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  History Capstone Presentations

  Camryn Mcnutt, Brant Bolton, Sean Zegarski, Jack Willerton, Noah Jackson, John Perkins-Stafford

  Capstone presentations by History Department Seniors showcasing scholarly historical projects based on primary source analysis and historiographical context. Topics range from Perceptions of Economic Transition in Russia and Eastern Europe, to anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism in Extreme Movements in Ohio, Chinese Propaganda, and the Professionalization of Army Cadre in Nineteenth Century America.

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  How Do Difficult Features Evolve? Test of a Sperm Tail Tubulin Synergism in the Fly D. melanogaster

  Kati Bowsher

  How does a protein evolve while maintaining its function? Structure/function tests of the sperm tail protein β2-tubulin show that even small changes in the protein render it unable to generate a motile sperm tail, raising the question about how it evolved in the first place. It has not evolved in 60 million years in Drosophila melanogaster. Previously, we identified additive and synergistic amino acid specializations of the β2 protein. Synergism is of particular interest because it makes evolution path-dependent, potentially contributing to the 60-million-year stasis of the β2 protein. Two amino acids, Threonine 55 and Alanine 57, were identified as potentially participating in a β2-specific synergism. Their function depends on amino acid contacts that are only present in β2. Here we test the hypothesis that a third amino acid that is in contact with Thr55 and Ala57 in the folded protein and is also unique to β2, Cysteine 29, completes the synergism, by generating transgenic flies expressing a modified major β1 tubulin containing β2 identity Cys29, Thr55 and Ala57. Spermatogenesis and fertility were assessed in CTA/CTA β2null/β2null flies. CTA can support all post-mitotic tubulin function in the testis, except spermatogenesis. CTA flies generate short, immotile sperm and are sterile. No additional sperm-generating function was provided by Cysteine 29 compared to the β1-β2 construct containing only Thr55 and Ala57.No candidate for sperm generating function is clear in the 11 remaining differences between CTA and β2, indicating that sperm-generating function resides in small epistatic interactions throughout the protein. However, the lack of strong candidates for β2 function raises another possibility; the β1 backbone used in testing for β2 amino acid specializations contains 9+0 specializations that actively generate immotile axonemes. Candidates for such β1 specializations will be identified through bioinformatic comparisons among 9+2 and 9+0 axoneme-generating β-tubulins and tested in transgenic flies.

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  How does Peer Delinquency influence an Individuals Aspirations for Work, Family, and the Law?

  Haley Fisher

  Delinquency is the act of criminal behavior committed by individuals during their adolescence. Delinquency has led many individuals down the wrong path in life, but it has also sparked desire for people to better themselves. Because many individuals do unfortunately suffer from the poor decisions they have made in their adolescence, that previous studies aim to look further into the catalyst of those choices. Many factors are considered when examining catalysts, such as exposure to violence, substance abuse, gang involvement, peer delinquency, age, gender, and ethnicity. Research for my project has used the dataset Pathways to Desistance study. This data has been collected from November 2000 to January 2003, following around 1,354 individuals who were serious juvenile offenders from adolescence to young adults, ranging from fourteen to eighteen years of age. There have been multiple tests conducted to observe their psychological development, behavior, social relationships, mental health, and experiences in juvenile court or the criminal justice system. This study was designed to identify the social contexts and developmental differences in encouraging desistance and antisocial behaviors. My research project looks examine how different factors specifically peer delinquency, affects individuals aspirations for work, family, and the law. The dependent variable of the study is individuals’ aspirations for work, family, and the law. This falls under the measure of perceptions of chances for success. The independent variables I also looked at when determining what would effect these aspirations were these individuals exposure to violence, substance abuse, gang involvement, age, gender, and ethnicity. It is hoped that the evidence which I have uncovered from my research will be able to further the understanding and prevent of individuals who are led down a wrong path in their lives eventually deteriorating their aspirations for work, family, and the law.

