Annual Student Research Poster Session

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  Extended Duration Studies of Energetic Particles in the Stratosphere

  Ian Kuhl, Ashna Coondiah, and Howard L. Brooks

  The Balloon Assisted Stratospheric Experiments (BASE) program aims to measure atmospheric muon concentration at the Pfotzer Maximum with Geiger Counters carried by weather balloons. The most intense radiation is found at the Pfotzer Maximum 18 - 22 km (11 - 13 mi) above ground level. During this summer, seven flights were conducted to attain maximum time in the Pfotzer Maximum using different strategies like underfilling and multiple balloon systems.

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  High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) for Ampicillin and Cefuroxime

  Patrick McInerney and Richard Martoglio

  Appropriate levels of an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) in medicines must be present in a medical product for the patient to receive therapeutic value. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to develop a methodology to test for the API in Ampicillin and Cefuroxime drugs. Following the regulations of the Distributed Pharmaceutical Analysis Lab (DPAL) out of Notre Dame system sustainability requirements linearity, precision, accuracy/range, spike/degraded spike, limit of detection /quantitation, tailing factor, and number of theoretical plates were experimentally determined to meet the excepted standards.

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  SD Prisms 2D & 3D: Visualizing the Standard Deviation

  Hieu Nguyen, Tom Nguyen, Mamunur Rashid, and Jyotirmoy Sarkar

  SD Prism is a graphical R package used for visualizing the standard deviation of a data set. Given a raw data set, the standard deviation (SD) is defined as the square root of the sample variance. Sarkar and Rashid (2017) interpret the sample SD as the square root of twice the mean square of all pairwise half deviations between any two sample observations. This interpretation leads to a geometric visualization of the sample SD and a more elementary explanation as to why the denominator in the sample variance is one less than the sample size. In this article, we will explain step by step how to understand it mathematically and how the package implements the methodology to visualize the SD.

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  Method Development for the Analysis of Pharmaceuticals Using High Performance Liquid Chromatography

  To Uyen (Anita) Nguyen and Richard Martoglio

  Since 2013, there have been 1500 reports of counterfeit drugs to WHO, especially from African, American, and European regions 1. Tackling the problem of poor drug quality, the Distributed Pharmaceutical Analysis Lab (DPAL) provides a quality analysis to quantify active pharmaceutical ingredient contents with a goal to trigger a report to the MRA or WHO2. With the support of DPAL, we would like to perform a series of chromatography experiments using the HPLC in order to identify and quantify the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) of Amoxicillin and Ciprofloxacin.

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  Impact of Urea on Size and Red-Edge Emission Spectroscopy of Reverse Micelles

  Tran Nguyen, Nancy E. Levinger, and Bridget Gourley Ph.D

  We use reverse micelles (RMs) as our model system to study the impact of osmolytes on water at the nanoscale. Reverse micelles are characterized by w0 = [polar component]/[surfactant]. In our experiment, we focus on 5 different w0 (w0 = 1, 5, 10, 20, 40) and 3 concentrations of urea (0.5M, 1M, 2M). The Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) illustrates a linear relationship between reverse w0 (the ratio) and size. Additionally, the DLS data indicates that the impact of osmolytes on size for small reverse micelles is not significant. Furthermore, Red-Edge Emission Spectroscopy shows a bigger impact on emission for smaller reverse micelles compared to the larger w0 samples.

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  Effects of nitrogen fertilizer on the sugar and ethanol production of C. Sativa

  Aidan Power, Christian Mugisha, Boanerges Bamaca, Asmita Mahara, and Mark Wilkins Ph.D

  With the decrease of fossil fuel-supply and increase of greenhouse gasses, biofuels are needed now more than ever. This includes bioethanol, an alternative fuel that can be made from waste materials, including C. Sativa (commonly known as hemp). The common belief in biological engineering is that the sugars from hemp can attract fermenting organisms to produce the needed ethanol. The question remains, however, of how external factors play into the ethanol production from hemp, such as fertilizer. I tested samples from three plots with different amounts of nitrogen fertilizer to see if the amount of sugar and ethanol varies or remains the same, and through a process of composition analysis of the sugars, pretreatment using an alkaline solution, enzymatic hydrolysis using cellulase, and fermentation using ethanol red, determined some significance regarding more sugars being produced in less fertilized fields. The connection from sugars to ethanol, however, remains to be thoroughly tested, as time constraints prevented me from taking enough samples to find any obvious trends or significance between the three plots. Future studies would include gathering more samples for both sugar and ethanol and redoing all processes in order obtain more reliable results.

