The goal to improve well-being for Penn State students initiated an explorative research study into smart mirror design and its current integration in student’s daily activities. This study is inspired by a multi-stage framework to achieve a healthy lifestyle through technology. The study was informed by both a university-wide survey and cognitive walkthroughs of the mirror prototype. Findings include design considerations for balancing student interest in cognitive load and challenging users to engage in self-improvement.

Transformation is the process of cells incorporating exogenous DNA into their genome; transformation efficiency denotes transformants from total viable cells. Efficiencies vary by species and plasmid, with difficulty in delineating consistently successful methodology. In Vibrio fischeri, transformation universally requires regulatory gene TfoX, but efficiencies are unconserved across isolates. The influential factors and methods to maximize transformation efficiency are poorly understood; gaining insight provides opportunity for increased genome editing consistency and a tool for mutant-comparative research.

A traffic garden is a designed space where children can learn traffic laws and bike safety in a controlled environment, often located in parks or schools that connect the community. Research was done by interviewing traffic garden (n=13 ) organizers from different communities and then transcribing and coding for relevant themes. Results showed traffic gardens serve as learning environments and help underserved communities by addressing inequities by providing access to safe spaces and biking resources.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how regular people view the contempt emotion. PSYCH100 and PSYCH105 undergraduate participants were recruited through the SONA subject pool in exchange for course credit. On a Qualtrics survey, participants were randomly assigned to write about a time they felt anger, pride or contempt. While thinking of this emotion episode, participants completed the evaluative space model (ESM; Cacioppo & Bernston, 1994), and other measures of subjective feelings and cognitive appraisals. At the end participants completed open-ended questions to gauge their understanding of contempt and were instructed to draw their ideas of the contempt facial expression. 

In the United States, 20% of children have obesity. In investigating the cognitive impacts of this disease, 76 children aged 8-10 years old completed the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) along with a body composition scan. Children with greater weight status had lower block design, but not matric reasoning subtest scores. This indicates diminished perceptual reasoning in children with elevated weight status when fine motor skills are required. 

trans-Translation is a vital pathway in bacteria that rescues ribosomes stalled on damaged RNA during protein synthesis. ArfB is an alternative rescue pathway to trans-translation found in E. coli and harbored within an operon following a gene referred to as yaeQ. Although yaeQ is an unclassified protein, it is believed to be a nuclease. ArfB may be co-expressed in the same operon as yaeQ to cope with nuclease activity on RNA performed by yaeQ.

China is suffering from an invasive species called Pomacea Canaliculata, commonly known as apple snails. Apple snails have now been spreading across P.R. China for three decades. These pests did not come on their own, this snail was put into Southeast Asia on purpose, for a couple nutritional purposes. However, years after, damage to crops and ecosystems became apparent (Joshi & Sebastian, 2006). Although these insects started out intentionally, they are no longer wanted, and change is necessary to save Chinas production.  

Public safety relies on ethical engineers. It is important for students to understand real-world scenarios of ethics failure. As part of this project, I co-authored a micro-credential on engineering ethics with PSU faculty and an alumnus utilizing various ethical case studies. Through the project, I realized that real-world engineering incidents are often more ‘gray’ than classroom problems. In this work, observations and lessons learned from the perspective of an undergraduate student are presented.

Under standard imitation dynamics, the strategy Defect is known to be stable to invasion against Cooperate in the spatial Prisoner's Dilemma game. We show that when imitation is based on a 'bank' or sum of all payoffs up to time t, Defect is no longer stable. We study dynamics for the single invader and random initial strategy cases, finding that for large enough initial bank values, cooperation not only persists but can dominate the domain.

