Jonathan Ehrlich Participated in Buena Vista University's Eleventh Annual Scholars Day

2015 May 22

Buena Vista University's eleventh annual Scholars Day was held Friday, April 24. The event provided students from all disciplines an opportunity to present their best presentations, original research, academic posters, artistic creations and performances to their peers, professors and the public.

This year's Scholars Day event featured 43 presentations from 86 students, exploring topics from art and business to science and history.

Jonathan Ehrlich, a senior philosophy and religion major from Storm Lake, was one of the students who participated. Ehrlich's presentation was titled Music and Musicality, and the project's abstract is as follows:

Andrew Kania’s definition of music implies agents interacting with musical features, but the musical features are only such in relation to the agents’ abilities to recognize the features. It follows that Kania’s definition needs to work out the abilities of its implied agents to interact with musical features. Most importantly, the agents’ abilities to recognize musical features needs to be established. Kania does not do this, thus his definition of music can be improved. Explaining Kania’s definition’s implied agents’ abilities leads to expanding the whole definition to include one the abilities of its agents explicitly. That ability is musicality. To improve Kania’s definition of music, I (1) explain the definition’s implied agents’ abilities to interact with musical features so as to give them the ability to recognize musical features as such. That is, I identify the agents as possessing musicality. And (2) I expand Kania’s definition to explicitly account for musicality of its implied agents. Musicality is a human trait commonly considered innate, but claimed by Gary Marcus to be acquired. Because musicality is an element of agents interacting with musical features, controversy about its origin clouds Kania’s definition so long as the definition does not account for musicality explicitly. Collectively, the explanation and expansion of Kania’s definition of music make it clearer.

Ehrlich also had a second presentation titled: The Effects of Atrazine on Dugesia dorotocephala Planarians. The abstract for this presentation is as follows:

The similarities between planarian and human stem cells allow us to see the effects that chemicals may have on the human body through the study of metabolomics with GC/MS analysis. Planarians are able to regenerate, which makes it possible to study the role of environmental pollutants on planarian tumor production. Our study incorporated the use of environmentally relevant concentrations of atrazine, which is a widely used agricultural herbicide. The initial study involved dosing concentrations and behavioral assays to observe physiological responses when compared to control planarians after 5 days of exposure. Light and tactile sensitivity were observed with the 100 ppb samples, while only light sensitivity was observed with the 10 ppm samples. Additionally, using 2 subsamples of 10 Dugesia dorotocephala each, 10 planarians were maintained in control water and 10 in control water dosed with 100 ppb atrazine for 5 days. Following preparation, samples were analyzed with an Agilent 5973C mass spectrometer coupled with an Agilent 7890A gas chromatograph. The GC/MS results were inconclusive, although it is hypothesized that environmentally-relevant concentrations of atrazine may result in tumorgenesis due to atrazine’s secondary amine group reactions with nitrites that form N-nitrosoatrazine, which are known to increase abnormal chromosomes in lymphocytes.

The keynote speaker for the event was Jeff Anderson, Class of 2003, who is the executive director of communications for the Minnesota Vikings. Anderson is entering his thirteenth season with the Vikings and plays a lead role in the organization's external and strategic communications.

"For some Scholars Day is the culmination of their work at BVU, and for others it becomes the springboard that sends them into a field they had not previously anticipated," said Dr. Steven Mills, assistant professor of Spanish and chair of the events committee who organized the event. "Either way, those who participate find in it a valuable growing experience and a strong sense of accomplishment."

Photos from this year's and previous Scholars Day events, along with a video from this year's event, are available online at www.bvu.edu/scholarsday.