Panel Session 3

In the courtroom, how words are said can be just as important as what words are said. Perceptions of vocal characteristics influence outcomes of Supreme Court cases. Just from a voice sample, people create ideas of a person as more or less aggressive, attractive, confident, intelligent, trustworthy, and masculine. We are studying what characteristics of speech, such as differences in ... Read More

In this year-long Independent Study, we have read and analyzed literature about romantic love from many different cultures. In our studies, we have approached questions including: Why has love always been integral to humanity? How do different cultures define love? Is there any agreement about what love is across culture? How do modern definitions of love derive and deviate from ... Read More

Words similar to the learner’s first language (L1) are often used to support second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. Additionally, adapting instruction to the individual learner can help to maximize learning success. In this study, we investigated how L1 influences L2 acquisition and how mood and confidence interact with task difficulty to influence vocabulary learning. We created an artificial language and ... Read More

The Nullarbor Plain of Southern Australia hosts a number of caves that preserves small mammal fossils that originally accumulated through the activities of owls. The goal of this study is to use this unique fossil record to examine how rodent species responded to environmental changes over the past 20,000 years. We used geometric morphometrics to quantify mandible shape in four ... Read More

Marine populations are connected through larval exchange between otherwise isolated habitats. A network of marine protected areas connected by larval flow are a tool that can replenish and conserve threatened marine populations. However, before a network can be created, the most valuable habitats need to be identified for a given species. Queen Conch is an ecologically and economically and culturally ... Read More

This project was created to visualize, model, and analyze animal movement on the Island of Barro Colorado. Using the longitude, latitude, and heights of 23 animals over the span of 3 months, this project was able to create several 2D visualizations. One, a map, showed the longitude and latitude movement of the animals, with a user interface to select animal, ... Read More

This research investigates the developmental process of elasmobranch body in order to understand evolutionary mechanisms of benthic body by analyzing the cellular [behavior] of a skate and shark embryos (stages 29 and 30). Understanding this developmental process of Batoidea will allow us to explore and comprehend the evolutionary mechanisms of how skates evolved from sharks, which is a field that ... Read More

Advanced MS patients experience severe ambulatory impairments and require specialized exercise equipment. One option is functional electrical stimulation (FES) cycling, which electrically stimulates leg muscles to elicit movement on the leg-ergometer. Methods/Design: The randomized controlled trial recruited 11 people with severe MS (EDSS 6.0-6.5). Participants were randomized into either the FES cycling condition or the passive cycling condition in which ... Read More

When it comes to preventive healthcare, place matters. It is increasingly clear that social factors, particularly access to resources such as healthy nutrition and safe housing, are as determinant to health and health equity as medical care. We investigate the significance of access to community resources to the social determinants of health in Humboldt Park, Chicago. In our approach, we ... Read More

Alzheimer's Disease is currently the primary cause of dementia throughout the world. Many patients tend to undergo a pre-clinical phase of mild cognitive impairment before onset of the disease. A variety of motor impairments, such as bradykinesia, characterizes both mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s. Motor skills that are impaired may be re-learned through the practice of implicit learning with visual ... Read More

Often, people afflicted with neurological, neuromuscular, or orthopedic impairments such as spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, stroke, or trauma are prescribed a knee-ankle-foot orthosis (KAFO) for walking. KAFOs, however, cause abnormal gait and extended use leads to chronic pain among other problems. Other orthotic devices, specifically the stance controlled orthotic device (SCO) and the microprocessor controlled C-brace, have sought to ... Read More

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are responsible for most cases of death and disability in the civilian and military populations under the age of 35. In spite of the importance of this public health problem, there is little information on long-term consequences of TBI. The Vietnam Head Injury Study (VHIS) is a long term (40 years+) follow-up study of penetrating TBI ... Read More

HIV AIDS is a prevalent disease that affects about 1.2 million people just in the United Stated and about 36.7 million people worldwide. Since this disease can be transmitted directly from person to person it affects many people. Though this is mainly seen as an immune system disease, there are also affects that HIV has on the nervous system. In ... Read More

