All Abstracts

Mobile technology can be utilized both to encourage and to distract students from educational pursuits. This project examines cell-phone based learning methods in undergraduate chemistry classrooms. It is hypothesized that the use of cell phone applications and services stimulates learning in chemis...

Factors pertaining to a child’s home environment, such as income, can impact learning outcomes. One outcome that has been found to be affected by a child’s family income is reading ability. Previous literature suggests that children's ability to read in primary school is linked to cognitive deve...

Biofilm formation (BF), the aggregation of bacteria encased in an extracellular matrix, is an emerging scientific and health concern in many environments including hospitals, infrastructures, and industrial production sites. Pathogenic Neisseria species, N. meningitidis and N. gonorrhoeae, form biof...

Depression is the fourth leading cause of disability and the leading cause of non-fatal disease burden in the United States. Several studies have indicated that African Americans are significantly more likely to report depression compared to European Americans. Although the literature has examined c...

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...

Antibiotics are produced by microbes in the soil and can slow the growth of plants. For example, kanamycin, which is an aminoglycoside, affects cells by binding to ribosomes and inhibiting translocation. Atwbc19 is a gene in Arabidopsis plants that has been known to mitigate the effects of antibioti...

Baylis-Hillman reactions are described as the addition of an acrylate to an aldehyde catalyzed by an amine. This reaction is atom economical, but for our reaction of benzaldehyde and methyl vinyl ketone it produced low yields and the reaction rates were slow. To increase the reaction rates and yield...

Plants take up essential nutrients from the soil through their roots, and in the process absorb substances released by soil microorganisms such as antibiotics. Plants appear to have developed resistance mechanisms. One example of this phenomenon is observed in Arabidopsis thaliana plants, which poss...

The purpose of this study is to assess the benefits of an academic after-school enrichment program. This study is of interest as it focuses on students from low SES neighborhoods. This study uses survey and interview methods to understand student experiences in the afterschool program. This study wi...

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...

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 ...

Pharmaceuticals are not currently tested for trans-generational and epigenetic side effects. Therefore, research and data in that area are limited. Recently, invertebrates such as insects have been suggested for this purpose as more ethically acceptable. We used the red flour beetle, Tribolium casta...

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...

I performed a comprehensive analysis of spatial and temporal vulnerability to tornadoes using data from the national weather service during the period 1950-2016. I recorded monthly reports and hypothesized a correlation between severe tornado occurrences and the time of year, the origin of a tornado...

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...

This study examines whether Eastern subterranean termites (Reticulitermes sp.) use swarm intelligence as a way to increase foraging efficacy. We hypothesized that termites would use the shortest trail in each maze configuration as a result of swarm intelligence. Groups of 20 termites were deprived o...

This research examines the impact of race, income, age, education level, and sexual activity on the likelihood of teenage pregnancy. The hypothesis presented was that teenagers from African American communities and low socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to have teenage pregnancies than Caucas...

African American women are more susceptible to experiences of gendered racism, which is a hybrid phenomenon constructed by the intersection of racism and sexism (Essed, 1991). In order to cope with experiences of discrimination, African American women may alter their self-presentation to fit social ...

Circadian rhythms are behavioral and physiological changes that occur on a 24-hour cycle. The timing of these rhythms are set by a biological clock located in the hypothalamus of the brain which is set by the timing of light input. Abrupt changes in the light-dark cycle, such as an altered light-dar...

  Invasive species are organisms that are not native to a specific location and can potentially cause harm to their new community. These organisms are not harmful simply because of what species they are, instead they are harmful when they enter foreign habitats and disrupt the flow of the ecos...

STEAM education is an approach to learning that encompasses the use of science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math, to guide critical thinking and problem solving (Schweingruber, Pearson, & Honey, 2014). This teaching method is a kind of culturally responsive pedagogy because most chidl...

Antibiotics kill the bacteria or make it harder for them to grow. However, some bacteria are no longer affected by these drugs and are termed as “resistant”. Antibiotic resistance is when bacteria have the ability to resist the effects of antibiotics and continue to thrive in spite of treatment....

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...

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...

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 ...

This study examined whether there is a relationship between maternal rank and infant social behavior in the green monkeys (Chlorocebus sabaeus) of Barbados. Previous research on vervet monkeys suggests that maternal rank is strongly associated with infant rank and social behavior (Horrocks & Hun...

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 ...

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...

Metformin is the most widely used therapeutic for Type 2 diabetes, and it has also been shown to have antineoplastic properties by modulating tumor growth and T cell responses. Immunotherapy for cancer is becoming a promising approach to treat metastatic disease because of the rising pre-clinical an...

Water, energy, and food (WEF) are essential to human health, sustainable development, and economic success. WEF nexus is the interrelationship between water, energy, and food. The ability to understand how water, food, and energy are connected allows for a more sustainable environment. Urbanization ...

Bacteria are small single-cell, prokaryotic microorganisms. They are normally a few micrometers in length and usually grow together in millions as colonies. Bacteria can vary in shape: spherical (cocci), rod shaped (bacilli), and spiral (spirilla). One of the major factors that can affect bacterial ...

