Undergraduate Research Day 2020

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/20158

With students involved in so many research opportunities, Undergraduate Research Day provides the perfect opportunity for them to share their work with the campus community. Held each April, Undergraduate Research Day showcases current research, scholarship, and artistic endeavors.

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End date: 2020Subject: search.filters.subject.CMNS

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 16
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    Recognition of Aminated Guests by Acyclic Cucurbiturils in Biological Conditions
    (2020) Shah, Rohan; Isaacs, Lyle; Zebaze, Sandra
    The acyclic cucurbituril Motor2 has already been well documented in its binding to several types of molecular guests in phosphate buffer. However, while these tests provide a rough idea of motor2 affinity to different types of guests, they are incomplete in that they do not reflect how motor2 actually binds in body conditions. The human body contains many proteins and macromolecules that can affect the host-guest interactions of motor2, so it is important for new binding constants to be measured for motor2 in body conditions. In order to do this, Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) was used to measure motor2 binding constants to several different guest types in several different solutions, including albumin and fetal bovine serum. It was found that when tested with cyclic, monoaminated guests, motor2 binding affinity did not decrease significantly from phosphate to protein serum solvents. This retained affinity held across several different ring sizes and shapes. Motor2 binding affinity did suffer greatly in protein serum for guests that were linear, regardless of how many amines they had. The results also indicated that more hydrophobic guests do not bind as well to motor2 once albumin and other proteins ae introduced to solution, while hydrophilic, polar guests have better affinity retention. The ITC testing results indicated that motor2 binding in body conditions is heavily dependent on the shape of the guests it is binding to, and that motor2 would be most effective at its purpose in the human body if it was used to target cyclic amines and similar types.
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    Assessing Life History Parameters of Trissolcus japonicus and Anastatus reduvii, Parasitoids of the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug
    (2020) Thomas, Namitha; Dabek, Elizabeth Z.; Shrewsbury, Paula M.; Hooks, Cerruti R. R.
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    Interpretable Deep Learning for Toxicity Prediction
    (2020) Banerjee, Aranya; Boby, Kevin; Lam, Samuel; Li, Jeffrey; Polefrone, David; San, Robert; Schlunk, Erika; Wynn, Sean; Yancey, Colin; Feizi, Soheil
    Team TOXIC (“Understanding Computational Toxicology”) seeks to apply interpretability techniques to machine learning models which predict drug safety. Currently, such models have been developed with relative accuracy and are used in industry for drug development. However, because they are not sufficiently rooted in chemical knowledge, they are not widely used in regulatory processes. To contribute towards a solution, we evaluate existing explanation methods for toxicity predction models trained on open-source data sets. Additionally, we are working towards models involving the usage of more interpretable data representations. Ultimately, we hope to demonstrate a proof-of-concept for an interpretable model for predicting drug safety which can illustrate its reasoning.
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    The Effects of DMPF on Honey Bee Pathophysiology
    (2020) Moon, So Eun; Nearman, Anthony; vanEngelsdorp, Dennis
    Varroa destructor is a parasitic mite that is the leading cause of honey bee colony loss in the United States. To mitigate these losses, beekeepers apply acaricide treatments. N-(2,4-dimethylphenyl) formamide (DMPF), the active metabolite in amitraz, was the highest detected pesticide in the 2017 US National Honey Bee Survey (NHBS), where samples of bees and wax were taken from 300 different apiaries across the United States. Although amitraz is relatively non-toxic to bees, very little is known about its effects on honey bee physiology, which has shown to be a useful tool in predicting overall colony health. This study investigates the potential effects of DMPF in adult honey bees across 19 pathophysiological traits. Samples of adult bees were necropsied from colonies with known levels of DMPF in the comb wax and compared to bees from colonies with no DMPF detections. The statistical results indicate potential associations between physiological symptoms in honey bee organs such as the ventriculus, Malpighian tubules, rectum, sting gland, and venom sac to varying DMPF concentrations. These findings serve to identify preliminary evidence for future work quantifying the overall effects of DMPF on colony health.
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    Troublesome Parents? An Exploration of the Relationship between Anxiety, Parenting, and Ethnicity
    (2020) Farooq, Tayyiaba; Seddio, Kaylee, PhD CFLE; Fox, Nathan, PhD
    The role parents play in their children’s lives has been debated for quite some time now, as paralleled by the nature vs. nurture debate. In this investigation, we look at the relationship between parenting and anxiety during adolescence in order to understand the potential consequences and differences in parenting style later in life. Based on the current literature there is a consensus to the fact parenting plays some role in the manifestation of the anxiety of their children during adolescence, the however full extent of this is not known. The link between ethnicity on parenting and anxiety during adolescence as well have not been well-established among this sample. For this analysis, we looked at the relationship between parental restrictiveness within the Temperament Over Time Study; 366 subjects (169 male, 197 female; 122 minority, 244 Caucasian/White) participated. Data were collected when participants were 12 and 15-years of age. It was concluded there is a statistically significant relationship between ethnicity and parental restrictiveness within the sample. Specifically, minority parents indicated more restrictive parenting strategies than do Caucasian or white families, F(14, 141)=2.442, p = .004. For future research, other confounding variables affecting adolescent anxiety should be measured as well as taking into account cultural implications when studying parenting style, as well as the limitations of the sample population used for this investigation.
