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  Nanostructured Microcantilevers for the Sensing of Volatile Compounds

  Ryan J Mcneilly

  The goal of this study is to create a biomolecular sensing device with high sensitivity and selectivity. The micro-machined cantilever has been selected as the sensing platform, and will be improved using a bio-inspired approach. Inspired by the small hairs on fly antennae, the sensitivity of the sensor is increased through the use of a nanostructured surface. Nanostructure was deposited on the surface of the microcantilever using the Glancing Angle Deposition process and the nanostructure was analyzed using scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and a Scanning Kelvin Probe. Incorporation of odorant binding proteins will also be used to increase the selectivity of the device, inspired by the sensing compounds of a dog’s nose. The sensing capabilities of the microcantilever will be tested on three molecules: trimethylamine, acetic acid, and ammonia. Peptides for the detection of these compounds have been modeled using PEP-FOLD and binding interactions have been modeled using PyRx. The chemistry was tested using fluorescence microscopy and Raman spectroscopy, demonstrating the successful attachment of the peptides. The microcantilever can be constructed in an array format, leading to potential applications in many areas, including environmental monitoring, food quality monitoring, hazardous gas detection, and medical diagnostics.

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  Navigating Work Politics 101: How Student Affairs Professionals Navigate Workplace Politics While Balancing Authenticity and Well-Being at a Private, Catholic-Affiliated Institution

  Nickole R Watson

  Finding yourself navigating workplace politics as a student affairs professional? This research strives to provide a better understanding of how student affairs professionals navigate workplace politics in a way that allows them to be their authentic selves and practice well-being. Student affairs professionals are faced with various choices that they must make that affect students, and there are times when these professionals have to carry out decisions with which they may not agree. There appears to be a lack of research on workplace politics in student affairs; thus, the significance of this study is in its contribution towards closing this gap in the literature. The sample for this study includes eight full-time student affairs professionals at a private, Catholic institution. This study uses qualitative, phenomenological methodology. This research is grounded in the field of student affairs and higher education administration. The specific themes for this research include: authenticity, workplace politics, and well-being. Findings of the research show that professionals have not come to a common definition of workplace politics; thus, it is recommended that future research should work to construct a common definition for the field to utilize. Additionally, future research could look at how identity and workplace politics relate.

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  Non Destructive Evaluation of Urethane-Epoxy Coating Systems using the Scanning Kelvin Probe Technique

  David J Borth

  High performance aircraft are subjected to harsh environmental factors during operation including impacts with water and other particles, as well as high temperature and humidity. Rain erosion coatings (REC) made from polyurethane (PU) are used to protect the metal and other coatings from these damaging elements by absorbing the force of impacts and providing a barrier against corrosive substances. Over time these coatings break down and may fail in flight by delamination. Traditional lifecycle estimates fail to predict coating life due to the variety of environmental conditions aircraft are exposed to. Therefore, there is a need for a reliable non-destructive method to detect the changes in the surface coating that indicate when it is close to failure or has begun to fail. Previous studies have shown that it is possible to detect change in alkyl chain length in polymers using a Scanning Kelvin Probe (SKP) system. Additionally, Hansen et al. demonstrated the ability to detect the changes in length and conformation of DNA molecules using an SKP system. These, and other experiments, show the sensitivity of the SKP to changes in surface material and indicate that the SKP should be able to detect chemical changes in a degraded PU coating as well. The objective of this research is to determine if the SKP can be used to detect the changes in polymer coating structure associated with degradation as well as characterize the degradation of PU RECs as a function of time exposed to elevated temperature and humidity. If successful, it will serve as the justification for developing a portable scanning unit that can be deployed by maintenance crews to determine when a coating needs to be reapplied. Having a reliable method to assess degradation will increase the service life of coatings, saving time and money by reducing preemptive reapplication.

