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  Modification and Analysis of a Two-Axis Solar Tracking System

  Zaid Al-Moghrabi

  Solar tracking is related to moving the solar panels in such a way that its solar panel always points toward the sun which results in maximum output. The goal of this research was to modify and improve a two-axis solar tracking system. The rotation of the module is controlled by a rotational motor and the tilt is controlled by a linear actuator. The motion and direction of these two motors is controlled by an Arduino code which compares the electrical current going through four mini solar collectors (used as sensors) mounted in orthogonal pairs at the top of the PV panel. If a solar collector has a higher current reading, then it is exposed to more sunlight, so the panel is adjusted until all of the mini solar collectors have nearly the same current output, and thus are receiving the same amount of sunlight. Testing of the designed system was performed alongside an identical, stationary solar panel, which allows for a direct comparison between the electrical outputs of the two solar panels.

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  Different Modes of Semantic Representation in Image Retrieval

  Rory Bennett

  Semantic representations of words can be acquired by both textual and perceptual information. Multimodal models integrate this information, and outperform text-only semantic representations of words. In many contexts, they better reflect human concept acquisition. A common model for semantic representation is the semantic vector, a list of decimal numbers representing the clusters in which a word appears in text. Studies have shown that if two words have similar vectors, they are likely to have similar meaning, or at least be relevant to each other. Other approaches entail inserting sentences, made up of caption words from an image set, into text, to modify the vectors corresponding to each word in a textual corpus's vocabulary, and thus form different semantic representations. These techniques have also suggested that whereas concrete terms' meanings tend to improve with propagation, abstract terms tend to become less accurate when too much information from their more concrete counterparts is propagated to them. In this study, I have therefore utilized different techniques for comparing words' meanings, to implement an image retrieval system. Even if a word w does not directly tag an image, the system retrieves images whose captions contain words that have the most similar vector representations to that of w. Therefore, we examine the extent to which a word's semantic representation has improved, based on improvements in corresponding retrieval results from this system.

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  Application of Covering Sets

  Casey Bruck

  A conjecture made in 1849 by French mathematician Alphonse de Polignac is that every odd number can be written as a power of 2 plus some odd prime. Although easily seen to be false with counterexamples 127 and 509 it was not so easily discarded and caused some further thought and discussion on the subject. In 1950 Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős introduced and developed the theory behind covering systems and proved that there are in fact infinitely many counterexamples to this conjecture of Polignac. In more recent years mathematicians have used covering systems to look at variations of the Polignac conjecture, some involving the Fibonacci numbers and the interesting properties they have as a whole. In this talk we will explore some of these variations.

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  Bee Communities in Native and Restored Pine Barrens Habitats in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve

  Abigail-Mary Lehner

  The Albany Pine Bush Preserve, APBP, maintains a globally unique inland pine barrens ecosystem that houses many rare and endangered species. However, non-native black locust trees have invaded many pine barren sites, leading to a loss of biodiversity. The APBP commission staff have restored several of the invaded sites by removing black locust trees, replanting native vegetation, and introducing prescribed fire treatments. The restored areas have yet to match the original pine barrens habitat in plant species composition, but have a similar grassy, open habitat. The effects of restoration on local bee populations is unclear. The bee communities are extremely important to monitor as they are declining worldwide at an alarming rate. Bee decline is due to a variety of reasons including: habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change. To analyze the bee communities in restored and native sites, four survey plots of each were established. We utilized pan trapping and sweep netting methods six times between mid-June and late September resulting in 958 individuals, which are being identified and prepared for quantitative community analysis. Bee communities in the two habitat types will be analyzed by comparing species abundances and diversity indices. In addition, community composition will be evaluated using non-metric multidimensional scaling to summarize species distributions among sites. We have already analyzed the differences in the number of bees collected at each site and there was not a significant difference between the number of bees collected at restored sites versus native sites (p=0.62). However, finding distinct bee community compositions between different site types has been a common result in other studies. We hypothesize that we will find similar differences in community composition between native and restored sites due to greater number and abundance of specialist bees in the native habitats.

