United States of America

Creating a Spherical 3D Printer

The purpose of “Creating A Spherical 3D Printer” was to create an additive manufacturing device based on Spherical coordinates. Most current 3D printers are based on Cartesian coordinates. A…

Creation of Additional Signal Regions to Increase Signal Sensitivity in the Search for Vector-Like Quarks at the LHC

An analysis is presented on the effectiveness of four new signal regions in the search for vector-like quarks (VLQs) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). These new signal regions attempt to u…

CRISPR Based Gene Editing Confers Resistance to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)

Third Award

Current HIV therapies lead to drug resistance and fail to address the latent viral reservoir which reactivates and inevitably leads to AIDS and mortality. Commonly infectious HIV targets T-c…

CRISPR/Cas9 Based Mechanisms for Controlled Gene Delivery with Applications for Alzheimer's and Pain Management for Veterans

CRISPR Cas9 is a protein that precisely cuts a sequence complementary to a guide RNA. Recently, a CRISPR/Cas9 based self-cleaving genetic system has been engineered such that DNA can be deli…

Critters in Your Cooler

The goal of the experiment was to see if the bacteria found in coolers is dangerous or harmful. In this experiment four coolers were swabbed. The bacteria found was incubated for forty-eight…

Crumb Rubber for Artificial Turf: The Leaching of Heavy Metals into Blood Systems

Black Rubber, commonly found in tires and crumb rubber, is known to have carcinogenic materials and compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals. Crumb rubber is recyc…

Crustacean Filtration: Removal of Radionuclides using Chitosan Filtration from Different Sources

Numerous locations throughout the United States are reporting the presence of radon and uranium in their drinking water, particularly in households with well water drinking sources. Areas in…

Crystal Clear Collection

Because of the technology available in today's modern world, scientists have recently discovered ice on Mars. The question is: how can scientists confidently determine whether or not the ice…

Dead in Their Tracks, Phase III

Systems Software

The experiment is designed to test how dodecatrylinol and neocembrene, termite pheromones mimicked by ballpoint pen ink, affect in-wall termite colonies when used in imidacloprid-based traps…

Debunking Food Myths: How Safe Is It?

Biomedical Engineering

There are several “safe” food myths that are prevalent in today’s society, but the question remains whether or not they actually hold true. To determine the safeness of following certain foo…

Deciphering the Roles and Mechanism of Zn7MT3 in Abating Neuronal Cytotoxicity - Year Two

Aggregation and cytotoxicity of amyloid-ß (Aß) with redox-active metals in neuronal cells have been implicated in the progression of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Particularly, dysregulated inte…

Deep Learning Action Recognition on Small Data: Transfer Learning the Stanford 40 Actions Dataset

In the field of artificial intelligence, computers are exceptional at recognizing objects from images, but struggle with recognizing actions from images. In 2011, a human action dataset (Sta…

Deep Learning: Structural and Characteristic Classification of nsSNP Deleterity

Genetic evaluation can predict cancers and other genetic diseases before expression in the phenotype, allowing for early preventative treatment. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) are the…

Deformable Body Analysis through Gauge Kinematics

Second Award

A cat released in mid-air devoid of angular momentum or anything to push off easily maneuvers to land on its feet. Similarly, a diver can leave a diving board with no angular momentum and ye…

Dehydroabietinal Signaling in Plant Defenses

The plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) plays a critical role in the regulation of plant tolerance to drought. ABA stimulates root growth in plants to increase their ability to extract water f…

Deriving Unsupervised Fluid Intelligence from Schema-Less Polymorphic Unstructured Data

Third Award

This study investigates the fluid intelligent capabilities of a layered artificial intelligence in the feed of streaming polymorphic unstructured data. The model aims to simulate mathematica…

Design and Assembly of CRISPR/Cas9-Based Virus-Like Particles for Orthogonal and Programmable Genetic Engineering in Mammalian Cells

First Award

Targeted genetic engineering with CRISPR-Cas9 endonucleases is an exciting development with many potential applications in science and medicine. However, a primary challenge in realizing CRI…

Design and Construction of a Modulating Wind Turbine

Devices created to harness the power of wind have been used for centuries to perform a variety of different tasks from milling to pumping. In modern times the wind turbine, a device that con…

Design and Evaluation of Betulin-Based Anti-Cancer Compounds

Fourth Award

Betulin is a compound found in the bark of birch trees. Betulinic acid, a betulin derivative, exhibits ready availability and selective cytotoxicity as an anti-cancer agent, as designated by…

Design and Implementation of a Sustainable Permeate Gap Membrane Distillation System for Water Purification in the Turkana Basin of Kenya

Second Award

Reverse osmosis (RO) has proven an effective method of water purification and has been widely implemented in much of the industrialized world. However, high production and energy costs of th…

Designing a Cost Effective Aquaponics System for Small Urban Households

I have developed a cost effective aquaponic system that can be sustained in an average urban household. My initial goal was to develop an inexpensive system that urban families could use to…

Designing a Cost-Effective Device to Decrease the Risk of Vesicovaginal and Rectovaginal Fistulae during Labor

In developing areas where professional medical care is scarce, the labor complications that result in the development of obstetric fistulae are common and the effects devastating, with over…

Designing a Novel Technique to Determine Patient Suitability for Brain Cancer Clinical Trials

Glioblastoma (GBM) and Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) are the most lethal form of brain cancer in adults and children respectively. There are clinical trials aimed at trying to kill…

Design of a Sounding Rocket for Maximum Altitude

In this engineering project, a sounding rocket using an 80 Ns motor was optimized for altitude. A numerical simulation was used to model the rocket's flight characteristics. Through the simu…

Design of Bioink: An Innovative Biomaterial for 3D Medical Implants

Several hundreds of thousands of lives can be saved, prolonged, or provided better quality of life by organs and implants that are currently unavailable. 3D bioprinting is the process of cre…

Detecting Plagiarism, Phase II

The purpose of this experiment was to enhance a plagiarism detection technique known as bag of words from phase I and apply a graphical user interface (GUI), allowing users to employ the pro…

Determination of Antioxidants in Food and Their Anti-Cancer Activity

Antioxidants are necessary for good health. An antioxidant is a molecule that inhibits the oxidation of other molecules. Oxidation reaction can produce free radicals. Free radicals can start…

Determination of Efficacies of Somatic Muscle Cell Transcription Factors for Direct Reprogramming into Induced Muscle Stem Cells

The biochemical versatility of direct reprogramming—based upon induced pluripotency—is one that continuously intrigues the scientific community with its applications in regenerative medicine…

Determining Network Robustness Using Region Based Connectivity

Third Award

In today’s increasingly interconnected world, robust networks are crucial for military or civilian activities. The ability to test a network’s resiliency is important, whether it is a commun…

Determining the Effect of Extracellular Matrix on the Differentiation and Functionality of Stem Cells for Bioengineering Organs

More than 6,500 Americans each year have died waiting for an organ transplant, and of those who receive a transplant only one out of four are biologically correct, however bioengineering org…