Haptic technology is an area of study involving creating the feeling of touch through the use of vibrations and forces. Commonly seen today in most handheld devices, which vibrate as users type on their screens, the area of haptic technology provides a way to deliver sensory information to individuals beyond the senses of hearing and […]
B22: How Universal is Arrhenius Behavior?
Diels-Alder click chemistry is a widely researched topic of chemistry through which polymers can be synthesized under relatively mild conditions. These polymers can then be crosslinked through Diels-Alder (DA) chemistry into materials containing temperature responsive linkers. In this project, DA bonded materials of varying crosslink density and polymer length were made into gel-like materials and […]
B24: Public Obesity Database In R package
The motivation for this project is to build an R package that outputs necessary data frames relevant to obesity costs, where the clients could easily manipulate the output using difference parameters, e.g. relative risks for each illnesses. This is in conjunction with another research project that estimated the state-level economic costs of obesity in the […]
B25: Modeling the Economic Cost of Obesity Risk and its Impact on Excess Mortality and Morbidity in the United States
Understanding the economic cost of obesity risk represents an important aspect of prevention and management of the obesity pandemic. Thus, assessing the economic impact of obesity on society is increasingly important. Prior studies about obesity-related costs in the United States focused more on the national-level direct and indirect costs that evolved over a short time […]
B29: Examining Sex Chromosome and Gonadal Hormone Influences on Fear Learning in Mice
There are known disparities in susceptibility to psychiatric and stress-related disorders between sexes. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one such case. We used stress-enhanced fear learning (SEFL), a validated animal model for PTSD. However, it is unknown if sex differences stem from gonadal (Sry + vs. Sry -) or chromosomal (XX vs. XY) differences. The […]
B31: The Effects of Acute Early Life Stress and Social Buffering on Anxiety Behavior, Corticosterone Secretion, and Receptor Protein Expression in Adulthood
Although the psychopathological impacts of stress are far-reaching, the mechanisms of these consequences remain poorly understood. Recent evidence implicates a social component in the development of stress-induced psychopathologies. The presence of a social partner can ameliorate the consequences of stress exposure, a phenomenon known as social buffering. To better understand this phenomenon, this study sought […]
B38: Investigating the Role of NKX6-1 in Lens Development
The lens consists of two cell types: 1) proliferative lens epithelial cells and 2) terminally differentiated lens fiber cells that arise from lens epithelial cells. Transcription factors (TFs) direct gene expression. TFs drive development by dictating which genes are expressed in particular cell types. PAX6 and NKX6-1 are TFs found in lens epithelial cells and […]
B40: Genome Wide Identification of Active Promoters in Neonatal Mouse Lens Chromatin
Gene expression is controlled and maintained by a variety of regulatory elements, including histones, which are what was researched for this study. Trimethylation of lysine 4 of histone 3 (H3K4me3) is a characteristic of the promoter regions of actively expressed genes. This means that wherever H3K4me3 is expressed highly, it indicates a portion of the […]
B41: Comparing ATAC-seq and RNA-seq Data to Understand How Chromatin Accessibility and Gene Expression Correlate in Differentiating Lens Epithelial Cells
This project focuses on lens cells by analyzing the genetic changes that happen as lens epithelial cells differentiate into lens fiber cells and how these changes correlate to gene expression. The main question I am asking in this project is how does the accessibility of chromatin relate to the expression of genes in differentiating lens […]
B43: A 3D Printable Microscope With Dynamic Patterned Illumination
Our research project is focused on the field of optics, our goal is to reduce the costs and increase efficiency in using filters in microscopy. We explored the utility of a video projector as the source of dynamic pattern illumination for a 3D printable microscope in conjunction with lenses and a Raspberry Pi module and […]