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  Nonlinear Adaptive Control for Hypersonic Vehicles at Subsonic Speeds

  Turki Mohammed Alsuwian

  Hypersonic vehicles are complex nonlinear systems with uncertain dynamics. This work presents a robust nonlinear adaptive (NA) control system for the operation of these vehicles at subsonic speeds. The complexity of the dynamic system is considered in the design, in order to address robustness issues. In this work, we only consider lateral dynamics with a fixed roll angle (five degrees of freedom, or 5-DOF). These dynamics are divided into subsystems for aircraft speed, flight-path angle, and yaw angle. A robust NA control design is implemented to provide asymptotic tracking regulation of these output quantities. Adaptation is employed in this study because of its robustness properties. The stability analysis is performed based on a Lyapunov function candidate for the feedback closed-loop system. Simulations of the design indicates that it successfully provides flight control.

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  Novel Porphyrin Antimicrobial

  Marissa Christine Jama, Nehaben N Patel

  The CDC reports there are over 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths per year attributed to antibiotic resistance in the US. The recent report of a colistin resistant strain of E. coli in the US heralds the first truly panresistant bacterium. These data signal a major challenge to human health and a clarion call for new and novel antibacterial treatments. Photodynamic therapy using porphyrins and light activation has emerged as one such strategy. We report here standard antimicrobial testing of a novel Zn containing porphyrin, ZnP, we recently patented (US PAT. NO. 14,466,662). Additionally, we report a novel antimicrobial strategy using a well-known porphyrin, TMP, in the treatment of biofilm associated pathogenic bacteria (US PAT. NO. 8,551,456.Our novel, patented porphyrin, (ZnP) possesses dark as well as light activated toxicity effective at micro molar levels against a broad range of bacterial pathogens: P. aeruginosa, Listeria monocytogenes, Mycobacterium smegmatis and MRSA, for example. Typical killing ranges are from 4-8 logs. Further, ZnP added to planktonic cells results in biofilms that are 6 logs reduced compared to control biofilms. We also present data that show pretreatment of 24h old P. aeruginosa biofilms with TMP, in the dark, substantially enhanced killing by antibiotics such as tobramycin and vancomycin; and dismantles the biofilm from the surface. Enhanced killing by vancomycin is of great interest since this is an antibiotic not typically effective against gram-negative bacteria. In vitro toxicity testing of ZnP has shown no toxicity at effective treatment levels in lung alveolar tissue cells. Resistance has yet to be observed by us or reported by others. Our novel porphyrin ZnP is uniquely effective against a wide range of pathogens in the absence of light. Prior to this finding the requirement for light has limited the areas in the body where porphyrins could be used to treat infections. Our finding that TMP can enhance and expand the effectiveness of currently used antibiotics, and dismantles biofilms from surfaces, provides a combination therapy that should prove to be useful for a wide range of infections.

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  Numerical Analysis of a Mathematical Model for the Formation of Alzheimer’s Disease

  GROUP Summer E Jenkins, Christopher A Negri, Amelia I Pompilio

  Mathematics can be applied meaningfully to a variety of disciplines and research areas, especially the spread of disease. The pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease remains largely ambiguous in current research because of the complex relationships between cell types due to aging. In this project, we computationally study a mathematical model that is a system of coupled differential equations to represent such relationships between cells. We use Runge-Kutta methods and Euler’s method to study the model.

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  Numerical Integration

  Jiaying Chen

  The objective is to calculate the integral of a function f over an interval (i.e. area under the curve). However, in practice, f or its antiderivative is analytically unknown, forcing us to settle for a numerical approximation. We investigate different numerical methods such as Trapezoidal rule, Simpson's rule, Newton-Cotes rules and Gaussian quadrature rules to compute the area under f, and compare their accuracies and efficiencies.

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  One Click to Meet the Physical Therapy World