Malaria, a deadly disease caused by the Plasmodium parasite, remains a significant threat to public health worldwide. Developing effective drugs to combat malaria is challenging due to the parasite's ability to rapidly develop resistance to antimalarials, as seen with existing medications such as chloroquine, quinine, sulfadoxine, and halofantrine. However, a potential target for novel antimalarials lies in the unique, heterogenous ribosomes found in Plasmodium, and their temporally expressed Asexual (A) and Sporozoite (S) types. These ribosomes contain sequence variations between their rRNAs, particularly in expansion segments (ESs), which are protrusions of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sequences outside the conserved core rRNA. While the functional roles of eukaryotic ESs are not fully understood, they play crucial roles in ribosome biogenesis and recruit specific effector proteins acting on nascent polypeptides. This evidence of rRNA ES interactions with ribosome-associated factors in eukaryotes leads me to hypothesize that certain rRNAs varying between A- and S-type ribosomes may interact with a protein complex crucial for Plasmodium ribosome specialization. The aim of this project was to develop a reproducible protocol to generate ES probes identical in size and sequence to Plasmodium's ES9S and ES27L sequences that protrude from A-type and S-type ribosomes. I established the experimental workflow by exclusively focusing on creating control ES GFP RNA probes designed to mirror the approximate sequence length and predicted structure of the three sequences for both the P. yoelii ES9S sequence and ES27L sequence, located on Chromosomes 5, 6, and 12. These ESs were chosen for investigation because of their demonstrated specialized functions in other eukaryotic organisms. Throughout this project, I established a reliable and consistent protocol for generating these RNAs that can be applied to the remaining ES RNA probes chosen for this study. This will enable efforts to determine whether the other six ES9S and ES27L A-type and S-type ES possess the capacity to selectively bind effector proteins. These results would demonstrate their specialized translational function in Plasmodium, which could advance understanding of stage-specific Plasmodium ribosomes and their role in translational regulation throughout the malaria life cycle. Through the generation of ES RNA probes known to have specialized functions in other eukaryotic organisms, we aim to uncover whether similar specialized functions exist in Plasmodium, potentially offering valuable targets for vaccines or medications focused on disrupting the translational dynamics of malaria. 

Sunscreen traditionally focuses on blocking UV-B rays, assuming it boosts UV-A protection. However, this assumption questions its efficacy. SPF testing assumes linear protection over time, ignoring the known decay in protection. To reevaluate, we tested three popular sunscreen brands for bacterial growth under UV light exposure. Results revealed all performances fell short of label claims, prompting a reconsideration of sunscreen effectiveness.

Despite its prevalence, endometriosis often goes undiagnosed due to a lack of awareness, symptom dismissal, and absence of point of care detection device. Approximately 10% of women (especially young adults and women in their mid-thirties) can be diagnosed with mild to severe form of Endometriosis. iInstead of invasive diagnostic procedures like laparoscopy, our aim is to utilize menstrual blood as a non-invasive diagnostic tool for endometriosis. Using a lateral flow assay method, a point-of-care diagnosis of endometriosis can be achieved using menstrual effluent. This work specifically targets specific upregulated protein biomarker present in menstrual blood.

In animal-microbe symbioses, microbiome organization underpins established host behavior. Vast microbial populations can be inscrutable, so the simple symbiosis between marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri and Hawaiian Bobtail Squid Euprymna scolopes is utilized to elucidate host-microbe dynamics. Currently, squid microbiota composition is assessed by plating for CFU, which has quickly become antiquated to those probing the system. Here, we report the potential of leveraging qPCR to efficiently determine relative bacterial strain abundance in the squid-Vibrio system.

Grape-derived polyfunctional thiols contribute positively to the aroma quality of wines, especially aromatic white wines1. These thiols, such as 3-mercaptohexanol (3MH), 3-mercaptohexyl acetate (3MHA), and 4-mercapto-4-methylpentant-2-one (4MMP), have very low aroma thresholds (ng/L), but impart highly desirable aromas (e.g., grapefruit, passionfruit, blackcurrant) to finished wines2. Recently, studies have shown that the application of urea and micronized sulfur to the foliar during growing season in Pennsylvania resulted in a significant increase (73-300%) in varietal polyfunctional thiol content in finished wines. Unfortunately, the repeated application of these treatments can be time consuming and expensive. In the present study, liquid-chromatography with tandem mass spectroscopy was used to investigate the impact of additions of elemental sulfur (S0), in combination with SO2, and/or ascorbic acid to grape juice on the concentration of polyfunctional thiols in finished wines. This approach relies on the recently elucidated mechanism by which S0 is biologically transformed (i.e., via yeast) to hydrogen sulfide during the primary fermentation, which is subsequently capable of reaction with juice-derived C6 alkenes (e.g., trans-2-hexanal, trans-2-hexanol, hexanol) via 1,4 Michael addition reactions to yield desirable polyfunctional thiols. These reactions have been shown to be effectively modulated through the addition of SO2 (a multifunctional antioxidant capable of quenching thiols, scavenging hydrogen peroxide, inhibiting polyphenol oxidase, and quenching carbonyl-containing oxidation products) and ascorbic acid (a strong reducing agent and oxygen radical scavenger). We hope to determine if the S0 addition technique is viable as a simple and cost-effective method of increasing the pool of desirable polyfunctional thiols in Pennsylvania wines.

