Abington College Undergraduate Research Activities

ACURA Project Fair 2022

ACURA

2022

Welcome to the ACURA 2022 Project Fair!

ACURA provides a yearlong collaboration between faculty and students so they can explore their interests through scientific experimentation, inquiry-based research, or creative works. Students earn credit for ACURA and participate in the annual research competition.

Its mission is to develop students who are critical thinkers and creative scholars by engagement in scientific experimentation, inquiry-based research, and exploration of the arts through a year long research experience within our community of teacher-scholars.

Interested In More?

Have a look at our main page and learn more about the ACURA mission and program.

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Exploring a pink-free alternative to the traditional titration!!

Often a good way to understand chemistry concepts is through doing experiments in the laboratory. Determining the concentration of a solution is important skill/knowledge learned in chemistry. In this project, we will compare two analytical techniques for determining the concentration of a solution; traditional titration that uses an indicator vs a method that employs a digital conductivity probe.

Authors: Abdulrahman Kaki and Asmaa Akbar

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Effects of a SETD2 Mutation on DNA Damage Response in Renal Cell Carcinoma

This project aimed to characterize the homologous repair (HR) defect in SETD2-mutated and wildtype RENCA cells and then evaluate potential therapeutic susceptibilities to PARP inhibition. The goal was to distinguish between two phenomena causing HR deficiency: lack of DNA double stranded break (DSB) detection or lack of repair after a DSB is detected.

Author: Jessica Peskin

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Automatic Text Summarization and its approaches

Automatic Text Summarization (ATS) is a process of condensing large text data to a shorter version without losing pertinent information. ATS is being commonly used by several online platforms especially by big companies like google, amazon etc. ATS has many ways of implementation, and each way serves its unique purpose. This research investigates and compares various approaches of ATS.

Author: Zamot Anthony

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Analysis of Giant Pulses from the Vela Pulsar

Using data we collected during 2021 from the 20-meter radio telescope at the Green Bank Observatory we conducted an analysis of the pulses from the pulsar J0835-4510, also known as the Vela pulsar. Using python programs and Jupyter Notebooks, we removed radio frequency interference for a more accurate statistical analysis.

Authors: Avinash Sookram, Katherine Hayhurst, Valerii Dabagian, Nicholas Pagano, and Jianting Yao.

 

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Visualizing Art: Preserving Art through 3D Imaging

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Microscopic Imaging Analysis

Monolayer molybdenum disulfide is a unique semiconductor that can be utilized for microelectronics and optoelectronic devices. However the quality of these devices highly depends on the quality and defect morphology of these layers. This project utilizes computer vision to detect the defects and perform analysis on molybdenum sulfide images with varying levels of proton irradiation energy.

Author: Holly Schafer

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Defects Detection and Classification on Metallic Surfaces

Inspecting metallic parts is a challenging task and is in demand in various manufacturing quality control applications. Computer Visions (CV), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) are typically used for automating the inspection process, in particular, for detection, recognition, and classification of metallic surface imperfections. The objectives of this research are bifold: 1) programming a robotic arm to pick and drop objects and capture multiple images of the object using a stationary camera and 2) developing the CV, ML, and DL algorithms for identifying defects such as dents, scratches, glue and paint marks on smooth metal surfaces.

Authors: Kseniia Gromova and Youxin Zhuo
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Aerodynamics of airborne droplets behind the social distancing rules for COVID-19

This project investigates the dynamics and kinematics of airborne droplets experiencing aerodynamic drag force to understand the reasoning behind social distancing rules for COVID-19.

Authors: Phuong Ho and Sean Thomas

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Giant Pulses emitted by the Crab Pulsar

This project utilized radio astronomy to collect and analyze data relating to the frequency and size of giant pulses emitted by the Crab pulsar over a two year time period.

Authors: Alexa Piker and Zefanya Amadeo

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Autistic Traits, Alexithymia, and Facial Emotion Recognition of Human and Anime Faces

Data were collected on autistic traits, alexithymia, and facial emotion recognition (FER). The relationships were examined between autistic traits and alexithymia, and performance on a task measuring FER with human and anime faces as targets. Consistent with previous research using human faces, autistic traits and performance on the FER task were significantly and negatively correlated. However, this relationship was no longer significant but still negative when anime faces were viewed. Results further revealed alexithymia as a moderating variable. Alexithymia showed a stronger association with FER of human and anime faces than did autistic traits.