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  The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Undergraduate Students’ Interest in the STEM Field

  Zaheen Rashed '24, Yuchen Jiang, Zimo Ma, and Pamela M. Propsom

  The deadly consequences of COVID-19 have been well documented, as have the social, emotional, and cognitive effects. These sequelae extend to the educational system. Much less investigated have been the potential positive outcomes of the pandemic. Given that STEM education relies heavily on hands-on laboratory experiences, STEM students may have been especially impacted by pandemic-imposed remote instruction. We surveyed 392 students at one liberal arts college querying why they continue studying in STEM or leave the STEM disciplines. Because the literature indicates that people of color and those from lower socioeconomic groups were more negatively affected by COVID-19, we hypothesized that students from traditionally marginalized groups in STEM would report greater adverse educational consequences of the pandemic as well; however, this was not borne out by the findings. Across demographic groups, students reported negative impacts of COVID-19, although in a few areas we found that more traditionally “privileged” groups complained of more negative outcomes than traditionally marginalized students did. What was most novel and dramatic in our results were the positive outcomes of the “lockdown” reported by students. These beneficial results were in the areas of enhanced resilience, improved social relationships, greater opportunities, academic improvement, and better mental health. Our paper concludes with recommendations for addressing the negative outcomes of COVID-19 and remote instruction, and for taking advantage of the unexpected positive effects.

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  Magma Mixing in the 874 AD Hrafntinnuhraun Rhyolite Eruption

  Chris Shannon, Kenneth L. Brown, D. McGarvie, and Matthew Looke

  The exposed Icelandic crust contains ~10% rhyolite and ~90% basalt, and there is ample evidence in both recent and ancient rocks of interactions between rhyolitic and basaltic magmas. A spectacular and little-studied example is the c. 874 AD rhyolite eruption of Hrafntinnuhraun at the Torfajökull volcano, where after an initial explosive (Plinian) phase a large rhyolite lava field formed. In this lava field, one vent produced a hybrid lava which is a mechanically mixed blend of approximately 83% rhyolite and 17% basalt.

  Polarized light microscopy was conducted on a suite of Hrafntinnuhraun samples that include flow-banded rhyolites, vesicular basaltic enclaves, and hybrid lavas. The flow-banded rhyolites are nearly aphyric, containing plagioclase and augite phenocrysts, with minor hornblende and biotite. The enclaves contain abundant plagioclase, augite, and olivine. The hybrid lavas contain plagioclase, augite, and olivine, but also contain minor amounts of biotite and hornblende.

  To better evaluate the magma mixing process, one hybrid lava sample (83:17 rhyolite:basalt) was analyzed by EPMA. This sample contains mineral cargos belonging to both the rhyolite and basalt end-member magmas. Plagioclase compositions range from An22 to An87, with anorthite-rich grains displaying resorption textures. Of particular interest are olivine crystals derived from the basalt, which contain Fo-rich (~Fo80) interiors and narrow rims (~5- 10µm) with lower Fo content (~Fo70). Follow-up work on diffusion modelling will hopefully yield a timescale, thus providing valuable and new information on mixing processes in the conduit prior to the eruption and cooling of this hybrid lava.

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  Distal Exposures of the Miocene Peach Spring Tuff in the Marble and Ship Mountains, CA

  Kelsang Shrestha, Matthew Loocke, and Kenneth L. Brown

  The Peach Springs Tuff (PST) is a uniquely identifiable ignimbrite deposit formed by a large caldera-forming volcanic eruption during the early Miocene era. Previous investigations (e.g., Miller et al., 1986; Neilson et al., 1990) have suggested that distal ignimbrite deposits located within the Mojave region of southern California belong to the PST eruptive event. To address this hypothesis, this study investigates ignimbrite samples collected from outcrops within the Marble Mountains (n = 6) and Ship Mountains (n = 8) of southern California. Petrographic analysis reveals the abundance of quartz, sanidine, titanite, hornblende, and biotite in most ignimbrite samples. These mineral phases agree well with previous heavy mineral studies of the PST (Gusa, 1986). Electron Probe Micro-Analysis (EPMA) reveals average biotite, hornblende, and sanidine compositions that closely match PST values. Our data suggests that the ignimbrite deposits in the Marble and Ship mountains are distal exposures of the PST.

