Session II

Abstract: The Collins-Soper angle θ* is the angle between the negatively-signed lepton and the Z axis in the center of mass reference frame, calculated using Lorentz-invariant kinematic variables. In CI analyses, cosθ* is used to control the lepton angular distributions (as 1 + cosθ), as well as determine forward-backward asymmetry of the dileptons in the sample. The cosθ distribution ... Read More

Abelmoschus esculentus (Okra) is a highly nutritious vegetable. It belongs to the malvaceae family and is widely cultivated in India, Africa, America, and Brazil for its fibrous fruits containing round, white seeds. Usage of traditional plants and natural products for the treatment of infections rather than synthetically derived drugs are on a steep rise. Therefore, the aim of this ... Read More

Studies have shown that high Nitric Oxide expression in human tumors predicts a poor outcome. In high Nitric Oxide (HNO) adapted cells, signal transduction in response to DNA damage is altered. The objective of this study is to determine what genes are associated with response to DNA damage to nitric oxide exposure. mRNA was isolated from A549 (parent) and ... Read More

Dealer Fox is a data analysis focused social media management company which helps dealerships maximize their digital marketing budget. The focus of the business project for Dealer Fox changed over time and included social media management, secondary market research, web development, and database design. Over the course of six months, the company provided opportunities to work with clients through ... Read More

The internship focused on the implementation of new features and analysing data for the app CabDash. The app is indented to help rideshare and taxi drivers efficiency between riders by displaying times and potential riders. Most of the time was focused on gathering and analysing data about competitors, potential markets, and data about events usable by the app. This ... Read More

CancerIQ, Inc. is a company which helps to prevent people from developing late-stage hereditary cancers by informing them of their risk, and what they can do to lower that risk by educating them on lifestyle changes which could help. The main project of this school year has been to create an interactive web application for users that will take in ... Read More

AutoPair, Inc. is a company that serves as a layer of transparency between car dealerships and clients. It is a window for clientele to interact with business personnel to collect on the best service for the best prices that their area has to offer in the way of car repair. The internship was focused mainly on training vital skills that ... Read More

VisMed3D is a biomedical and technology company with a focus in the areas of determining concept viability with healthcare consulting, assurance services involving malpractice and IP patent review, and 3D printing services ranging from custom prosthetics and dental fabrication. The work completed for VisMed3D includes in-depth research for “The 2018-2019 Medical AM Highlights” journal. The research has produced over two ... Read More

CancerIQ sells a “cancer risk clinic in a box”, allowing hospitals to quickly find out their patients’ risk for hereditary cancer through an intuitive quiz. The business project attempts to tackle the problem of getting patients into the hospital by offering a free intuitive version of the company’s product. By informing users (based on their daily activities) about the chances ... Read More

LEAP Innovations is a company that strives to make learning more personalized and tailored to the individual. To organize the ideal system of education, LEAP innovations has laid down a framework for their company creating 4 separate categories that contribute the the overall learning experience: Learner Led (student driven learning), Learner Connected (real world application), Learner Demonstrated (competency-based learning), ... Read More

Cleancio strives to provide high-quality, low cost cleanings for vacation rental properties. The goal of the business project was to build Cleancio’s brand, through the integration of more frequent and targeted social media marketing. Other than social media, it aimed to use other digital avenues to continue to reinforce the company’s image. Content created ranges from blog posts, social media ... Read More

Interpreter Tap is a startup looking to create a service in which clients can connect to trained interpreters via video chat through the convenience of a mobile application. After the minimum viable product was developed for Android devices, Interpreter Tap was in need of an equivalent for iPhone users. Although they began development on the project in previous years, the ... Read More

Anastrozole is a commercial drug used to treat breast cancer in postmenopausal females. It targets the protein Cytochrome P450 19A1 which cleaves androgen to produce estrogen which can cause breast cancer. The focus of our project was to alter the chemical structure of the drug and improve its properties to inhibit the protein Cytochrome P450 19A1 from producing estrogen ... Read More

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder characterized by the deterioration of memory, visuospatial ability, and executive function. Because this neurodegeneration happens slowly, early diagnosis and intervention is needed. This study utilizes a preclinical transgenic mouse model of AD, 5XFAD, because it is characterized by an increase in amyloid-β oligomers (AβOs) in the hippocampus. Preliminary results show ... Read More

Compelling evidence suggests endothelium permeability comprises vascular architecture affecting a body’s angiogenesis and tumorigenesis. One of the key factors of endothelium permeability is the ERG gene which is located in the nuclei of endothelial cells. The ERG gene is classified as a proto-oncogene which means that through excessive mutation it can code for factors causing cancer. Through QPCR and ... Read More

Vibrio fischeri bacteria colonize the Euprymna scolopes bobtail squid, and are most commonly known for their unique ability to provide bioluminescence to the squid. However, motility and biofilm formation are two other traits known to be important for squid colonization. To conduct research on this type of bacterial behavior, it is useful to develop strains in which the natural ... Read More