Despite its resource wealth, over 40% of Sub-Saharan Africans live in absolute poverty.  With more resources than many of the developed countries, it leaves one to wonder why Africa is unable to sustain steady economic growth, if not dominance. For many highly indebted African countries, it has...

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...

Valproic acid (VPA) is an organic acid and known ERG inhibitor by regulating histone deacetylase (HDAC). HDAC regulates transcription and is known to be highly expressed by ERG. ERG, or ETS-related gene, is a transcription factor in the ETS-1 family. Several studies have shown that ERG plays a large...

This study examines the spatial distribution of ozone trends in India over the decade 2004-2016. Tropospheric ozone is an indicator of environmental health as a major air pollutant; long-time exposure and air quality deterioration threaten public health. As more manufacturing, power plants and trans...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) refers to any form of physical, psychological, and/or sexual harm committed by a current or former partner (CDC, 2003). In heterosexual partnerships, 34.6% of European American women report experiencing IPV, and this rate is even higher for African American women of w...

While prior research has explored cortical connectivity and reliability of response using fMRI, there has been far less research on these topics using other neuroimaging technologies, such as fNIRS. The purpose of this study is to investigate how different cortical regions are connected, as well as ...

Prostate cancer is a multifocal disease, with varying sensitivity to hormone therapy or androgen deprivation therapy. It is initially responsive to therapies that inhibit androgen receptor (AR) signaling, but the disease eventually advances to an androgen-independent state. Investigators have demons...

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. ...

Epigenetic changes modify genes in ways that do not change the DNA sequence but changes their level of gene expression. CpG islands regulate the expression of nearby genes; however, transcriptional complexes involved in gene expression can be repelled or attracted by methyl groups modified through e...

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...

Acid Sensing Ion Channels (ASICs) are proton-gated cation channels belonging to the degenerin/epithelial Na+ channel (DEG/ENaC) superfamily. There are at least four genes that encode six alternatively spliced transcripts: ASIC1a, ASIC1b, ASIC2a, ASIC2b, ASIC3 and ASIC4. ASIC1a, a primary subunit exp...

Organochlorides are a component of pesticides. Previous studies have shown that individuals with >100ng/mL of 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis (p-chlorophenyl)-ethylene (p,p-DDE) in their blood exhibited altered methylation of the genes DIO3, TERT, and HCK; any of which could have implications in cancer prog...

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...

Fracture healing is critical to restoring physical and mechanical properties of bone. However, various co-morbidities result in approximately 10% of fracture non-unions, a major clinical and economic concern. Approximately 100,000 fractures result in non-union each year in the United States. Drug de...

Cysteine cathepsins are potent collagenases and elastases that regulate tissue maintenance and contribute to tissue degeneration. Extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling by cathepsins is linked to a number of diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis and tendinopathy. Our lab has shown that cathepsin K (c...

Sexual reproduction is a tool used to increase genetic diversity amongst species. Previous studies of small eukaryotic microbe life cycles, including Amoebozoa, have assumed these organisms to reproduce asexually. Interestingly, studying the lifecycle of Cochliopodium, a genus of amoeba, and ot...

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 ...

Many children of color in low-income communities lack extracurricular exposure to education in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Due to this disparity, African-American and Hispanic or Latino students have lower performance scores on standardized tests deterrin...

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...

Intermediate filaments include a group of proteins primarily involved in structural support as opposed to other cytoskeletal proteins that have specialized functions. Intermediate filaments are organized into different classes due to their variety. Intermediate filaments are found in most Opisthokon...

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...

The issue of global warming or climate change, has fostered a great deal of interest to ecologists around the world. Climate change is a significant topic because of its adverse effects on the life cycles of several mammals and plants. The study of the impacts made by climate change on the timing of...

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 ...

African American (AA) men are disproportionally affected by prostate cancer (PCa) compared to men of any other ancestral background. Previous studies suggest that there are genes that play a role in PCa development and metastasis. Studies have also shown that during cancer progression, cancer cells ...

Compared to European Americans, African Americans are half as likely to use mental health services (Lukachko, Myer & Hankerson, 2015). Also, African American women use services at lower rates compared to African American men (Neufeld, Harrison, Stewart, Hughes, 2008). Research suggests that seve...

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...

Diabetes is a disease in which the blood glucose levels of an individual are unnaturally high. The development of the disease is caused by a lack of insulin production. The island of Trinidad and Tobago has experienced a dramatic increase in the percentage of citizens who are diabetic, hypertensive,...

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a disease of impairment in the production of or responsiveness to the pancreatic hormone, insulin. Pediatric patients with diabetes are often deemed to have insulin dependent diabetes (IDDM). Without insulin, children cannot keep their blood glucoses (BG) within a target ra...

Child development can be greatly influenced by prenatal and postnatal experiences. Recent primate studies have shown that prenatal stress can exacerbate behavioral outcomes. Competing demands can cause mothers to become psychologically unavailable to infants, which can disrupt normal development. Fu...