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  Introduction to Common Molecular Biological Techniques Used in Research Laboratories

  Dington Tan, Ruitang Deng, Winifer Ali, and Qiwen Chen

  The main techniques used in molecular biology are cloning, PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction), nucleic acid electrophoresis, DNA microarray analysis, in situ hybridization (HIS), sequencing (Sanger or Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)). Molecular biology techniques are extremely valuable for addressing a wide range of issues impacting the general state of humanity, in addition to investigating fundamental scientific concerns. Applications for molecular biology techniques include the prevention and treatment of disease, the creation of new protein products, and the modification of plants and animals to produce desired phenotypic traits.

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  Outdoor Leadership in New England

  Sarah Tiggleman and Adam Liebman

  How do we expand youths' curiosity and joy for nature in outdoor spaces? During the summer of 2022, I worked at Overland Summers as an outdoor leader guiding 5th and 6th graders through the outdoor spaces of New England. This leadership role allowed me to understand importance of teamwork and independence for young students, and critically analyze what work these types of programs are doing in retrospect to the concept of wilderness.

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  Emotion-Aware Music Recommendation

  Hieu Tran, Tuan Le, Anh Do, Tram Vu, Steven Bogaerts, and Brian T. Howard

  People often listen to songs that match their mood. Thus, an AI music recommendation system that is aware of the user’s emotions is likely to provide a superior user experience to one that is unaware. In this paper, we present an emotion-aware music recommendation system. Multiple models are discussed and evaluated for affect identification from a live image of the user. We propose two models: DRViT, which applies dynamic routing to vision transformers, and InvNet50, which uses involution. All considered models are trained and evaluated on the AffectNet dataset. Each model outputs the user’s estimated valence and arousal under the circumplex model of affect. These values are compared to the valence and arousal values for songs in a Spotify dataset, and the top-five closest-matching songs are presented to the user. Experimental results of the models and user testing are presented.

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  Gender Disparities in NLSY97: Educational Attainment and Income Level

  Ngan Tran and Naima Shifa

  This paper is designed to examine gender differences in education and their impact on education and occupation status, following the research Economic Rationale for Sex Differences in Education conducted by Janice Fanning Madden. Data was collected from the NLSY97 (National Longitudinal Survey) on American youth born between 1980-84. The sample originally included 8,984 respondents when first interviewed in 1997.

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  Visualization for Better Learning in Chem 120

  Ngoc (Valerie) Tran and Jeffrey A. Hansen

  Many concepts in organic chemistry relate to spatial reasoning and the ability to translate two-dimensional representations into a three-dimensional mental image. It is critical that students gain a thorough understanding of visualizing atoms, orbitals and their interactions in three dimensions. By developing an E-book with computer graphics, 3D animations, H5P films, and online apps, we hope to enhance Depauw students' learning experiences in the CHEM 120 course. In this project, we would like to demonstrate 3D representations of chemical concepts to help students form these 3D mental images from a 2D surface. The process includes concept developing, storyboarding, 2D and 3D modeling, texturing, animation, rendering, and editing.

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  Megacrystic Potassium Feldspar Magmatism In The Southern Mojave Desert, California

  Claire Wolfe, Matthew Loocke, and Kenneth L. Brown

  Investigating the textural, chemical, and chronological records preserved within crystal populations can provide insight into the processes which operate during magma ascent, emplacement, and crystallization. K-feldspar megacrysts offer an excellent opportunity to explore these records, particularly in chemically-evolved systems. Understanding megacryst formation bears on a fundamental issue in granite petrogenesis, namely whether the textural and chemical features preserved within granitoid intrusions reflect primary magmatic processes or late-stage crystallization and subsolidus reorganization. To expand our understanding of megacryst formation, we investigated a suite of K-feldspar megacrysts from the Sheep Hole Pluton (SHP) in Southern California.

  SHP megacrysts are euhedral, ranging from 1-8cm in length. Petrographic analysis and SEM/EDS mapping reveals abundant plagioclase (~40%), quartz (~35%), biotite (~10%), titanite (~10%), and hornblende (~5%) inclusions. Other accessory phases include Fe-Ti oxides, apatite, allanite, and zircon. Many of these inclusions, especially euhedral plagioclase, biotite, and titanite, are preferentially orientated along diffuse oscillatory zoning boundaries in the host megacryst. EPMA analyses collected along megacryst core-to-rim traverses reveal Or78-93 compositions with dramatic fluctuations in Ba concentrations (0.89 - 2.73 wt%). Core and rim analyses of plagioclase inclusions were also collected via EPMA. These analyses reveal that plagioclase inclusions contain oligoclase to andesine cores (An19 - An34) and albite-rich rims (An3 - An10).