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  Human Designed Equitable Warming Shirts

  Annie Wesner, Victoria Jacobs, Nicholas Stout

  Our project is to create a STEM based lesson plan that requires students to design a thermal shirt that is effective in keeping people warm by testing different insulators. Our problem given to students is the inequality of people facing homelessness often facing extreme temperatures in Ohio with little protection from the elements, especially in Winter. There is also inequality with the cost in buying hand warmers and warm clothing. Before students create and test their shirt designs they will learn about exothermic and endothermic reactions and learn mathematical concepts of modeling growth and decay over time. Students will test and design using the scientific method what insulators they will use to create this shirt based on their knowledge of chemical thermodynamics. They will measure the effectiveness of their design over time through sampling over the time interval chosen to test the theory that exothermic reaction rate flows are proportional to temperature. Students will then model using the data from the experiment to apply both chemistry and biology concepts to mathematics in a real-world example.

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  Human Impacts on Wildlife Activity in Glen Helen Nature Reserve

  Elizabeth Divish; other author: Dustin Holmes

  Recreational Locations such as Glen Helen Nature Reserve (Yellow Springs, OH), are welcoming and open to many human activities that involve being outdoors. These nature locations are also home to many different wildlife species that interact with each other and the humans that visit the park. These species have natural behaviors and interactions that are necessary for survival and reproduction. Living in an outdoor recreational area can at times make it difficult for them to follow their natural behaviors, because human activities such as hiking and dog walking can influence how the animals act, what times they look for food, or look for mates. In collaboration with the Glen Helen Nature Reserve, we implemented a wildlife monitoring project through the use of remote trail cameras in their park. We set up five trail cameras, with three of them having bait in the form of bird seed. Cameras were active for a month, from Nov 15 to Dec 15 2022. We documented eight mammal species: North American beaver (Castor canadensis), White tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), Raccoon (Procyon lotor), Coyote (Canis latrans), Gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), Southern Flying Squirrel (Glaucomys volans), Muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus), and small rodents, such as field mice (Mus musculus). Using the footage from the camera traps, we found observable data to support that wild mammals inhabiting this location are affected by human behavior visiting the park. The majority of wild animals had nocturnal behavior, in contrast to human activity that occurs entirely during the day. By analyzing at the time of day of the activity for both, the different activities that are taking place and the relationship between them support the idea that wildlife are shifting their behavior to avoid human activity. The research has shown the effects that an outdoor area allowing humans to explore nature and their surroundings can have on the different fauna that call that location home, and these results will help inform Glen Helen Nature Reserve and their management plans for this protected area.

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  Identification and Comparison of Hydrolases Secreted from Naganishia albida to Papiliotrema laurentii and their activity toward natural and synthetic polyesters

  Clarissa Ove

  Esters and amides are the most versatile functional groups in nature and in plastics today. Understanding the key temporal events in the biodegradation and susceptibility of polymers and plastics (e.g. polyester and polyester polyurethanes) to hydrolytic enzymes is important to the sustainable development of our modern society. We will present the isolation, identification, and classification of an environmental strain of Naganishia albida found on polymer coatings inside of aircraft. To better understand the capability of hydrolytic enzymes to degrade plastics we isolated, identified, and classified an environmental strain of Naganishia albida found on polymer coatings inside an aircraft. We utilized cultivation conditions that induced the secretion of several hydrolytic proteins (between 30 kDa and 140 kDa) from N. albida that were identified via LC-MS. We also isolated the hydrolytic proteins from cellular supernatants using size exclusion chromatography, and performed soluble colorimetric esterase assays and polyester polyurethane coating degradation experiments. Finally we showed comparisons between the hydrolytic proteins produced by N. albida and another polymer degrading yeast, Papiliotrema laurentii.

