Alcohol consumption is a problem among college students. Annually, 1,800 students age 18 to 24, die due to alcohol related injuries and accidents (Hingson et al., 2009). Recently, rates of alcohol consumption have increased among college students (Schulenberg et al., 2019). Among college students, research has shown that a person’s peer group is one of […]
A09-P: Understanding the Developmental Barriers to Retina Regeneration Using the Embryonic Chick
Visual impairments are widespread in the population due to common retinal ailments such as macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and visual decline with age. Unfortunately, humans lack the ability to regenerate damaged retina tissue and therefore, research exploring gene regulation in regenerative animals can provide important insight to combat retinal diseases. At day four of embryonic […]
B48-P: The Interplay of Music and Alcohol in Regulating College Students’ Mood
Alcohol is a public health concern across university campuses and is known to regulate individuals’ mood. It has been evidenced that alcohol’s impact on mood yields negative consequences such as impaired judgment and an increase in drinking to cope. Drinking to cope is very common among college students and has been shown to increase one’s […]
C43-P: The Joys and Pains of Popular Science Writing
Efficient communication to a non-scientific audience requires unique skills, as the author must ‘translate’ complex scientific findings in an understandable fashion for the public. This skillset is captured in popular science writing, a writing subdiscipline where scientifically literate authors attempt to communicate scientific principles and discoveries to the general public. The Microbiology Club undertook a […]
C06-P: MBLinhibitors.com, a Website Resource Offering Information and Expertise for the Continued Development of Metallo-β-Lactamase Inhibitors
Metallo-β-Lactamases are enzymes that bacteria produce to protect themselves from various β-Lactam antibiotics. As a result of the growing antibiotic resistance crisis, new compounds have been developed to try to inhibit these enzymes and slow the spread of antibiotic resistance. In an effort to facilitate the discovery of new, improved inhibitors of the metallo-β-lactamases, a […]
C41-P: The Effect of Stressor Predictability on Stress Enhanced Fear Learning
While fear can be adaptive by inhibiting pain and eliciting defensive behavior, long lasting fear can have negative effects on overall health, including psychological disorders, such as PTSD (Harris & Seckl, 2011; Bolles & Fanselow, 1980). Unpredictability of an aversive event can sensitize the fear circuitry causing an increase in one’s stress response later in […]
B25-P: A Novel Circuit Controlling Motivation
To maximize rewards, one must learn what specifically causes those rewards. This learning process is disrupted in numerous psychological disorders, including depression and substance use. Understanding the systems responsible for these processes is key to developing future treatments for psychological diseases. The serotonin and dopamine systems play critical roles in learning and motivation. While these […]
A43-P: A System for Fluorescence-based Metabolic Sensing for Cells embedded in Collagen
Thomas Finn, Nick Mayer, and Dr. Urayama, with the help of Taylor Phillips, Bibek Dhakal, and the Department of Physics, elaborate on the next steps of metabolic sensing using autofluorescence in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, baker’s yeast. A turbid mixture of baker’s yeast cells in Phosphate-Buffered Saline was excited using a nitrogen-gas discharge laser with a 1-nm […]
A31-P: Computational Analysis of the Structure of Fluorinated o-Phenylenes
Ortho-Phenylenes have been found to take on conformations similar to those found in biological secondary structures, classifying them as a type of molecule known as foldamers. The goal of studying this class of molecules is to eventually use this simple structure in 3D molecules that mimic biological systems. Past studies have been done to investigate […]
C36-P: Does Early Life Stress Inhibit Discrimination of Fear in Adulthood?
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by severe anxiety-like symptoms that are the result of experiencing one or more traumatic events. Currently, in the United States, PTSD has a prevalence rate of 8.3% indicating that there are over 8 million people living with this disorder (Goode et al, 2020). This experiment investigated the possible effects […]