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  Mammalian Cell Toxicity of the Photoproducts of Octyldimethyl Para-aminobenzoic Acid

  Kimberly A. O'Reilly, Jessica N. Maung, Lauren E. O'Connor, and Laura A. Macmanus-Spencer

  Solar tracking is related to moving the solar panels in such a way that its solar panel always points toward the sun which results in maximum output. The goal of this research was to modify and improve a two-axis solar tracking system. The rotation of the module is controlled by a rotational motor and the tilt is controlled by a linear actuator. The motion and direction of these two motors is controlled by an Arduino code which compares the electrical current going through four mini solar collectors (used as sensors) mounted in orthogonal pairs at the top of the PV panel. If a solar collector has a higher current reading, then it is exposed to more sunlight, so the panel is adjusted until all of the mini solar collectors have nearly the same current output, and thus are receiving the same amount of sunlight. Testing of the designed system was performed alongside an identical, stationary solar panel, which allows for a direct comparison between the electrical outputs of the two solar panels.

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  The relationship between body image concerns and 3d shape perception

  Paige Osborn

  Anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphia, two commonly comorbid disorders characterized by Body Image Concerns (BIC), are not yet well understood at a neuropsychological level due to the complex array of symptoms. Individuals with BIC often display two cognitive-perceptual processing differences: visuospatial deficits and weak central coherence. This often contributes to perceived defects in visual appearance of the body. In this study, perceptual performance differences were examined using a set of 432 globally convex randomly deformed 3D shapes. These stimuli differed across several variable categories including complexity and the presence or absence of symmetry. A sample of female undergraduate students completed a two-alternative forced choice task that involved matching a target stimuli to its rotated counterpart. Participants then completed the Eating Disorders Diagnostic Scale (EDDS) and the Body Image Disturbance Questionnaire (BIDQ) as measures of BIC. The results, performance in terms of speed and accuracy, support the hypothesis that females with Body Image Concerns may process information differently at a perceptual level. These and similar results further our understanding of anorexia nervosa & body dysmorphia and may eventually aid in diagnosis and/or treatment.

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  Optimizing a Connecting Rod through 3D Printing

  John Ozirsky

  The use of 3D printing metals has become an increasingly popular manufacturing method in the automotive and aerospace industry, causing a push for faster and cheaper processes. 3D printing has the unique ability to fabricate parts that have been topographically optimized, a method that takes given loads and uses finite element analysis to optimize material layout while maintaining strength. An original and optimized connecting rod will be printed with the selective laser melting and binder jetting processes. Another connecting rod will be machined at the Union College Machine Shop. Weights from the Union College Material Science lab will be used to apply a tensile load on parts, then stress and displacement will be measured. The strengths of different printing processes will be compared and the weight and strength of original versus optimized parts will be compared.

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  International Environmental Policy Agreements and their Effect on Reduction of Greenhouse Gases

  Elisabeth Palmieri

  One country’s emission of greenhouse gases affects the rest of the world through externalities. Several international conferences have resulted in agreements aiming to hold countries accountable for reducing emission. Before 2005 there were different, antagonistic schools of thought on how to make this change. The Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, is widely recognized as a failure to achieve this goal, partly due to this debate. The European Union had advocated for sharp reduction of emission from all countries while China, India, and Brazil claimed that this should be confined to the developed world. Their argument was that they are currently the largest developing economies, and do not want their growth to be restricted.

  This paper measures the change in emissions since 1990 across 100 countries analyzing how the GDP of a country in 1990 and the change of GDP since 1990 affect the change in emissions, controlling for energy production and usage, and the change of these numbers since 1990. All data is collected from the World Bank, except oil production which is collected by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

  This analysis aims to contribute to the research on the progress of limiting greenhouse gas emission and conversion to renewable energy sources. It draws attention to the relationship between emissions and GDP as major emerging market economies are likely to be the largest source of future emissions. Examining change in emissions since 1990 will allow us to see effects of economic changes on environmental issues while also tracking the progress since the less influential Kyoto Protocol and the promising Copenhagen Accord.

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  Africa Yoga Project Internship: A Grant for Resources

  Emma Parece

  In May of 2017 I had the opportunity to intern at Africa Yoga Project (AYP), a non-profit organization in Nairobi, Kenya, as part of a study abroad program with Saint Lawrence University. AYP was founded in 2007 by Paige Elenson and seeks to “create opportunities for youth to step into their greatness and become self-sustaining leaders in their communities.” The program gives scholarships to young people in low-income areas or informal settlements across Africa to attend a two-week long yoga teacher training class. Following the class, the teachers become part of an academy in which they must teach 3-5 free classes each week within their communities to empower other young people as well. Since 2007, over 200 young people have been trained to teach yoga and now are earning a living wage. AYP has helped to reduce the high unemployment rates among young people in Africa, improved their mental and physical wellbeing, and given them the tools to become leaders within their communities. During my time at AYP, I worked on an application for a grant that would allow the organization to invest in technological advancements that could help them better assess their impact on the community. This presentation will highlight the goals and impacts of AYP as an organization and in particular my work on the grant application.