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  Identification of a SARS-CoV2 viral protein that triggers neurodegeneration and accelerates Aβ42 mediated neurodegeneration

  Aditi Singh, Anuradha Chimata Venkatakrishnan

  The SARS-CoV2 virus is responsible for the recent COVID-19 Pandemic that caused a range of symptoms including an acute respiratory tract infection up to fatal severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that is fatal. The virus is highly contagious, rapidly mutating, and has resulted in massive morbidity and mortality around the globe including within the United States and worldwide. While COVID-19’s acute symptoms are known, the long-term sequelae and impacts like Post COVID-19 Syndrome (PCS) are lesser known and remain understudied. To date, it is understood that SARS-CoV2 results in an increased inflammatory response, cognitive dysfunction like brain fog, several long-term cardiovascular and autoimmune changes. Therefore, we hypothesized that SARS-CoV2 may impact conditions with pre-existing neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, and cognitive dysfunction like Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). To study these impacts, we used the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly model, to understand how specific SARS-CoV2 proteins affect neurodegenerative pathology. Our model first misexpressed specific SARS-CoV3 CoV2 proteins in wildtype flies via Gal4-UAS system. Interestingly, misexpression of SARS-CoV2 NSP3, nonstructural protein 3 (NSP3), generated a rough eye phenotype with necrotic spots indicating cell death. These findings suggested that COVID-19 alone may promote cell death. We also confirmed these results in the mammalian neuronal cell known as Neuro-2a cells. Transient expression of SARS-CoV2 NSP3 significantly reduced the metabolic activity of these cells and enhanced cell death (p < 0.05). We were interested in observing how COVID-19 may potentiate cell death in a neurodegenerative background that has high pre-existing levels of neuroinflammation and cell death. Therefore, we misexpressed SARS-CoV2 NSP3 in an AD transgenic fly using the Gal4-UAS system (GMR>Aβ42). Here, we observed a worsening of the rough eye phenotype and increased cell death. Changes in cell morphology and increases in cell death may be indicative of COVID-19-mediated changes to AD pathophysiology. These findings suggested that a cell death mechanism may be involved in COVID-19 mediated worsening in AD pathology. Here, we present our studies in assessing various cell death mechanisms including autophagy, apoptosis, and necrosis, and their potential involvement in SARS-CoV2’s impacts on AD pathology.

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  Identification Of miRNA in Growth And Survival

  Prajakta Deshpande, Esther Labya; other author: Amit Singh

  Cell size is essential in a cell's cellular processes and function. Hence cell size andgrowth need to be appropriately maintained. Gene regulation plays a vital role inregulating gene expression of different cellular processes like apoptosis, cell growth,etc. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), small single-stranded RNAs, regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally by binding to the 3’ untranslated region (UTR) of their target messengerRNAs (mRNAs), degrade their target mRNA, and hence silence their gene expression.In a forward genetic screen, our lab has identified a micro-RNA that inhibits apoptosisin the Drosophila eye model. Previous study shows that in the hippo (hpo) mutantsexhibit overgrowth, whereas gain-of-function of hippo triggers cell death in thedeveloping eye. Our preliminary data suggest that the gain-of-function of miR-277 in theGMR>hpo background rescues Hpo-mediated cell death. In addition, the gain-of-function of miRNA-277 restores the impaired axonal targeting observed in GMR>hpoeye disc. Hence, our working model suggests that miRNA regulates cell growth bymodulating the hippo pathway.

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  Identification of Novel Genes Responsible for a Rapidly Evolving Fruit Fly Trait by Gain and Loss of Gene Function Experiments

  Devon Seibert, Gavin Christy, Rachel Stanojev

  Two long-standing goals in biology are to understand how genes are used during an organism’s development to make morphological traits, and how genes change to facilitate the origins, modifications, and losses of these traits. Two powerful approaches to identify the critical genes are through gain and loss of function experiments. The former experiments look at the effects when the expression of genes is induced in new cellular places, at new times in life, and/or at elevated levels of expression. The latter experiments cause the absence of expression for genes from their normal places, times, and/or levels of expression. While many methods have been devised to accomplish such experiments, these methods are generally too cumbersome to apply to tens, hundreds, or even thousands of genes. In recent years, scientists have found ways to use RNA-interference and CRISPER/Cas9 gene editing to cause both gain and loss of function mutations for specific genes. These methods are being combined with resources for the fruit fly species Drosophila (D.) melanogaster to target a steadily increasing number of this species’ genes. Our research project applied these approaches and genetic tools to cause gain and loss of function for genes suspected to play a role in the development and evolution of the male-specific pigmentation of the D. melanogaster abdomen. The greater than 30 genes whose altered function distorts this pigmentation feature will be the focus of future studies to reveal the mechanisms of gene function and their evolution.

