Undergraduate Research Posters 2018

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  Anti-thrombotic Coatings for Blood Contacting Medical Decives and Implants Based on Nitric Oxide Release

  Celine El-Khoury, Shaimaa Maher, and Haitham Kalil

  Blood-contacting medical devices, are often used to treat cardiovascular diseases. These implantable medical devices, even if labeled as biocompatible, can cause serious complications in patients. Thrombus formation and infection are the main causes of failure of these devices. In contrast to the healthy endothelium, which actively resists thrombosis, artificial surfaces promote clotting through a complex series of interconnected processes that include protein adsorption, adhesion of platelet, leukocytes and red blood cells, ending with thrombosis. Using a layer-by-layer thin film building strategy to form layers of polyethyleneimine (PEI) and iNOSoxy as ... Read More

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  Increasing the Efficacy of Doxorubicin Against Breast Cancer

  Jovana Hanna and Jung-Suk Choi

  In the United States, breast cancer accounts for one in three cancer diagnoses in women, making it the most common type of cancer in women. One important chemotherapeutic agent used to treat breast cancer is doxorubicin, an anthracycline compound that causes cell death by damaging DNA in addition to producing reactive oxygen species. Previously, the Berdis lab developed an artificial nucleoside analog designated 5-NIdR that improves the efficacy of DNA damaging agents used against brain cancer. This nucleoside works by inhibiting the replication of damaged DNA created by certain chemotherapeutic ... Read More

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  Dodecanedioic Acid Treatment in VLCAD Fibroblasts

  Igor Radzikh

  Very-long-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency is the second most common disorder of fatty acid oxidation in the USA, with an incidence of 1:25,000-1:100,000 newborns (Tucci, Floegel, Beermann, Behringer, Spiekerkoetter, 2017, pg. 196). The current dietary therapeutic strategies are designed to avoid long chain fatty acids, instead providing carbohydrates and medium chain triglycerides as an energy source. Despite the controlled and biochemically balanced diet, it has a limited success in treatment of clinical symptoms and metabolic decompensations in VLCAD affected individuals. It has been proposed that defect in long chain fatty acids ... Read More

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  Off targets toxicological investigation of anti-cancer tubulin inhibitors

  Abbound Sabbagh and Yaxin Li

  We have developed a class of novel tubulin inhibitors based on NSC751382 (Figure 1), Benzo[1,3]dioxole-5- carboxylic acid [3-(2,5-dimethyl- benzyloxy)-4- (methanesulfonyl-methyl-amino)-phenyl] -amide, as the lead compound. This compound showed potent tubulin polymerization inhibitory activity by binding at the colchicine’s binding domain, and suppressed cancer cell growth with an IC50 of 200nM. It has molecular weight of 482, logP of 4.1, only one hydrogen bond donor, and eight hydrogen bond acceptors. The compound meets the Lipinski's Rule of Five and is a highly drug-like molecule. In addition, NSC751382 significantly inhibited the growth ... Read More

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  Synthesis of Sialic Acid Derivative for Modifying Cell Surface Sialylation

  Isaac Turan and Joseph Keil

  The exterior of cell surfaces express a dense layer of glycans which are often terminated by sialic acid (SA). SA is an acidic monosaccharide whose presence is found on the terminal ends of glycans of either glycoproteins or glycolipids. Due to its hydrophilic and electronegative nature, SA is often involved in both physiological and pathological processes, such as in regulating cellular interactions with ligands, microbes and neighboring cells. In addition to these functions, SA is also implicated in controlling cellular activation, differentiation, transformation and migration. Cell surface glycometabolic engineering provides ... Read More

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  TMCO1 is a novel target for cancer chemotherapy

