ABSTRACTS
2019 National McNair Scholars Conference at UCLA
Researcher: Paola Bojorquez-Ramirez
Presentation Title: Cognition Assessment in Mexican Americans, Cameron County Hispanic Cohort (CCHC), Brownsville, Texas
Research Focus: Chronic Disease Prevention
School: University of Texas at Austin
Presentation Type: Poster Presentation
Findings on the association of demographic variables, diabetes, and diabetes-related conditions in cognitive decline have been inconsistent and no studies have evaluated the association between hypothesized risk factors and cognitive decline in Mexican American adults ≤65 years. The purpose of this study was to assess risk factors for cognitive deterioration in Mexican American adults aged ≥18 years. This study included 2991 baseline participants 18-94 years of age from the Cameron County Hispanic Cohort. The association between diabetes, age, education and cognition, assessed by using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), was evaluated with logistic regression models. The sample was subdivided into two subgroups; those indicated to have ‘mild to severe’ cognitive impairment (CI) (MMSE ≤24, n=331, 11.1%) and those indicated to have normal cognition (MMSE>24, n=2652, 88.9%). At baseline, 17.2% of self-reported diabetes participants and 9.9% of participants who did not report diabetes were identified as having ‘mild to severe’ CI. Participants found to have diabetes have 1.9 (95% CI: 1.45-2.49) times the odds of having ‘mild to severe’ CI compared to participants without diabetes. However, diabetes status no longer had a significant association with ‘mild to severe’ CI (adjusted OR: 1.14[95%CI: 0.85-1.53]) in models adjusting for age and education. In this sample, diabetes status was not independently associated with CI among Mexican Americans when adjusted for age and education. These findings indicate the need for assessing factors related to cognitive aging to objectively identify risk factors for cognitive decline in Mexican Americans.
Researcher: Ilse Colchado
Presentation Title: Healing Together: Latina/x Spirituality
Research Focus: Latinx Spirituality, Personal Experience Narratives, Decolonial Ideologies & Practices.
School: The University of Texas at Austin
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
An embedded knowledge lays within our flesh, more profound than what can be felt through our physical bodies and the melanin that radiates within our skin serves as a reminder of what long ago our ancestors planted on this earth. In western ideology, the separation of mind, body, soul, and spirit fragmented the idea of holistic health and well being among Latinx peoples. Diving into Anzalduan epistemologies and theories such as, la facultad, the Coyoxuahqui imperative, spiritual activism, and nepaltla that interplay with the personal experience narratives of Latina/Latinx, Chicana/x, Xincana/Xinanx,and Indigenous livelihoods. This study takes a specific lense at how Latina/x identity is part of the ontologization of the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual experiences. More specific, it is to understand the complexity of Latina/x women spiritual practices from a detribalized perspective.
Researcher: Luke Hernandez
Presentation Title: Queergaming: Gender and Sexuality in Online Video Games
Research Focus: Sexuality and Media Studies
School: University of Texas at Austin
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
What is the role of online video games regarding their impact on people’s formation of gender and sexual identities and communities? The platform of video games and their corresponding culture offers unique insight into understanding the politics of representation and self-making seen in theories such as how gamers queer games and how games queer gamers. This research begins with the literature in the emerging field of video games studies intersecting with queer theory. The framework of this analysis requires complicating representation, including self- representation done by marginalized gamer communities and representations produced by companies. Finally, this research tackles the question of how online videos games impact identity and community formation through an ethnography comprised of testimonials and observations that archive how individuals use video games in these regards. Such accounts include the familiar mode of experimenting with gender through player created avatars, changing the meaning of the text, and disrupting how to queer/be queered in online video games. There are numerous possibilities found in and through video games, making it imperative to analyze its impact on society.
Researcher: Muxin Wang
Presentation Title: Improving RiboFlow through analysis of unaligned sequences
Research Focus: Bioinformatics; Ribosome Profiling; Translational Control
School: University of Texas at Austin
Presentation Type: Poster Presentation
Ribosome profiling is a robust method of sequencing ribosome protected mRNA fragments that allows us to study translation at a global scale. Analysis of ribosome profiling, or Ribo-Seq, data at nucleotide length level has been shown to provide valuable insight into the kinetics of protein synthesis. Processing Ribo-Seq data requires the association of thousands of reads to each transcript, which makes it difficult to analyze and display through traditional methods. We are developing a novel pipeline, called RiboFlow, that can effectively analyze, store, and display Ribo-Seq results directly from the sequencing data. As part of the pipeline, these sequences are first filtered and then aligned to the genome. To improve the efficacy of filter, we worked on identifying the unaligned sequences through sequence assembly and basic local alignment. Many of the unaligned sequences had similar regions with minor mismatches. To take advantage of this, velvet assembler was used to construct longer sequences that can be more efficiently identified using the basic local alignment search tool (BLAST). Using this method, we were able to determine many different origins of unaligned sequences, including BAC clone, rRNA, and tRNA. These findings will be implemented in improving RiboFlow filtering and future analysis of Ribo-Seq data.