Engineering Mechanics
Exactly half of 2014 bicycle fatalities were at dusk, dawn, or night, according to NHTSA, yet only 20% of bicyclists ride at night. Improvements in overall bicycle visibility through use of…
Microbiology
Bacteria are rarely found alone in natural environments. Instead, they are usually located within complex structures composed of extracellular matrices called biofilms. Many species of bacte…
Microbiology
5-Aminolevulinic acid (ALA) can be used as a green pesticide as it is biodegradable and nontoxic to crops, animals, and humans. In addition, ALA has been shown to be an effective growth stim…
Engineering Mechanics
This work studies air flow in a special centrifugal pump design that uses straight tubes rather than the usual expanding passages between the inlet and exit flow. Three effects are evaluated…
Chemistry
This project in its present form is about approaching noninvasive ways in monitoring glucose in the human body using sweat. The idea of this experiment is to find an alternative to the curre…
Mathematics
Faked company payments and fraudulent schemes such as Ponzi schemes steal over $3.7 trillion from innocent consumers every year, with auditing methods significantly lagging behind the increa…
Materials Science
Third Award
Certain cancers (metastatic breast cancer, invasive glioma) are deadly because of their inability to be treated using existing methods. Nanoparticles, can be engineered to access these areas…
Biochemistry
The aquatic fern, Salvinia molesta is a global menace to waterways as it grows on water surfaces and prevents oxygen from getting into the water, creating a dead zone where no organisms can…
Microbiology
Almost all organisms on Earth are either directly or indirectly affected by ultraviolet radiation emitted from the sun. For this reason, it is imperative to understand how and to what extent…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Microplastics, plastic particles smaller than 5 mm, have been regularly found within marine, freshwater, and estuarine environments. These tiny plastic polymers have been discovered in vario…
Physics and Astronomy
In indirect detection experiments, the photon flux expected from dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way halo depends strongly on the distribution of dark matter in the halo. The effect o…
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
More than 98% of the human genome is defined as non-coding DNA. Many of these noncoding elements are simply remnants of ancient genetic material, but studies indicate that 5% of the genome i…
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Fourth Award
Sundowners syndrome is a clinical diagnosis given to dementia patients. People who suffer from this experience heightened neuropsychiatric symptoms (depression, anxiety, agitation, confusion…
Biomedical Engineering
The prevention of concussion and sub concussive injury in helmeted activities are of great military, commercial, legal, and medical interest. A Summation of Tests for the Analysis of concuss…
Plant Sciences
Circadian clocks are biological systems found in nearly all living species. In plants, they are responsible for water, nutrient and light intake and usage. Based on numerous studies, there a…
Biomedical Engineering
In the United States, athletes suffer roughly 3.8 million concussions per year. Unfortunately, many current concussion diagnostics are subjective, placing athletes in potentially dangerous s…
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Twenty-percent of women in the United States are affected by breast cancer. Estrogen-receptor negative cancer treatments for postmenopausal women often worsen symptoms of osteoporosis, resul…
Plant Sciences
Third Award
The purpose of this project was to investigate the disparity between the abundance of Tamalia spp. galls on non-native Arbutus unedo and native Arctostaphylos spp. It was hypothesized that t…
Environmental Engineering
The accumulation of expanded polystyrene foam waste in landfills and oceans is an increasing global problem. Every year in the U.S. alone, a staggering 900 million kilograms of polystyrene f…
Plant Sciences
The sweet potato whitefly, Bermisa tabaci (Genadius) has become a major pest of economically important crops worldwide. In this research, two experiments including 8 treatments were conducte…
Biomedical Engineering
Quantitative measurement of human gait is currently prohibitively expensive in the field of orthotics and prosthetics. This project is investigating the capabilities of a relatively inexpens…
Biochemistry
Nanoparticles are easily finding their way into the environment much easier than before due to them being in consumer products such as food and the lining of clothing. If enough nanoparticle…
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Third Award
Traditional analysis of text has been limited to an analysis of the content to extract meaning and intent. New technologies now allow us to also measure the process of creating the content a…
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Today's children are spending over fifty hours a week immersed in technology (Burke, 2003) and yet, seventy-five percent of these children fail to meet the World Health Organization's recomm…
Microbiology
Sinusitis is very common condition in the United States, afflicting 15% of the population each year. This study tested the antimicrobial/ inhibitory effects of Kimchi against the common Gram…
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
The purpose of this experiment was to find the correlation between the complexity of leaf vein structure and the speed at which leaves dry, as determined by the rate of embolism formation. M…
Cellular and Molecular Biology
Fourth Award
Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is an invasive type of skin cancer that lacks expression of lecithin-retinol acyl transferase (LRAT), a protein implicated in wound healing and cancer progressi…
Energy: Physical
Due to the partial unavailability of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency in today's world is more important than anything else. Less energy consumption meaning less fossil fuels will…
Embedded Systems
Hunger, one of the most prominent problems in the world today, is primarily caused by a shortage of fresh water. Significant optimization of water use can be achieved by knowing the time and…
Engineering Mechanics
First Award
Despite industrialization, Sub-Saharan Africa’s water infrastructure leaves ~341 million people without access to potable water. In addition to water purification problems, transportation pr…