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  Identifying the effects of anaerobicity and propionate on Listeria monocytogenes metabolism and central nervous system infection

  Rebecca Rudd

  Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative foodborne pathogen that can enter the bloodstream and invade the central nervous system to cause meningitis. As an intracellular pathogen, L. monocytogenes replicates inside the host cell cytosol and avoids extracellular immune defenses as it disseminates throughout the body. L. monocytogenes can also reach and cross the blood brain barrier, resulting in severe or fatal symptoms in immunocompromised and elderly patients. The overarching goal of my research project is to better understand how different environmental factors, anaerobicity and propionate, in the intestinal lumen alter the ability of L. monocytogenes to cause infections. In the first aim of my thesis research, I investigated how anaerobicity and propionate affected L. monocytogenes central metabolism by measuring acetoin production, which is a proxy for pyruvate metabolism, and culture pH, which is a proxy for lactic acid production. I also compared these measurements between different strains to identify the potential genetic regulations underlying L. monocytogenes responses to anaerobicity and propionate. In the second aim, I examined the effect of anaerobicity and propionate on L. monocytogenes infection and intracellular growth in a model host cell line for neuronal cells, the Neuro-2A cells. Additionally, I investigated the intracellular growth differences between different strains to identify strain-dependent variations. Through this project, further findings were discovered about how anaerobicity and propionate exposure influence L. monocytogenes metabolism and infections, allowing for better understanding of how this pathogen might behave during and after intestinal transit.

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  Image Caption Generation Using AI/ML With User Feedback

  Nidhi Sinha

  The objective of this project is to create a machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) system that can produce accurate and meaningful captions for images. When a picture is an input, the system will give a caption that precisely describes what is shown in the image. This will be achieved by using a sizable collection of photos and their related captions to train a neural network. The system will use a recurrent neural network (RNN) to produce the caption and a convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract features from the image. The image will be transformed by the CNN into a feature vector, which will then be sent as input to the RNN. The caption will then be created by the RNN using a series of words. To train the model, a large dataset and their respective caption are required. Initially, will pre-process the dataset to ensure that it will be useful for neural networks. It includes resizing of images to a particular size, normalizing pixel values & converting the caption to their respective numerical vectors. Once training is completed, it will be tested on a different set of images to check its accuracy and relevance. User feedback will be collected for further improvement. This feedback will be used to fine-tune the model in order to achieve an accurate result. Users will be able to upload an image and instantly get a caption using a web application. Users will be able to rate the automatically generated captions and offer additional input through the web application's feedback feature, which will be included. This technique has a wide range of possible uses, such as increasing the accessibility of photos for those who are visually impaired, improving the searchability of image databases, and giving automated image descriptions for use in advertising and social media. In conclusion, the goal of this project is to create a system that can produce precise and pertinent captions for photographs utilizing AI/ML methods. The technology will be put into use as a web application for real-time use and assessed using user feedback.

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  Immune Signaling by HCT-8 Cells in Response to Intracellular Pathogens

  Aysha Choudhury

  Viral infections have the potential to completely overwhelm the body if appropriate measures by the immune system are not taken. Under the mentorship of Dr. Sun and Dr. Rajput, my research focused on the influence of propionate (a metabolic byproduct of gut microbiota with putative health effects) on intestinal epithelium cells infected with coronavirus (OC 43). By studying the cytopathic effects of HCT-8 cells exposed to different concentrations of propionate, we were able to gain a better understanding of how the metabolism of our gut microbiota can modulate our immune functions, something that can potentially lead to the development of new treatment options for coronaviruses, including COVID-19.

