What's Under Your Bed - Rough Draft 2

This topic submitted by Kat Byerly, Katie Hange, Yosuke Kawai, Chelsae Dorman, BJ Lohr (byerlyka@muohio.edu) at 2:59 PM on 9/24/02. Additions were last made on Wednesday, December 10, 2008. Section: Nicholson

Natural Systems 1 Fall, 2002 -Western Program-Miami University

1. Introduction

a. Students in McKee Hall encounter many respiratory problems while living in their rooms. Our hypothesis is that the amount of allergens collected between each floor of McKee hall will be the same.

b. We plan to collect samples of allergens from under the beds of one room on each floor of McKee. We hope to identify the different types of allergens floating within studentsÕ rooms and determine which is/are most abundant. With this, we hope to discover whatÕs causing the increase in allergic reactions among students.

c. As students living in Western dorms, we are curious as to what actually exists on the floors and in the air circulating throughout our rooms. Many of our roommates have experienced increased allergic reactions after moving in, and we would like to find out why.

2. Relevance of your research question: Background Information

CancerWeb defines an allergy as "a state of hypersensitivity induced by exposure to a particular antigen (allergen) resulting in harmful immunologic reactions on subsequent exposures, the term is usually used to refer to hypersensitivity to an environmental antigen (atopic allergy or contact dermatitis) or to drug allergy."
http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?query=allergy&action=Search+OMD
Published at the Dept. of Medical Oncology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
© Copyright 1997-2002 - The CancerWEB Project. All Rights Reserved.

(A) Literature Review
Profet, Margie. "The Function of Allergy: Immunological Defense Against Toxins." Quarterly Review of Biology. 1991. University of Chicago Press.

Be sure to include a brief explanation as to why you selected each source.
--a minimum of 5 website references that are pertinent to your study. Make sure the URLs are "Hot" links in your proposal posting (see instructions below). Also, be sure to include a brief explanation as to why you selected these specific websites.
(B) How does your research relate to a larger question?

3. A Specific Research Design
We will cover four slides with vaseline and place them under beds on three floors in the three bedrooms in McKee hall and place one in the basement of the same building. The three bedrooms will be directly above/below one another. We will leave the slides in place for one week, allowing them to collect various allergens that may be present in those rooms. We will then collect those slides and analyze their content. We will then repeat the process three weeks later, in order to determine if there is any change in the amount of allergens present.
We will be measuring the amount of allergens (pollen, molds, dust mites, etc.) found in the rooms and determining how those measurements change with the dropping temperatures and/or change in floors.
The residents in each of the three bedrooms will be interviewed following the collection and review of the samples as to any notice of respiratory problems or allergy increase dealing with allergens since they have moved or since the weather has become colder.

4. Materials and Methods

a. We will place slides covered in Vaseline under beds in one room on each of the three floors of McKee Hall. These rooms will be situated directly above and below one another. The slides will be used to collect samples of pollen, molds, dust mites, etc. so we can observe and analyze them.
b. We will use scientific slides covered in Vaseline to collect allergens from studentsÕ rooms. They will be placed under a bed in each room for a period of a week and then collected and the allergens recorded. In order to involve the class in our study, we will be using their rooms for the experimentation, and we will also be comparing our results to other studentsÕ who are testing allergens in Peabody Hall.

c. Have you included a Data Sheet?
d. Have you included a Research Time Line of research execution?

Next Article
Previous Article
Return to the Topic Menu or the Course Syllabus.