  GROUP Swetha Nanda Dugulam, Sindhura Nalluri

  Physical therapy is a health care profession that makes use of mechanical movements and emphasizes on the rehabilitation of physical impairments without focused use of medicine or surgery. So, how can we enter the physiotherapy world by just one click? What’s the idea? So here is the collaboration between the world of physical therapy with an innovative open-source operating system called ‘android’. The proposed app provides an insight of how the different body parts carry out their functionalities, how to identify injuries/illness and what should be done to cure them. This helps the reader to have a quick view of the overall process. Based on the individual’s history and physical examination, an intervention plan is made to address the dysfunction. Each body part has different functionality and its management includes assistance with specific exercises, manual therapy and manipulation, mechanical devices such as traction, education, physical agents which includes heat, cold, electricity, sound waves, radiation, rays, prescription of assistive devices and other interventions. How to perform each of the above mentioned process is shown effectively in this app. This app can be used in all android devices and is developed using the Android Studio 2.1.2 with the help of images and videos. The android studio plays a vital role in giving the support environment, which has the inbuilt java libraries and can identify the styling languages as well. In the process of development, the developer can drag or drop the panels/layouts for the correct measures of the phone view or the tablet view. The overall application outcome is to let the physical therapy students understand the diagnostic process and how certain tests and measures relate to dysfunction and treatment in an interactive manner through one-click. Ever wondered how science is combined with technology? Our application is an excellent example for this scenario.

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  On the Hall Effect Measurements

  Gina M Lucia

  The Hall Effect has long been the standard experimental technique to measure the free carrier concentration, mobility and resistivity in semiconductor materials. In this presentation, we will describe in details the functions of all the equipment of our Hall Effect setup in our laboratory on campus. Because the Hall system is fully automated and controlled by a computer, the emphasis will be focused on explaining how the measurements are made and how the calculated carrier concentration, mobility and resistivity are obtained as a function of temperature from these measurements.

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  Optical characterization of Vanadium Dioxide smart materials under phase transition and its thin film effects

  Pengfei Guo

  Vanadium Dioxide (VO2) is a polycrystalline material that exhibits a reversible transition from a monoclinic semiconducting phase to a tetragonal metallic phase in the temperature range of 55 – 68 °C. The refractive index of VO2 also undergoes a dramatic change during this phase transition. In this project, the VO2 thin films were grown by ion-assisted deposition (IAD) using E-beam evaporation on sapphire substrates. A simulation model was developed to extract the optical constants from the measured reflectance and transmittance spectrum.

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  Optical Propagation in Anisotropic Metamaterials

  Rudra Gnawali

  Optical propagation through metallo-dielectric stacks is analyzed using the Berreman matrix approach for electromagnetic propagation through anisotropic media. Effective medium theory is used to represent the metallo-dielectric stack as an anisotropic bulk medium. Transmission and reflection are investigated as functions of the incident angle and wavelength. Validity of the effective medium theory is investigated by varying the layer thickness and number of layers.

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  Partnering with IEP Students to Improve the Readability of a Seasonal Flu Health Document

  Maria E Anderson, Dominick R Massa, Cynthianna M Mastropietro, Lauren T Olson

  Partnering with the Intensive English Program (IEP) students at the University of Dayton, we attempted to address the issue of health literacy, specifically in the form of reading health documents. Being health literate requires the ability to understand instructions, guidelines, and general health information that can lead to action. Current health documents often include medical jargon and complex English that makes interpreting the information difficult for native English speakers and especially for those whom English is their second language. We transformed an informational document from a government site that covered general information on the flu into something that was more easily understood by students in UD’s IEP. First, we visited an IEP class and asked what they knew or wanted to know about the flu and then tailored the editing of a document toward their needs. We edited the original flu document into a more concise and “readable” brochure and then returned to the IEP class for further suggestions. We received feedback that certain terms were harder to understand than others and that they had a difficult time interpreting charts. Based off of the feedback, we made final edits to our document in which we removed the chart and further simplified the language used. Using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, we determined that the original document was written at an 11th grade level. After editing the document into a brochure, we were able to reduce the reading level to 3rd grade, which is more understandable for these readers. Through this project we were able to gain a better understanding of the issue of low health literacy in a hands on approach.