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    Weakly-Mixing Systems with Dense Prime Orbits
    (2020) Benda, Aaron; Kanigowski, Adam
    We provide the first examples of smooth, weak mixing dynamical systems for which all points have dense orbits along primes.
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    Comprehensive Multi-Timespan Analysis of Known AGN
    (2020) Riitano, Luca; Goodman, Jordan
    Only two sources of Very High Energy (VHE) gamma-rays (~50 GeV to ~10 TeV) from outside of the Milky Way have been detected by the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory. Although varying timescale analyses have been performed, a complete search of all multi-day time scales has not been executed. The primary sources of extragalactic VHE gamma-rays are Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), supermassive blackholes at the center of other galaxies, actively feeding on matter. I propose a comprehensive analysis of known AGN in all multi-day time scales since HAWC began operations. Such an analysis would allow for limits to be placed on the frequency of AGN flares, and improve our understanding of AGN in the VHE regime. In order to determine the significance of the flux received, a False Alarm Rate (FAR) must first be established by analyzing the significance distribution of pseudomaps created by poisson fluctuating the background. This step requires the bulk of computing time and is nearly complete. The next step will be to run the program to determine the significance of known AGN on a comprehensive set of timescales.
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    E. coli biofilm adhesion to porous and nonporous surfaces in spaceflight conditions
    (2020) Raghu, Apurva; Fang, Michelle; Adam, Debbie; Gooya, Niki; Keppetipola, Pali; Serrano, Daniel
    Biofilms are communities of microorganisms that have the capacity to facilitate the development of diseases. Previous literature has found that biofilm growth is affected by surface properties: for example, in some cases there is reduced biofilm formation on porous surfaces compared to non-porous surfaces. As humans continue to explore space, understanding the behavior of biofilms in spaceflight conditions will become critical. Research has indicated that bacterial colonies within microgravity environments exhibit atypical behaviors of increased growth and virulency. To help shed some light on these aspects of biofilm growth, our study analyzed the formation and adhesion of E. coli on porous and nonporous 99.99% aluminum on Earth and in space. The experiment was conducted both on Earth and at the International Space Station to determine if the presence of gravity impacts biofilm physiology on these surfaces. E. coli growth on nonporous and porous aluminum were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Qualitative analysis reveals a possible size difference between the Earth and space bacteria. However, no significant qualitative differences were observed between gravity and microgravity samples on porous and nonporous aluminum surfaces. We are currently analyzing our samples to corroborate or invalidate the presence of structural differences on biofilms in porous vs. nonporous surfaces and Earth vs. space settings. Further research is required to assess the morphology of individual bacteria on these aforementioned materials and growth settings.
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    The Role of Lipid Metabolism in B Cell Immune Functions
    (2020) Beher, Richa; Song, Wenxia
    Evidence indicates that lipid accumulation due to obesity triggers a low-grade, chronic inflammation, which is correlated with the occurrence of Type 2 diabetes (T2D). Recent studies provide evidence for the essential role that B cells play in obesity-induced inflammation and the development of insulin resistance. In visceral adipose tissue (VAT), B cells generate self-reactive antibodies (autoantibodies), which increase their pathogenicity. They also activate the production of cytokines by T cells through antigen presentation. Lastly, B cells themselves increase the production of inflammatory cytokines while decreasing the production of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10. We hypothesize that neutral lipid accumulation exclusively in B cells will cause them to infiltrate VAT, trigger autoantibody production, and develop an autoimmune pathology. Preliminary research has led to the generation of a B cell-specific CGI-58 knockout (BKO) mice model in order to induce neutral lipid accumulation in B cells. It was found that increased accumulation of triglycerides in CGI-58 BKO mice significantly increased the levels of spontaneous activation in B cells, shown by the increases in the number of germinal center B cells, the surface expression levels of B cell activation markers, and the number of infiltrated lymphocytes in VAT, compared to Flox controls. The goal of this project is to determine the mechanism by which B cell lipid metabolism regulates B cell activation and pathogenicity in obesity-associated insulin resistance.
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    Balancing Fairness and Profit in Rideshare using Deep Learning
    (2020-04-26) Raman, Naveen; Dickerson, John
    Rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft have become much more popular over the last few years. Determining which riders are allocated to which drivers is a challenging problem, complicated by the number of combinations of riders and drivers. Current solutions typically optimize for gross mean volume or profit, while ignoring fairness in driver pay and rider wait-time. We address these by taking a long-term view, using Neural Networks to simulate value functions, and use Markov Decision Processes to maximize fairness.