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 ...

Numerous forms of modern slavery and human sex trafficking constitute a global billion-dollar industry. China is one of the largest factors fueling this industry. The Chinese government’s inefficient prevention and investigation measures have caused an exponential rise in human sex trafficking. Ov...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Influenza is one of the deadliest of all airborne and upper-respiratory infections. On average, 22,000 deaths and over 3 million hospitalizations in USA are attributed to influenza each year. In the United States, influenza activity has been increasing since the beginning of November of 2017, with I...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and depression are major health concerns in the United States (U.S.). Studies have shown that women who receive help for IPV have a rate of depression that ranges from 17% to 72% (Warshaw, Barnes, 2003). Additionally, research findings suggest that IPV is more prevale...

The ant, fungal cultivar, and Escovopsis system is one of mutualism and parasitism. Attine ants grow fungal cultivars that they feed and in turn use for food. Escovopsis is a parasitic fungus that uses the cultivated fungus as a host. However, studies have shown that Escovopsis is often but not alwa...

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...

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) is a synthetic polymer that is popular in orthopedic medicine due to its high water compatibility and other chemical resistance. Some common uses for PVA are  solutions for contact lens, tissue adhesion barriers, and artificial knee cartilage (Baker et al. 2012; Spiller ...

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in men worldwide. DNA methylation is an epigenetic mechanism used to control gene expression. To understand the correlation between this epigenetic mechanism and cancer, single nucleotide polymorphism from the human genomic matrix are analyzed using R...

Plants mine the soil to obtain essential nutrients and in so doing, they can take up several antibiotics produced in the soil by certain microorganisms. One such antibiotic is kanamycin. Plants are sensitive to antibiotics and appear to have developed different mechanisms of resistance. For example,...

The symptoms of Hereditary Nonpolyposis Colerectal Cancer (HNPCC) are caused by inherited defects in the DNA Mismatch Repair Mechanism (MMR), a mechanism responsible for fixing the mutations that occur during DNA replication. Components of MMR, MSH2 and MSH6 form complexes to recognize the mutations...

Research suggests that eating disorders can pose a threat to young adult women's health and adjustment because they are associated with negative health outcomes such as infertility and high rates of suicide. More specifically, several studies have examined behavioral symptoms of eating disorders in ...

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...

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...

Iron plays an important role for plant growth and development. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the Ferric Chelate Reductase Defective 3 (FRD3) gene plays an essential role in the uptake of iron. FRD3 transports citrate into the xylem, which form a complex with iron and enable its transport over long distan...

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...

Spelman College is an all-women’s Historically Black College which prides itself on the academic and professional successes of its students. However, the students attending the institution may feel stressed when attempting to meet the school’s academic standards, such as achieving a high GPA, ho...

It is essential to explore barriers that inhibit African American college women in seeking mental health services. The purpose of this study is to examine how attitudes toward mental health services, mental health stigma, and racial centrality influence African-American college women’s intentions ...

Dibenzoylmethane (DBM) is a minor constituent of licorice root, a common ingredient in many sunscreens, and a known neoplasia inhibitor. Although DBM has exhibited anti-neoplastic activity in many studies, no reports offer definitive mechanisms of action for DBM on tumor growth inhibition. Our labor...

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...

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...

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...

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths of males in the United States. Although it is usually treatable, advanced or metastatic prostate cancer can be mortal. Our laboratory examines the use of various diet-derived compounds as potential chemotherapeutic agents for advanced pros...

Zero-tolerance policies in schools require severe disciplinary action regardless of the number of infractions or offenses (Skiba 2010). These zero-tolerance rules can result in children being suspended and even expelled from school. Schools relinquish their responsibility to the students they were b...

There is a well-documented and long-standing disparity between the reading levels of African American children and their European American peers (Craig, 2006). The assessments used to determine student reading levels have been criticized. Washington (1996) proposed that most child language developme...

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...

Trichosphaerium is a polymorphic, multinucleated, marine amoeba. It contains spicules consisting of calcium carbonate embedded in the glycocalyx covering that encapsulates the cell membrane. Microbial eukaryotes usually have definite shape and very few are observed to show multiple morphologies that...

From 1966 to 1979, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution redefined China’s political and historical atmosphere for rural Chinese women. Although there is literature that examines gender reforms, family reform and women rights, there is limited scholarly work about how rural women's labor force...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the sea surface temperature in a region over the Atlantic ocean and hurricane and tropical storm frequency in the United States. Of late, there seems to be an increase in the number of hurricanes making landfall in the United State...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The unique nature of graphene and its versatility in technological applications has prompted research on the once enigmatic and theoretical material. With a nearly zero band gap, graphene offers conductive properties that surpass most, if not all, other semi-conductors/superconductors. Understanding...

The infrared region of the light spectrum contains photon energies that are able to create vibrational excitations of covalently bonded atoms and groups. This region is known to contain many fundamental stretches (e.g. N-H, C-H, O-H, etc.) that are useful when analyzing molecules and determining mol...