Anita Lin

One of the great human rights crisis characterizing the turn of the 21st century is the drastic increase in the number of refugees worldwide. As of 2014 the UNHCR reported the number of people forcibly displaced to be 59.9 million people and pinpoints the number of years spent in refugee camps to be 17 years. The UN, NGOs, advocates and the international community have given great effort to meet this serious human rights crisis characterizing the turn of the century. However, the most commonly quoted statistic pinpointing 17 years as […]

Emily Chong

Genome sizes vary greatly across many species and within species, though their biological significance is still poorly understood. Large amounts of eukaryotic genomes are composed of repetitive DNA, whose functions also remain ambiguous, and are often called junk DNA. These repeats usually exist in the form of heterochromatin, DNA that is tightly packed as a possible mechanism to silence or repress the expression of these sequences. A group of repetitive elements include transposons, or transposable elements, which can jump around to different locations in the genome, interrupting other genes and […]

Kimberlie Le

My research is an interdisciplinary study of the effects of agrochemicals on river ecosystems. I will be travelling the Taichung, Taiwan to conduct my study in an area which predominately farms various fruits and vegetables. I’m interested in looking at the environmental effects of the agriculture on river ecosystems by performing bioassement arrays and looking at macroinvertebrate concentration as well as water sample analysis for pesticides. To piece together my project, I will also be tracing a history of farming practices in Taiwan too see how they have changed due […]

Rebecca Kuan

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are plasma membrane localized receptors found in eukaryotic cells. GPCRs are common targets of pharmaceutical drugs because they mediate cellular responses to hormones, neurotransmitters, and environmental stimulants and are also involved in vision, olfaction, and taste. An important aspect of GPCR biology is negative regulation, or turning off a pathway to avoid deleterious effects of constant signaling. One mechanism for this is internalization, bringing the receptor from the membrane into the cell. The mating pathway of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast) can be used to study GPCRs; […]

Susan Wang

Many factors come into play in the course of an organisms growth and development, one of which is the transcriptional coregulator C-terminal Binding Protein (CtBP). CtBP has been characterized in a variety of developmental pathways, including the TGF-beta and WNT pathways, and has been shown to produce growth abnormalities when studied in drosophila melanogaster. I plan to study transcription of drosophila CtBP by using fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). Although drosophila CtBP is encoded by just one gene, there are actually several isoforms of the protein that can each produce […]

Arman Babkhani

The search for superconductors began in the twentieth century as our understanding of quantum physics developed. In the field of condensed matter physics this search is pivotal. My research will focus on investigating the superconductive properties of certain group of semi-metals, known as Weyl semi-metals. These semi-metals are crystals whose low energy excitation was predicted by one of the solutions to the Dirac equation, the Weyl Fermions. I will mainly investigate different growth methods and superconductive properties of crystals such as Tantalum Arsenide (TaAs) and Cadmium Arsenide (Cd3As2). Further, exploring […]

Emma Wilcox

Aspect is very pervasive in the Russian language. One definition of aspect can be taken from renowned Russian linguist, Roman Jakobson: aspect deals with temporal values inherent in the activity or state itself. With the exception of a few, Russian verbs express imperfective and perfective aspect in pairs. Imperfective aspect is considered to be the basic part of the pair, working without special morphology whereas perfective aspect is achieved by means of prefixation. An imperfective/perfective pair such as chitat prochitat (to read to complete the action of reading) is a […]

Kirk Duran

Superconductors are materials that exhibit the phenomenon of zero electrical resistance below a certain temperature. Some pure metals are superconductors, but only at very low temperatures. But over the last few decades some interesting materials have been discovered that super-conduct at high temperatures, up to about 200C. This is still far below room temperature, but if we can understand these materials it may be possible to engineer even room-temperature superconductors. However, many aspects of hightemperature superconductors are still unknown, including how the other properties of these materials are related to […]

Ryan Serpa

My research attempts to examine the roles of race, suburbanization, and region in the context of San Francisco Bay Area art production. Specifically, I will look to the artwork of David Park and Richard Diebenkorn, two members of the prominent Bay Area Figurative School. Bay Area Figurative art developed during the 1950s and 60s, a period of intense development in the Bay Area that coincided with increased migration of Black residents after World War II. However, these developments did not occur on equal footing. Home loan discrimination on the basis […]

Stella Chen

Prosocial behavior is rooted in empathy, or the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Humans, like many other animals, have been shown to process the pain of in-group and out-group members differently, reflecting strong empathic bias towards ones own group. Encouragingly, research suggests that positive social interactions with an outgroup member leads to increased empathy for the out-group. Previous research with rats in a helping behavior test has demonstrated that rats will perform prosocial behaviors, such as releasing conspecifics trapped inside a restrainer, and will do so […]