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  Synthesis of Potential Small-Molecule Inhibitors for S. commune Metacaspase

  Truc Pham

  Metacaspase are proteases that are involved in the cell death pathway of fungi. A better understanding of metacaspase might be helpful in the development of the antifungal drugs. The project was a collaboration between the Fox Lab and the Kehlbeck Lab. The Fox Lab aims to elucidate the structures and the properties of five types of metacaspase enzyme in S. commune fungus. The Kehlbeck Lab, has been working on synthesizing different inhibitors for the S. commune metacaspase. Z-Arg(Pmc)-benzothiazole served has been shown to inhibit similar metacaspases in similar organisms. The project aimed to propose the most effective synthetic pathway to generate Z-Arg(Pmc)-benzothiazole that would ideally allow us to explore other related inhibitors. This project focused on studying the direct one-way synthesis pathway from a carboxylic acid and heteroaryl halides. Several model reactions with different R-groups were tested and analyzed by NMR and GC-MS to study the effectiveness of the synthesis pathway. The model reaction using Z-Ala-OH gave the most promising NMR data. The NMR result suggested that a new compound, which was different from the starting materials, had been synthesized. In the near future, the synthesis method will be studied using different model reactions to compare how it works on structures with different R-groups. The final goal of the research is to make a library of different inhibitors for S.commune metacaspase.

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  Battling Fiji's Heat With Positivity

  Virali Shah

  This oral presentation is on my three weeks spent in Fiji completing the Klemm Fellowship on Nutrition and Chronic Diseases. Chronic disease is the primary cause of death in Fiji; about 80% of Fijians die of chronic diseases each year. My internship experience included conducting free health screenings in Native and Indo-Fijian villages, teaching health education at Dratabu summer school, and giving Zumba lessons at the community center for adults (including social workers, airport staff, and police officers). In addition, my team and I sought to bring social change in Nadi by spreading motivation and positivity during the intense dry heat period. We conducted a project in which we surprised strangers at the local market with inspirational quotes, and I designed a free personal food diary for patients to track their own health. My time in Fiji was also filled with Fijian language classes, hiking, traveling to the beautiful islands and beaches, and spending quality time with my loving host family.

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  Exploration of Neuronal Responses to Auditory Stimuli in Dragonflies

  Brian Shaw

  To date there is no scientific evidence that dragonflies (Odonata), have a nervous system equipped to process auditory stimuli. Even with considerable research on these creatures due to their specialized vision and flight mechanics, there is no evidence that dragonflies have ears or even auditory neurons. Last year student Andrew Hamlin and Professor Robert Olberg recorded neuronal responses in the dragonfly to auditory stimuli of 100-2000Hz sounds (Olberg and Hamlin, unpublished). This year our research was aimed at understanding a sensory modality that was previously unknown in dragonflies, the sense of hearing. In order to investigate this question we used behavioral and electrophysiological studies on the live dragonflies Anax junius and Aeshna constricta. Behaviorally, dragonflies were loosely tethered to a standing mount allowing free movement while computer-generated sound stimuli were played to the animal and video-recorded. Electrophysiological studies were done by extracellular recording of the ventral nerve cord to observe neuronal activity in response to these computer-generated frequencies (50Hz – 22KHz). Due to the electrical and mechanical properties of a speaker, low range frequencies (100-200Hz) were used to conduct sound waves that directly contacted the dragonfly (near-field sound) while staying out of the electrical field of the speaker itself. This inhibited the electrical field of the speaker from being picked up in the extracellular recordings. We observed body movements to near-field sound waves in behavioral studies that backed up the initial observations. Our electrophysiological studies showed that sound waves do not stimulate an auditory sense through a tympanum but apparently stimulate mechanoreceptors on the body. This mechanoreception is subtle and highly dependent on the quality of the recording but does exist. Our findings suggest that the behavioral responses of dragonflies to loud sounds may be mediated by mechanoreceptors, such as sensory hairs, distributed across the body of the dragonfly.

