The UK Undergraduate Research Program is intended to offer students, particularly in their first and second years, the opportunity to begin to engage in research and scholarship with a faculty mentor. Students in this program may enroll in a special research methods course designed to provide them with practical research and scholarship knowledge, such as how and where to seek funding, how grants are administered, using library and Internet resources effectively for research, and writing research and scholarly abstracts and reports. The following abstracts were the final papers submitted by three students who took this methods course in the Spring of 2003 and reported on their on-going research:

Determining Cotton Fiber Quality by Polarized Laser

Aydin Hatemi, Research Assistant to Dr. Mustafa Aslan

I am participating in a detailed experimental/theoretical study on understanding the fundamental nature of individual cotton fibers from a light scattering experiment. In this study, my mentor, Dr. Mustafa Aslan, identified a new methodology to determine the scattering characteristics of irregularly shaped particles, such as cotton fibers.

In the increasingly competitive textile market today, the quality of raw material, such as the quality of cotton, is one of the most important factors for determining the quality of manufactured goods. Therefore, it is essential for textile manufacturers to determine cotton fiber properties, such as fineness, maturity, color, strength, and length and, therefore, processing performance. For this purpose, we built a new precision measuring instrument to picture (profile) the quality (fineness) of cotton fibers.

There are already a few characterization techniques that are used in cotton agriculture. Unfortunately, successful applications of these techniques in agriculture are often valid only for characterization of regularly shaped particles. During the last decade, by using the elliptically polarized light scattering concept, regularly shaped spherical and cylindrical particles have been investigated. This approach is based on the measurement of the scattering matrix elements of single scatters. However, all of the data available for scattering matrix elements is currently limited to regularly shaped particles, and the fundamental nature of fibers cannot be determined from such techniques.

In the case of irregularly shaped micro-scale particles, such as cotton fibers, we have to determine the characterization of particles by using another method. In this research, we developed a rigorous experimental/theoretical approach to determining the radiative properties of single cotton fibers and to correlating these results with cotton properties, particularly with fineness. For this purpose, we designed and built a versatile light source. Detailed polarized-light was sent into six different cotton fiber samples. Then we scanned scattered light from the fibers. We monitored the scattering light on laser sensitive films. These results were compared against the predictions from a finite element model (FEM). Finally, differences between the theoretical and experimental findings were compared.

In this research, we found that knowledge of cotton fiber properties, such as fineness, length, and uniformity, can be determined better than in most of the previous studies on cotton fibers. This experimental study is being expanded to make polarized-light scattering measurements on cotton fibers. Such measurement will allow us to determine the scattering elements, which are expected to reveal more information about the nature and structure of cotton fibers.

A Reexamination of Iran's Role in the Middle East

Ben Woodman, Research Assistant to Dr. John Stempel

The United States of America has entered a new era of foreign relations. The years following the end of the Cold War held few feelings of unrest among the American people, and a time of relative security was experienced. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York dramatically changed our  country. The attacks gave a new focus to United States' history, and we are forced to reexamine the way that we deal with other countries, particularly Islamic nations.

The study in which I have assisted Dr. John Stempel has focused on a nation that has been at odds with the United States of America since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dr. Stempel served as the Deputy Chief of the Political Section of the American Embassy in Tehran from 1975 until the nation's revolution five years later. This, in addition to the rest of his career in diplomacy, has allowed Dr. Stempel to obtain considerable insight into the complex structure of Middle Eastern political systems, particularly that of the Iranians.

My responsibility has been to gather information and prepare it for Dr. Stempel. Using a wide range of sources such as census figures, economic analyses and forecasts, academic journal pieces, and Iranian news lines, I was able to find relevant data and brief the information's main points for submission to Dr. Stempel, as well as create outlines showing important information and my own viewpoints. The research that we have conducted this year has been the basis for a series of written and oral discussions of Iran's foreign policy and how our own nation's decisions can affect it. The study will also become part of a broader study of the United States' options in the Middle East for the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. State Department.

In recent times, our country's dealings with Islamic countries have had to undergo some re-thinking.  Our policies in the Middle East are becoming increasingly unpopular among Moslems, and under the threat of Islamic extremism we can no longer ignore the potential problems that can arise from the area.

Our work is geared to show the massive amount of evidence that points to Iran being the catalyst that could lead to improved US-Islamic relations and be a giant leap in stamping out terrorism. The aim of the study is to show that the US can no longer afford to ignore Iran in the ways it has since the hostage takeover.  In the written discussions from our study, Dr. Stempel concludes that the stubborn approach that the US has taken toward the Islamic Republic has led to our poor relations. An example of this is the Clinton administration's refusal to finalize the creation of a deal between AMOCO and the North Iranian Oil Company. Another example was President George W. Bush's classifying the country as part of the “Axis of Evil” with Iraq and North Korea, further inflaming the anti-American sentiment in Iran.

The point that our work makes is that Iran holds many key elements for change: a disproportionately young population, an easily expandable economy, and a growing level of dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs within the country. Iran has already begun modernizing its economy via new trade agreements with the European Union. These agreements have not only helped the country take steps toward economic modernity, but have led to social reforms such as a