College of Health and Human Sciences <\/b><\/p>\nRESEARCH SEEKS GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF CONCUSSIONS<\/h4>\n
Concussions are a common but un\u00adfortunate occur\u00adrence 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to help determine how long the effects of a concussion persist,\u201d said Georgia Southern health and kine\u00adsiology professor Thomas Buckley. \u201cIf a person returns to risky activity while still suffering the effects of a concussion they are more likely to suffer another con\u00adcussion, which will likely be worse and could potentially even be fatal. We hope that this research leads to a better under\u00adstanding of how long a person needs in order to fully recover before engaging in activity that could put them at risk for an\u00adother head injury.\u201d<\/p>\n
The research, which will help coaches, athletic trainers and doctors deal more ef\u00adfectively with concussions, builds on three years of ongoing concussion research within the College of Health and Human Sciences. In addition to Buckley, profes\u00adsors Barry Munkasy, Laura Gunn, George Shaver, and Brandy Close are participat\u00ading in the research in collaboration with University of North Carolina-Charlotte faculty member Erik Wilkstrom.<\/p>\n
Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health <\/b><\/p>\nZHANG PLACES TWO ARTICLES IN MAJOR JOURNAL<\/h4>\n
Public health professor Jian Zhang and an in\u00adternational team of researchers have published two reports on ef\u00adforts to reduce the incidence of mea\u00adsles and rubella in rural China.<\/p>\n
The Journal of Infectious Diseases <\/em>pub\u00adlished their work, \u201cImpact of Supplemen\u00adtary Immunization Activities in Mea\u00adsles-Endemic Areas: A Case Study From Guangxi, China\u201d and \u201cInnovative Use of Surveillance Data to Harness Political Will to Accelerate Measles Elimination: Expe\u00adrience From Guangxi, China,\u201d which was sponsored by the World Health Organiza\u00adtion, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United Nations Chil\u00addren\u2019s Fund.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year may see the historically highest number of cases in 20 years in this country and most of these are imported from outside,\u201d said Zhang. \u201cThe most im\u00admediate 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.<\/p>\n \u201cHelping the global community to elim\u00adinate measles and reducing the potential risk of importation is the top priority in the Global Immunization Division of the CDC,\u201d Zhang said.<\/p>\n College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences <\/b><\/p>\n Writing and Linguistics professor and Fulbright Scholar Lori Amy has been in\u00advited to Iceland to present her research on non-governmental organizations\u2019 influ\u00adence on the changing society of Albania.<\/p>\n Her visit is sup\u00adported by a grant from the Ameri\u00adcan Council of Learned Societies Committee on Eu\u00adropean Studies.<\/p>\n Amy\u2019s paper, \u201cNGOs and Civil society in Albania: Where We\u2019ve Been, Where We Are, Where We\u2019re Going,\u201d looks at the last of the So\u00adviet-bloc countries to open its borders. It explores the relationship among state, mu\u00adnicipality, private enterprise, and the non\u00adprofit sector and how structural realign\u00adments in these sectors can work together to advance health, welfare and economic development.<\/p>\n \u201cThe communist regime \u2013 in power un\u00adtil 1991 \u2013 exercised a high degree of state terror,\u201d said Amy. \u201cEighteen percent of the population was subject to exile, arrest, imprisonment, torture or execution, and it is estimated 20 percent of the popula\u00adtion 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 \u2018civil society\u2019 was, under the one-party system, illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n The analysis is part of her ongoing re\u00adsearch about traumatic memory under communism in transition.<\/p>\n College of Business Administration<\/b><\/p>\n Grants from PearsonEducation\/Pub\u00adlishing and The Georgia Council on Eco\u00adnomic Education will fund an investiga\u00adtion of testing critical thinking skills in a Principles of Macroeconomics course.<\/p>\n Economics professor Tony Barilla re\u00adceived the grant and will begin his study this fall.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been proven in other research that taking an upper-division economics course increases critical thinking,\u201d said Ba\u00adrilla. \u201cI\u2019m going to look at the \u2018Principles of Economics\u2019 level to see if an introductory course has the same effect.\u201d<\/p>\n College of Education<\/b><\/p>\n Education professor Robert Mayes wants to be sure there are environmentally literate citizens who can make informed decisions about challenges like fresh wa\u00adter availability and our diminishing biodiversity.<\/p>\n Mayes is lead\u00ading a portion of a National Sci\u00adence Foundation Mathematics and Science Partner\u00adship project or \u201cPathways Project\u201d \u2013 a collaborative of 11 universities, four Long Term Ecologi\u00adcal 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 educa\u00adtion through the development of learning progressions across grades 6-12 in the ar\u00adeas of biodiversity, water systems and the carbon cycle.<\/p>\n Mayes leads the Quantitative Reason\u00ading (QR) Theme of the Pathways Project, which is exploring the role of math\u00adematics and statistics in students\u2019 devel\u00adopment of environ\u00admental literacy. His QR team is exam\u00adining three practices that might serve as tools or barriers in the environmental lit\u00aderacy 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 predic\u00adtions and discover trends; and quantitative modeling, the ability to create representa\u00adtions to explain science.<\/p>\n Allen E. Paulson College of Science and Technology<\/b><\/p>\n Biology profes\u00adsor Checo Colon-Gaud knows that small creatures can tell a big story about the health of streams and rivers.<\/p>\n Colon-Gaud is researching the role of freshwater insects in streams and rivers as indicators of the health of water\u00adways. \u201cIn general, my students and I are interested in the role that aquatic con\u00adsumers, mainly insects, play in ecosystem structure and function,\u201d he said. \u201cEarly 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 materi\u00adals like leaves and debris from the sur\u00adrounding forest. However, as both juve\u00adniles and adults, they depend on healthy terrestrial environments for food, refuge and dispersal habitats.<\/p>\n \u201cFurthermore, many of these insects can serve as food sources for larger con\u00adsumers and make their way up the food chain as an important resource for fish, amphibians and even birds,\u201d said Colon-Gaud. \u201cThey can also provide important insight into the health and condition of local aquatic systems as many can be sen\u00adsitive and thus respond rapidly to altered conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the researcher\u2019s studies look at small streams in the Appalachian moun\u00adtains and the Puerto Rican rainforest. Others are examining floodplains and wet\u00adlands of larger rivers in the Southeastern Coastal Plain.<\/p>\n College of Information Technology<\/b><\/p>\n The ancient Chinese concept of yin yang describes how polar oppo\u00adsites or seemingly opposing forces are actually inter\u00adconnected, depen\u00addent, reciprocal of one another in equilibrium, har\u00admony or comple\u00admentarity.<\/p>\n College of Information Technology Professor of Computer Sciences Wen-Ran Zhang has taken the concept to a new lev\u00adel in his book, YinYang Bipolar Relativity: A Unifying Theory of Nature, Agents and Causality with Applications in Quantum Computing, Cognitive Informatics and Life Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n In it, Zhang applies the yinyang con\u00adcept to make complex theoretical topics like quantum entanglement logically un\u00adderstandable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Research News Roundup<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-fall-2011"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}PROFESSOR INVITED TO SHARE EXPERTISE IN ICELAND<\/h4>\n
BARILLA TO TEST EFFECT OFECONOMICS STUDY ON THINKING<\/h4>\n
PATHWAYS PROJECT RESEARCH<\/h4>\n
BIOLOGY RESEARCHER STUDIES HEALTH OF WATERWAYS<\/h4>\n
IT PROFESSOR ZHANG EXPLORES \u2018YINYANG BIPOLAR RELATIVITY\u2019<\/h4>\n