There are several policy options that can reduce pollution and other externalities associated with economic activity. They can be classified into two categories: mandates, such as minimum fuel efficiency or pollution emission standards, and price-based instruments, such as gasoline taxes or tradable pollution permits. Although economic theory predicts that price-based instruments are more efficient (cheaper for a given unit of ... Read More

Our research at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, applying the lean startup method to DropDot, has enabled us to distill knowledge useful to startups that develop software applications. After conducting research on popular startup methods and comparing startups that have failed to others which have had exponential growth, we applied what we learned about being efficient to our own ... Read More

Companies often publicly announce their new products to attract customers. Their successfulness is indicated in a change in their stock performance. This investigation studies how the announcement of new drug products affects a company's stock price. I looked at eight different pharmaceutical companies and created a list of the new drugs they produced since 2000. For each drug, I found ... Read More

Cluster analysis is a method in data analysis used to group data points with similar characteristics. Kmeans clustering is a widely-used algorithm to sort data using a prototype which was, in this case, the mean of all the data points in a cluster. Throughout this project, a better way to initialize data points into clusters before applying the algorithm was ... Read More

The value g in particle physics represents how a particle couples to a magnetic field. Paul Dirac predicted the g-value of a muon to be exactly two without quantum effects. However, quantum mechanics does exist in our universe and affects the g-value of the muon. With the combined effects of quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, and electroweak interactions, theorists predicted that ... Read More

In the most recent measurement of the muon’s magnetic anomalous moment at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), a three standard deviation discrepancy was found between its measured and predicted value. The experiment will be repeated at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) with four times more precision to prove whether physics beyond the Standard Model is responsible for the observed difference. The ... Read More

Two genomes of unicellular photosynthetic algae known as diatoms have been sequenced and annotated prior to this investigation, but using new techniques, a third diatom genome, Psammoneis, has been sequenced. Analysis of aspects of the Psammoneis genome, including its protein divergence from its relatives as well as its transposable element diversity, could reveal trends about diatoms and heterokonts. Transposable elements ... Read More

Anthocyanins are pigments produced by the flowers, fruits, and leaves of plants. These molecules can give plants their color, and are stabilized successively by glycosylation and acylation reactions. Catharanthus roseus is the model organism for studying the effects of these reactions in the sun, as C. roseus flowers lighten when exposed to sunlight due to the decomposition of unstable anthocyanins ... Read More

Invasive species plaguing the United States threaten native species and biodiversity by damaging native habitats. In Illinois, invasives of concern include common buckthorn, garlic mustard, multiflora rose, leafy spurge, and Japanese honeysuckle. Plant phenology is the study of seasonal occurrences in plants, such as the timing of bud bursts or flowers blooming. Previous studies have shown that invasive plants tend ... Read More

To better understand the dispersal patterns of airborne pollen, of which research and information is scarce, we want to design an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for aerial sampling of pollen, spores and other particles to precisely determine the quantity and type of airborne objects at different altitudes and distances for a focal tree. Understanding dispersal patterns will help predict how ... Read More

Osteosarcoma can be regarded as a differentiation disease that is caused by genetic and epigenetic disruptions of osteoblast terminal differentiation. Using an innovative approach of genome-wide functional screening, we have recently uncovered that forced expression of certain short RNA (19-base) may disrupt BMP9-induced bone formation from MSCs. These short RNA are designated as Disruptors of Osteogenesis induced by BMP9 (or ... Read More

The bacteria Bacillus subtilis secretes exopolysaccharide (EPS) as part of its biofilm formation. EPS has been found to protect mice from colitis and other inflammatory processes induced by the mouse pathogen Citrobacter rodentium. There is not much known about the chemical nature of EPS and the goal of this project was to find the optimal growth conditions for EPS production ... Read More

The Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV), known as herpes, is a part of the herpesviridae family. There are glycoproteins on the surface of HSV. These glycoproteins are activated with their receptors on the cell surface causing the viral particles to sure into the cells and get endocytosed by the host cells. This investigation was conducted to figure out how exactly gD, ... Read More

Guanosine penta/tetraphosphate ((p)ppGpp) is a widely conserved intracellular signaling molecule that plays important roles in metabolic control and stress response in bacteria. Biosynthesis of ppGpp is known to be triggered by various starvation stresses, most notably amino acids starvation. However, the dynamics of ppGpp production in bacterial cells and their effects on stress survival have not been fully explored. Using ... Read More

Animal models are essential to our current understanding of disease progression, pathology and diagnosis. Created as models for pre-clinical studies, animal models have served as excellent indicators of protein regulation, gene expression, and immunology, all of which have provided insight into the growing field of therapeutics and treatments. One particular illnesses of interest, Alzheimer’s disease, is being studied using animal ... Read More

One approach to image Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology is by positron emission tomography (PET), using probes that target amyloid fibrils. However, PET is costly and limited in availability, and does not provide an early diagnosis of AD by focusing on amyloid fibrils. Furthermore, AP oligomers have been shown to correlate better with the pathogenesis of AD in comparison to amyloid ... Read More

