Undergraduate Research Posters 2017

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  Improving the Development of the I-Chart For Use in Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Operation

  Kimberly Schveder

  The Shewhart control chart is a statistical tool used by pharmaceutical companies, as well as chemical and other batch manufacturers, to help detect errors in the manufacturing process and ensure control of product quality. One particular type of control chart is the I-chart. The average run length (ARL) statistic of the I-chart can easily be determined when output from the manufacturing process is normally distributed with known population parameters. This paper investigates the impact on the ARL statistic when the I-chart is based on mean and standard deviation estimates obtained ... Read More

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  P1: Assessment of Metabolism-Induced Hepatotoxicity on a 384-Pillar Plate

  Yana Sickar, Soo-Yeon Kang, Pranav Joshi, and Kyeong-Nam Yu

  Microarray bioprinting technology has been explored to create miniaturized 3D cell cultures on a 384-pillar plate, which were combined with drug metabolizing enzymes (DMEs) and test compounds in a 384-well plate for metabolism-induced toxicity assays. Our goal in this study was to demonstrate rapid assessment of metabolism- induced toxicity on the 384-pillar plate and obtain reliable and highly predictive information on compound's hepatotoxicity in vivo. Briefly, human cells including Hep3B human hepatoma cell line as well as human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK 293) cell were encapsulated in alginate-Matrigel on the ... Read More

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  P2: Construction of Weather Station for Measuring Wind using a Hovering Drone Network

  Adam Stead, Mark Travis, and Rishi Maheshwari

  Our research aims to build and test the effectiveness of the Sparkfun® Weather Station in its ability to record meaningful data while streaming to a remote device in real-time. This is motivated by our plans to utilize a hovering-drone system to collect meteorological data, such as wind speed, wind direction, humidity, pressure, and temperature. This data is essential to evaluate the wind profiles of a given area and assess available wind resource. The weather station was first calibrated by comparing measurements of the cup anemometer against a standard pitot tube ... Read More

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  P1: How High Does the Lower Atmosphere Go?

  Vladimir Sworski and Justin Flaherty

  The Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL), consisting of the bottom few kilometers of the troposphere, is a region with strong mixing of moisture and winds. This region's activity has a large impact on weather and climate models. In this study, we use a high resolution computer model: Large Eddy Simulation (LES). Statistics produced require a strong understanding of the height of the ABL. The purpose of this study was to create a method for determining this height accurately and consistently, as previous models demonstrated significant error.

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  P2: Developing Methodologies for Wet-Sample Electron Microscopy Imaging

  Daniel Terrano and Petru Fodor

  Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) is widely used to analyze the size, shape, and composition of material systems. However, using this tool for analyzing systems such as particles suspended in solution requires drastic sample alterations, such as precipitation and fixation. Besides altering their environment, this exposes the particles to the harsh conditions within an electron microscope, such as high vacuum and electron beam exposure. To this end, the first goal of this study was to develop methodologies for imaging wet samples using electron microscopy. This is realized by creating a sandwich ... Read More

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  P1: Synthesis Optimization and Characterization of Polymeric Microgels

  Samantha Tietjen and Samantha Hudson

  Microgels are spherical particles suspended in solution, comprised of crosslinked polymer chains. Due to the amphiphilic property of the parent polymer, microgels display a temperature dependent de-swelling property, and therefore have the potential to be used for drug delivery. In this case, microgels were synthesized using hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) polymer and divinyl sulfone (DVS) cross-linker, as well as dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB) surfactant to decrease particle size and promote microgel monodispersity. Synthesized particles were then characterized using dynamic light scattering (DLS) for both temperature and angle dependence to determine hydrodynamic radius, ... Read More

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  P2: Is it in the eyes? A pupillometry study of stress reactivity and Borderline Personality Disorder

  Zachary Tokar

  Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by unstable mood states, chaotic interpersonal relationships, and behavioral dysregulation in the form of selfinjurious acts that results in notable functional impairment. Emotion dysregulation, marked by strong shifts in emotional states away from baseline levels across subjective and physiological substrates, is believed to reflect one mechanism in the relationship between BPD and functional impairment. However, it remains unclear whether emotion dysregulation represents a general tendency to experience both positive and negative emotions keenly, or to specifically be sensitized to negative mood states. The present ... Read More

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  P2: Light Scattering Study of the Size and Shape of Mixed Elastin-Like Polypeptide Micelles

  Ilona Tsuper, Daniel Terrano, and Bryce Noe

  Elastin-Like Polypeptides (ELP) can be used to form thermoreversible vehicles for drug delivery systems. The ELP nanoparticles are composed of three-armed star polypeptides. Each of the three arms extending from the negatively charged foldon domain include 20 repeats of the (GVGVP) amino acid sequence. In addition, linear constructs composed of 40 repeats of the same (GVGVP) sequence are introduced into the system. The mixed ELP polymer system is soluble at room temperature and becomes insoluble at the transition temperature (~ 50°C) forming micelles with the foldons on the exterior and ... Read More

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  Spurious grain formation due to convection at cross-section-changes during directional solidification

  Noah Weber and Masoud Ghods

  Turbine blades are a critical component in high powered gas turbine engines. These components are directionally solidified to have a single grain orientation, which allows them to operate under high temperature and stress conditions. Spurious grain formation is a major concern when forming these turbine blades. The purpose of this study was to study the effect convection has on forming these defects within turbine blades. Two alloys, Pb-5.8%Sb (solutally unstable) and Al-19%Cu (solutally stable) were directionally solidified upward in a positive thermal gradient (thermally stable) in a graphite crucible having ... Read More

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  Expression Validation of miR-149-5p targets in prostate cancer

  Grant Wethington and Savita Singh

  Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the leading causes of mortality in men. Current therapeutics for PCa are androgen depletion by castration or/and anti-androgen based treatments. Androgens are necessary for Androgen receptor (AR) to function as a transcription factor, AR then regulates the expression of genes which promote cancer cell proliferation. However, despite the therapeutic interventions recurred AR signaling, which is facilitated by the acquisition of mutations in AR and its amplification, cholesterol biosynthesis and alterations in the steroidogenesis continue promoting PCa carcinogenesis. Our research is focused on regulatory small ... Read More

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  An Evaluation of Unionidae diversity in the Rocky River and how Population density has Changed Over Time in comparison to Observations made over 15 Years ago

  Jamil Wilson

  This study was undertaken to determine the changes in freshwater bivalve population since the survey conducted in 2001 in the northern region of the Rocky River, Ohio, USA. During our study, we discovered 69 live specimens and 58 shells most of which were found in two distinct locations near the top and bottom of the area surveyed. Our finds consisted of eight species in comparison to the nine that were seen in the same area of the 2001 study. Our results showed that Leptodea fragilis populations have decreased in the ... Read More

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  P2: Dispersion Stability of DNA-Wrapped Carbon Nanotubes in Biological Media

  Fjorela Xhyliu

  Single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are among the most widely studied artificial nanomaterials. Their dispersion stability in biological media is a prerequisite for applications development in biomedical imaging and sensing. This project investigates the dispersion stability of DNA-wrapped SWCNTs in RPMI cell culture media with and without fetal bovine serum (FBS). The synthetic SWCNT mixtures were purified into semiconducting enriched fractions and various single species including (11,1), (9,4), and (7,3) using recognition DNA sequences by a polymer aqueous two-phase (ATP) separation method. The near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence, vis-NIR absorption, and pH of ... Read More