Research shows that men support women’s choice to breast-feed as the healthiest choice, but there isn’t enough literature for fathers when it comes to the decision.

Dava Roth, a graduate student in curriculum instruction from Evansville, Ind., has researched with others in her department this semester to test the decision of whether to breast-feed based on the father’s perspective.

Roth was one of several students and faculty from different disciplines who presented their work to the public during Tuesday’s Research Town Meeting in the Student Center ballrooms. The types of research varied from testing animals for behavior and evaluating how men feel about breast-feeding to testing strands of chlamydia for information on why they infect different parts of the body.

Roth said she chose to research the fathers because there is a gap in the literature.

“There’s just not enough information out there about the dads,” Roth said.

She said there’s very little information out there for dads when it comes to choosing whether or not to breast-feed, but plenty exists for the moms about preparing for breast-feeding and parenthood in general.

Fathers also need more information on how to establish stronger bonds with their infants, she said. They are increasingly gathering more data from fathers in their research, she said, and there are results showing significant differences in feelings for dads on the decision.

Roth said the fathers understand breast-feeding is the right method, but a connection is missing. There is a gap in the bond because breast-feeding leaves more time and closeness with the infant and mother, she said, and takes away bonding time from the fathers. However, she said this doesn’t have to be the case because dads simply need to be educated on how to make that missing connection with their children.

Saulo Silva, a graduate student from Brazil studying animal science, also showed his work at the fair.

He conducted experiments that compared the sizes of different ovarian-related structures in cows. He conducted two 10-day experiments to compare sizes, the first with Aberdeen Angus cows compared to heifers. The angus cows showed a larger follicle size, but the corpus luteum was the same. The second experiment was with pregnant and non-pregnant cows. The results both showed the follicle size was different, but the luteum size was the same.

Speech Communication Professor Sandy Pensoneau-Conway said she and Molly Wiant Cummins, a doctoral candidate in speech communication from St. Cloud, Min., conducted research on dialogue between students and professors. Pensoneau-Conway said she taught a graduate course last semester entitled “Pedagogy and Dialogue,” where Wiant Cummins was one of her students. Pedagogy means to think about teaching from a more philosophical and critical perspectives.

“For my final project, I asked (Pensoneau-Conway) if she’d be willing to write letters back and forth to me to consider dialogue (and) how it works in our everyday life and in our lives as teachers and students,” Wiant Cummins said.

The experiment’s purpose was to explore and break down the barriers between teachers and students, Pensoneau-Conway said. The first test was to examine the letters as a function of dialogue. Therefore, they examined the content of the dialogue, she said.

“We were able to use our letters to think more differently, to think more critically, to think dialogically about the things that we were doing,” Pensoneau-Conway said.

The second question asked how the letters helped to look more critically at the roles between teacher and student, she said. Letters could help them think differently about what it means to be teacher and student, she said, but it didn’t erase the roles as they knew them. This way, she said, they learned from each other.

A lot of studies have shown that students will do well in courses not because of the content, Pensoneau-Conway said, but because of the relationship with the instructor.

Jordan Larson, a senior from Macomb studying psychology, said his research involves the use of computer software for analysis, called automated analysis, of brain images in a structural context. He examined ADHD MRI brain scans to those with non-ADHD MRI scans, and examined the density gray matter was examined, which is part of the central nervous system affecting learning, memory, perception and other traits, he said.

The general conclusion indicated that smaller amounts of grey matter were discovered in the ADHD scans compared to the controlled scans, Larson said. This could mean that grey matter volumes are associated with ADHD, he said.

“It’s not to say that you could (give) a kid in an MRI scan, look at his brain and (just) because these volumes (of gray matter) were smaller or larger, you could not attribute that for a child having or not having ADHD,” Larson said.

Ryan Ceresola, a graduate student in sociology from Washington, said his presentation, called “What Good Work Works Well,” tested social sport theory, which is an idea that communities and individuals that provide instrumental and expressive resources to others will experience less crime.

“The more support you have, the less crime there will be,” he said.

He said there have been a few studies on this where individual social support, community and government all explain some kind of social sport theory — but they never test it in the same model. Ceresola said he decided to do his research in order to determine which elements work better in the model.

He said his conclusions indicated that government social support, which includes aid such as food stamps and welfare, caused property crime to decrease. However, violent crimes were decreased through individual social support, such as charity, he said.

But he saw an increase in violent crime based on community support, which are non-profit organizations. He said these results were strange, but the circumstances could be that non-profit organizations and other forms of charity are more likely to come from places where there is violent crime.

Adolfo Frias, a senior from Lyons studying microbiology, said his research tested a strand of chlamydia that is one of several glycogen, an energy source in animals, negative out of the nine species, which can be grouped into a glycogen positive or a glycogen negative. His experiment sought to determine if the glycogen factor could yield a conclusion. The big picture says it’s hard to understand why different strands of chlamydia affect humans and animals, he said, so his project examines one of the minor differences to see if he can come up with a kind of a conclusion.

Tom Egdorf, a graduate student in zoology from Oswego, said his research tested the ranivirus in amphibians. They evaluated tadpoles based on size, with the theory that the smaller ones would be more suceptable to the virus. They believed the larger ones were more likely to spread the virus. However, the conclusion said the larger ones were more susceptable to the virus.

Cheyenne Adams, a junior from Bloomington-Normal studying environmental zoology, said her research is a pilot project based on a larger project that seeks to establish a Mariculture, a branch of aquaculture involving the the use of marine organisms for food and other products, industry in Illinois. She said the research involved pumping salt water out of saline aquifers to use the salt to raise salt water fish. Her research showed that there are no statistical differences between fish growing in aquifer salt and ocean water salt.

Matt Johnson, graduate student from Minnesota studying behavioral analysis and therapy, said he used the Madagascar hissing cockroach as a new subject for analyzing behavior. Using the cockroach is much cheaper than using rats for research, he said.

The cockroach was used to test reward stimuli using different kinds of food that they prefer, he said. The cockroach pressed a lever to deliver a drop of food. He said the highest preferred food generates more quickly, much like humans.