  Although SHP megacrysts are much older than megacrysts described in previous studies, the textural and chemical observations are strikingly similar. We favor a magmatic origin for these megacrysts and interpret these similarities to suggest that a common magmatic process is responsible for K-feldspar megacryst formation.

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  Investigating Conflicts in Mind Wandering and Neural Oscillation Studies

  Mahnoor Zahid and Robert West

  When presented with a repetitive or an undemanding task, our mind tends to disengage from the external environment to focus on the inner trains of thought. This phenomenon, commonly known as "zoning out" is termed as Mind Wandering. Across various literature', this effect has been mainly studied under two states: while performing a low-demand task, or under a meditative state. Neural oscillations such as alpha, beta, delta and theta waves were studied to observe varying effects of mind wandering and to distinguish how and when a human mind goes into this state. It was hypothesized that one wave would prove to be a distinguishable factor in identifying the mind wandering state. Surprisingly, the literature did not meet at one solid convergence.

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  Latex Variation in Hemp Dogbane (Apocynum Cannabinum)

  Michael Aikin and Rose Keith PhD

  Hemp Dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum) is a weedy perennial native to North America that can reproduce by seed or clonally. Shoots can emerge from vertically oriented crown roots or horizontally orientated lateral roots. This plant can be found readily throughout the nature park in small to large patches. We sampled from 6 populations, 3 within the quarry bottom and 3 outside of the quarry bottom. We looked at latex production to determine if it was influenced more by herbivory or water availability. In our analysis we discovered that water availability played a role in the amount of latex produced and that herbivory was deterred by latex production in nonquarry populations.

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  Life on the rocks: Small-scale primary succession in an abandoned limestone quarry

  Sophia P. Atkinson, Diana Borse, Cedrick Chandler, Daniel L. Saltz, and Dana A. Dudle PhD

  Abandoned quarries, from which all soil and plant life have been removed, represent an opportunity to study primary succession at a small scale. Using a framework suggested by Gilardelli et al. (2016), we assessed the stage of primary succession in an abandoned limestone quarry in Greencastle, Indiana, where gravel extraction ceased in 1977. From 2018-2021 we surveyed the quarry floor to describe the species composition and distribution of flowering plant species that have established at the site, then described each species in terms of its plant form, life history, native and wetland status, and invasive rank using the USDA website. In 2021, we made a grid across the quarry bottom and randomly selected 50 two-meter plots of which we characterized the substrate and identified flowering plant species found within each plot. We identified 106 species in the quarry, 72% are native to Indiana. From the quarry survey, we found that most of the species currently growing in the Nature Park quarry are native, herbaceous perennials. From the sample plots, we found that the quarry bottom does not follow the pattern of late-phase succession as laid out by Gilardelli et al. (2016) with only 28% of species identified being woody perennials that are sparsely distributed. Shrubland communities are not replacing herbaceous pioneer species as quickly as expected.

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  Edge influence on forest composition in a pine-oak forest in central Mexico

  Isidro Avila and Dana Dudle PhD

  Deforestation in central Mexico comes as a direct consequence of the increase in agriculture demand and has resulted in the creation of more habitat edges. Changes in land usage for agriculture and resource extraction has resulted in habitat destruction and degradation; these same mechanisms have led to habitat fragmentation by producing smaller, and isolated fragments separated by human-transformed land cover. The loss of continuous area has resulted in greater exposure to human dominated landscapes resulting in changes to the structure and function of the remaining fragment. To quantify, document, and describe the edge influence on forest composition fragmented by an agriculture field, I sampled 6 transects with 3, 10, 20, 30, & 40m data points per transect. My results reveal an edge influence on forest composition from an agriculture field.

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  The Effectiveness of Serial Casting in Children with Arthrogryposis

  Christina Bourantas; Chris Church MPT; Stephanie Butler BPT; Jose de Jesus Salazar-Torres PhD; John Henley PhD; Maureen Donohoe PT, DPT; Freeman Miller MD; and L. Reid Nichols MD

  The most common foot deformity in children with arthrogryposis is clubfoot, which is typically stiffer than in the idiopathic clubfoot (IC). While the use of the Ponseti method in IC has led to improved foot mobility and reduced invasive surgical procedures, there is currently limited information of the effectiveness of serial casting (SC) in arthrogryposis. The purpose of this research is to determine the effect of serial casting in recurrent clubfoot in children with arthrogryposis on brace tolerance, foot position, patient reported outcome, and the need for surgery.

