All Abstracts

Preterm infants in the NICU often require supplemental O2 (ie. Hyperoxia) to ensure healthy oxygen intake. One consequence of supplemental O2 therapy can manifest as airway (AW) hyperreactivity, which is an underlying feature of lung disease (ie. bronchopulmonary dysplasia) and various wheezing diso...

Although the EPA regularly monitors ground-level ozone in the US, information about regional intra- and inter-regional transport comes from the measurements of ozone profiles, as they encompass concentrations in the middle and lower troposphere. The 2011 DISCOVER-AQ (Deriving Information on Surface ...

Misuse of antibiotics has resulted in antibiotic resistance being at an all time high. Microbiologists are seeking new antibiotics to solve the problem. We tested whether combining antibiotic-producing bacteria increased their antibiotic production. Three uncharacterized bacteria displaying antibiot...

Little research has considered the unique factors Black women face that may affect their binge eating disorder (BED) symptomatology. The purpose of the present study is to investigate group differences in income and racial makeup of neighborhood on BED symptoms among Black women. In addition, the cu...

The goal of this research study is to gain an understanding of the mechanism of antibiotic resistance in plants. Previous investigations revealed a link between metal uptake and antibiotic resistance, such as, a decrease in iron uptake in plants exposed to kanamycin. We hypothesize this relationship...

Human-Robotic Interaction is an emergent field that has been studied for years in much breadth and depth. The use of robots as emotional and therapeutic support aids has been researched with aging and socially exceptional individuals. As conversation based agents such as Siri and Alexa are becoming ...

Horizontally transferred genes (HGTs) are a result of transferred genetic material across species and is not a result of direct descent. HGTs are common in prokaryotes but typically rare in multi-cellular eukaryotes. However, rapid accumulation of genomic information has recently identified increase...

Neisseria gonorrhoeae is an obligate human pathogen that causes gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease in humans that is becoming untreatable given high levels of antibiotic resistance expressed by N. gonorrhoeae. N. gonorrhoeae was shown to form biofilms in vivo and in vitro. Biofilms are aggreg...

Human activity and development over the last century has increased the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, offsetting the natural greenhouse effect and creating drastic changes in daily life. One major effect of this increase in carbon emissions is the increase of extreme weathe...

The purpose of this study is to explore the early specialized school experiences of young children who have cochlear implants, hearing aids, and varying degrees of deafness. This study explores how aspects such as speech, technology, curriculum, and behavior play a part in the child's development in...

Metastasis is responsible for the majority of breast cancer-related mortality. Through systematic testing of breast cancer cell lines in vivo, we have identified a strong correlation between metastatic potential and genetic dependency on Dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH), an inter-mitochondrial g...

According to studies made in USA, children of both sexes and races start school with roughly similar potential to learn. Their scores on IQ tests are approximately equivalent when gender difference was controlled. Yet, test scores of female students decrease over time until when children move up the...

    Both male and female red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, have a high mating rate. Male beetles demonstrate clear pre-copulatory mate choice. We hypothesized that male choice is affected by the environment and test if male mate preference varies when the males' environment is changed. In t...

After-school and community programs provide a significant amount of insight into both the effective and ineffective practices that can be used to promote youth development. According to research, for students who are considered at risk (i.e., coming from impoverished backgrounds, violent neighborhoo...

  This presentation offers research on the degradation of the environment through noise pollution. Noise pollution from human created noise activities impacts biodiversity and quality of life for all elements in and of the ecosystem. Our research will include observations and effects that noise pol...

This EPA Campus Rainworks Challenge project centers on implementing an extensive green roof on the Facilities Management Services (FMS) building of Spelman College as a way to help manage stormwater runoff. The green roof will be implemented using trays filled with vegetation that will capture preci...

The purpose of this study is to understand the role of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in eukaryote evolution. HGT is known to be widespread in prokaryotes and allows for the rapid acquisition of phenotypic traits. HGT can explain how genes are independently transferred to multiple unrelated species....

“Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet” Audre Lorde asserts that, “it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are... about to be birthed, but already felt.” This inherent feeling inspired my investigation of the legacy of ancestral memory conveyed through poetry. Poetry has...

Self-compassion is defined as offering a nonjudgmental understanding to oneself. Agency refers to the sense of control individuals feel they have over their actions and the consequences of those actions. We hypothesized that some sense of control is required to exhibit self-compassion, yielding a po...

The CDC defines obesity as a Body Mass Index (BMI) at or above the 85th percentile and below the 95th percentile . A report written by Bell et al., indicates that approximately 12.5 million children between the ages of 3 to 12 have been affected by childhood obesity. According to the state of obesit...

The purpose of this study is to explain the effects elementary schools in the Chicago Public School system have on students’ collegiate performance. This experiment focused on identifying whether different types of elementary schools - traditional public schools, magnet schools, charter schools, o...

  The soil is an environment inhabited by a large/diverse population of bacteria, many of which can produce antibiotics that can be harmful to plants. Plants have evolved genes that confer antibiotic resistance. In Arabidopsis WBC19 confers resistance to the aminoglycoside kanamycin. We assessed th...

    Feelings of exclusion and maternal closeness are large determinants of wellbeing in humans, yet few people take the time to understand why these aspects of life affect people so deeply. This study surveys 4,882 young people between the ages of 18 and 26 to determine whether or not maternal clo...

Pharmaceutical testing on epigenetic effects are very limited. The routine use of vertebrates as preclinical research models is constrained by their long mating and generational times, leading to very low numbers of progeny to test and assess. In contrast, invertebrates such as insects are ethically...

Elly and Zelle--an original play by Maxine Ford--was created for elementary school students and discusses the complexities of friendship--especially those that occur when proper communication does not happen. This story follows Elly, an elephant, and Zelle, a gazelle, who are on a mission to achieve...

The Civil Rights era was greatly impacted by Muhammad Ali’s resistance to westernized European social norms and protest against racial prejudice in the mid-1900s. Ali undergoes a series of changes of his identity and asserts himself as Muslim activist, using his athletic background as the foundati...

Black Twitter, a subculture with a Black frame of reference within the popular social media site Twitter, acts as a “counterpublic” that engages in critical dialogue and resists hegemonic power. As part of this counterpublic vocalizing Black issues, it has in recent years targeted the representa...

The purpose of this research is to gain a comprehensive understanding of how the immersive teaching method used in foreign country education systems is implemented in immersion schools in the United States. The goal of this research is to gain insight on how the immersive methods may be beneficial f...

Previous findings have shown that socioeconomic status and parental education has been associated with the behaviors children display in classroom settings. Further research explores the relationship between the behaviors African-American students display in the classroom and their socioeconomic sta...

 In the operating room, a team is required to effectively perform surgical procedures; part of this team includes a unique duo, an attending and a resident. This dynamic exists due to the nature of teaching hospitals, in which resident autonomy is encouraged. When the dynamic bet...