Diabetes is a widely spread disease that affects millions of individuals around the globe. One of the main symptoms that arise with the diagnoses of diabetes is a tingling sensation in the extremities. Although the disease significantly impacts the lifestyle of individuals, little is known about the reasoning behind this onset of pain. While previous studies have made efforts to ... Read More

Empathy is a complex psychological phenomenon that motivates the occurrence of helping behaviors. Four experiments were performed to examine the effects of motivation, lack of social interaction, and decreased emotional contagion on helping behavior in rats. In our experimental paradigm, two rats were placed into an arena, with one rat in a restrainer and the other free to move around. ... Read More

The purpose of this investigation was to detect AB (Amyloid beta), ABOs (Amyloid Beta Oligomers), APP (Amyloid Precursor Protein), p-Tau, and t-Tau in the chick embryo retina. This would determine if the chick embryo was suitable for Alzheimer’s disease research. In this investigation, chick eggs were incubated for 12-13 days, after which they were dissected and the brain and retina ... Read More

The external globus pallidus (GPe) and dorsal striatum are two structures of the basal ganglia, which are a set of subcortical, movement related nuclei in the brain. The GPe projects into the striatum and provides an inhibitory input. However, the magnitude of this input and locations of pallidostriatal synapses have not yet been described. Because the GPe has been shown ... Read More

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the most common neurodegenerative disease that targets people from 10-80 years of age. Our lab previously showed that a mutation (variant) in the gene STK11 increased the risk of getting MS. However, the mechanisms of action of the SKT11 gene and its role in MS is not clearly understood. We demonstrate here that knockout (KO) of ... Read More

Convincing evidence indicates that pathological activity of the external globus pallidus (GPe), a nucleus in the basal ganglia, contributes to the motor symptoms of movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. The GPe’s activity is regulated by other basal ganglia structures, including the dorsal striatum (dStr), which forms the principal inhibitory input to the GPe. Despite the clinical importance of the ... Read More

Uncontrolled resistance hypertension referred to patients taking three or more antihypertensive medications with at least one being a diuretic and BP above threshold values (140/90 mmHg). The purpose of this study was to predict an empirical baseline variable that discriminated hypertensive patients who did or did not eventually develop resistant hypertension over a 150 day period using receiver operating characteristics ... Read More

There is a need to better understand the progression of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), commonly known as pancreatic cancer, in the early stages. The purpose of this investigation is to determine how MR microscopy, an advanced imaging technology, can be used to track the onset and development of pancreatic cancer. MR imaging was performed ex vivo at 14.1T on pancreas ... Read More

Phase I dose-finding clinical trials are utilized to optimize patient benefits at a specific dosage level of a drug. In the Toxicity Probability Interval (TPI) design, if the central tendency of a clinical trial’s beta-distribution falls in a safe interval, physicians will Escalate (“E”) their dosage. If the central tendency falls in an equivalence interval, physicians will Stay (“S) at ... Read More

With molecular biology starting to focus more on specific mechanisms and mutations, different types of mice are being generated. The question, thus arises, how to differentiate between these mice. Previous studies indicate the mechanisms behind breeding and creating certain specific- gene targeting -mice. However, there are few cost effective methods that are available in order to check whether mice have ... Read More

Heart failure (HF) affects about 6 million adults in the United States each year. However, the cellular mechanisms of developing HF are poorly understood which hinders the development of treatment. The purpose of this investigation was to further research the correlation between T-tubule density and the development of HF. Left ventricle myocytes of both HF and normal hearts were sliced ... Read More

Myocardial infarction is a very common cause of cardiac injury in humans. Unfortunately, the human heart cannot regenerate the cells that die as a result of cardiac disease. Progressive loss of these cardiac cells can eventually lead to heart failure. A solution to this problem could be to use regenerative methods to replenish the myocardial cells. Drosophila melanogaster is a ... Read More

