Oral Presentations Session 1

Sleep is one of the most important factors in student success, both academically and socially. Although many schools recognize the importance of sleep for their students, they fail to make changes that allow or help their students to get more sleep. In order to observe how sleep, or a lack thereof, affects students’ lives and grades, surveys were sent to ... Read More

To remove agrochemicals such as pesticides from drinking water, a second stage was developed for antibacterial clay filters. These filters help kill bacteria in drinking water and must be affordable and readily available for people in the developing world. A chemical stage would have to be so as well. Activated carbon is a porous material that has the ability to ... Read More

The Gini index is a single number that attempts to measure inequality. However, this common measure of inequality fails to describe how unequal different parts of a population are, and only provides a view of the population as a whole. We investigated the relationship between the measures for specific groups and the measure of the total population. We constructed a ... Read More

Diffusion Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging observes the diffusion of water through tissue. Diffusion of water attenuates the signal received. The purpose of this study was to determine if the Fractional Order Calculus (FROC) model can be used to determine if the treatment of colorectal cancer patients is effective over the duration of radiation therapy. Sixty-eight patient datasets were collected and ... Read More

Roads accommodate a large portion of the movement of people and goods across transportation systems, but are vulnerable to man-made and natural disasters. To minimize the impacts of potential disruptions on the road network’s users, network resilience, the ability to resist, react, and adapt to disruptions must be improved. Investing into the network is critical to improving resilience, but requires ... Read More

As an effect of the rising use of health information technology, biomedical databases consist of rising numbers of discrepancies. Ultimately this is affects the efficiency of data analysis in medical research. This study aimed to develop a method of eliminating these discrepancies and developing a biomedical database into a more research-friendly version. Medical lab data was acquired from HealthLNK Data ... Read More

Herpes simplex virus type-1 is estimated to be present in around 90% of humans. Although most cases of HSV-1 are latent, the virus still poses a threat, especially to patients with a weak immune system. Once the virus enters a cell and replicates itself using cell machinery, HSV-1 can induce cell-to-cell fusion and form syncytia. The four glycoproteins responsible for ... Read More

Last year we studied the effectiveness of Alcohol/Water mixtures in dissolving PMMA. PMMA is a commonly used resist in electron beam lithography. Ethanol/Water mixtures in a 4:1 volume ratio developed PMMA such that they could replace mixtures of Methyl(isobutylketone) and Isopropanol. Raman spectroscopy revealed that Ethanol/Water mixtures in a 4:1 ratio and IPA/Water mixtures in a 3:1 ratio have different ... Read More

During the summer of 2013, a 50-foot wide magnet was transported from the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Brookhaven, New York to the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) in Batavia, Illinois. This magnet will be used to repeat BNL's muon anomalous magnetic moment experiment with more precision and confirm whether new physics beyond the standard model was responsible for the ... Read More

The creation of plastics revolutionized how we built materials, allowing them to be easily created for a low cost, and have a wide variety of forms and structural properties. Likewise, the successful creation of an organic conducting material would revolutionize the electronics industry. Dendrimers are complex polymers that take multiple synthetic steps to create, however, they allow for greater control ... Read More

The instability of genomic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) plays an integral role in carcinogenesis and metastasis by causing mutations that regulate cell division and expression. Degrading the genomic DNA that governs the cell cycle will downregulate both proliferation and differentiation. In an attempt to discover therapeutic agents that would distort the molecular structure of DNA, this investigation uncovered medicinal effects of ... Read More

Our project sets out to find the effects of combining both electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to pinpoint the regions of epilepsy in the human brain. On their own, MRIs and EEGs are useful in diagnosis, but the combination of the two is expected to be even more powerful in terms of spatial and temporal resolution. In ... Read More

A quantum graph is a weighted combinatorial graph equipped with a Hamiltonian operator acting on functions along each edge. As the name suggests, it can be used to model quantum phenomena such as wave propagation and free-electron theory. We investigate the behavior of quantum graphs when their Laplacian matrices are used as the operator. Specifically, we examine families of graphs ... Read More

