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  Internet of Things: Proximity and Traffic

  Lucy Zelinski

  As a civil engineering major, I didn’t expect much overlap between transportation and Internet of Things. I came to learn that this was not the case. Sensors can be used for all sorts of things and that includes being able to sense the location of something. I knew that there was a way that traffic engineers were getting data to allow vehicles and pedestrians to move efficiently and safely. An IoT connection helps me understand how that data is gathered. I was tasked with using sensor to collect meaningful data and I figured I would expand my knowledge in both engineering and IoT by using a proximity sensor to gather data that could be applied to traffic movements.

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  Introduction to Scriptures Requires an Introduction to Math

  Cathrine Erbacher

  Since the Bible was codified there has been much study conducted to the mysteries of the Scriptures through the lens of mathematics. Many mystics, philosophers, visionaries and mathematicians have attempted to “decode” presumed “inner secrets.” Just search using the terms “Math and Bible” and you can find a multitude of references to hidden mysteries and meanings, prophecies and revelations based on complicated mathematical formulae and algorithms. But what I would like to explore is the importance of math in understanding the Scriptures, not by reading what might be hidden, secretly imbedded, deep between the lines, but the lines themselves, just as they are written; and believe it or not that requires math. I would argue that the type of math required to understand the scriptures is the fundamentals of numeration and counting, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division. When math is part of a culture, the language that develops incorporates terms such as: in addition to, without, twice or thrice as many, half as much, more than, equally, a ton of, lighter than, heaviest, or tiniest. This creates an understanding, at least intuitively, of what is happening to amounts, volumes or weights of things. These expressions creep into our common usage because our society has a foundational understanding of mathematical concepts. As such, many of the concepts of mathematics are learned before they are formally taught allowing for a greater understanding of these terms used in the Bible. But what if a culture has no written language, or concept of math? Identifying these particular circumstances and addressing them is of paramount importance to the sharing of Scripture, and the focus of this poster.

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  Investigating the Role of CodY in Regulating hly Transcript Level in Response to Propionate

  Sydney Herzog

  Listeria monocytogenes is a deadly foodborne pathogen with a variety of virulence factors. During its transmission from food products to the human intestines, L. monocytogenes needs to respond accurately to the changes in the environmental signals to coordinate the expression of the appropriate virulence factors. Through previous research in the lab, it was identified that the transcription factor CodY plays a key role in regulating the production of listeriolysin O (LLO), a virulence factor necessary for L. monocytogenes to establish an intracellular infection, in response to propionate. To confirm that this regulation takes place at the transcriptional level, I conducted quantitative reverse transcription PCR experiments to determine the transcript level of hly, the gene that codes for LLO, in response to propionate. I also compared the propionate response in wildtype and ΔcodY to determine whether the transcriptional response was dependent on the transcription factor CodY. With three independent trials, preliminary results showed that hly transcript levels were affected by propionate treatments. Further analysis will reveal whether CodY is involved in the propionate response.

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  Investigating the Role of Neural Stem Cells in Aggressive Gliomas

  Sadie Salamone

  In the United States alone, there are more than 1.8 million people diagnosed with cancer every year. This number increases exponentially as the scope is expanded to look at the number of people affected worldwide (National Cancer Institute, 2020). With the widespread nature of cancer, treatments have been extensively researched and explored, but there is ultimately no cure for this aggressive and unrelenting disease. One extremely invasive type of cancer is Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), which is a specific type of brain cancer. The exact growth patterns of these tumors are unknown, but it is known that GBM is formed from excess glial stem cells, which are produced by neuroblasts. It is unsure whether these neuroblasts are preexisting in GBM tumors or if new neuroblasts are created to induce and promote GBM tumor metastasis. These aggressive tumors grow rapidly and aggressively, which makes their origins and pathways of growth extremely difficult to locate and track. The Drosophila melanogaster, or common fruit fly, is the model organism for this study. The power of Drosophila lies in the multiple genetic tools available for experimental design, and the conservation of genes and cell-biological processes between flies and humans (Portela et al., 2020), which means that findings from Drosophila studies can be easily verified in mammalian models and human patients. We have developed a GBM model in flies using the GAL4-UAS system, where two genotypically different flies will be crossed to induce these tumors in developing Drosophila larval brains. This study will explore the origins of GBM tumors and the nature of cell-biological and growth promoting pathways that promote uncontrolled growth of glial cells and neuroblasts within the brain.