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  Impact of Religious Groups on Immigration in Western civilization

  John Saxton, Mary Koonce, Estil Stevens

  This project is a literature review focusing on immigration in the United States and Europe. This project evaluates different perspectives among immigrants and native citizens. The review focuses on the intersection of religion and immigration, both discriminatory and supportive practices and perspectives. Findings include biases among religious groups regarding immigrants. Discrimination stems from the societal and cultural frameworks from where individuals originate. This review finds religious organizations that offer support and resources to immigrants in their communities. Religious groups must do what they can to support immigrants in this ongoing issue.

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  Impact of the addition of a food resource on the aggression levels of Sunburst Platies between different sex combinations

  Elizabeth Vear, Palmer Lambert, Alyssa Hack, Claire Van Meter

  Interspecies aggression is used by many organisms as a way to win mates, gain food resources, protect offspring, and develop status within social groups. In this study, we assessed the level of conspecific aggressive behavior observed before and after feeding in male and female Sunburst Wag Platies (Xiphophorous maculatus). We hypothesized that when feeding bloodworms, a high value food, to two fish in the same tank, conspecifics will show more aggressive behavior and be more territorial after the addition of the food compared to prior to the feeding event in an effort to protect their food source. We used different sex pairings, (two males, two females, and a male and female together) to get a better understanding of how sex combinations impact aggression levels in response to food territoriality, and hypothesized that males will show more aggressive behavior than females. We found that aggressive behaviors do increase after the addition of a food source, and that one individual was more dominant compared to the other. This resulted in the dominant individual usually consuming more food than the subordinate, however; they were both able to consume the majority of the food without any aggression when the food density was high.

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  Inmates Likelihood of Engagement with Mental Health Resources

  Madyson McKinney, Samantha Dwyer

  In recent years, mental health has been a prevalent topic in society. One group greatly affected by mental health issues are prisoners, with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2016) reporting that over half of all state prison inmates had a past or current history of mental health issues. Nonetheless, only a small percentage receive mental health services while in prison. One must wonder what may affect an inmate's likelihood of engagement with such services. To help determine this, we chose to look at the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities (SISCF). It was conducted for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and uses personal interviews conducted from October 2003 through May 2004 with inmates in both state and federal prisons. We focused on seven main dependent variables in relation to our independent variable of inmate participation in a self-help group. Specifically, we strongly focus on whether possession of an unauthorized substance impacts an inmate's likelihood of engagement with a mental help group.

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  Insects as an indicator? How unwanted and overlooked creatures in litter can be a useful tool to indicate prairie restoration success

  Matthew Carroll

  Tallgrass prairies were once a dominant ecosystem in the US historically covering roughly 1/3 of the nation but now roughly 4% of prairie coverage remains. These prairies provide valuable ecosystem services and serve as a safe haven for native plants and wildlife. To combat prairie loss there has been a series of prairie restoration projects taking place around the greater Dayton area. While these projects are great at bringing back native wildlife there has been no real criteria established to measure how well these restoration projects have boosted biodiversity at higher trophic levels. We were interested to see if any invertebrates that live in the litter or soil could indicate successful prairie restoration. We tested whether there was a difference in the communities of ground dwelling insects between both native prairies and restored prairies to see if there is a group or species of insects that we can use as a measurement of restoration success. We used a transect of pitfall traps to collect insects at each of 12 field sites. These pitfalls collected invertebrates for roughly a week, and then they were brought back to the lab and identified to order. We found that both snails as well as isopods are significantly more abundant at remnant sites, likely because these species have low levels of dispersal so they take a long time to get to restored sites. These two groups have potential to be used as indicator species to show restoration success of prairies in the Miami Valley.