Photography has largely gone digital, and these images are developing to become more realistic reflections of their subjects. By analyzing the digitizing process of creating colored images from the color filter array layered image sensor, the most accurate method of extrapolating color can be examined. By coding arrays to mimic the information collected from an image sensor with a color ... Read More

Advertisements are created to appeal to certain audiences in order to market a specific product. There are both popular advertisements and ones that fall short. This difference in their ranking has to be caused by specific factors in the advertisement itself. This investigation focuses on the movement of the eye and where it focuses in relation with the ranking of ... Read More

Stroke is one of the leading causes of long-term disability in the United States. Studying altered neuromuscular mechanics in stroke patients has significant applications in enabling physicians to treat changes related to muscle function. This study aims to correlate biomarker data from stroke patients with their biographical data and muscle architecture data-- quantified by clinical tests and measurements of muscle ... Read More

Short term rental platforms such as Airbnb provide cost efficient rooms for tourists. However, it also can cause housing prices to fluctuate, making it hard for some areas to retain local residents. In order to evaluate Airbnb's effect on the housing market, we collected data from different towns on Anna Maria Island, Florida. The three towns we evaluated were: Anna ... Read More

N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDAR) play an important role in development and are also known to be associated with certain brain disorders. Commercially available NMDAR subunit specific antibodies from Cell Signaling and Abcam were shown to not be very specific and can skew results. The purpose of this investigation was to create a green fluorescent protein (GFP) tagged NR2B expressing vector that ... Read More

Indoor air quality and energy consumption are factors that constantly impact our lives, but they have a negative health impact. My SIR involved writing a program to model these two factors using Python, BEopt (Building Energy Optimization), and EnergyPlus and was part of a 3 year project to model indoor air quality and building energy consumption, predict how this will ... Read More

Despite the existing methods of water purification, over 1.1 billion people do not have access to potable water. The purpose of this investigation was to design an ultraviolet light filter that produces 40 liters of water per day at a 99.9% kill rate, uses minimal power, costs less than $20, and is simple to operate. The initial design involved a ... Read More

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) represents a progressive disease that makes it hard to breathe. Cigarette smoking that give rise to COPD is thought to be mainly due to the obliteration of airway epithelial cells. The occurrence of airway endothelial cell (EC) death in COPD was reported more than 50 years ago, however, the role of EC-dysfunction in relation to ... Read More

The “Ekso Bionics” exoskeleton is a powered external orthotic device which provides assistance for lower extremity movement in individuals with neuromuscular disorders. This exoskeleton technology is currently under clinical investigation for its use in mobility training during stroke rehabilitation. In my project, we used the Actigraph wearable sensor and GAITRite Gait tracking system to evaluate changes in daily stepping and ... Read More

Dopaminergic (DA) neurons are the primary source of the dopamine produced in the central nervous system. These DA neurons have recently been shown to have diverse molecular and physiological properties. A recent study implied that the SNc neurons may release the neurotransmitter, GABA, along with dopamine. Through our research, we aimed to localize these “hybrid” neurons which produce both GABA ... Read More

The theory of mind is an important human capability that allows us to understand and predict the goals, intents, and beliefs of other individuals. We present an approach to designing intelligent communicative agents based on modeling theories of mind. This can be tricky because other agents may also have their own theories of mind of the first agent, meaning that ... Read More

Extensive research has been done to find the relationship between high school and college success. The current research is bringing this down one level by comparing a students’ success at their past school to their success at IMSA by comparing a student’s entering GPA and standardized test scores to their GPA at IMSA and their test scores after attending IMSA. ... Read More

Glioblastoma, one of the most lethal forms of astrocytoma, has a median survival rate of fifteen months post diagnosis. Due to its multiple pathways that allow this cancer to quickly grow, divide, and invade the brain, glioblastoma has a high recurrence rate despite aggressive treatments. Our primary goal for this study is to determine the effect on cell viability of ... Read More

In hearts, the T-tubules allow calcium ions to enter the organ, which will then initiate a pathway that allows the heart to contract. Studies have shown that over time, T-tubules will lose their structure, leading to less efficient contraction and eventual heart failure. One protein that causes this is phospholipase Cβ-1 (PLCβ-1), which, when activated, cleaves and deactivates phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate ... Read More