In the field of Alzheimer's Disease (AD), there is great debate about the role of Aβ Oligomers Species (AßOs) and pTau in the pathogenesis of AD, a progressive neurodegenerative disease. Since there is still ambiguity about the pattern of AßO buildup in correlation with other pathological events associated with AD, it is important to study the formation and onset of ... Read More

One of the greatest advancements in Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnostics has been the implementation of positron emission tomography (PET) probes that target amyloid fibrils and plaques. However, these protein congregations do not correlate closely to the pathogenesis of AD. It is now believed that amyloid-beta oligomers (ABOs) appear in the earliest stages of AD cause memory dysfucntion through tau hyperphosphorylation, ... Read More

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of diseases which affect the digestive tract. Over three million people from the United States and Europe are afflicted with an IBD (Raffals, 2016). Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD) are two such diseases that fall within the category of IBDs. While the exact cause of these IBDs is unknown, scientists have ... Read More

Colorectal neoplasia is the abnormal growth of tissue in the colon, encompassing dysplasia as well as colorectal cancer cancer. Patients with inflammatory bowel disease have chronic inflammation in their colon. It is thought that the chronic inflammation places them at increased risk for colorectal neoplasia, whereby the colonic lining changes from at risk mucosa with chronic inflammation to dysplasia and ... Read More

Celiac disease is a complex autoimmune disorder induced by the ingestion of gluten that causes inflammation and mucosal damage in the small intestine due to a loss of tolerance to gluten. Past studies have shown that virus infections also play a role in the development of celiac disease by stimulating an immune response, such as upregulating type-1 interferon expression, and ... Read More

The majority of glutathione, an important antioxidant, appears in the body in its reduced form (GSH), with 10% appearing in its oxidized form of glutathione disulfide (GSSG). A deficiency in glutathione results in oxidative stress and plays a major role in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, oxidative stress is an important cause of intestinal epithelial cell death. High ... Read More

Systemic Sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune rheumatic disease with the highest mortality rate amongst autoimmune connective tissue diseases. The disease causes symptoms such as inflammation within the dermis and other organs. Adipocytes are fat cells which aid in the progression of SSc by regulating the immune system and metabolic pathways. C1q/TNF-Related Protein 3 (CTRP3) and C1q/TNF-Related Protein 9 (CTRP9) are ... Read More

Pediatric sepsis is a common and serious blood bacterial infection that can lead Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome and death. Previous studies associate early recognition and treatment with increased patient outcomes, yet the optimal treatment protocol for pediatric patients is not always followed. In September 2015, Lurie Children’s Hospital implemented an electronic screening record and treatment pathway in their Emergency Department ... Read More

Juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) is an autoimmune disease that affects children with muscle inflammation, weakness, and skin rashes. The main way to treat JDM is using corticosteroids and to track the progression of the disease, the disease activity score (DAS) can be used. In a typical JDM patient, the lipid levels are higher than in a normal, healthy child. The association ... Read More

High salt has shown to be a part of the human lifestyle for ages, but has had adverse effects on health. High salt’s influence not only encompasses nutrition but also involves wound healing. During the process of a wound, an increase in Na ions is known to lead towards an inflammatory reaction. We demonstrate that macrophages, as one of many ... Read More

Boiling water on a heated solid surface has taken a fundamental role in everyday life, and occurs in many industrial processes. However, at extremely high temperatures, heat transfer between a solid surface and liquid water decreases due to the formation of a gas phase acting as an insulator between the liquid water and the hot surface. In addition, a sudden ... Read More

The goal of this project is to create a porous ceramic water filter for families in the developing world in need of sanitary water. Estimates put this number at nearly a billion people. Our targets include a bacterial kill rate of 99%, a flow rate of 2 L/hr, and an annualized user cost of $20. Filter composition was varied in ... Read More

The wastewater from hospitals contains many hazardous materials such as antibiotic, genetic material, and bacteria. It is essential to treat this wastewater fully by removing all of this hazardous material before it enters aquatic environments or is in contact with humans. Enediyne is a class of small molecule that can cleave DNA in tumors by formation of biradical. We tested ... Read More

Microfluidics continues to be a field of vast potential in the biomedical field due to the various factors that make it attractive. However, one of the principle problems with microfluidic devices is the phenomena of clogging. Clogging can inhibit the function of microfluidic devices and render them useless. Recent advances in 3D printing technology have given rise to 3D printed ... Read More

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), scheduled to begin in 2021, will search for rare decays as evidence of Grand Unification, in which the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces governing particle interactions in nature are unified at high energies. Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) frequently predict that nucleons - that is, protons and bound neutrons - may decay, and observation of ... Read More

Fermilab produces intense beams of high-energy neutrinos, particles that may hold the key to understanding the universe and what matter is made up of. Various neutrino experiments are either running or under planning; some aim to discover differences in neutrino and antineutrino interactions, look for neutrinos from supernovae, or search for nucleon decay. Others will help answer some of the ... Read More

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle detector that is being used to search for possible new physics, such as Supersymmetry and Dark Matter. The top quark is one of the most important particles in the search for Supersymmetry, and it is highly sought after at CMS due to its large ... Read More