  Ashley Przybylowicz, Ruhan Wei, and Qiaoyun Zheng

  Transmembrane and coiled-coil domains 1 (TMCO1) is a protein of 22 KDa highly conserved in amino acid sequence among mammalian species and functions as an endoplasmic reticulum (ER) Ca2+load-activated Ca2+channel. Homozygous frameshift mutation in TMCO1 causes distinctive craniofacial dysmorphism, skeletal anomalies, and mental retardation. However, its physiological functions are largely unknown. In this study, we found that TMCO1 was co-localized with microtubules as determined by immunohistostaining and a co-sedimentation assay. Interestingly, TMCO1 was highly expressed in the invasive front of high grade lung cancer and metastatic cancer cells of clinical ... Read More

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  Peer Quizzing: Are Two Heads Really Better Than One?

  Leah Bunnell

  Instructors are often plagued with a difficult opened ended question; what measures can be implemented during class that will maximize students’ academic benefit? During this research project, the impact of frequent peer quizzing in introductory college level physics courses on subsequent learning assessments, such as midterms and percent gain, are examined. A peer quiz is initially administered to a student individually and graded but not returned to the students until they are given the opportunity to revisit the same quiz question with a partner. Two physics instructors’ student data is ... Read More

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  Characterization of Microgels in Ionic Liquid

  Dan Terrano

  Microgels are thermoresponsive polymeric nanoparticles whose size in aqueous solution is dependent on temperature. The microgels were studied using both dynamic light scattering (DLS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to better understand the nanoparticles dynamics. The first part of the study focused on developing a controlled preparation procedure which would generate reproducible SEM images on a wet sample. The ionic liquid was mixed with a dilute solution of microgels and water was dried using nitrogen gas. This technique allowed a large volume of microgels to easily transition from their natural ... Read More

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  Construction and Applications of an Inexpensive Muon Detector

  Nicholas Knyszek

  Muons are important due to the abundance of them on earth. Muons that are on earth originate from the Sun and enter Earth’s atmosphere as decaying cosmic rays. Muons are somewhat unstable, with a lifespan of roughly 2.2 microseconds. Muons decay into electrons and two types of neutrinos. Since Muons travel near the speed of light they can still go thousands of meters into the Earth’s crust before stopping. Muons account for most of the cosmic radiation at sea level. Muons are harmless to humans. In this study, we built ... Read More

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  The Effects of Chemical Crosslinker on Polymeric Microgels

  Samantha Tietjen and Jacob Adamczyk

  Microgels are nanoparticles suspended in solution and comprised of crosslinked polymer chains. Due to the amphiphilic property of the parent polymer, microgels exhibit a reversible volume phase transition. The standard behavior of these microgels is to deswell from a large to small size with an increase in temperature. Microgels in this study were synthesized by crosslinking hydroxypropylcellulose (HPC) in a surfactant solution. The amount of crosslinker used for synthesis was varied by a factor of a hundred. Using dynamic light scattering, microgels were characterized at various temperatures and scattering angles ... Read More

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  Towards Understanding Microgel Volume Phase Transitions

  Jacob Adamczyk and Samantha Tietjen

  Microgels are polymer-based particles which are able to change size and shape during volume phase transition in response to external stimuli. We have investigated microgels which respond to changes in temperature for eventual use in drug-delivery systems on the nano to micro scale. Light scattering data on Hydroxypropylcellulose (HPC) microgels has been analyzed to determine microgel parameters such as radii, molecular weight, and polydispersity at various temperatures. The classic Flory- Huggins (FH) approach to mixing polymer-solvent solution is used to model a temperature-size dependence for the microgels. Existing theory on ... Read More

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  An Alternative Means for Observation-Based Cloud Size Distributions

  Adam Stead

  Clouds are a poorly understood phenomenon that have a significant impact on climate and day-to-day weather. This research aims to measure cloud size distributions for shallow cumulus clouds from observational data. Clouds are sampled via a ceilometer, which indicates both the presence of cloudy air and the base height of the respective cloud. When combining this data with the recorded horizontal wind velocity, we can infer a cloud transect size distribution. After sufficient sampling, we can use an algorithm to deduce an approximate cloud area distribution for the specified time ... Read More