It has been conjectured that quantum entanglement operators can be lifted to braiding operators by the way of the topological quantum field theory axioms set forth by Witten and Atiyah. Moreover, it can be readily shown that quantum link invariants need entanglement to construct topological invariants. Given these results and the already dense mathematical framework underlying topology and quantum field ... Read More

Design is the practice of creating a solution to enhance a situation. The design process promotes interdisciplinary thinking to encourage greater innovation, which suggests that undergoing the design thinking process will motivate students to participate in their community. The purpose of this study is to determine if design education has a significant positive effect on student motivation to succeed and ... Read More

The retinoblastoma protein (pRB) is a key regulating protein in the cell cycle, which often interacts with the lysine (K)-specific demethylase 5A (KDM5A). While pRB has been shown to play a significant role in the processes of cell differentiation and metabolism, the role of KDM5A in these cellular processes is not fully known. Our investigation focused on clarifying the role ... Read More

Each year in the United States, 60,000 people are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (PD) which causes impaired motor abilities and tremors. PD is caused in part by the loss of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra secondary to the loss of dopamine fibers in the striatum; so current research is focused on reversing those symptoms. The purpose of this study ... Read More

In additive number theory and group theory the Erdos-Ginzburg-Ziv theorem describes the length of the shortest zero-sum subsequence modulo n, given a sequence of length 2n – 1 and has been described well for unordered sequences in non-abelian groups. However there is little to be found on ordered sequences and therefore, the goal of our research is to make progress ... Read More

Patients with end stage renal diseases requiring hemodialysis treatment experience cognitive impairment due to a variety of risk factors. Many risk factors come from Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and dialysis itself. The purpose of this study was to assess changes in cognitive functioning in maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients during a hemodialysis (HD) session. MHD patients (n=21) were recruited from dialysis ... Read More

Digital technology has become increasingly important in our lives. While many programs have a set capability, we have begun using machines that learn using adaptive algorithms, allowing computers to imitate the flexibility of the human brain, reacting quicker and more effectively. This investigation could provide rationale for alternatives to brute force algorithms. We started by coding a connect four game ... Read More

Taking notes has been found to increase recollection of facts from reading and lectures, although research contradicts whether computerized or pen-and-paper notes produce better test scores. Our research was to study whether typed or handwritten notes were more effective for retaining information for tests and quizzes. Our objective was to see which of these two methods appear to produce better ... Read More

Firefly luciferase (Fluc) is a well-documented proteome stress sensor. Its misfolding upon cellular stress leads to aggregation and loss of enzymatic activity, which can be assayed by oxidizing luciferin, producing bioluminescence. However, Fluc is large (63 kilodaltons) and dependent on adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for activity. Since stresses to the cell can affect ATP production, Fluc activity is not solely dependent ... Read More

The theory of mind is, perhaps, one of the most important psychological constructs in humans today, as it allows us to record, understand, and predict the desires, intentions, beliefs, and goals, of other individuals or agents. The purpose of this project was to implement an assistive agent that we call MARTHA, or the Mental-state Aware Real-time Thinking Assistant, in order ... Read More

Air pollution contributes to more than 62,000 lung cancer deaths worldwide and an additional 712,000 cardiac and respiratory diseases per year. To raise public awareness of the hazards, the Environmental Protection Agency is working to make air sensors, which detect more than 180 hazardous air pollutants, available for the public to observe the air pollutants and safety risks of the ... Read More

Clay filters treated with silver nanoparticles have shown strong germicidal activity. However, other toxins in water include heavy metal ions from agricultural runoff. This investigation deals with possible amendments to the clay filter, allowing it to not only kill bacteria but also remove heavy metal ions from water. Copper, a common heavy metal in fungicides, was used in this investigation. ... Read More

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder occurs when a mother consumes alcohol during pregnancy, leading to physiological and neurobehavioral abnormalities and deficits in the brain of the fetus. This study investigated whether ethanol reduces the population of parvalbumin- expressing purkinje cells in the cerebellum of a mouse model of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Additionally, another objective was to find thickness parameters for ... Read More

