All Abstracts

The performing arts often fail to reflect the technologically advanced society we live in. Scientists and engineers rarely collaborate with the performing arts. In an attempt to encourage this collaboration, we have created wearable technology, programmed in concordance with the music and choreograp...

Dance
Oral

Economic prosperity, a better quality of life, and a hopeful future are key aspects that migrant individuals seek when coming to the United States. These migrants often send money back to their native countries in hopes of improving the lives of their families. Research has shown that migrant remitt...

Economics
Oral

Spring of 2011 brought the ban of the burqa (face covering-veil) in public spaces in France. The French government stressed that the law was implemented for security purposes, to help combat terrorism and promote homogenous attire for people in France. Others interpreted the ban as an attack against...

Political Science
Oral

Ruby Hurley's moral agency in the NAACP consisted of advocacy for civil rights, increasing the orgainzation's membership, public speaking on race issues, and investigating racial incidents. As a Black woman serving as the Southeastern Regional Director for the NAACP from 1951 until 1978, Ruby Hurley...

Religious Studies
Oral

For decades HIV and AIDS have remained a public health problem for the United States and many other countries. While great progress has been made in preventing and treating HIV, there is still much to do. Considering that the HIV virus can lead to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) if not tr...

Mathematics
Oral

As of 2015, there are 29 independent nations where French is an official language, also known as francophone countries. Francophone countries are in five of the seven continents including Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania. Out of the 29 francophone countries, only 3 of them are in the top 10...

International Studies
Oral

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most frequently diagnosed malignancies among men worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. In many cases, PCa develops slowly, but it can be more aggressive and metastasize to other parts of the body. Our recent studies ...

Biology
Oral

Most political research is concerned with Presidential elections. However, congressional elections are more relevant to the interests of citizens. Research about congressional elections in specific districts such as majority-minority districts is scarce. Examining voting in majority-minority distric...

Political Science
Oral

In “Blogging while Black,” Catherine Knight Steele invites us to consider blogs as “sites where black women interrogate the intersectionality of race and gender from a black feminist perspective” (2). Because my project is rooted in English-language literature, I analyze the role of a blog ...

English
Oral

For the first time in history, the aggregate student loan debt in the United States has surpassed the total credit card debt. Furthermore, the amount of federal tax dollars allocated towards funding postsecondary education has remained the same over the last thirty years. Research has shown that the...

Political Science
Oral

Media is a socializing institution which produces and reproduces culture by circulating images. Unfortunately, many images that respresent Black Women are "controlling images" (Collins 200:85). Examples of controlling images of Black Women are the Mammie, Jezebel, and the welfare queen. These monoli...

Sociology
Oral

The Brazilian film This Love that Consumes Us, directed by Allan Ribeiro (2012), portrays an Afro-Brazilian dance company and its struggle for sustainable artistic creation. The group is striving to secure the house where they live and rehearse in Rio de Janeiro. In my presentation, I analyze how th...

Portuguese
Oral

Multiple myeloma (MM) currently accounts for less than 1% of total cancer occurrence worldwide. Despite decades of research and design of therapeutics, clinical responses to molecular-targeted drugs tend to vary and are often unsuccessful. This hematological malignancy originates in the plasma cells...

Biology
Oral

Research has found that voter identification requirements do not significantly impact voting. These studies have focused on short-term rather than long-term impact. Past analysis has failed to test if voter identification laws implemented in the 1960s continue to impact voter participation among min...

Political Science
Oral

The works of Fabiola Jean-Louis, a contemporary artist and photographer, reflect a style that is historical, haunting, magical, and mysterious. Focusing on her “Madame Leroy,” this presentation highlights Jean-Louis’s recourse to history and fashion as vehicles for interpretation of the treatm...

Art History
Oral

Pathogenic Neisseria, N. meningitidis and N. gonorrhoeae that respectively cause meningitis and gonorrhea, form biofilms in vivo, and while in these structures, display increased resistance to antibiotics, compromising treatment. Biofilm formations (BF) are aggregates of microorganisms encased in an...

Biology
Oral

Previous research indicates that executive functioning, the ability to manipulate information through the use of focused attention, is an important predictor of math achievement. Some studies report that the direct effects of executive functioning seem especially strong for mathematics. The present ...

Mathematics
Oral

In the United States, household debt is often examined in relation to household spending, with minimal consideration for how other factors contribute to the likelihood of individuals incurring debt over their lifetime. Through an OLS regression analysis of cross-sectional data from the Panel Study o...

Economics
Oral

Tetrahydrobenzoxepines are seven-membered heterocyclic rings that are found in a variety of natural products and biologically active substances such as Forbaglin, a potent anticancer agent derivative. This project targets the synthesis of tetrahydrobenzoxepines from donor acceptor nitrocyclopropanes...

Chemistry
Oral

Neisseria meningitidis, an agent of bacterial meningitis, is carried by 70% of the healthy population, where it forms biofilms in the human oral and nasopharynx. A biofilm is an aggregate of surface-associated bacteria enclosed in an extracellular polymeric substance matrix, often associated with in...