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  Personality and Smell: Investigating Associations between Personality Pathology and Odor Detection, Identification and Hedonic Response

  Hannah B Gahimer, Rhiannon A Gibbs, Russell J Mach, Maia A Mclin, Lauren T Olson, Lisa E Stone, Julia K Wiedemann

  Although personality has been shown to influence affective (Larsen & Kettelar, 1991) and sensory processing (Corlis, Splaver, & Wiseup, 1967; Wilson et al., 2000), very a few studies have investigated associations between olfaction and personality traits. Research findings do support a relation between neuroticism and increased odor detection sensitivity (Herbener et al, 1989; Pause et al., 1998) and more accurate odor identification (Larsson et al., 2000), although a more recent study found higher neuroticism in individuals with odor identification impairment compared to non-impaired healthy controls (Lehrner, Kirchebner, Auff, & Pusswald, 2015). To our knowledge, odor detection sensitivity, identification, and hedonic response have not been studied in relation to personality pathology. The aim of the present study was to investigate associations between select pathological personality traits and olfactory function. University students (N = 68) completed the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) and olfactory function was assessed using the Sniffin’ Sticks odor detection and identification tests. Hedonic response to each odor was assessed with unipolar rating scales for odor pleasantness and odor unpleasantness. Results indicated a trending, negative correlation between Depressivity and odor detection sensitivity (r= -.235, p=.052) and a positive correlation between Depressivity and total pleasantness ratings of negatively valanced odorants (rs =.303, p=.012). Anxiousness was also positively associated with pleasantness ratings of the negatively valenced odorants (rs =.264, p=.030). When Anhedonia, Depressivity, and Anxiousness were entered into a regression model, Anhedonia (Beta = -.371, t = -2.32, p = .026) and Depressivity (Beta = .414, t = 2.284, p = .026) uniquely accounted for variability in total pleasantness ratings of all odorants. Important sex differences also emerged. Anhedonia was negatively associated with unpleasantness ratings of unpleasant odorants in males (r= -.450, p=.010), but not in females (r = .271, p=.109). Gender discrepancies were also apparent for impulsivity and antagonism. The implications of these findings on personality assessment research will be discussed.

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  Platinum Nanoparticles Induced Modifications to the Inflammatory and Signaling Responses in Liver Cancer Cells

  Rebecca T Browning, Claudia J Labrador Rached

  Platinum nanoparticles (PtNPs) are being explored as a potential therapeutic due to their ability to act as a catalyst and their high conductivity. However, in order to develop PtNPs for utilization in the medicinal field, their behavior and safety in a biological system must first be characterized. In addition to evaluating the traditional toxicological endpoints of cytotoxicity and stress response, this work sought to uncover if PtNPs induced an inflammatory response or modified critical signal transduction pathways in the human liver HepG2 model. While PtNP exposure resulted in negligible loss HepG2 viability, a dose dependent stress response was uncovered, as assessed via production of reactive oxygen species. As HepG2 cells are known to secrete key pro-inflammatory cytokines when stressed, we examined the production of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, and TNF-α after a 24 hour incubation with PtNPs. Our results demonstrated a significant increase in production of these critical mediators, demonstrating that PtNPs were capable of inciting an inflammatory response. Lastly, this work uncovered that incubation with PtNPs modified the HepG2 response to insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), altering basic cellular functionality. Following IGF-1 stimulation, the PtNP-dosed HepG2s were associated with intensified Akt signaling activation. As the PI3-kinase/Akt signaling pathways is paramount in the regulation of a diverse number of cellular processes, including metabolism, proliferation, cell survival, growth, and angiogenesis, this results suggests that PtNP exposure could induce a plethora of long-term consequences. Taken together, the activation of stress, inflammatory, and signaling cellular responses indicate that a more in-depth analysis of PtNP-induced bioeffects is required prior to their utilization as a medicinal therapeutic.

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  Portfolio Weighting, Risk Aversion and Stock Returns in the S&P Materials Sector: An Empirical Analysis 2006-2016

  Stuart W Allen

  Over the last several years stocks in the materials sector (XLB) have experienced increased volatility. In this study, I develop a risk dampening portfolio weighting scheme in order to increase the potential for excess returns in the sector. Using portfolios of ten and twenty stocks, ranked by market cap, I calculate the standard deviation of the return on equity (ROE) for each stock over rolling 5 year periods and divide it into the standard deviation (weighted average) for all ten and twenty stocks. This scheme allows stocks with lower relative standard deviations to have higher portfolio weights. Both buy and hold and rebalancing strategies are used in the analysis. The performance benchmarks are the materials sector, XLB, and SPY, a proxy for the S&P 500 stock index.