Barrett Medical Inc.’s Proficio rehabilitation robot has the ability to improve the lives of many stroke patients with impaired upper extremity function through techniques such as error augmentation and negative viscosity. However, the current forearm segment of the Proficio robot prevents some stroke patients with weak grip from using it and inhibits natural arm movement. In this project, we constructed ... Read More

Camptothecin has been found to inhibit topoisomerase 1, which is essential for DNA replication. With a decreased amount of topoisomerase 1, there is an excess of reversible cleaving complexes which initiates apoptosis. Through microscope observation of camptothecin treated cells, concentrations of camptothecin were narrowed down in order to determine a range of 0.2 micromolar (uM) to 0.8 uM to use ... Read More

Every year, car manufacturing companies spend millions of dollars advertising their products during one of the most watched television events of the year, the National Football League’s Super Bowl. In addition, millions of Americans are more interested in watching these famous advertisements rather than the outcome of the game. Because of the large sums of money being spent on these ... Read More

Schistosoma mansoni is a parasitic flatworm that is a causative agent of the disease schistosomiasis. Schistosomiasis plagues many third-world countries and is considered by the CDC to be a neglected tropical disease. Currently there is only one treatment: praziquantel. Praziquantel has many limitations, which necessitates discovery of a new treatment. The enzyme thioredoxin glutathione reductase (TGR) has been identified as ... Read More

Spinal cord injuries (SCI) interrupt the pathways between the brain and spinal cord, prompting profound impairment in motor control and disability. Despite recent advancements, individuals with SCI have few effective treatment options. A strategy to induce plasticity is exposure to acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH)–which constitutes breathing air containing low concentrations of oxygen (~10%) alternating with normal air (21%), for a ... Read More

Toxoplasma gondii, an apicomplexan parasite affecting one third of the world’s population, causes the disease known as toxoplasmosis. Atovaquone is a current treatment against T.gondii which can partially reduce the number of bradyzoites. However, atovaquone-resistant mutants are rapidly selected during treatment with atovaquone. Atovaquone and related compounds have been developed against cytochrome b, a target within complex III of the ... Read More

This study focused on comparing three different leg braces that assist people with neurological disabilities namely micro-processor controlled knee-ankle-foot orthosis (C-Brace), stance-control knee- ankle-foot orthosis (SCO), and conventional knee-ankle-foot orthosis (KAFO). Each participant in the study wore accelerometer sensors along with a brace and was asked to perform activities of daily living (sitting, standing, climbing stairs, etc.) and simulated falls ... Read More

The brain has a default mode of functioning based upon the observed activation of particular brain networks when no explicit task is performed which can be referred to as resting state. The purpose of this study was to examine the affect auditory stimuli had on resting state and which brain networks were activated as we increased the complexity of the ... Read More

Intelligent Tutoring Systems are computer systems that are designed to provide users with customized or immediate instruction without the use of a human teacher. An example of this is ChiQat-Tutor, which is a system designed to teach students basic Computer Science concepts. The purpose of this research was to develop and evaluate a component of ChiQat-Tutor that interprets and answers ... Read More

Radio wave communication is the primary mode of data transmission, but is vulnerable to interception or data theft. In addition, its heavy use restricts its available bandwidth. Thus, Li - Fi, or Visible Light Communication (VLC), has potential as an alternative. Through Li - Fi, higher transmission speeds, unregulated bandwidth, and unprecedented security could be achieved, allowing for applications like ... Read More

Stem cell asymmetric division is necessary for cyst stem cells (CySC) to produce self-renewed and differentiated cells at a 1:1 ratio around the stem cell niche, also known as hub cells. It is extremely important that this ratio is maintained because tumorigenesis can occur if too many self-renewed cells are produced while germ cell depletion and infertility can occur in ... Read More

New ways to administer drugs without a needle have been developed. Using an erbium doped yttrium aluminum garnet laser induced microjet, the same technique may be used to develop painless tattoos. A piece of pig skin is placed underneath the laser which is set at 2940nm, a wavelength well absorbed by water. The laser is then pulsed at 150μS while ... Read More

Chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) can result in changes in memory, attention, and motor skills in cancer patients. These impairments can be short-term or affect patients for the rest of their lives. Previous studies have shown that functional connectivity is abnormal in hippocampi for situations involving cognitive decline, such as traumatic brain injury and Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, we hypothesized that a ... Read More

In The Bahamas, Nassau Grouper, a top predator, are at a critical stage in their long term survival. Years of overfishing at spawning aggregations have caused an enormous decrease in their population, causing them to be listed as endangered and the Bahamas National Trust to enlist the help of biologists for research. The main focus of my research was to ... Read More

In recent years several arguments have been raised as to whether sugar substitutes help or harm us. This SIR investigation is focused on researching the effects of sugar substitutes in simulated blood. This was completed through both a literature search and lab experimentation. Simulated blood and amylase (0.1% solution in buffer) were used in the lab investigation, amylase represents the ... Read More

When combined, the proteins Ho1, PcyA, and LP502 make up the light- harvesting complex, or phycobilisome (PCB), of cyanobacteria. These complexes are primarily responsible for the light absorption that takes place in photosystem II of photosynthesis. Expression vectors pET28b- and pETDuet code specifically for the LP502 protein and the Ho1 and PcyA proteins. By inserting the photosystem into Escherichia coli, ... Read More

Derived from the vincamine plant, vindeburnol is a drug that has been shown to enhance release of noradrenaline, a key chemical in the regulation of neuroinflammation, in locus coeruleus neurons. Evidence shows that vincamine modulates cAMP levels in neurons, suggesting that vindeburnol is able to as well. Since the enzyme phosphodiesterase (PDE) breaks down cAMP, we use the PDE- Glo™ ... Read More

For coronary bypass surgery, the great saphenous vein is routinely used as a replacement graft. However, the venous graft often fails primarily due to “cellular mismatch,” as venous endothelial cells (ECs) have never seen oxygenated arterial blood before. Therefore, prior to grafting, reprogramming of venous ECs to arterial identity provides a clinically relevant approach to enhance graft patency and reduce ... Read More

Conjugated polymers are organic macromolecules containing alternating double and single bonds. In recent years, conjugated polymers have attracted considerable attention as chemosensory devices to detect nitroaromatic compounds, that are found in explosives. The goal of our research is to synthesize a conjugated polymer that will detect nitroaromatic compounds and improve the efficiency in the polymer’s detection abilities. We began by ... Read More

Empathy is a complex psychological phenomenon that can motivate the occurrence of behaviors that benefit others in distress; we call this helping. In humans, the relationship between empathy and helping is modified by the emotional state of the potential helper. To test if the same holds true in rats, midazolam, an anxiety-reducing drug, was administered to a rat that could ... Read More

The combinatorial Laplacian is an operator that has numerous applications in physics, finance, randomized algorithms, and graph theory. It contains information that describes certain properties of the graph. One important set of information is its set of eigenvalues (also known as its spectrum). For example, one can determine the relative connectivity of a graph with this. Furthermore, one can determine ... Read More

In order to satisfy the popularity of internet-connected devices and the demands for faster speeds, network companies have moved towards heterogeneous networks. Cellular providers have a limited bandwidth and must allocate it across its different cell types in order to best optimize revenue. We used MatLab to create a model which optimizes bandwidth allocation across a heterogeneous network consisting of ... Read More

HSC (hepatic stellate cell) activation has emerged as a key player in liver injury and fibrosis development. However, the molecules and signal pathways involved in liver fibrosis are unclear. The aim of this study is to identify the molecule related to HSC phagocytosis and activation. TIM4 is a cell receptor used by activated T-cells and could potentially be a mediator ... Read More

The Global Positioning System (GPS)is the most widely used navigation system to help travelers get from one place to another. However, because the system requires satellite signals to obtain an object’s location and subsequently give it direction, it doesn’t work well for indoor navigation. In this investigation, the goal was to create a way to localize an object indoors and ... Read More