Author: Bridger Standiford

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What’s in a Recipe? - The Barclay Manuscript

Throughout this project, we explored and transcribed a multigenerational recipe manuscript compiled by Christian Barclay Jaffray in late seventeenth-century Scotland. While modern recipe books usually focus only on food, this time capsule also captures recipes for medicinal remedies, dyes, and other household products. This manuscript was a glimpse into Barclay’s kitchen, giving clues about everyday life during this time.

Authors: Saranya Ananth, Kathryn Brodeur, Fabiana Cajamarca, Leah Davis and Emily Lang

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Beating Writer's Block: How to Write a Story Based on Real Life

I’ve been attempting to write a novel based on real events from my life for over a year now. And I was hit by writer’s block. For this project, I studied multiple writers, their works, and styles of writing to figure out the key to writing with inspiration from real experiences without getting blocked.

Authors: Samhita Chitturi

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Everyone is an artist! A look into creativity through nature restoration

The purpose of this study is to explore the implications of nature restoration via audio soundscapes alongside the therapeutic art properties of claywork. The goal of this study is to determine the ways in which listening to nature-based soundscapes affects one’s creativity levels when given the cognitive task of creating a sculpture out of clay.

Author: Alexa Pagan

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Explaining the COVID-19 Pandemic: The very intentional creation of a children’s picture book

With the goal of creating an “ideal” children’s book to explain COVID-19, we reviewed scholarly articles about children’s concepts of illness and about what constitutes effective writing and illustrating for children’s books. Then, using our own rating grid, we conducted a content analysis of several children’s books about COVID-19. We considered the strengths of this existing literature as well as what elements are missing from it to then craft a picture book that effectively addresses social-emotional and cognitive aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic and is inclusive, developmentally-appropriate, and child-centered.

Authors: Samantha Antell and Alexa Johnson

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Learning International Management with Blockbuster Films

This project expands the use of films in learning international management topics such as globalization, political, legal, economic, ethical and technological environments, cultural dimensions, strategic predispositions for managing across cultures, organizational culture, diversity, cross-cultural communication and negotiation, internationalization strategies, entry strategies, and multinational organizational structures. This project identifies films and/or TV shows that offer examples of national and/or business cultures of major regions around the world, and connects them with international business literature and pedagogy practices.

Author: Caitlin Brianna Wert

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Intelligent electrical wheelchair with automatic braking

This project combines the LASS system with an electrical wheelchair to reduce the risk of colliding with an obstruction from any angle to assist people with visual impairments to detect and avoid obstacles.

Authors: Yuze Jiang, Jerin Rajiv Kuruvilla and Seongeun Kim

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Optimizing Aziridination of Alkenes to Develop an Instruction-Friendly Experiment

The aziridine ring is a versatile building block for organic synthesis. Many biologically active compounds such as amino acids, beta-lactam antibiotics, and alkaloids have been derived from aziridines. Incorporating aziridine synthesis into an undergraduate organic chemistry lab course would provide students valuable experience and insight into a current synthesis methodology with many contemporary applications. A survey of reported aziridine ring syntheses was conducted to identify a procedure that accommodated instruction-related limitations that include cost, safety, time, and sophistication. This work focused on a methodology using pyridinium hydrobromide perbromide as a catalyst for aziridination of alkenes using chloramine-T.

Authors: Mahjabin Jaigirdar and Ayah Alkurdi

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Where Does Penn State’s Academic Websites Stand on Extra-Functional Properties and Quality Characteristics?

Accessibility of websites of the higher educational institutions in the US and EU countries are mandated and protected by the law. Many studies focus on these important requirements and report lack of conformance for many such institutions. Apart from accessibility and usability, there are more to extra-functional and quality characteristics for any websites. In this project, we applied different open-source and freely available testing tools to the websites of more than twenty campuses of Pennsylvania State University. We report on our approach, different testing tools used, and initial findings of our investigation which include interesting insights, anomalies, and compliance issues for PSU websites..

Authors: Matthew Coutts, Luna Hatahet and Yash Amin

Faculty Advisor: Ishtiaque Hussain
 

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