Biology
Oral

In 1202, Fibonacci, an Italian mathematician, created a mathematical sequence to model the reproduction of rabbits. Fibonacci used his sequence to explore patterns found in multiple areas outside of mathematics such as: nature, art, and architecture. Additionally, the Fibonacci sequence can be found...

Mathematics
Oral

Music plays a vital role in the way a film is perceived and accepted by its audience. In this study, film, music and melody are approached from a musical, psychological, and emotional point of view. This project seeks to understand the psyche and emotions of a listener/viewer. I will analyze the mel...

Music
Oral

This project is inspired by a poem by the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. His work, “Borges y Yo” was written in prose and focuses on the conflict of identity between Borges the individual and Borges the author. Critics such as Roland Barthes, who wrote “The Death of an Author”, believe ...

Spanish
Oral

Maternal adaptation to physiological shifts during pregnancy is essential for both successful pregnancy, parturition and newborn health. The physiological changes that occur during pregnancy could be detected at the transcriptional level. However, little research has been conducted on gene regulatio...

Biology
Oral

African-American respectability politics are founded in ideals of whiteness, yet they are reinforced within the homes, social spaces, and institutions of the black community. HBCUs have long served as hubs of black intellectualism and racial uplift, but have not escaped the consequences of conformit...

History
Oral

Black Lesbian Fiction emerged as a literary genre out of the cultural work of Black feminists of the 1970’s and 1980’s. The genre’s formal beginning was marked in 1974 by the publication of the novel, Loving Her. Despite its cultural significance, Black Lesbian Fiction and the writers who work...

English
Oral

While the importance of herbivorous fishes in supporting the health of coral reefs has been established globally, the role of herbivorous invertebrates has only been evaluated in the Caribbean, where urchins were found to have compensated for a long history of overfishing when a catastrophic decline...

Environmental Science
Oral

Through the course of this research, we utilized the geometric mean to discover how it differs from the arithmetic mean. The geometric mean is found by taking the n-th root of the product of n numbers. The geometric mean can be used to determine growth rates, portfolio returns, and stock indices. ...

Mathematics
Oral

When sexual assaults occur, individuals who learn of the event may develop victim-blaming attitudes in which they attribute more guilt to the survivor than the perpetrator (Kelley, 1967). Previous research shows that complex factors like race, attitudes about rape, and endorsement of sexual stereoty...

Psychology
Oral

Misinformation, or information initially accepted as fact until later corrected or retracted, can persist in memory and influence subsequent inferences and judgments. This phenomenon of continued reliance on false information is known as the continued influence effect (CIE). Previous research has in...

Psychology
Oral

According to the Center of Disease Control, there were over 1,500,00 cases of chlamydia reported in the United States in 2016. Is this figure in line with the recent past or does it represent a rise on the incidence chlamydia? This project's aim is to look at the trend of chlamydia rates within the ...

Mathematics
Oral

Home interiors often allude to who inhabits them. Black home interiors include visual references as to the worldly understanding of its inhabitants. The walls are adorned with pictures and objects that seemingly constitute a black aesthetic and represent the materiality of black interiority. Focusin...

Art History
Oral

The field of cellular reprogramming has the potential open avenues for disease modeling and personalized medicine. Many protocols have been developed to differentiate embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells into neurons, but a simple and efficient method for creating matured neurons i...

Biology
Oral

The purpose of this study is to explore creative education (focusing on art education) and its impact on children’s development. There is a documented need for quality art education, as art has been used as a means to engage students in the learning process. As young children require hands-on acti...

Education
Oral

In our culture, black women are not seen as important entities to help preserve and protect the African American culture, but are seen and treated as sexualized objects. Negative stereotypes govern the black woman. Strong public disinterest in uplifting black women has detached them from their true ...

Art History
Oral

This study seeks to explore the politics of Afro-Cuban identity after the triumph of the 1959 Cuban revolution. I answer three main questions: What role, if any, have the tools of nation-state building played on how Cubans identify themselves? Does a distinction between racial identity and national ...

Spanish
Oral

Kidney transplantation is a surgical procedure using a donor kidney to treat an individual with end stage renal disease (ESRD). Common causes of ESRD are diabetes and high blood pressure. Approximately 29 million people in America have diabetes, causing a high demand for kidney transplants. Over 100...

Health Science
Oral

Increasing gentrification and homelessness have coincided with neighborhoods, communities, cities, and states undergoing transformation and reconstruction. A negative outcome of gentrification is cultural displacement experienced when a group is forced out of the neighborhood due to changes in prope...

Economics
Oral

Biologically relevant odors, including those related to predators, produce unconditioned fear and anxiety-like behaviors, such as risk assessment, avoidance and freezing as well as conditioned place avoidance. In addition to predator odors, social stress can promote anxiety-like behaviors. When a ma...

Psychology
Oral

Research demonstrates that Black women are the strongest supporters of black female candidates. However, despite strong electoral support for candidates, few gains have been made in electoral success, as compared to other minority groups. What is missing in the literature is how this support impacts...

Political Science
Oral