Neurological research has yet to fully link socioeconomic status (SES) disparities to Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) risk. Numerous studies have attempted to show the relationship between adult CHD risk and SES, but little is still known about adolescent CHD risk and the cerebral origins of these SES disparities. We collected structural magnetic resonance imaging (T1MRI) data from a pool of ... Read More

One of the most prevalent chronic heart diseases in the United States, heart failure is the process wherein heart muscles slowly function worse until the heart fails. Many believe heart failure is caused by the loss of the T-tubule structures which are attacked as a result of the activation of PLCB-1. We are looking to find a compound which will ... Read More

Toll Like Receptors are responsible for activating innate immunity in response to microbes. One such Toll Like Receptor is TLR4. TLR4 primarily senses lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from bacteria, but its response to LPS can be increased in the presence of the host stress response protein high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1). Bacterial LPS and HMGB1 have both been implicated in diet-induced ... Read More

Six healthy individuals and six hemodialysis patients were tested for Forced Vital Capacity. Hemodialysis is used for those Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) patients who are acutely ill and require short term or long term dialysis. Obstructive disorders due to CKD can lead to vital capacity becoming impaired as the lungs become engorged and turgid with blood subsequent to a failing ... Read More

The intensity and spot size of any beam of light delivered to tissue is impacted by scattering, absorption, and reflection. The wavelength of light, the type of tissue, and the tissue thickness determine how much the properties of the light beam change. To successfully construct a cochlear implant that stimulates auditory neurons with light, these characteristics must be investigated, and ... Read More

In today’s world, there is a constant threat of environmental pollutants which negatively affects the daily lives of humans. One of these known pollutants is phenol, which is found in common consumer products such as mouthwash, lotions, and ointments. It has been found to accelerate senescence and decrease lifespan when introduced during early development. We utilized Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit ... Read More

The purpose of this investigation was to update, refine, and apply the techniques and strategies developed over the course of the last two years to produce a new cluster richness proxy, called M*, based off of stellar masses derived through Bayesian statistical methods. Bayesian models derived from Simha et al (2014) and Conroy and Gunn's FSPS were updated to incorporate ... Read More

We report results from an automated method to identify lensed quasars from the Dark Energy Survey using a PSF-difference-based algorithm aimed at identifying close-separation lens candidates. The PSFdifference algorithm utilizes the difference between PSF magnitude and model magnitude, as well as image segmentation, to deblend and identify close-separation candidates. In total, the algorithms identified 156 final lens candidates and also ... Read More

Dark matter is nonluminous material in the universe that is only known to interact through gravity, but may also interact via the weak or strong force. Although it is widely hypothesized that dark matter is weakly interacting massive particles, the recent detection of merging black holes by LIGO has brought forth the idea that dark matter takes the form of ... Read More

Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) represent the final frontier in research of the solar system. One recently discovered object, nicknamed “DeeDee” by researchers, has unusual orbit characteristics which could suggest the plausibility of a ninth planet the size of Neptune beyond the Kuiper Belt. This ongoing investigation aims to determine the characteristics of DeeDee via analyzing the photometric spectrum of DeeDee and ... Read More

We conduct a light review of the field of swarm engineering, describing the field’s development, methodologies, and applications. Top-down, bottom-up, and middle meeting methods of swarm design are described. We discuss the Hamiltonian method of swarm design, biomimetic systems, and physicomimetic systems. We address open problems within the field and future areas of research.

This project looked at the exceptions used in Java programs, specifically throws and catches. When something unexpected occurs during program execution, the throw block triggers an exception and the catch block responds to the exception in a variety of ways, such as long chain recovery attempts or printing an error message. Exception handling is widely used and crucial to all ... Read More

A fledgling technological with extraordinary potential, artificial neural networks have risen to prominence in the field of machine learning. Loosely inspired by their biological counterparts, neural networks function as computational systems composed of interconnected neurons. By exploiting certain architectural and computational properties of the system, neural networks are capable of a dizzying array of tasks, encompassing everything from computer vision ... Read More