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  Insights into an emerging insect habitat: Ant communities on green roofs in 3 Ohio cities

  Grace Jackson

  Many cities are experiencing a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect largely as a result of decreased vegetation. Green roofs have been used to help combat this issue, and many claim that they also provide habitat for urban wildlife. There is a significant knowledge gap in our understanding of the interactions between urban wildlife and this artificial habitat. The insect family Formicidae (ants) are a great study organism for this system because they are ubiquitous across urban areas and their ecology is easily studied with simple methods. In the summer months of 2022, soil samples, temperature data, and ants were collected from nine study sites spanning across three cities in Southwestern Ohio (Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus). I predicted that the green roofs would be hotter and drier than their immediate ground level habitats. Ant activity was predicted to be negatively correlated with increasing height and positively correlated with increased plant species richness and soil depth. I also hypothesized that when presented with an equal opportunity to forage for salt or sugar, ants foraging on green roofs would have a more pronounced preference for sodium over sugar due to the deicing practices of roads and sidewalks and increased sucrose availability on the roofs. This proposed work could help inform land managers about the type of habitat that green roofs provide, and provide novel insight into how they affect arthropod communities.

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  Instance Segmentation for Medical Image Analysis

  Kim Anh Phung

  In this work, we will explore the instance segmentation for medical image analysis. In particular, we will collect a new dataset of polyp instances for this task. Then, we evaluate and report the performance of different state-of-the-art methods. Finally, we will provide insights about applying the computer vision methods into practical problem.

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  Instance Segmentation to Identify Mouse Brain Cell Types

  Aditya Shrivastava

  I.ObjectivesFor the study of brain function and behavior, the mouse brain serves as a valuable model system. Methods to accurately analyze the complex signals produced by the mouse brain are becoming increasingly important due to developments in neuroimaging and optogenetics. Techniques that can take the information contained in mouse brain signals and turn it into useful biological insights are especially needed. In brain analysis, instance segmentation is commonly used for measuring and visualizing the brain's anatomical structures, for analyzing brain changes, for delineating pathological regions, and for surgical planning and image-guided interventions. In the last few decades, various segmentation techniques of different accuracy and degree of complexity have been developed and reported in the literature.II.MethodsThis interdisciplinary project explores the image segmentation with fluorescence microscopy images of mouse brain tissue. In particular, we will develop a model to segment dendrites, cell body, and axon from images of mouse brain tissue. The segmented results will be extremely helpful to detect synaptic proteins that are important for neuronal communication. We will focus on the excitatory synaptic proteins VGLUT1 and VGLUT2 which are specifically expressed circuits in the brain. To this end, we will use an image dataset of mouse brain tissue provided by Dr. Aaron Sathyanesan. Then, we will annotate the dendrites, cell body, and axonal regions by using our in-house annotation tool provided by Dr. Tam Nguyen. Next, we will train an image segmentation model on the newly annotated dataset. For the evaluation, we will use the performance metrics such as accuracy and IoU.

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  Integration of motorized kinematic stages in an optical Lithography experiment

  Russel Pienias

  Lithography is the technique used to create micro and nanostructures for a variety of applications, in which a laser creates precise patterns in a photosensitive material called a photoresist. In a modern system, both high-resolution piezoelectric stages, as well as large travel stepper motor stages, are needed. LabView is a programming system that allows its users to communicate with instruments that allow the user to control and read different instruments. In this case, LabVIEW is being used to control motion in a 3-dimensional plane, and the ability to have precise motorized movement will do two things for the optical Lithography system: a) it allows the users to align the laser coming into the system which is normally done manually, and b)also it allows users to switch samples in and out of the system with ease as the stages move the samples in and out of the system. In summary, we integrate motion control stages into a lithography system to assist in sample mounting and dismounting while maintaining positional accuracy, and we validate the lithography system using a dose parameter (laser power) characterization.

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  Interaction between the dorsal selector gene defective proventriculus (dve) and Decapentaplegic (Dpp) signaling pathway during Drosophila eye development

  Katie Perry, Anuradha Chimata Venkatakrishnan, Anjali Sangeeth; other authors: Neha Gogia, Madhuri Kango-Singh, Amit Singh 1,3,4,5,6