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  IoT-Based Home Automation System

  Prem Kumar Velagandula

  A cost-efficient and reliable intrusion detection system is now required. In this digital world, we are gradually moving towards transforming our home into a smart home. The term "Internet of Things" (IoT) refers to the idea of remotely interacting with and keeping track of physical things (objects) over the Internet. The Internet of Things is a booming industry of communication and computer science. Each IoT device acts as a tiny element of an internet node, and each node communicates with and interacts with other nodes. This idea can be effectively applied to our home to make it smarter, safer, and more controlled. The likelihood of an invasion is rising daily in the modern world. There are numerous security firms available to safeguard homes from such theft. But there's still no security that the house will be protected. In this presentation, an additional security system's design and Arduino prototype implementation are discussed. To identify any intrusion, it helps make use of an ultrasonic sensor. When an item is identified, it alerts others around lighting on the LEDs and turning on the buzzer. We can use an ultrasonic sensor to retrieve the distance between the sensor and the object whenever there is a breach.

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  Is urban farming the bee's knees? A socio-ecological study on the effect of pollinator recruitment methods on pollinator communities in urban agriculture

  Samantha Urquidez

  Background/Questions/Methods:Pollinators are essential to agriculture and with the increase in urban farming, there is great concern regarding insect pollinators in urban spaces. While there has been extensive literature looking at bee abundance and biodiversity in urban environments, there has been little research studying the efficacy of currently utilized pollinator recruitment practices in urban agricultural systems. In Dayton, Ohio, and the surrounding area 15 urban agricultural sites will be sampled for insect pollinator activity utilizing timed observations, pan traps, and passive netting. In addition to traditional methods of looking at pollinator activity, an important component of this research includes a sociological study that looks at the farmers themselves and how their efforts may be affecting the pollinator activity observed on their agricultural plots. To examine this relationship, we conducted an electronic survey and one-on-one interviews with each of the farmers in addition to our biological sampling. Results:Our results suggest that the most effective pollinator recruitment methods include ones where resources are stable and pollinators are able to actively rely on resources such as food, water, or shelter at these locations. The pollinator activity level seemed to depend not only on the pollinator recruitment methods utilized but also on the surrounding area with water being the resource that attracts the most pollinator activity. When choosing recruitment methods, farmers who are interested in insect pollinator behavior and put effort into attracting them to their property use science-based methods in addition to methods promoted by anecdotal evidence. These farmers tend to see higher pollinator activity than farmers who are less interested in insect pollinators and put in little effort to attract pollinators utilizing methods that are less effective. By implementing recruitment methods that are effective, insect pollinator activity can be promoted in an urban agricultural setting.

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  i-TRACE RNA interference-based reporter system to distinguish spatiotemporal gene expression in real time versus lineage cells in Drosophila

  Erin Mcgraw

  In all cells, dynamic gene expression along the spatiotemporal axis proves to be vital in any organism’s development. These changes are responsible for cellular responses to stimuli as well as execution of sequential developmental programs. This execution is highly regulated and highly specific. In the development of the Drosophila eye, multiple genes are expressed at various times in order to regulate target genes. The interest of this project is to is to analyze the exact positions of this dynamic expression of certain genes involved in the fruit fly’s eye development. The i- TRACE (RNAi Technique for Real- time And Clonal Expression) system is being used to observe the small yet active changes in expression patterns. The Gal4/UAS, FLP/FRT, RNAi and fluorescent reporters are used in combination with the i-TRACE system to assess gene expression. Real time expression that is Gal4 mediated is observed in the presence of a red fluorescent protein known as RFP. Similarly, any lineage cells are marked by the presence of green fluorescent protein, or GFP, which functions independently of Gal4. Finally, GFP-RNAi expression, which is Gal4 mediated, exists in cells that have either currently or recently expressed the gene. Because of this, observations in minute changes in expression are able to be observed as marked by a loss of GFP. Here, we present the expression data of some of the genes that play an important role during Drosophila eye development.

