The 2017 Seventeenth Annual UMM Undergraduate Research Symposium (URS) celebrates student scholarly achievement and creative activities. Students from all disciplines participate in the URS. Types of presentations include posters, oral presentations, and short or abbreviated theatrical, dance, or musical performances.
Presentations are accompanied by discussions and multimedia.
Alzheimer’s Disease is a neurodegenerative disease that causes problems with thinking, memory, and behavior and accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. The presence of amyloid plaques in the brain, formed by the aggregation of a small, misfolded peptide called amyloid beta (Aβ), has been linked with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are compounds made of metal ions coordinated to organic ligands to form pores that can trap different sized proteins and peptides. The use of a pre-stained protein ladder allows efficient testing of the protein absorption by multiple MOFs in hopes of characterizing one that will absorb small proteins similar in size to the aggregates of Aβ. UV-vis spectroscopy and gel electrophoresis where then used to track protein absorption. Previous research has identified HKUST-1 and Co(11)MOF-5 as MOFs of interest to continue studying. This research continued to characterize properties of those MOFs and investigated other MOFs such as ZIF-9 and ZIF-12 Characterizing these MOFs may lead to a better understanding of physical and chemical traits of MOFS and the involvement of MOFs in Alzheimer’s treatment as MOFs have the potential to help us understand vital information about the peptide that aggregates to form amyloid plaques.
Consider the map of the 48 contiguous states in the USA, and suppose we want to color each state so that no two states that share a boundary have the same color. In general, we could represent every state with a vertex and draw an edge between two states that share a border. This problem can be modeled by a mathematical structure called a graph. A graph, denoted G = (V, E), is a set of vertices V and a set of edges E. The Vertex Coloring problem on G aims to find the minimum number of colors (the chromatic number) needed to color the vertices such that no two adjacent nodes have the same color. Vertex coloring can solve real-world problems such as finding the minimum number of time slots to schedule a final exam period so that no two courses (taken by the same student) are scheduled at the same time slot. In general, finding the chromatic number of a graph is an NP-hard problem, meaning there is no known efficient time algorithm to solve it and there will likely not be one. Hence, there is interest in finding approximation algorithms (heuristics) to find the chromatic number. In this research, we present three heuristics used to find good approximate vertex colorings in an efficient time period even though they may not give us the optimal minimum coloring of the graph. This is important as it allows us to approximately solve complex problems in a reasonable amount of time. We will present computational results comparing the efficiency (time and quality) of these heuristics.
As the number of Chinese international students rapidly increases in U.S. colleges, it becomes important to understand the factors that contribute to their mental health, especially during their first semester of adjustment to the new culture. This study tested the hypothesis that: family condition predicts Chinese International Students’ Sense of Coherence (SOC), the overall capacity of handling tension derived from life stressors, with adaptation performance works as a mediation during their first semester. Data collection sessions were conducted for a collage-based cohort of 43 freshman Chinese international students at the beginning and at the end of their first semester. Participants completed self-report questionnaires that included the SOC (23-term) scale, Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (62-term) measuring parent-child relationship, and Sociocultural adaptation Scale (41-term) measuring adjustment performance. Result showed that participants with a healthy parent-child relationship reported a higher SOC than those with a weak family relationship. Those reported a better performance of adaptation to foreign environment also reported a higher SOC than others. Family relationship is a potential predictor of Chinese international students’ SOC through their first semester while the process of acculturation is predictive of their SOC and mediated the impacts of parent-child relationship on students’ SOC. This study contributes to the literature on Antonovsky’s theory of sense of coherence in Chinese international students.
Aluminized plastics are one type of waste that cannot be efficiently recycled. They are also often used in the packaging of snack foods. Moreover, even easily recycled products such as aluminum cans and PET plastic bottles are often wasted, with only 55.1% and 31.2% of them recycled, respectively. Food waste is even less likely to be properly disposed of, with only 5.1% of food waste composted in the U.S. in 2014. I aim to bring awareness to these problems of unsustainable waste by creating an evening dress from aluminized plastic wrappers found in UMM garbage cans. While retrieving my materials, I also sort out and document other compostables and recyclables mistakenly thrown away to estimate the amount of materials that could easily be diverted from the landfill. Thus, this project is also intended to bring awareness to opportunities to increase the amount of materials recycled on campus by presenting a report of material diverted, alongside the displayed dress. This project takes the concept of fashion trashion, a class with the goal of making an outfit entirely from trash, and expands upon it. Rather than simply making a dress from any waste, I am using one of the few materials that cannot be recycled at UMM. Also, beyond just a piece of fashion, this project creates a measurable positive impact on the environment, through its diversion of waste from the landfill.