Tropical rainforests are responsible for 30% of the total carbon dioxide exchange between the biosphere and atmosphere and store large amounts of carbon as biomass. Soil nutrient availability is an important regulator of forest carbon cycles by influencing tree growth and leaf nutrient concentrations. In this project, we studied how nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) added as fertilizer to the ... Read More

This study will observe the effects of the socioeconomic status of high schools on the political orientations of students. Specifically, it will investigate how the class cultural norms of the student body and faculty transmit political views to students. It will also explore the correlation between left-right political orientations for social and economic issues and the wealth of a ... Read More

In this experiment, ototoxicity from the chemotherapeutic drug cisplatin was studied to reduce or eliminate this common side effect from chemotherapy. Cisplatin causes damage to mitochondria and DNA in ear cells, resulting in severe hearing loss and deafness. Use of the drug Honokiol, a traditional Chinese medicine, is being tested in conjunction with chemotherapy to combat the ototoxicity from ... Read More

This project analyzes the effects of environmental stress on levels of RNA editing in an adult rat brain PTSD model to search for implications in mental health. We have previously detected changes in the levels of RNA editing due to prenatal stress, but we have not tested a model of adult stress. We plan to investigate changes in the ... Read More

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States for women (Chang, 2012). There has been a decline in deaths due to preventative measures and better treatment, however, African American women experience worse prognosis, shorter

survival times, and higher mortality rates due to various reasons including genetic risk factors,

obesity, and others which are ... Read More

The external globus pallidus, located in the basal ganglia, is associated with a variety of functions including the control of voluntary motor movements. To fully understand the input control of the GPe, we focused upon the projection from the dSPN neuron class to the Npas1 neuron class within the GPe of Parkinson’s Disease models and control models of mice. ... Read More

Patients with Spina Bifida affected with myelomeningocele can typically display varying degrees of bladder dysfunction. In most cases, surgical reconstruction utilizing a piece of intestine is needed. However, this solution is unsustainable as many issues can occur and the possibility of using a scaffold is ideal. The goal is to use scaffolds with a biodegradable framework that can serve ... Read More

In order to interpret data from the CMS particle accelerator, we must compare generator-level variables with reconstructed variables in Monte Carlo samples. These comparisons allow us to estimate systematic uncertainties in the detector.

Generating Monte Carlo samples is a tedious process. Each step (generation, reconstruction, AOD, and miniAOD) entails creating new python files, submitting each file, checking the dashboard ... Read More

In this project, the aim is to find a drug to treat malaria. The target that was chosen is an enzyme of Plasmodium falciparum, hypoxanthine guanine xanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HGXPRT). HGXPRT is an enzyme required for P. falciparum to synthesize purine nucleoside monophosphates essential for DNA/RNA production. When HGXPRT is inhibited there is a potential for P. falciparum to be ... Read More

A stellar stream is a group of stars that has been torn away from globular clusters and dwarf galaxies that have been stretched apart by gravitational tidal force. Previous observations have been made of stellar streams by the Dark Energy Survey. The objective of this research project is to confirm the findings discovered in the previous study and to ... Read More

For many years, the Monte Carlo simulation has been the prevalent method of measuring probabilities when it comes to the field of particle physics. While it has traditionally been built on the usage of regular probabilities and the fundamental practices of the standard model, there has been a push for an updated version of this simulation, and so this ... Read More

The phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) enzyme, which is responsible for hydrolyzing cAMP in immune cells and the central nervous system, is involved in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and depression, making it a promising target for pharmaceutical development. Drugs such as Apremilast and Crisaborole are already in use. Ligands which act as inhibitors of PDE4 and have high binding ... Read More

Protein engineering is growing as an important subject as new discoveries in this area open new doors for application of different proteins. Camelid antibodies specifically are an area of interest because they lack the light chain and only possess the heavy chain that allow for unique applications. This heavy-chain only design increases stability and specificity in bonding interactions. Previously, ... Read More

Feldman and Cousins introduced a statistical technique to perform a frequentist analysis which unifies upper and lower limits with two-sided confidence intervals. This solves the problem that the choice of upper limit or two-sided interval leads to intervals that do not give frequentist coverage if the choice is dependent on the data. The Feldman-Cousins approach involves sorting pseudoexperiments by ... Read More

The complexity of certain classical computer algorithms can be reduced by a quantum algorithm completing the same task. We examine the implementation of the Bernstein–Vazirani algorithm. It finds the hidden n-bit string s from the function fs(x)=sx that takes an n-bit input string x and outputs one bit, the dot product. This algorithm reduces the complexity from n queries ... Read More

Machine learning is the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use to effectively perform a specific task without using explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead. Machines learn by taking in large amounts of data and slowly adapting an artificial network to process the data. Machine learning has been used in a wide variety ... Read More

Angiogenesis is the process by which new blood vessels form, as cells in hypoxia secret Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor which creates the tip cell phenotype in whichever endothelial cell it binds to. The new tip cell promotes the stalk cell phenotype in neighboring cells through the Notch pathway. The tip and stalk cell phenotypes are critical to angiogenesis, but ... Read More