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  Just War Tradition: Non-Combatant Immunity

  Jinyu Hu, Jack Gorman

  What is just war tradition, in Catholic thought? This poster will introduce the tradition and raise issues about its role and value in our current context.

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  Large Scale Benchmark for House Price Prediction

  Amira Yousif, Sai Surya Vaddi

  In this project, we conduct a benchmark for house price prediction. We collect a large-scale dataset consisting of estate attributes and house pictures. The selling prices are collected as groundtruth data. Then, we evaluate state-of-the-art machine learning methods on this collected dataset. The insights gained from this project will benefit the study of the house market.

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  League Structure and Fan Culture in German and American 'Football'

  Logan Brown & Kaleb Geevarghese

  Part of a course project on intercultural communication, which 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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  Lean Theorem Prover: The Lean, Mean, Math-Proving Machine

  Ethan Shade, Sarah Herr, Kailey Peppard, Joseph Kopp

  This is an exploratory project for MTH 342 - Set Theory. Lean Theorem Prover is a computer programming language that allows for the formalization of mathematical proofs and the use of computer-readable logic. We explore the structure and syntax of Lean and show how this can be used to formalize mathematical proofs. We identify classic math proofs that have already been formalized within Lean, as well as discuss how this language can advance the writing of proofs. Finally, we investigate proofs that are still yet to be formalized, and the potential reasons why they have yet to achieve formalization in Lean.

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  Life as a Student Music Therapist

  Valeria Alvarado Berrios

  This presentation will tell the life story of Valeria N. Alvarado Berrios, as a music therapy student at the University of Dayton. The project will result in a hardcopy portfolio which will serve as the artifact. The content will include a compilation of songs and reflections, individually representing each semester of Valeria's undergraduate time as a music therapy major. This presentation will discuss her experience of the world through the lens of her identity, ethics, and leadership.

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  "Loading Senior Portfolio…Scratch Disks are Full": The class of 2023 BFA in Graphic Design Senior Portfolio Show

  Olivia Marklay, Jason Sullivan, Brandon Hines, Maxwell Benson, Leah Ramspott, Daveauntae Cotton, Matthew Signa, Grace King, Ellise Westerheide, Colleen Glavic, Melina Durham, Claire Pawlecki, Mira Holifield, Jillian Whitson, Brooke Baker, Allen Morales, Peder Harvey, Elliott Gilardi, Macaira Pucci, Megan Emery, Grace Hughes, Ekua Bransah, Tashauniel Nelson, Reilly Waldoch, Yamilet Perez Aragon, Mia Gaskey, Cara Simmons

  This Capstone presentation includes all 26 seniors graduating with a degree in Graphic Design + one minor who will present the culmination of their work within and beyond the Department of Art and Design. Students will present their best work—research, creative process, and outcomes—in the context of a formal presentation of both classroom and real-world projects. Work will be shared simultaneously.

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  Lovecraft, The Uncanny, And The Sublime: A Psychoanalytic Critique Of H.P. Lovecrafts’ Fiction

  Jules Carr-Chellman

  This project will seek to analyze H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction through a critical psychoanalytical lens with particular attention paid to the uncanny and the sublime. H.P Lovecraft’s writing emphasizes horror in the face of a world that cannot be known. The characters’ encounters are thematically consistent in their incomprehensible grandeur: the sprawling metropolis, the arctic plane, the range of mountains – all literary elements that approach a concept of sublimity. In a traditional sense, the sublime is a mental state that swiftly alternates between feelings of pleasure anddispleasure in the face of something incomprehensibly large. Displeasure occurs in the realization that human reason cannot adequately describe or understand the infinite, and pleasure occurs in the ability of human reason to conceive of the infinite as a complete idea despite its transcendence beyond any human faculty of reason. In cadence with presentations of the sublime, Lovecraft imposes literary elements that create a distinct subconscious feeling of familiarity in the face of the utterly unfamiliar. It is precisely this feeling that characterizes Freud’s definition of the uncanny. Freud understands the uncanny as an ambiguous sense of familiarity coming from a person's subconsciously repressed ideas that underlays their perception of uncertainty. The fabric of reality in Lovecraft's fiction is a perpetual phantasmagoria of familiarity and oblivion that contextualizes sublime feelings of awe and grandeur. The direction of my inquiry in this project will be toward the nature of the uncanny as a context for sublime experiences and how the uncanny lends itself to a different interpretation of contemporary conceptions of reality as a product of the human need to build a home in the inhospitable: the human need to survive.