  During organogenesis, axial patterning is required to establish the Antero-Posterior (AP), Dorso-Ventral (DV), and Proximo-Distal (PD) axes for proper organ development. The DV axis is thefirst lineage restriction event during eye development. These processes like patterning anddevelopment are carefully co-ordinated by various transcription factors, morphogens andsignalling pathways. Any errors in this process result in developmental defects, genetic birthdefects, and patterning defects in the organ. Here we wanted to study the interaction between apreviously identified dorsal selector gene defective proventriculus (dve, an ortholog of SATB1),a K-50 homeodomain containing transcription factor and Dpp morphogen. Decapentaplegic(Dpp)/Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) signaling pathway is highly conserved in humans andforms morphogen gradient in the developing eye to initiate retinal differentiation and establishthe anterior-posterior axis of the Drosophila eye imaginal disc. We hypothesize that dve couldinteract with Dpp signaling and an optimum level of interaction between dve and Dpp signalingis essential for the proper development of Drosophila eye. Our results suggest Dve might interactin an antagonistic manner with Dpp pathway to regulate growth. We will address this hypothesisusing gain-of-function and loss-of-function approaches. Here we present how the dve patterninggene interacts with the Dpp signaling pathway to determine retinal vs head cuticle fate.

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  Interactive Effects of Predation and Sex of Group Member on Social Behaviors in Platys

  Grace Litavsky, Emma Borgert, Amy Friemoth, Greta Schoettmer

  Platys (Xiphophorus maculatus) are naturally found in warm, shallow waters and typically live in social groups. These fish demonstrate complex social hierarchies where dominant individuals assert authority through aggressive and physical displays. Subordinate fish may display submissive behaviors like swimming away from the dominant individual. However, when exposed to a predator, the social dynamic of platy fish groups can quickly shift. Here, we investigated how exposure to predators and social structure influence the interactions of the platy fish. To do this, treatment groups of male-male, female-female, and male-female had their behaviors scored for 5 minutes before predator exposure as a control and for 5 minutes after with 30 second acclimation time after the 30 second predator exposure. Statistical significance was only observed for the behavior of top time, with differences observed between the male-male and male-female treatment groups during the pre period. No significance was observed between treatments or within the overall data for the pre and post periods for the behaviors of gravel time and schooling time. The effects of social structure influences the behaviors of platys greater than exposure to a predator, as significant changes in behaviors were not observed between the pre and post periods. This research is important because it can tell us more about the complex social structure of platy fish and help us to understand the evolutionary history of their behaviors.

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  Interconnections of Research to Education and Creating

  Veronica Bernacki, Sydney Summers, Hannah Bright

  This panel discussion among senior preservice art educators explores the relationship of the interconnected roles of artists, educators, and researchers. Using qualitative methodology, each panelist engaged in a self-directed, IRB approved study in the Dayton area using survey, autoethnography, or interviews. Exploring art, education, community, and personal discovery through the act of conducting arts-based research, panelists will share findings and experiences as new researchers in the field, offer a comparative analysis of their studies, and discuss the implications of the research process on their future roles as art educators.

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  Intercultural Communication Semester Projects

  Jayilin Barksdale, Piper Adkins, Ashley Walker, Grace Kennedy, Melissa Weidner, Christian Valenzano, Connor Fritzsche, Caroline Sullivan, Sarah Harper, Christian Gordon, Madlyn Hansen, Julia Strittmatter, Charles Corrigan, Clare Loesch, Ella Sweitzer, Ella Doyle, Margaret Ruhlmann, Quinn Gilroy, Jessica Morris, Lauren Riley, Kaleb Geevarghese, Kaitlin Hall, Jenna Borrelli, Emma Bueti, Bill Farmer, Kevin Dolehide, Clayton Lovin, Caroline Duarte, Casey Tirado, Ruth Eckhart, Katherine Brothers, Ethan Schum, Dorian Mays, Erika Christie, Logan Brown

  Intercultural communication can be expressed and studied in myriad ways. The students of CMM 316.01 investigated various forms of cultural expression by comparing and contrasting the ways a particular form is used by multiple cultural groups. Specifically, each group researched and presented about the ways food, music, festivals, rituals, dance, clothing, and other artifacts communicate cultural identity in at least two different cultures.

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  Internet of Things Final Project

  Vincent Oliver

  I will present the design of an internet of things device that is programmed to automatically heat or cool a room. A sensor will be used to turn a fan off an on.