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  Characterizing the Turbulent Structure of the CBL and the Entrainment

  Wei Jia

  The convective boundary layer (CBL) is the lowest part of the atmosphere. The turbulent motions in the CBL are important for redistributing trace gases, particles, heat, and momentum between the surface and the free troposphere thus it is important that this process is properly represented in numerical models that attempts to simulate the atmosphere. This study is trying to characterize the water vapor structure in the quasi-stationary CBL, using statistical way to build the turbulent model and uses a high resolution model: Large Eddy Simulation (LES) to investigate the adequacy ... Read More

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  Determining Cloud Cover with Machine Learning

  Sarah Sesek

  The cloud cover provided by boundary layer cumulus clouds is one of the greatest uncertainties in climate and weather prediction models. It is difficult with current technology to cheaply and accurately collect cloud cover data. The TSI (Total Sky Imager) provides a hemispheric field of view in order to maximize the area it can see. The farther away from the center of the image, the more angled the view of the the cloud is. Therefore, more of the side of the cloud is captured in addition to the cloud base. ... Read More

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  Investigating the Influence of Cloud Size on Cumulus Cloud Entrainment

  Theresa Lincheck

  Clouds play a crucial role in determining the weather on local and global scales, yet their complexity accounts for some of the largest uncertainties in weather forecasts and climate models. Environmental air mixing or being drawn into a current, called entrainment, is one source to blame for this complexity. When air entrains into a cloud evaporation of in-cloud condensates increase and temperatures in the cloud drop, reducing buoyancy. The overall effect of entrainment inhibits a cloud’s development, and usually results in the dissipation of a cloud. With the use of ... Read More

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  A Study Inquiry of the Impact of the Mother-Daughter Relationship with Teen Pregnancy

  Klarissa Zeno

  The relationship a teenage girl and her mother hold is vital in the outcome and the decisions the teen makes. This relationship is influenced by many different things including communication patterns the mother and teen have. The aim of this study is to look at the way the two communicate throughout the teen years of the daughter to see if there is an association with whether or not the teen becomes pregnant. Teen pregnancy has been an obstacle many girls have had to face during their adolescent years. This is ... Read More

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  Perspectives on Adolescent Drug Use: Interviews with Community Providers

  Noelle Naser

  With a striking rise in drug related deaths over the past few years, researchers have looked towards improving prevention methods as a way to not only react to substance abuse with treatment, but learn to better prevent individuals from following these risk taking behaviors. Adolescents specifically are prone to risk taking behaviors such as substance use as they navigate through the challenges of adolescence and transitioning into their identities. Therefore, research in understanding how and why youth decide to get involved in substances is important for creating stronger prevention. Using ... Read More

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  Perception of Time and Post-Surgery Physical Rehabilitation

  Karmen Love

  Physical rehabilitation is an important part of a patient’s recovery after surgery. Physical therapists are crucial to the success of that patient’s healing process. Physical rehabilitation can determine how quickly the patient’s healing progresses. It is difficult to determine how long a person will be in rehab and every patient has different expectations of how long their recovery will take. In this study, I explored how a patient’s perception of time affects the estimated versus actual recovery time post-surgery. The participants were patients admitted to the inpatient rehab at Mercy ... Read More

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  The Impact of Adjacent-Letter Flanking Bigrams on Lexical Decision Performance

  Gina M. Cascone and Deion L. Colbert

  Some models of word identification hypothesize that the word recognition system includes units responsive to bigrams (letter pairs). Grainger, Mathot, and Vitu (2014) and Palinski (2016) found that target-flanking bigrams consisting of letters adjacent in targets (e.g., OG FROG FR) affect decisions about whether letter strings are words: Bigram-letter order, but not proximity of bigram letters to their locations in the targets, affected performance. (Average performance was better with FR FROG OG and OG FROG FR than with RF FROG GO and GO FROG RF, but no different with FR ... Read More