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  Male Coloration Preferences between Females of Sunburst and Rainbow Color Morphs

  William Ogburn, Lindsey Litterer, Noah Jones-Beyene, Destiny Cratsenberg

  Xiphophorus maculatus, or the platy, have several linebred color morphs that have wide ranges of color that differ greatly from the wild type coloration. Brighter coloration in male livebearers has shown to affect mate choice in females (Kodric-Brown & Nicoletto, 2001). The females are shown to be attracted to the males who have the more colorful pigmintaiton. This study examined differences in male mate selection between two female color morphs, the sunset wag morph and the rainbow morph. We hypothesized that males will choose to spend time on the side of the tank of their own morph. This was tested by creating a tank with 3 chambers. A male was placed in the middle and females were placed in the outside chambers. BORIS was used to observe and track the time the male spent on each side and the orientation of the male throughout the assay. Behaviors like what side of the tank the males were on, if there was any orientation on a specific female, and any possible aggression were all recorded into BORIS. We found that males have a preference towards the side of the tank containing the female of the same color morph. The results of this experiment helped to further our understanding of mate selection based on color while also producing potential insights on how human line breeding can alter mate selection.

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  Measuring Mycorrhizal Colonization: Estimating Percent Root Length Colonization on Quercus Macrocarpa Seedlings Following One Growing Season

  Madelaine Gregory

  Industrial agriculture is an increasingly prevalent practice within the Midwest and along with this practice lies the issue of abandonment of these sites. This study takes place at the Great Miami Mitigation bank which was previously used for agriculture for at least 80 years. The primary goal of this study is to investigate the influence of previously established seeding mixes and soil amendments on the microbial community. These treatments were applied with the intention of facilitating succession in a post agricultural field by deducing what treatments most effectively produced optimal conditions for microbes to establish symbiotic relationships with native seedlings. Treatments applied to the study site were incorporated to achieve an intermediate prairie with the long-term goal of establishing a mature oak-hickory forest. EMF colonization will be estimated to deduce what treatments support the establishment of the microbial community. Additionally, from these results, it can be determined if there is a correlation between intensity of colonization and factors such as plant community structure, enzyme activity and biomass of Q. Macrocarpa seedlings. A total of 480 Quercus macrocarpa seedlings were established at our study site in May of 2022. Following this, in Fall of 2022 80 Q. Macrocarpa seedlings were collected after one growing season for the purpose of assessing EMF colonization. While results are preliminary, thus far analysis has shown that percent root length colonization was not significantly different when looking at the seeding mix and soil amendments together and individually. Additionally, there was no difference in percent root length colonization and the biomass of the seedlings as a total unit and the biomass of the root system. Further analysis needs to be done to determine if there is any correlation between root colonization and the structure of the plant community as well as enzyme activity.

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  Measuring wetland restoration success through water quality and invertebrate community indices

  Abbey Raison

  Wetland restoration projects are essential to preserving these imperiled ecosystems. While restoring lost or degraded wetlands is the first step, determining the success of restoration efforts is often difficult or only focuses on one aspect of an ecosystem. To address these shortfalls, I determined the success of wetland restoration through traditional (i.e., water quality testing and plant composition) and non-traditional methods (i.e., terrestrial and aquatic insect sampling) in established and restored wetlands in Ohio. I determined water quality using a YSI probe and measured dissolved oxygen, pH, conductivity, and temperature in each wetland. The values collected for these characteristics were compared to established wetlands and known standard water health metrics. I determined plant composition by estimating the percent cover of plant species found within 5-0.25 m circle plots. Lastly, I used sweep nets for terrestrial insect collection and dip nets for aquatic macroinvertebrate collection. These samples were sorted, counted, and identified to order in the lab to determine how terrestrial insect and aquatic macroinvertebrate community indices indicate the health of restored wetlands. Initial results indicate that insect abundance in restored wetlands was greater than in established wetlands, which was likely driven by restored wetlands having higher plant species richness. Our initial results indicate that a diverse plant community in restored areas may serve as a habitat for aboveground insects, which could have cascading beneficial effects on the rest of the ecosystem.