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  Small Farms Throughout Southwest Indiana

  Thomas Brelage

  My experience at the DePauw University Ullem Center & Campus Farm took place during Summer 2021 with a majority of my internship taking place from June to August. Prior to my internship, I had worked at the Ullem Campus Farm as a volunteer and intern to the Farm Manager. During this time, I winterized the farm, completed the last of the fall harvest, and began preparing for spring planting. These experiences throughout the winter and spring influenced my decision to accept the summer internship at the Campus Farm!

  The summer internship was offered through DePauw's Sustainability Leadership Program (SLP). Developing multi-faceted leaders, SLP works to establish and promote sustainability on DePauw's campus. The club is comprised of smaller working groups and each focuses on different interests in sustainability. My area of focus has been in the Campus Farm working group so I was extremely excited to dive into farm work. Through SLP, the focus had always been "bigger picture" farm projects, but my internship dove into the everyday work on the Campus Farm.

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  A model of flexible feature learning for segmentation and unitization

  Ziyi Chen and Michael E. Roberts PhD

  The form of visual feature learning called segmentation involves learning components from whole objects, whereas unitization is learning whole objects via repeated exposure to the key parts. While some computer vision approaches get similar results as empirical findings from humans, the models are not very biologically plausible. This project presents a web-accessible version of a neural network model of flexible visual feature learning developed by Roberts and Goldstone. Here we use HTML and javascript to create a website which allows users to draw and train with their own input patterns, adjust parameters, and then test the features learned by the network.

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  Problematic Social Media Use: Are There Gender Differences in Control and Craving

  Aaniyah Childs and Robert West PhD

  Problematic social media use is characterized by being overly concerned about social media, having an uncontrollable urge to use social media, and devoting ample amounts of time to social media that impairs other important life areas. According to Statista, 15% of people from 23-38 years of age admit they demonstrate problematic social media use, and 30% of all the participants surveyed admit they somewhat demonstrate problematic social media use. Problematic social media use is a growing problem, especially during a time where the world took a momentary pause and people turned to social media during quarantine amidst the pandemic. The Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) has been widely used to measure this problematic behavior. This is a short six item scale measuring one factor, overall social media addiction. The goal of the current study was to create a new scale based on the BSMAS and the validated Internet Addiction Test-Short Version (s-IAT). The s-IAT is a 12 item scale that measures Internet addiction with the two factors control and craving. The scale was sent to 361 participants, both males and females to see whether or not there are gender differences. Our findings show that the DePauw Social Media Scale does measure problematic social media use and captures the two factors control and craving. There were gender differences in control, where females were higher than males, but not in craving. Our findings reveal that the relationship between gender and problematic social media use may differ from gender and Internet addiction.

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  Behavior and Genomics of Nicotine-Seeking Larval Zebrafish

  Kuzivakwashe Chinyanya, Andrew Button, and Henning Schneider PhD

  Nicotine-use behavior is one of the main causes of preventable diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Helping people quit nicotine products is a main goal of our projects. Developing a zebrafish model for nicotine use behavior could provide a tool for studying the underlying genetic, environmental and neuronal elements of nicotine use behavior. The high reproductive rate and short generation time of zebrafish as well as available genetic tools represent major advantages for studying potential links between behavior and genes in zebrafish. In our experiments, we use a behavioral assay for studying nicotine-choice behavior in larval zebrafish. By analyzing the swimming path using the tracking software EthovisionXT (Noldus) we can group larval zebrafish into nicotine-seekers, nicotineavoiders and nicotine-neutrals. As previously shown, about 20% of tested larval zebrafish can be identified as nicotine seekers. By selected breeding we aim to generate a zebrafish line with a higher percentage of nicotine-seekers. However, the results of breeding nicotine-seekers with each other resulted in a smaller percentage of nicotineseeking larval zebrafish in the third generation. Consistently, the percentage of nicotineavoiders is higher in each generation. To explore if nicotine-seeking and avoidance behavior can be linked to gene variants similar to those in humans, we have developed a protocol for detecting variants of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor genes in nicotineseekers and avoiders and found only weak correlation of certain variants with nicotineseeking behavior.

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  Testing Inductive Learning Effects from Changing Attentional Focus with Training Instructions

  Bradon Collins, Emily Gost, and Michael E. Roberts PhD

  Participants studied a variety of artists’ paintings with different instructions regarding which elements of the paintings to focus on. The identification and recognition of trained and novel paintings was then tested. The additional instructions did not significantly alter memory performance or inductive learning .