All Abstracts

Why is the healthcare system failing for mothers and young children in Lao People’s Democratic Republic? This research will analyze the socio-political effects of Lao PDR to better understand why the infant mortality rate and the maternal mortality rate are drastically high. The main argument of t...

  Plants acquire essential nutrients from the soil through their roots. In the process, they may absorb many antibiotics such as kanamycin that are harmful to plants. Therefore plants such as Arabidopsis have evolved resistance mechanisms that involve the adjustment of metal uptake. We propose a mo...

  Genome sequencing is a technique that identifies the order of nucleotides in a DNA sequence of an organism. This process is the most successful for large animals like humans and plants, however, genome sequencing of microbial eukaryotes is still advancing. Microbial Eukaryotes like Amoeba have ve...

Mental health, particularly mental illnesses are overlooked and seen as nonexistent in the African American community. Many people are not aware of the mental health issues that impoverished Black Queer people endure, “LGBTQ individuals are almost three times more likely than others to experience ...

  Few research has examined identity as a scientist among Black college women attending HBCUs. Thus, there is a need to further investigate how HBCUs’ strengths in establishing an institutional sense of belonging relates to Black female students’ science identity in majority White, male-dominat...

    The menstrual cycle has been present in women since early human development. As a result of its everlasting presence, one way humans have tried to explain its existence is through religion. However, as cultures developed and patriarchal societies advanced, menstrual taboos and their resulting ...

Data suggest that the United States has experienced a lack of diversity in STEM fields, and it seems that underrepresented minorities are more likely than any other group to change to non-science majors (Tsui, 2007). Clark Atlanta University (CAU) is a Historically Black College and University (HBCU...

Globotriaosyl ceramide (Gb3 or CD77) is a glycolipid cell surface recognition receptor for Shiga toxin molecules. Shiga toxins are a family of related bacterial toxins that bind to globotriaosylceramide on various human cell types including germinal center stage B cells, endothelial cells and certai...

Body mass index (BMI) is a measure of body fat based on height and weight, and can be used as an indicator of obesity and malnutrition. The morbidity and mortality associated with overweight and obese individuals is independent of age, race, gender, and ethnicity. In addition to the associated cardi...

Amylin is a fibrillogenic protein co-secreted with insulin from pancreatic beta cells. Amylin has been shown to function in metabolism through its influence on glucose homeostasis. It has also been proposed to have an impact on amyloid beta, a major component of the amyloid plaques found in Alzheime...

  Flagella are projectile organelles that tell us about the organism’s mechanisms for mobility and sensory structures. Flagella are highly conserved structures among eukaryotes and are found in many microorganisms and cells of multicellular organism including ovaries, sperm, and kidney. Flagella ...

Islamophobia in France stems partially from the relationship the country has had with Muslims and Arab-states in the past, including France’s colonial history, shaping current treatment of and sentiment towards Muslims. Helbing and Traunmüller (2016) seek to understand how a nation’s religious ...

Black and brown girlhood has rarely been imagined in terms of the "bildungsroman" which has largely been understood as a genre which chronicles a white male protagonist's psychological maturity from child to adult. As such, these particular femme coming-of-age stories have been relegated to the marg...

This project incorporates healthy coping mechanisms for students who struggle with non-clinical anxiety through the use of a Virtual Reality(VR) application. Using VR, instead of a traditional application, allows the student to be fully immersed in a calming environment that projects a subdued tone....

Colleges are now being challenged with accommodating many students with differing abilities like those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).  Approximately 35% of 18-year-old autistic young adults attend college; however, only 15% of those graduates are employed. This number is even lower for ST...

This presentation explores American hip-hop’s interaction with immigration policies in the contemporary era marked by Donald Trump’s presidency. Hip-hop will be used as a cultural genre, providing the framework to examine some of the political voices of American Black people surrounding immigrat...

Urbanization is an increase in the number of people that live in relatively small areas and can cause drastic changes in land use. For example, more cement and concrete may be used to accommodate the growing population of people moving to a city. This research analyzes how urbanization affects bird ...

Promoter fusion with Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) is often used to determine a gene’s transcriptional activity in vivo. To transform Arabidopsis plant with promoter-GFP transgenes, Agrobacterium inserts a transfer DNA (T-DNA) containing promoter-GFP and a kanamycin-resistant gene into the plan...

There is a known link between Diabetes, specifically type two, and the development of Alzheimer's Disease. While studies have not yet been able to determine whether greater amounts of insulin cause Alzheimer’s Disease, the idea that this phenomenon may occur has inspired us to explore how UCP2 af...

    Seasonal influenza is an annual public health problem worldwide, as it is one of the deadliest airborne and upper-respiratory infections. On average, 22,000 deaths and over 3 million hospitalizations in United States are attributed to influenza each year. In the U.S., influenza activit...

The objective of our study is to address the relationship between food insecurity, unmet needs and ART adherence in youth living with HIV (YLWH). Previous research shows that food insecurity and unmet needs are substantial barriers to medication adherence and it has been analyzed specifically as it ...

Funk music is a fundamentally crucial genre when discussing the history of Black music genres. This genre was created at a time of extreme change for the Black community in the United States. Civil rights laws were passed to give voting rights and fair housing to the newly integrated citizens. Altho...

    Shiga toxins (STXs) are virulence factors of Escherichia coli and Shigella strains that cause disease in humans. Members of the Shiga toxin family are composed of a pentameric array of glycolipid-binding B-subunits and a single enzymatic A subunit that inhibits ribosomal function. Globotriaosy...

Previous studies have indicated Atlanta has been experiencing more heat waves due to the climate change and city heat island. The increasing extreme heat waves are significant threats to people living in Atlanta GA, especially for sensitive ones including pregnant women. The purpose of this research...

High-resolution coherent 2-dimensional spectroscopy (HRC2DS) is a powerful tool for analyzing chemical systems. However, the technique is not well-suited for general application for a number of reasons. First, it uses electronic enhancements that can span over a wide region of the visible and UV reg...

This research presentation situates the concept of homoertoic racism within the sports documentary genre in order to demonstrate its impact in the representation of the black male athlete. The increase in sports documentaries on streaming platforms, such as Netflix, demonstrates the seemingly unlimi...

How does the weather change impact the crime rates?   We hypothesize that higher temperatures does have an influence and impact on crime rate. https://blog.weatherops.com/how-does-the-weather-affect-crime-rates Staticially, warmer weather typically does have a connection to the increase in crime r...

Hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) is an inherited dominant autosomal disorder caused by defects in the mismatch repair (MMR) mechanism that increases the risk of cancer in the colon and endometrium. The MSH2 gene is part of MMR, and when defective, can terminate its function, leadin...

In this research project titled “In God’s Image: Black Womanhood and Effective Leadership,” I asked, "How have Black clergywomen utilized a positive paradigm of Black womanhood to construct an effective leadership style?" The goal of this qualitative study was to discover a correlation between...

According to research, data demonstrates that white students fare better in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)courses in k-12 than their black counterparts by almost twice as much (Bacharach, 2003). In determining different success rates based upon race, the factor of accessibility ...