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  Media’s Role in a Democratic Society: A Systematic Review of Normative Role

  Zoe Hill, Nick Thompson

  Normative role in a democratic society is an evolving facet of the journalism profession that is rooted in the democratic and philosophic traditions of Western culture. Normative theory simply seeks to define the roles journalism plays in society while analyzing the complexities of the impact those roles have through the lens of philosophical traditions, political systems, and media systems. While seeking to update and expand upon the "Four Theories of the Press" laid out by Siebert et al. (1956), Christians et al. (2009) enunciated four roles of journalism to be scrutinized by these means: the monitorial role, the facilitative role, the radical role, and the collaborative role (p. 133). Analogous to the three branches of government, the four normative roles of journalism help identify and explain how media interacts with the government, audiences, and the society at large. As the landscape of the journalism profession changes over time with the advent of new technologies, government structures, societal values, political motives, and economic trends, the roles of journalism and how scholars analyze them too have shifted and propose new possibilities to answer the question, “what is and what should be the media’s role in a democratic society?” (Christians et al., 2009, p. vii).

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  MinLoss-VAE: Min-Loss Parallel Variational Autoencoders with Categorical Latent Space

  Fangshi Zhou

  Recently variational autoencoders (VAE) have become one of the most popular generative models in deep learning. It can be applied to generate images, audio, text, and other data. We propose a novel parallel structure for Gumbel-Softmax VAEs, which combines m ≥ 1 parallel VAEs with different annealing mechanics for softmax temperature τ and adjusts τ at each training epoch based on the minimum loss from these VAEs. Our preliminary experiments demonstrate that our model with m > 1 (e.g., m = 5) outperforms the model with m = 1 in generative processes, adversarial robustness, and denoising.

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  miR-277 ameliorates Aβ42-mediated neurodegeneration in Drosophila eye model of Alzheimer’s Disease

  Prajakta Deshpande, Anuradha Chimata Venkatakrishnan; other authors: Chao-Yi Chen, Catherine Yeates, Chun-Hong Chen, Madhuri Kango-Singh, Amit Singh

  Alzheimer’s disease (AD), an age-related progressive neurodegenerative disorder, exhibits reduced cognitive functions with no cure to date. One of the reasons for AD is the extracellular accumulation of Amyloid-beta 42 (Aβ42) plaques. We misexpressed human Aβ42 in the developing retina of Drosophila, which exhibits AD-like neuropathology. Accumulation of Aβ42 plaque(s) triggers aberrant signaling resulting in neuronal cell death by unknown mechanism(s). We screened for microRNAs (miRNAs) which post-transcriptionally regulate expression of genes by degrading mRNA of the target genes. In a forward genetic screen with candidate miRNAs, we identified miR-277 as a genetic modifier of Aβ42-mediated neurodegeneration. Gain-of-function of miR-277 rescues Aβ42-mediated neurodegeneration whereas loss-of-function of miR-277 enhances Aβ42-mediated neurodegeneration. Moreover, misexpression of higher levels of miR-277 in the GMR>Aβ42 background restores the retinal axonal targeting indicating functional rescue. Here we provide a mechanism of how miR-277 modulates Aβ42-mediated neurodegeneration and demonstrate its neuroprotective role in Aβ42-mediated neuropathology.

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  Mitigation of JavaScript-Based Fingerprinting Attacks Reliant on Client Data Generation