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  Prayer and Political Views

  William J Gross

  Does the amount of time spent in prayer affect one’s political views? This research looks at how often one prays during the week to see if it affects whether one is more likely to be conservative or liberal. This study builds on previous research on how religion affects political views. It seeks to concentrate on how the amount of time spent in prayer affects political views. In this way, it is not only religion that is being accounted for, but through prayer, how religious someone is and how it may or may not affect their political views. For this study, data will be taken from the General Social Survey. The hypothesis that will be tested is as follows: On average and all else equal, a person who prays more will be more likely to identify as conservative. To test the hypothesis, a logistic regression will be conducted to determine the probability of a person being liberal or conservative. The logistic regression will be a function of several variables – including the amount of time spent in prayer.

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  Predicting Baseball Player’s Salaries Based on Past Performance and Other Factors

  Courtney A Arand

  The purpose of this project is to predict a baseball player’s salary in the 2016 season based on their performance and other factors in the 2015 season. The factors (regressors) used in this project that could possibly affect the salary (dependent variable) were age, seasons played, games played, wins above replacement (WAR), and batting average. The data was collected from sources such as the Major League Baseball (MLB) website and the USA TODAY website. We used the statistical software package SPSS to analyze the data and obtain a good prediction model.

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  Predicting How Many Points a Famous NBA Player Will Score in a Game

  Crystal D Brock

  Stephen Curry is a player in the National Basketball Association (NBA), and he plays as a point guard for the Golden State Warriors. The overall purpose of this project is to predict, based on a number of factors (independent variables) from the 2015-2016 season, the amount of points Stephen Curry will score in any given game. The independent variables (regressors) chosen that could have an effect on the number of points scored are minutes played in a specific game, field goal percentage, three point percentage, free throw percentage, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals, fouls, and turnovers. The data was obtained from the ESPN website. The statistical software package, SPSS, was used to analyze the data and obtain a good prediction model.

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  Predicting Residential Heating Energy Consumption and Savings from Known Energy Characteristics and Historical Energy Consumption

  GROUP Badr Al Tarhuni, Adel Ali Mohamed Naji

  Cost effective retrofits of residential buildings could yield annual electricity savings in this sector of approximately 30 percent in the United States. Furthermore, investment in energy efficiency can create millions of direct and indirect jobs throughout the economy for manufacturers and service providers that supply the building industry. Unfortunately, the actual energy savings, compared to predictions based upon physical energy models, have been somewhat disappointing, leading to wariness on the part of those wishing to invest in efficiency projects. The objective of this study is to use an expanded set of building characteristic data to predict savings from the adoption of individual energy saving measures based upon actual building data and not only on energy models. Key to this study will be the use of a large number of buildings/residences for which all energy characteristics are known. The specific case considered here involves hundreds of university-owned student residences in the U.S. Midwest. A neural network approach is used to develop a single model that accurately predicts heating energy for all houses given the specified energy characteristics. The resulting neural net is used to predict savings associated with a small subset of houses in the study which have already been upgraded from a variety of measures. The estimated savings are compared to the actual savings realized. The results show that the predicted savings match the actual savings within 2.5 percent for most of the measures considered. These results show the potential for establishing larger public databases of building energy characteristics in order to strategically implement energy reduction strategies with the greatest energy savings per cost to implement

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  Predicting Smoking Rates in the U.S. Using Multiple Regression

  Marie K Bertolo

  In this work, we will try to predict the smoking rates (dependent variable) based on several independent variables (regressors) such as graduation rate rate (measured by high school graduation rates), race, religious status, age, median household income, crime rates and cigarette tax per pack. We also test if the smoking rate is dependent on the state. In the model, smoking rates are shown as a percentage of a state’s population and all 50 states are included to give an accurate representation of the United States as a whole. The data used was obtained from several websites such as Americas Health Rankings, the US census, the Kaiser Family Foundation, Governing and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These variables are being tested to speculate the reasons behind the differences in smoking rates across U.S. states and to predict potential future rates.