As the rate of antimicrobial resistance rises, the need to find new antibiotics has never been more important. One possible way to create new antibiotic compounds is to search for antimicrobial bacteria in dirt. In our studies, we took three soil samples from a concentrated area to test the antimicrobials within, against different pathogenic strains. Colonies from the soil ... Read More

Intuition is an important human capability that allows us to gauge and predict the properties of an unknown environment. This study presents an approach to how a computer agent can replicate this innate intuition by using an algorithm that will learn from an unknown underlying state using Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs). This task is difficult because the ... Read More

From aging research to paramount biological discoveries such as apoptosis, C. Elegans has been the crux of many research problems in the past decade. However, they possess certain qualities, such as their microscopic size, that make repetitive lab work extremely tedious for human labor and thus a strong candidate for automation. To automate the process of preparing worms for ... Read More

HIV-1 Protease is a principal object in drug discovery given its key role in the survival of AIDS. Without HIV-1 Protease, the disease would not be able to replicate or mature in the way proper for its survival (Caflisch et al. 2004). Given the complicated nature of its folding, including two flaps that shift between closed and partially open ... Read More

Our group's goal is to find evidence of quark-lepton compositeness by analyzing contact interactions that would indicate the presence of preons, theoretical constituents of quarks and leptons. We focus specifically on the Bayesian statistical analysis that determines the lower limit for the energy scale at which such contact interactions would occur. We calculate limits using a Bayesian Markov chain ... Read More

Networks can be used to analyze systems in the real world, however they are often too large for our computers to analyze within a reasonable amount of time. A solution to this is network sampling methods. These are just ways of sampling a smaller “representative” network that we can analyze. Being representative means that the sample retains certain characteristics ... Read More

In artificial intelligence, an important type of machine learning algorithm involves taking old data and using new information to transform it. With this in mind, the famous Cheryl’s Birthday problem was taken in order to take the information that each agent knows and put it into a data hierarchy, and then using an algorithm to transform this data hierarchy ... Read More

Diabetes mellitus (DM) has been a major public health problem in the U.S., affecting more than 29 million (9.3%) of the population. Type 1 diabetes (T1) is a form of DM in which very little or no insulin is produced by the pancreas, resulting in high blood sugar levels in the body. Many people with T1DM use daily physical ... Read More

The overall goal of this study is to improve quality of cardiovascular disease (CVD) care, a leading cause of complications and death, among liver transplant recipients. Currently, there is a lack of liver transplant-specific CVD clinical practice guidance. The study aims to quantify opinions, knowledge and usual care patterns about CVD care after liver transplant from practitioners who provide care ... Read More

The olfactory system is a central system that plays an essential part in the smell. Smell is an important sense because it is linked to parts of the brain that processes emotion and memory, so it can alert us to danger like fire or spoiled food when we are in trouble. Food is often used as a rewarding stimulus ... Read More

Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite responsible for the majority of deaths caused by malaria, requires purine to survive. These organisms are able to continually supply themselves with purine by processing hypoxanthine salvage from its host. Without the ability to create its own purine, the Plasmodium falciparum would die, which makes purine starvation a viable method of preventing deaths from malaria. ... Read More

Congenital nevi are pigmented moles present at birth that have a 2 to 20-fold increase in the chance of developing melanoma. In the past, melanoma has been treated using bleaching agents to give patients a more even skin tone which they may prefer. Bleaching seems to have a cytotoxicity towards melanocytes and not keratinocytes meaning it provides an effective ... Read More

As the largest components within the nucleus, nucleoli consist of ribosomal DNA regions and are essential for ribosome synthesis. Yet, for such distinct regions within the central component of cells, there has been little research concerning its influence on cellular metabolism outside of ribosome synthesis. Thus, nucleoli may play key roles in crucial cell processes, including involvement with cellular ... Read More

Hypervelocity stars are important for better understanding the nature of dark matter in the galaxy. By studying hypervelocity stars in the galaxy, we can gain a better understanding of the distribution of dark matter in the galaxy. However, finding hypervelocity stars in the Milky Way is difficult. My project utilized the Dark Energy Survey (DES) to develop a method ... Read More

Purpose to measure the penetration capability of chloride within unknown specimens of concrete. In doing so measuring the structural integrity of concrete when chloride provided materials are introduced, which introduces the possibility of corrosion in steel reinforcements. Solution of concrete will be poured, preparing four specimens. These serve as a control in which one contains no chloride and the ... Read More

Abnormal co-activation patterns of arm muscles is a substantial cause of impaired arm function after stroke. In our previous study, a myoelectric computer interface (MCI) training paradigm was designed to help stroke survivors reduce this abnormal coactivation. The effects of MCI training on function and arm kinematics in 32 chronic stroke survivors was evaluated, and results suggested that MCI ... Read More

Osteosarcoma is a differentiation disease that results from an osteoblast differentiation and proliferation imbalance. This study investigated how certain 19-base short regulatory RNAs may disrupt BMP9-induced osteoblast differentiation in mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). We are interested in determining these effects because they may further explain the development of osteosarcoma.

We introduced a completely randomized 19-base short RNA Library into ... Read More