Research topics presented

The use of prepositions in a Niger-Congo language, bioterrorist agents, the effect of color on working memory and Turkish shadow puppets were a few of the topics on which 23 undergraduate Hutton Honors College students presented Sunday in the Dogwood Room in the Indiana Memorial Union. \nThe event featured students' 10-minute Powerpoint presentations in which students discussed their own specific fields of research. \nTopics were wide in scope and broken down into five sections. International Issues, Social and Cultural Studies and New Perspectives in Art presentations were given in the morning session, and Current Research in Science and Exploring Medical and Psychological Questions presentations were given in the afternoon.\nLynn Cochran, assistant dean of the Honors College, put on the event. She said she was pleased with the event. \n"It was a wonderful occasion for learning about a wide range of topics," she said. "Students stretched beyond their fields and everybody learned something."\nAttendance was sparse, with less than 15 people present, including the nine speakers, for the afternoon session. Dean of the Honors College Karen Hanson said the morning session had about 30 attendees at its peak.\n"Sunday is a hard day to get people on campus," she said. "But it was a pretty good, involved turnout."\nParticipants have spent anywhere from a few weeks to three years researching their topics, which they had to boil down to a 10-minute presentation. One presenter went to France for a semester to study a specific flower's population differentiation, while another read medical journals to find the potential dangers of current bioterrorist agents. Three presenters studied an immigrant family's struggle to learn English and recreated their life story in their presentation.\nSophomore Patrick McGhee's research found that bioterrorist weapons such as anthrax are unlikely to be released in a large scale attack.\nJunior Leah Fey's study showed people memorize words more easily when they are categorized. She said she was surprised by her findings that placing the words in random order didn't detract from people's ability to recall them.\nThe wide range of topics made it hard for Hanson to pick one that stuck out.\n"It's like asking me to pick my favorite child," Hanson said. "They were all fascinating"