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  Reading Between the Bigrams

  Gina M. Cascone and Deion L. Colbert

  In lexical decision experiments in which target strings were flanked by pairs of bigrams, Grainger, Mathot, and Vitu (2014) and Palinski (2016) found, for words, better performance when flanking bigrams contained target-string letters (e.g., FR FROG OG; OG FROG FR; RF FROG GO; GO FROG RF) than when they did not (e.g., EX FROG IT); better performance when flanking bigrams contained letters ordered as in the target (e.g., FR FROG OG; OG FROG FR) than switched (e.g., RF FROG GO; GO FROG RF); and no effect on performance of proximity ... Read More

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  Programming to Transition Psychological Experiments from SuperLab to Matlab

  Mudra R. Savaliya

  For the past six years, our laboratory has conducted experiments programmed in Superlab, a software package designed exclusively for psychological experiments. Although Superlab has some attractive features, it also has some severe limitations. For example, Superlab cannot read files, meaning that for an experiment in which each participant has a unique stimulus list, a unique program has to be assembled for each participant. For an experiment in which each participant has a unique order of conditions, a unique program with the conditions in that order has to be assembled for ... Read More

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  Development of a Controlled Harness System to Increase Flexibility in Balance Testing and Training

  Kimmie Berkovich and Emily Meisterheim

  Falling can be a life-threatening event, especially for older adults. Clinicians use balance training to reduce fall incidents in at-risk individuals. There are various forms of balance training, and they often employ a harness system to prevent patient injury. Current harness systems are capable of supporting a percentage of an individual’s body weight and catching people in the midst of falling, and some may even perform both of these functions. However, injury can still be incurred from using a harness, particularly among the frail elderly. This lab has developed a ... Read More

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  Learning To Do in Vivo Neural Responses in Mice

  Timothy Mogan, Justin Wobser, Riley Raulhammer, and Tyler Erker

  Timothy Mogan, Tyler Erker, Riley Faulhammer and Justin Wobser were the target students for this stereotaxic neurosurgery and electrophysiology lab experience. They are Pre-Nursing, Pre-Neuroscience (Pyschology) or Pre-Med majors. This richly educational and hands-on investigation significantly enhanced their confidence and experience in RODENT HANDLING, ANESTHESIA, ELECTROPHSYIOLOGY, PERFUSION, BRAIN REMOVAL and GENERAL LAB SKILLS. An animal use protocol was created for the project under the guidance of the Mentors and the students followed it competently. Students completed CITI online animal research training and animal handling training was provided by Lou Turchyn, ... Read More

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  Case Concentration: An Academic Arcade Game for Physical Therapist Education

  Araxie Demirjian

  Case Physical Therapy is the study of patient/client cases to augment a practitioner’s clinical thinking, reasoning, and decision-making skills. Game-based learning, as part of an academic arcade, can add enjoyment and competition to an otherwise mundane process of acquiring knowledge and understanding and may serve to incentivize the student. The development of a case-related match game to teach physical therapy (PT) students about patient/client focused examination and interventional relationships is at the very heart of the design of Physical Therapy Case Concentration. Based in part on the successful, long-running (1958-1991) ... Read More

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  Indication of Abdominal Wound Complication within Breast Cancer Reconstruction

  Taylor Lawson

  Following a mastectomy, breast reconstruction can be performed immediately with one possible procedure being the use of the body’s own tissue. Natural tissue breast reconstruction surgery can result in abdominal wound complications. My research focus is on Retrospective Chart Review of patient’s pre- op risk factors for abdominal wound complications post- surgery; including factors such as diabetes, smoking, prior C-section, etc. Patients’ charts will be examined for medical history and health concerns and if patient had any issues after one- year post surgery such as hematoma, seroma, wound breakdown, and/or ... Read More