel discussion and future “Community Voices” events for the NSU Art Museum by viewing WLRN’s news story here.

College of Business and Entrepreneurship Elevates Virtual Events

The H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship is taking virtual events to the next level with their new 3-D event floorplan featuring the William S. Spears Courtyard Atrium in the Carl DeSantis Building located at the Davie campus.

In May 2020, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Huizenga Business Innovation Academy (HBIA) faced the difficult task of turning their highly hands-on, experiential learning summer boot camp course  fully virtual, in a matter of three weeks. After much research, they partnered with Remo, an interactive virtual event platform, to facilitate their “live classroom” team and networking activities. Remo allows for camera and microphone sharing between the guests sitting at each table, so conversations are semi-private once all the virtual seats at the table are full. This feature allowed HBIA faculty, administration, and students to meet virtually and feel like they were gathering in a real setting with the autonomy to move freely between tables and speak with other attendees around the virtual conference floor.

Over a year later, the college and the Business Innovation Academy are still using Remo and have held various events such as career fairs, holiday parties, study sessions, academic conferences, business trade shows and recruitment events.

“This platform has allowed us to safely continue working with our community partners throughout the pandemic and is a refreshing break from the traditional Zoom meetings” said, Monica Paneque, director of the Huizenga Business Innovation Academy.

Now, the college is taking the virtual event space to the next level with one of the most popular venues on-campus, the DeSantis building Courtyard Atrium. In innovating the representation of NSU’s first and only virtual event space, the Huizenga Academy’s program manager, Najeeb Ahmed, took his technical design skills and drew sketches from various perspectives of the atrium. With the help of a talented graphic designer, the college was able to bring their vision to life! If you have ever visited the atrium on campus, you will see how this new digital floorplan offers a familiar and amazing NSU virtual experience for events.

With all the excitement around our virtual venue that complements the on-campus experience, the Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship has hosted more than 100 virtual events to date and plans to continue using the platform even into a post-COVID era. For instance, the virtual conference experience allows the college to attract attendees to events from all over the world without the worry of space capacities, travel restrictions or double booking. Should your college, department, or association like to learn more about reserving our virtual atrium, you are welcome to contact us at HBIA@nova.edu.

Halmos Faculty Co-Authors Article with Fischler Faculty

Santanu De, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Santanu De, M.Sc., Ph.D., faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS), authored an article in The Quarterly Review of Distance Education with Vanaja Nethi, Ph.D., faculty in the Department of Education in the Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice.  The article is entitled, Impact of Science Mobile Applications on Interest and Learning among Undergraduate Science Students.

One of the challenges facing undergraduate science programs is keeping students interested in science and minimizing attrition from their discipline. Prior research shows that showcasing real-life applicability of science is one way to keep students interested. In this exploratory study using secondary data from two undergraduate science courses, we examined the impact of science mobile apps on students’ interest and learning. The results show empirically that students think science mobile apps do help increase their interest in science. Furthermore, the ubiquitous mobile phone allows 24/7 access to these science apps, enabling enhanced learning and mastery of scientific concepts.

De’s research interests include STEM education, pedagogy, reproductive physiology, developmental biology, cell biology, and protein biology. He is a member of  the Human Anatomy & Physiology Society (HAPS), an editorial board member of several journals including The American Journal of BioScience, and faculty adviser of  NSU’s Med-ED student medical organization.

For more information about the article

Halmos Researcher’s Efforts Focus on Visualizing Virus Variants

Associate Professor Louis R. Nemzer, Ph.D.

NSU Associate Professor Louis R. Nemzer, Ph.D., in the Department of Chemistry and Physics at the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, developed a new method for visualizing amino acid substitutions in which changes in the physical and chemical properties are represented by vectors in a 3D space. While applicable to a wide range of biological applications, such as rational protein design, this work is particularly useful for understanding the behavior of COVID-19 variants and even predicting future threats.

Proteins are long chains of amino acids, and the most infamous today is certainly the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. Random mutations cause changes to its amino acid sequence, which leads to variants that may spread more easily or more effectively evade the human immune system.

As part of his research on amino acid properties, Nemzer created a new way to visualize changes in novel variants, utilizing recently available data on SARS-CoV-2 immune escape, which measures how well they can hide from the host’s antibodies. In addition, results were used from site-saturation mutagenesis experiments, in which all possible amino acid substitutions at a particular site in the spike protein were tested for their impact on binding affinity with ACE2 receptors.

“We live in the era of big data in biology, and the key now is finding new ways to visualize this vast amount of information to make the best use of it,” Nemzer said.

In some diagrams, the colors of the vectors show the impact of the substitution, while dashed lines indicate changes that require at least two nucleotide mutations to happen. He showed that sometimes clusters of chemically similar amino acids can have similar effects, but in other situations, only a specific change – such as swapping a charged amino acid in place of a neutral one – significantly reduces the virulence. The work is available now as a bioRxiv preprint.

REFERENCES:

Nemzer, Louis R. “Visualizing Amino Acid Substitutions in a Physicochemical Vector Space.” bioRxiv (2021).

Fischler Professors Collaborate on Book Chapter

Professor David B. Ross, Ed.D.. and Associate Professor Gina Peyton, Ed.D., at NSU’s Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice coauthored the chapter, “The Never-Ending Intellectual Theft of Truth: How the Mainstream Media Cartel Dismembers the Facts.” In R. Blankenship (Ed.), “Deep Fakes, Fake News, and Misinformation in Online Teaching and Learning Technologies” (pp. 39-68). The abstract of the book chapter is listed below:

The purpose of this chapter is to examine how the fake news has originated. This term has been in existence for decades, since the evolution of the printing press, which also disseminated false information. The mainstream media and non-mainstream media or just individuals in general have their own biases and agendas, so misinformation, disinformation, exaggerations, and deceptions will exist. This chapter will provide individuals from any political perspective or other beliefs evidence to make their own judgments. Digital citizenship and literacy will be explored using various examples of obtaining information and use of devices. In addition, this chapter will consider how researchers should take risks to explore controversial topics such as fake news to inform an audience using research.

For more information, please click here.

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