  Nathan Joslin

  Although fingerprinting methods are currently used by fraud detection companies as a secondary form of identification, they can just as easily be used maliciously. By nature, fingerprinting reveals software and hardware information that malicious attackers may use to their advantage. Attackers with access to this sensitive information may target users running a software version known to have vulnerabilities, silently track a user’s activity across the web, or even reveal a user’s identity. Additionally, fingerprinting is silent and often done without the user knowing their fingerprint is being collected. As a result, it is nearly impossible for average users to opt out of or block fingerprinting attacks.In this thesis, we leverage the MyWebGuard browser extension developed by Phung et al. to enforce dynamic policies on web pages that engage in device fingerprinting. MyWebGuard implements an Inline Reference Monitor (IRM) to supervise the JavaScript operations carried out on web pages. Three types of JavaScript operations are monitored: method calls, object creation and access, and property access. When these operations are executed the IRM intercepts them, allowing for policy enforcement. As this policy enforcement mechanism monitors JavaScript operations, it is an excellent method to mitigate JavaScript-based fingerprinting. In this work, we will focus on monitoring dynamic fingerprinting methods that rely on generating unique data rather than collecting static attributes. As for the mitigation approach, we chose a randomization method rather than normalization or domain-based blocking. This “moving target” approach is intended to constantly change a given device’s fingerprint over time, making it increasingly difficult for malicious actors to track a device across the web. Further motivation behind this mitigation method is to limit major site breakage, a phenomenon common with current anti-fingerprinting technologies, while protecting user privacy.

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  Mock Trial Team Presentation

  Xavier Russell, Arabella Loera, Antonino Lacorte, Katherine Hoener, Lydia Artz, Madeleine Onderak, Noah Baker, Skylar Christian, Sasha Embry, Liam Row

  The University of Dayton Mock Trial Team presents Ari Felder v. Koller Campbell Air LLC. This presentation will feature fragmented performances of an air crash negligence case put on by Dayton Mock Trial members. These members have spent most of the school year learning all about this case and competing against other schools across the nation. During this presentation, there will also be time for the audience to ask questions about the case and about mock trial. This will be a great opportunity for students who have an interest in the law and/or public speaking to see an effective way to further explore those interests while in undergrad and beyond.

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  Modeling Mobile Visualization for Medical Reports of Complex Chronic Diseases

  Sankarshan Dasgupta

  Visualizing medical histories of patients with complex chronic diseases (e.g., discordant chronic comorbidities (DCCs)) is a challenge for patients, their healthcare providers, and their support network. DCCs are health conditions in which patients have multiple, often unrelated, chronic illnesses that may need to be addressed concurrently but may also be associated with conflicting treatment instructions. Future work targeting to reduce treatment conflicts and improve patient quality of life and care should carefully examine and visualize DCCs medical reports, symptoms, and treatment recommendations. In this study, we explore various visualization models and paradigms. We analyze how these models and paradigms are applied to visualize multifaceted medical data. We then propose a model for transforming the unstructured data into temporal slices and depict them in a single graphic model. We report how we carefully moved multifaceted DCC records into; structured data tables, visualization graphs, and various hardware devices.

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  Modeling the Benefits of Pandemic Interventions

  Nicholas Holden

  According to the CDC since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic the USA has had approximately 103.5 million Covid cases. To find the best way to control the disease, additional mathematical models are useful to predict what would happen in various situations. This project aims to analyze the outcomes of different interventions to determine the most effective strategies for responding to a pandemic. I used an SIR model to model how disease spreads through the population and looked at different intervention methods for controlling outbreaks. Some of these methods include, targeting vaccinations, mass quarantines, and contact tracing. I implemented simulations to keep track of important outcomes such as total infections and most infections on any single day. I examined the targeted vs. untargeted vaccine distribution strategies, the optimal timing for going into mass quarentine, and the impact of contact tracing. From these different methods we can see how to limit the spread or flatten the curve so people can live healthier lives.

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  Modeling the Distribution of Stock Returns

  Rachel Sebastian

  An important topic in finance is the question: What types of statistical models can characterize the distribution of stock returns? Stocks are partial shares of a company, and stock returns are a way to measure price changes and show the value of the company. While previous research considered the normal distribution, many articles have found this distribution does not accurately fit stock return data. In our study we investigate how well normal and alternative distributions fit stock return data from the S&P Index and Russell 2000. The alternative distributions explored were lognormal, Laplace, and Cauchy. Using quantile plots, alternative distributions, and measures of fit, we found that distributions other than the normal provide a better model for the indices tested. In addition, the best parameters for the alternative distributions vary depending on the measure of fit. Which distributions best characterize stock returns is an ongoing subject of study, but our findings suggest that non-normal distributions may provide a better model for the distribution of stock returns.