United States of America

Conversion of Algae Extract into Bio-Fuel

Abstract The global carbon dioxide emission due solely to the combustion of fossil fuels reached thirty-six billion tons, an increase of sixty-one percent since the 1990s. Therefore, in orde…

Convolutional Neural Network Structure for Ocean Health

Plankton are critically important to our ecosystem, accounting for more than half the primary productivity on earth and nearly half the total carbon fixed in the global carbon cycle. They fo…

Cool It: Keeping Children Safe from Playground Burns

During the summer, many children throughout the United States (and the globe) are burned by overheated playground equipment. Since there has been little study of the issue, there are few rec…

Correcting Ocean Acidification with Potassium Carbonate

Ocean Acidification (OA) is caused by the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere due to industrialization. CO2 dissolves in the oceans to form carbonic acid. Carbonic acid dissoc…

Correlating the Bandgaps of Earth-Abundant Metal Oxides to Photocurrent Generation for Water Splitting Applications

Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design Fourth Award

Providing sustainable energy globally is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Health and climate risks associated with combustion of fossil fuels threaten global stability, de…

Cosmic Ray Conundrum: Using a Cosmic Ray Detector with Varied Scintillator Configurations to Determine the Origin of Charged Particles

Cosmic rays are high penetrating particles that originate in outer space and consist partly of high energy atomic nuclei (Kormen, 2009). The question was what effect does scintillator config…

Cost Effective Device for Preventing Hot Car Deaths

According to the Department of Meteorology and Climate Study at San Jose State University, seventy-four heat stroke deaths among children in the United States in the last two years were caus…

Counteracting Pb2+ Induced Neurodegeneration: A Chemical and Genetic Approach towards Enhanced Synaptic Plasticity

Second Award

The neurotrophin BDNF has been shown to engage in retrograde signaling and interneuronal transport, causing increased synaptic transmission and neurogenesis, respectively. It was hypothesize…

Coupled Hydrodynamic Ocean and Atmospheric Simulation of El Niño

This project investigates the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and determines the effects it has on: rainfall rates, sea surface temperatures (SST), and wind stress on the ocean using a s…

Crabyotics: Novel Chitosan Water Filtration - Structure and Filtration, Year Two

Antibiotic resistance is caused by over-prescription and under metabolism of antibiotics. Eventually through sewer and water processing, antibiotics find their way into our drinking water an…

Craniometrix: Using Sensory Dissonance to Identify Cognitive Decline, Year Three

Biomedical and Health Sciences

Cognitive impairment can be induced by conditions ranging from PTSD to the early onset of dementia (a symptom of Alzheimer’s). However, there is currently no way to inexpensively, non-invasi…

Creating a Hybrid Agent/Grid Model of Contact-Induced Force

Most computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models follow either a Lagrangian or Eulerian approach to study the performance of objects in fluid flow. These wind tunnel models monitor a multitude…

Creating Biofuel from Food Waste

Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design

With increasing energy demand and increasing strain on the world’s resources, including supplies of fossil fuels and agricultural capacity, sustainable renewable energy is needed. Using disc…

Critical Point Energy Storage

The heat capacity (Cp) divergence of a fluid at its critical point has fascinated researchers for over 60 years. This singularity offers unlimited energy storage potential, but achieving it…

Cyanobacteria: Not Just Green in Color!

Greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide emissions, and an increasing population; all part of this planet we all call home. As the carbon dioxide amounts in the atmosphere increase, and the oxygen…

Cyber Automated Report Linker: A Network Approach to Minimizing Expansion of Catastrophic Cyber Infiltrations

Fourth Award

Catastrophic cyber infiltrations can devastate a nation's information infrastructure. This project provides a new way to defend modern adaptive computer networks. Computer networks are autom…

Cylindric Young Tableaux and Their Properties

Cylindric Young tableaux are combinatorial objects that are a natural extension of Young tableaux. Young tableaux -- grids of boxes with numbers that satisfy certain rules -- are useful thro…

Cytotoxic Effects of Graphene on Cell Proliferation of Skin Fibroblast Cells

Systems Software

Graphene is a crystalline allotrope with sp2-bonded carbon atoms in a hexagonal lattice. Its versatile properties, such as high mechanical strength, biochemical functionalization, and high s…

Data Representation with Relational Document Graphs for 3D Visualization

A method for the modeling and visualization of complex systems of objects was developed. The method developed implements a custom document object model to represent arbitrary data structures…

Dead in Their Tracks, Phase II

Behavioral and Social Sciences

This experiment was to test different concentrations of termiticides to effectively prevent termite infestation in the home, and to see if the average homeowner could make a cheap efficient…

Death Assay Evaluation for Angiostrongylus cantonensis Nematode

Animal Sciences

An increasing dilemma in tropical climates is that of Rat Lungworm disease, caused by human infection by A. Cantonensis larvae. These larvae typically survive within a rat or slug host, the…

Degradation of TPH- Diesel in Soil through Mycoremediation

The purpose of this research is to test the effectiveness of mycoremediation on urban soils. Mycoremediation is the process where fungal organisms such as mushrooms are used to degrade delet…

Design and Construction of a Scalable Active Battery Management System for Electric and Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Second Award

As battery cells age, their capacities diverge, which causes problems in large series connected packs such as those found in electric vehicles. Cells that develop larger or smaller capacitie…

Design and Evaluation of a Multisensor Bioelectrical System for Diagnosis of Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is the most common type of arrhythmia, where atria beat chaotically, resulting in an inefficient pumping action that causes blood to pool in the atria, increasing…

Design and Synthesis of a Novel Biosensor Platform for Health Diagnostics

Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design Second Award

Biosensors are becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s society with applications in health diagnostics, bio warfare detection, water quality monitoring, and food safety. Currently in heal…

Design, Construction and Optimization of a Low-Cost Portable Enterococci Test (PET) Kit

Third Award

The World Health Organization estimates that over two million deaths worldwide can be attributed to unsanitary water. High levels of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) in freshwater environments…

Designing a Fluorescent Precursor to Test the Partial Hairpin Insertion Model of Tat Protein Transport

Protein transporters, located in the bacterial cell membranes, are responsible for moving proteins produced inside bacteria to outside of the cell where they operate. The Tat (twin-arginine…

Designing a Genetic CRISPR-cas Detection Probe for Adherent Invasive Escherichia coli Utilizing Comparative Genomics

Fourth Award

Several studies have documented marked alterations in the gut microbiota of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). There are two major subphenotypes of IBD: Ulcerative Colitis (UC)…

Designing and Optimizing Whole-Cell Biosensors for the Detection of Heavy Metals in Water

The purpose of this project is to engineer E.coli to design an optimum biosensor for the detection of lead, cadmium, and zinc in heavy-metal contaminated water. This experiment works towards…

Designing an eDNA Assay for River Otter (Lontra canadensis) Detection in Streams

Biomedical Engineering

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a highly promising field of survey science that hasn't been fully explored on mammalian species. The river otter species (Lontra canadensis), is a prime candidate…