Faculty Mentor: David Hunt Student: Tyler Higgins Through previous research, it has become known that 1,2-cyclohexanedione can be used in Michael addition reactions. The use of 1,2-cyclohexanedione in Michael additions was previously restricted to reactions involving β-nitrostyrenes; this current project sought to expand the amount of Michael additions that 1,2-cyclohexanedione could undergo by examining reactions… Continue Reading
Author Archives: fscollab
Determination of the function of two genes, hnrnpab and zgc:77052-201, in early Danio rerio embryogenesis.
Faculty Mentor: Marcia O’Connell Student: Daniel Ferrer This project’s goal is to determine the function of two genes that are believed to function in the early stages of development of zebrafish embryos. The two genes of interest, hnrnpab and zgc:77052-201, are the two genes that are most homologous to the squid gene in Drosophila melanogaster.… Continue Reading
OpenShade: An Open-Source Multiple Sequence Alignment Shading and Editing Utility
Faculty Mentor: Sudhir Nayak Student: Peter Swetits Protein sequence alignments allow researchers to quickly determine regions of similarity between different proteins. They also provide important clues about the nature of the proteins that may be important to their study. While working with sequence alignments, researchers often find that they need to quickly shade or edit… Continue Reading
Analysis of GLD-1 Post Translational Modification
Faculty Mentor: Sudhir Nayak Student: John Fang The objective of this summer’s project was to the study the regulation of GLD-1 (defective in Germ Line Development), a RNA binding protein that is important for normal germ-line development in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). In mutant strains where GLD-1 is not expressed, hermaphroditic oogenesis… Continue Reading
Characterization of Tissue Damage via Dynamic Heart Phantom and MRI
Faculty Mentor: Karen Yan Student: Robert Seither Heart disease is the primary cause of death in the United States. Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology has been used to diagnose and evaluate a number of diseases and conditions. Given the inherent difficulty in imaging the heart in motion, cardiac MRI studies often use heart phantoms… Continue Reading
Particle Imaging Velocimetry Studies of Fluid Flows
Faculty Mentor: Paul Wiita Student: Daniel Sprague Continue Reading
Exploring Blazar Variability with the Kepler Satellite
Faculty Mentor: Paul Wiita Students: Paolo DiLorenzo, Mitchell Revalski, & Dan Sprague During the summer of 2012 Paolo Di Lorenzo, Daniel Sprague, and Mitchell Revalski conducted research in the field of active galactic nuclei under the advisement of Dr. Paul Wiita. The purpose of this research project was to search for periodic luminosity variations in… Continue Reading
Computational approaches to frequency doubling in nonlinear materials
Faculty Mentor: David McGee Student: Dacoda Nelson & Jan Brauburger Nonlinear optical materials are integral to applications in spectroscopy, medical diagnostics, and telecommunications. Novel high performance materials generate nonlinear optical effects through controlled alignment of highly conjugated dipolar molecules. Spatially probing this alignment on a material surface is critical to the development of these materials,… Continue Reading
Photoswitchable refractive index gratings in novel nonlinear optical films
Faculty Mentor: David McGee Student: Michael Erickson Continue Reading
Optically induced birefringence in hybrid organic-inorganic carbon nanotube films
Faculty Mentor: David McGee Students: Mina Shenouda Carbon nanotubes constitute a relatively new class of nanostructures with unique mechanical, electronic, and optical properties. They find applications in multiple technologies such as microelectronics, image display, and optical sensing. One particularly promising architecture is functionalized carbon nanotubes, in which an optically active azobenzene chromophore is bound to… Continue Reading