Abstract
A Note from the Editors We are delighted to welcome you to Volume 10 of the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal (VURJ), a selection of some of the finest research conducted within the undergraduate community at Vanderbilt University. In the decade since its inception, VURJ has featured over 100 articles in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. After a brief hiatus in 2014, VURJ came back stronger than ever, boasting our most diverse and selective issue yet. With 73 submissions from students at all four of Vanderbilt’s undergraduate schools, 19 outstanding articles were selected for publication. All submitted manuscripts underwent a rigorous multi-step review process, including two to three rounds of readings by trained peer reviewers, and final selection for publication by VURJ’s team of associate editors. In this issue, you will learn about and explore a diverse selection of topics from arts in trauma therapy to the resurrection of extinct species, an exciting assortment that provides a small glimpse into Vanderbilt’s thriving and dynamic academic community. We encourage you to engage further with this community by contributing some of your own work to our next issue, or by applying to join our team of editors. Happy reading and best wishes, Jelena Belenzada Editor in Chief, 2014-2015 Eriny Hanna Editor at Large, 2014-2015Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (linked here). By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are available for wide dissemination at no cost to readers, with proper attribution (acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal), in educational and other non-commercial settings. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, in a journal or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal. However, for undergraduates authoring a manuscript under the guidance of a faculty member or research mentor, we strongly encourage the student to discuss with the faculty mentor and the Editor if prior publication in the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal will constrain future publication efforts in professional journals. To this end, all authors must submit a signed mentor consent form at the time of submission..