Anthropogenic noise is an increasing source of pollution with unclear effects on wildlife. We complimented data from experimental manipulation of noise at bluebird nest boxes by quantifying distances to potential sources of noise (human structures) using ArcGIS. Using linear models in RStudio, we will test the association between distance to human structures with number of babies successfully raised. We will compare these results with the experimental results to better characterize anthropogenic noise effects on bluebirds.

The Payload for Ultra-High Energy Observations (PUEO) is a long-duration Cosmic Ray and Ultra-High Energy Neutrino detection payload set to be launched in 2025. PUEO houses over 200 horn antennas which will focus on detecting RF radiation from ice-showers also being able to characterize lower-frequency air showers through a dedicated drop-down Low-Frequency (LF) Instrument. I will be discussing the Characterization of the Signal Chain Electronics within the LF Instrument.

This poster will discuss the implication and historical significance of propaganda in wartime, as well as its connection to the current Russo-Ukrainian War. We will discuss the presidential speeches released by President Putin, from February 2022 to current day February 2024, and begin to analyze the underlying messages behind government propaganda.The objective is to identify the danger of state generated propaganda and how it contributes to misinformation, the erasure of history, war, and genocide.

This study investigates the intelligibility differences between global and focal clear speech adjustments in comparison to baseline or conversation speech. The objective is to determine what adjustments need to be made for individuals with speech disorders to produce intelligible and effective speech. Clear speech is a style of speaking where words are longer, articulatory precision is greater, and speaking rate is slower than conversational speech (Picheny et al. 1986). Clear speech represents a way of communication where the listener can understand what the talker says at a higher intelligibility rate. These adjustments have been proven to be beneficial for many individuals, specifically those with conditions like dysarthria secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) (Lee et al., 2019). This perceptual study recruited listeners through Prolific to listen to recordings of 9 different words embedded in speech-shaped noise produced by 12 talkers. Through conducting this study, we can understand what perceptual qualities contribute to higher intellgibility rates of clear speech while also considering factors such as vocal fatigue. This research study can help further speech recognition technologies, and speech therapy practices, and contribute to overall effective and efficient communication. 

Speech production during interaction allows naturalistic examination of the different speech sound categories spoken languages may use. Spoken languages have different vowel systems that may affect speech perception and production, potentially resulting in speakers and their conversational partners experiencing challenges based on speech contrasts and the presence of competing speech. This study focuses on Dutch-English bilinguals, whose languages have broadly similar phonological systems; however, specific speech contrasts pose challenges for Dutch-English bilinguals’ perception and production.

Climate obstructors are individuals, organizations, and corporations who contribute to the denial, delay, misinformation, deflection, and dismissal of climate science, proposed policies to allay climate change, and/or climate advocacy. This thesis analyzes the influence of climate obstructors on climate inaction. It then identifies climate activism mechanisms relating to consumerism and politics, which are synthesized in a framework. Potential drawbacks of findings, current knowledge gaps in the literature, and suggestions for further research are also discussed.

Mitochondria package their genomes into membraneless nucleoprotein complexes called mt-nucleoids that serve as sites of replication. Here, we study how the key packaging protein mtSSB drives the condensation of single stranded DNA (ssDNA). Using PCR techniques, we generate templates of ssDNA, and we visualize the co-phase behavior of mtSSB and ssDNA using advanced light microscopy techniques. These results will shed light on the biophysical driving forces needed to organize replicating strands of DNA within mt-nucleoids. 

Asthma is linked to multiple comorbidities (Heckking et al. 2017). Interestingly, the top five comorbidities of asthma are also linked to sleep disorders (Madrid-Valero et al. 2020). We hypothesized that these disorders may share common underlying mechanisms and we reviewed the literature to determine if there is support for this idea. Shared mechanisms could be clinically-relevant leading to improvements in treating both disorders (Lee et al., 2017); sleep interventions should be considered when treating asthma. 

Digital learning technology has increased in relevance in education settings globally, particularly thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study documents findings from student interviews at Penn State and the University of Oxford on their technology use in music coursework. Results show that students have an increased use and value associated with learning technology in music coursework, particularly post-COVID-19. Further findings underscore the importance of accessible user interfaces and institutional-procured software.

This performance is an excerpt from Leontes and Paulina Are Very Much Not Dead, a one-act play adapting Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. This new work imagines the titular characters stuck in the unending middle of their story, during their sixteen years of mourning, as they meet at the graves of their loved ones. Each morning, the grieving Leontes and Paulina bicker, reminisce, and find acceptance, slowly becoming unlikely friends—a ritual of grief they undertake daily.