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  Isolation, Characterization, and Synthesis of Cuticular Hydrocarbon Natural Products from Drosophila athabasca, A Species of Evolutionary Interest

  John Shuler; Nar Lin; Brittany L. Gay; Roman Yukilevich,; and Joanne D. Kehlbeck

  Drosophila athabasca, a species complex native to North America, provides a unique opportunity to study nascent speciation arising from sexual isolation. Some have suggested that cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) influence the sexual selection process. Extensive analyses have resulted in complex understandings of CHC involvement in insect mate preference, with minimal work focusing on D. athabasca. The goal of this study is to identify, synthesize and measure biologically relevant quantities of CHCs present in this species complex. Gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-MS) from several isofemale lines of D. athabasca allows for characterization of contributing compounds including saturated, unsaturated, and branched alkanes, fatty acids, acetates, and esters. Identification of these compounds using characteristic fragmentation patterns allowed for confirmation by synthetic standards. To date, over 100 CHCs have been characterized in D. athabasca using these analytical and organic methods. An overview of the analysis techniques and future direction will be presented.

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  Lapis Lazuli

  Michelle Tremblay and Mitchell Famulare

  Our study of lapis lazuli throughout the term integrated art and science. Lapis lazuli is a brilliant blue-purple hue used in many paintings throughout the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The pigment lapis lazuli can be used in fresco, tempera, and oil paintings. Lapis lazuli originates from Afghanistan and makes its way into Europe through the port city of Venice. Lapis lazuli could be more expensive than gold during this time period which makes it a highly desirable pigment and hue. We also studied the chemical structure of lapis lazuli as well as analysis methods such as infrared reflectography and SEM-EDS.

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  Hippocampal regional volumes of un-medicated first episode psychosis schizophrenic patients

  Kathryn Wall

  Schizophrenic patients have been found to have altered brain structures with many regions having reduced volumes when compared to their healthy counterparts. A recent paper suggests that schizophrenic individuals have reduced grey matter volumes in the frontal lobes, subcortical regions and limbic region (Birur et al., 2017). However, the hippocampal responsibility for memory and spatial recognition make it the current focus for schizophrenia research. Present research suggests a negative correlation between hippocampal volume and severity of negative symptoms as well as a significant overall decrease in hippocampal volume in individuals with schizophrenia (Bartholomeusz et al., 2017; Birur et al., 2017; Kalmady et al., 2017; Walter et al., 2016). It is believed that there are regional differences in hippocampal reductions because each region projections to various other neuroanatomical structures, suggesting different functionality (Kalmady et al., 2017). In the present study 28 participants were recruited from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada. Participants belonged to one of three groups, healthy control, clinical high risk or un-medicated first episode psychosis patients with schizophrenia. Anatomical Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data was acquired for each study participant (following informed consent). The hippocampus from each scan was segmented using Freesurfer’s hippocampal automatic segmentation program into eleven subfields. A repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare the gray matter of each subfield between patient group and control group controlling for age and sex to determine if any regional volume reductions are present. Initial findings indicate a significant difference of size between groups in the presubiculum and CA1; however, the analyses are ongoing. These findings are consistent with current literature (Haukvik et al,2015; Ho et al., 2017; Mathew et al., 2014; Ota et al., 2017). Results of this study will help to understand what anatomical changes in the schizophrenic brain are due to the disorder and what changes are due to treatments. Further work is needed correlate regional volume differences to negative symptoms.

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  Focused Ultrasound for Neuromodulation of Crayfish

  Jillian Yeager

  Neuromodulation is the alteration of nerve activity through targeted delivery of a stimulus to specific neurological sites in the body. The development of non invasive and accurate methods for neuromodulation could result in improvements in the medical field. Such improvements would be in treating epileptic seizures and mental disorders, inducing pain relief, and understanding how the brain works. Promising results in neuromodulation have been achieved with Focused Ultrasound (FUS), which can deliver targeted stimuli to a localized region deep in tissue. The goal of this research project is to determine the optimal ultrasonic parameters (e.g. frequency, peak intensity, pulse duration) to produce a neuromodulation response in crayfish. We are currently using crayfish due to its simple nervous system and well-established dissection protocol. The long term goal is to optimize the parameters of FUS for neuromodulation for use in the medical field.