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  Preparation, Analysis and Derivatization of Benzo[1,2-d:3,4-d’:5,6-d”]tris(thiazole)-2,5,8-triamine

  Jonathan P Alessi

  Multiple fields are areas of active research where organic materials hold considerable promise, such as thermoelectrics or photovoltaics. In an effort to design and prepare a new system which would exhibit a set of promising features such as high thermal stability, high degree of planarity, rigid skeleton and strong electron accepting properties, we have undertaken the preparation and characterization of benzotrithiazole and its derivatives. Our work has led to a reproducible and scalable protocol for the generation of one particular structure: benzo[1,2-d:3,4-d':5,6-d"]tris(thiazole)-2,5,8-triamine. We have also conducted further attempts to functionalize this structure, leading to other derivatives of the target compound.

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  Preparing Preservice Teachers to Collaborate with Families

  Fatimah A Rubayyi

  ABSTRACT During a time when the impact of education has come into question, family engagement is one factor that has been shown to have a positive effect on student learning. Many in the field focus on families to improve their engagement. The research is clear. There is a set of practices that when teachers use them, parents are more engaged. The purpose of this study was to determine whether teachers with different levels of education learned about these strategies. In this qualitative study, teachers at three different degree levels were interviewed to determine their perspectives about and knowledge of best practices in family engagement. The interview transcripts were analyzed and implications for teacher preparation what identified.

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  Principle Component Analysis

  Conor J McCormick

  Principle Component Analysis (PCA) is a powerful tool used in the field of statistics. In a given or collected sample of data, statisticians normally like to see correlations, or relationships, between variables in the sample. By examining the correlations between these variables, statisticians are able to create a linear representation to help make estimations for currently unknown values. Getting to this linear representation can be easy if there are only a few variables and/or the sample size is small. However, this is not always the case and this is where PCA comes into play. When the amount of variables taken is large it could lead to an even larger amount of correlation plots that must be looked at and could potentially be hard to interpret, but with PCA the number of plots can greatly be reduced and make it easier to see to correlation between variables. In my presentation, I plan to explain this technique.

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  Projecting Future Groundwater Recharge with CMIP5 Climate Models

  Amber N Johnson, Colin J Mctighe

  Abstract This project aims to predict the future precipitation characteristics for the Dayton region using climate model scenarios. This is part of an on-going research project on assessing the future sustainability of the Great Miami Valley Buried Aquifer under the changing climate. Dayton is home to one of the most productive aquifer systems in the country, and assessing the effects of climate change on the sustainability of this resource provides important information for future utilization and planning. In this region, precipitation contributes to 35% - 66% of the groundwater recharge with seasonal variations. Therefore, it is important to project future precipitation patterns in order to assess the sustainability of the groundwater. This research is performed in 4 major steps: (1) Collect historical station data for Dayton from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), and historical simulations of precipitation and temperature from 10-15 CMIP5 Climate models; (2) Compare the GHCN station data with the historical model simulations to evaluate model bias; (3) Collect future simulations of precipitation and temperature from the same CMIP5 models for future climate scenarios, and correct the bias; (4) use future precipitation information to predict future groundwater recharge in the Dayton region. This information will be useful for regional planning committees and local government for decision making and planning processes for the future.

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  Promoting Interdisciplinary Scientific Investigations in the Secondary Biology Classroom

  Jessica L Grilliot

  This project integrates interdisciplinary biosensor research conducted in the Biology Department of the University of Dayton into the curriculum of a ninth grade biology course. The curriculum of such a course in the state of Ohio must include opportunities for students to practice inquiry and application skills. The learning experience developed for this project challenges students to investigate the purpose and applications of college level research. Learning module content includes interdisciplinary connections with biology, chemistry, and physics, such as molecular structure, chemical bonds, sensory response, signal transduction, and sound waves/resonance frequency. Inquiry and application skills are incorporated through directed reading, group discussion of the project concept, and hands-on construction and testing of a model sensor device. Assessment metrics include a pre- and post-activity survey, peer evaluation of constructed devices, and working group written and oral reflection on learning module content.