THE UNIVERISTY OF ALABAMA - Graduate School - The University ...

Interactive DVD Tailored to Enhance Diabetes Health Literacy and Self- ManagementThis multidisciplinary intervention research targets improvement of health literacy in adults withtype 2 diabetes experiencing the disparities of rurality and poverty. The purpose of this researchis to test the effectiveness of a tailored, interactive DVD to improve health literacy and,ultimately, self-management skills for daily living with type 2 diabetes, thus reducing theeconomic and physiologic devastation of this chronic health problem. The DVD scenarios werescripted, filmed, and programmed by Computer Based Honors Students. The DVD incorporatescritical self-management skills for living with diabetes including nutrition, activity, and dailycare. Pilot data will be collected spring 2008.Catherine Qualls, Department of Chemistry, and Computer-Based Honors ProgramFaculty Mentor: Dr. Rebecca Kelly, Office of Health Promotion and WellnesswellBama Database DevelopmentThe wellBama program is an initiative started by Dr. Rebecca Kelly in the Department of Healthand Wellness. This program is being developed to encourage healthy lifestyles for the facultyand staff of the University of Alabama. A database is in the process of being created that willhold demographic as well as health information about the members of the faculty and staff.Through this database, information will be analyzed and associated with a risk factor score.Incentives will be offered to those with a low risk factor, therefore encouraging members of thewellBama program to live a healthy way of life. Outcomes of this database are projected toimprove the general well being and to better meet the any specific health needs for the facultyand staff of the University.Mary Margaret Randall, New CollegeFaculty Mentor: Dr. Janeann Dill, New CollegeA Nostalgic ReconnectionAs society is transformed by technology, there is a loss of the simplicity found in storytelling.Allowing the visual world to overtake us, we forget the significance of our imagination. In orderto keep our creativity alive, we must return to the power of a child-like imagination. This hasbrought me to the concept of nostalgia. By writing and recording a story using sounds of nature,I have returned to a forsaken love of story-telling. Through researching John Cage and MichaelNyman’s usage of “found sounds” I composed my own nature recordings in the composition ofnarrative.Catherine Grace Raulston and Simpla Mahato, Department of Biological SciencesFaculty Mentor: Dr. Harriet Smith-Somerville, Department of Biological SciencesComparison of Phagocytosis in Wild type and Revertant Cells in Tetrahymena thermophila NP1Phagocytosis is the formation of food vacuoles. In Tetrahymena thermophila NP1, wild cellsform a normal oral skeleton and produce vacuoles at 30C, but not when incubated at 37C.Mutant cells may regain the capability to form vacuoles after prolonged incubation at 37C. Weare using immunoflorescence and biochemical methods are being used to investigate how themutants have gained the capability to form vacuoles .To date no difference has been detectedbetween the wild and the revertant cells based on the study of proteins actin and dynamin whichhave been implicated to have role in phagocytosis.59