Session 2

Anthocyanins are pigments produced by flowers, fruits, and leaves of plants that determine the color of plant tissue. These molecules are stabilized by successive glycosylation and acylation reactions that directly correlate to the longevity of the pigments in commercial plants, as studied through the bleaching effect of sunlight on Catharanthus roseus, a model organism. However, different combinations of sugars and ... Read More

Around 50% of human liver cells and 90% of mouse liver cells are polyploid, containing more than two sets of chromosomes. However, polyploidy’s relationship to liver cancer is not yet known. We examined whether polyploidy protects against liver oncogenesis by comparing tumor growth in mostly polyploid and mostly diploid livers. To model loss of polyploid hepatocytes, we used a conditional ... Read More

We developed a program that reads structure sets and dose grids from radiation treatment plans and outputs field-specific histograms of the number of voxels within the planning target volume that received dose. The program then normalizes each histogram to the percent volume of the target that received each field's contribution of the total dose. It then determines the number of ... Read More

A hypervelocity star is a star that travels faster than the escape velocity of the gravity well of the galaxy it originated in. To create stars that travel at these speeds, the stars need to be flung out with a great deal of velocity, typically 1,000 km/s. We wanted to use new data provided by the DES camera in Chile, ... Read More

In the past two decades, genocide intervention around the world has reached unanticipated heights. Although the international community is increasingly stepping in to prevent genocide, it too often occurs after most of the damage has already been done. As we approach the 100th anniversary of the first modern genocide, we must reflect: What is the international community’s role in curbing ... Read More

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama proposed in The End of History and the Last Man that the fall oc communism signaled the end of human history. He postulated that everyone would now rally behind liberal capitalism and there would be nothing left to fight about. Subsequent events have proven Fukuyama to be an extraordinarily bad historian. Communism was a glass-jawed opponent. ... Read More

The number of uses for the harmonic gear are endless: from aerospace devices, to medical equipment, to robotics; the harmonic drive is essential to these devices. Its advantages include having high torque, zero backlash, high reduction ratios and precision, but the harmonic drive is often times expensive and heavy. To improve the design of the harmonic gear, the goal of ... Read More

Particle accelerators are a very useful tool in physics, biology, and materials science, among other fields. The superconducting radiofrequency cavities, which accelerate the particle beam, have certain cryogenic requirements that inflate the cost of operation. The viability of an Nb₃Sn film inside a Nb cavity is relevant to future projects due to its associated benefits. Should the alloy be able ... Read More

In the economics world, companies seek to make the most profit from their product sales. When competing companies announce their prices, consumers instantly join the more beneficial company. However, if the effective cost of the product is more than customers are willing to pay, less of the product will be sold. Wireless network providers have strategies in play when selling ... Read More

The purpose of this investigation was to devise an efficient and accurate algorithm that is capable of detecting pedestrians’ positions within frames of live footage. After exploring various models for pedestrian detection and weighing their advantages, we settled on using a convolutional neural network (CNN) as the basis for our algorithm. Using pre-recorded footage from the Chicago Police Department as ... Read More

Animal models have been instrumental in studying the progression, pathology, and symptomology of diseases, and are thus essential to our current understanding of diseases. One particular disease of interest today, Alzheimer's disease {AD), also uses these animal models. It is now accepted that Amyloid Beta oligomers (APOs), soluble derivative aggregates of the Amyloid Beta precursor protein (APP), are responsible for ... Read More

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common motor disability among children. A major contributor to this disease is hypoxia-ischemia (HI), characterized by deprivation of oxygen to the brain, usually caused by premature birth. HI can have detrimental effects on oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs), which are crucial to white matter development. Improper development of OPCs during gestation may lead to white ... Read More

The iconic queen conch is integral to the economy and culture of The Bahamas. Indeed, the majority of Bahamian households consume conch flesh weekly, which has resulted in catastrophic declines in abundance. To reverse the decline, effective protections must take into account conch ecology - specifically conch habitat preferences which are hitherto undescribed. Here, we use a massive dataset of ... Read More

Heart failure (HF) affects 6 million adults in the United States, with 500,000 new cases reported each year. Nonetheless, the cellular mechanisms that lead to the progression of HF are poorly understood, resulting in difficulties in treatment and prevention. Recent findings suggest that HF cells have a lower T-tubule density than normal cells, which contributes to poor EC coupling. The ... Read More

Schistosomiasis is a waterborne, parasitic disease often found in underdeveloped areas in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America that affects 260 million people worldwide. Currently, there is only one drug used to treat schistosomiasis, Praziquantel. However, scientists believe the worm may soon evolve resistance to the drug, as proven in a laboratory environment, stressing the need for another form of ... Read More

The targeting of axons in the epithelium of the tongue requires a high level of precision, as taste axons innervate the taste bud, but avoid the surrounding epithelium, while a subset of somatosensory axons does the reverse. The cell-attached signaling molecules Eph and ephrins act as ligands and receptors for one another that trigger growth promotion or repulsion to help ... Read More

Preons are hypothetical particles that make up quarks and leptons. Contact interactions (CI’s) involving such preons would theoretically occur above a characteristic energy scale, denoted . According to the CI model, high-energy interactions at modern accelerators will be affected by preon interactions at energies well below . Using Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) data, we can determine a lower limit on ... Read More

To predict the course of an infection, we created both a stochastic and deterministic model. In the deterministic model, we formulated a system of differential equations. We used the models to explore in further detail the effects of infection parameters (numerical descriptors of the infection) on the stability of the system at a disease-free equilibrium using a matrix method which ... Read More

Bile acid are synthesized by the liver and act as detergent for lipid absorption. X-box binding protein-1 spliced (XBP1s) is a protective molecule expressed when the liver is under ER stress due to cholestasis or proliferation, which can cause excess unfolded or misfolded proteins. The ER stress activates the unfolded protein response (UPR). The short-heterodimer partner (SHP) plays an active ... Read More

A population characterization is a table containing the qualities and characteristics of a sample population averaged from different individuals. Characteristics may include BMI, years of cigarette use, or body weight. In our study, we were given data of the characteristics of two populations, one of which was cancer-free while the other had cancer-incidents. Using the data, we compared the demographic ... Read More

Ephrin type A receptor 1 (EphA1) and Ephrin type A receptor 2 (EphA2) are highly related receptor tyrosine kinases that play a role in skin function. We have previously reported that loss of EphA2 severely impairs epidermal differentiation. However, despite high homology, EphA1 cannot restore the

differentiation defect caused by lack of EphA2 suggesting that they have non-redundant functions in ... Read More