Currently, monitoring the heart's electrical activity to diagnose cardiovascular disease requires the patient to have electrodes placed on their chest. A novel approach was proposed to record ECG (electrocardiogram) signals from human fingertips, which could offer a more convenient alternative for in-home use. A prototype device was designed to capture and process the ECG heart signals for real-time health monitoring. The development process included schematic design, printed circuit board (PCB) layout creation, hardware assembly, troubleshooting, and data acquisition and analysis. The device has three rounded copper electrode plates for collecting ECG from 3 fingers, with one serving as a noise-canceling electrode. ECG signals were successfully recorded from volunteers using these fingertip copper electrodes mounted on a PCB with biomedical signal amplifiers. Additionally, basic signal-processing algorithms have been implemented in MATLAB to remove noise and enhance ECG signal quality for parameter extraction. With further research and refinement, this prototype could evolve into a portable, user-friendly device suitable for at-home monitoring or clinical use as an alternative method for tracking heart activity.

The quantum magnetic particle imaging platform (MagPI) is a quantum sensing method that utilizes an ensemble of nitrogen vacancy defects in diamond as a sensor to measure magnetic fields and perform magnetometry. The MagPI experiment currently aims to measure the bend stiffness of DNA through detecting the magnetic fields of an externally applied field and the magnetic moment of a magnetic nanoparticle that has been tethered to our diamond sensor with DNA. This method requires characterized ferromagnetic particles with a size on the order of 10 nanometers and magnetic moments on the order of 10^-18 Am², the latter of which is information that suppliers and producers do not categorize or are able to obtain for singular particles. We will use MagPI and optically detected magnetic resonance to perform vector magnetometry and image the magnetic dipole moments of different magnetic nanoparticles and calculate their magnetic moments. In particular, we will compare TurboBeads, which were the 30 nanometer carbon coated metal particles previously used for this experiment but are no longer obtainable, and 30 nanometer Co-Zn ferrite beads from a collaborator from Sandia. We aim to detect, accurately measure, and categorize the properties of singular magnetic nanoparticles to identify promising particles to use for our experiments. We will compare these two nanoparticles and their properties for MagPI applications. The results of this project will be used for experiments using the MagPI platform, and showcases a method to measure the magnetic moments of singular particles for future use in research projects.

Our goal is to establish water quality baselines and ongoing trends for streams and tributaries of two separate watersheds, both of which drain into Lake Washington through Lake Forest Park, a city in the northwest part of King County, WA. This project is the first intensive multiple-site survey of urban King County watersheds using certified Washington State Department of Ecology methods. In three teams of 4-5 college students, we conducted monthly field tests of 16 sites along tributaries and sub-basins of the McAleer Watershed, and of 6 sites within the Lyon Creek watershed. We used a YSI ProDSS multiprobe meter and a Hach DR 900 colorimeter to collect measurements of air and water temperature, water turbidity, conductivity, % oxygen saturation, dissolved oxygen, pH, total suspended solids, and nitrate and phosphate levels, used Coliform Bacteria R-Cards to measure the quantitative presence of water-borne E. coli. Analysis of these water quality indices for these sites over a 12-month period will allow us to evaluate the overall health of the greater watersheds, and possible causes of poor conditions. Our data will contribute to other conservation research efforts supporting urban watershed health. This work was undertaken as a research project by undergraduates participating in the Urban Stream Ecology Internship and Training (USE-IT) program, funded by a Seattle Waterworks grant to the Stewardship Stream Initiative (SSI), an initiative launched by the Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation in 2024.

Tyrosine-kinase inhibitors (TKIs), a class of chemotherapeutic drugs, are a kind of targeted therapeutics which work by inhibiting the human epithelial growth factor, a common site of mutation in many cancers. However, TKIs may eventually fail due to accumulation of mutations leading to resistance and tumor heterogeneity. Drug cocktails, or combination regimens, provide a potential way to combat this problem. Combining different classes of drugs allow for the attacking of the issue from different angles. However, it is imperative to carefully understand these combinations before putting them to medical use. Results from a novel, non-invasive imaging technique--stimulated Raman microscopy (SRS)--quantified chemotherapeutic drug uptake with different transport inhibitors. Results from SRS show that the calcium channel inhibitor Verapamil increases TKI drug uptake until a certain point for Lapatinib but indefinitely for Afatinib when compared to using the drugs alone, indicating that there is likely an optimal range for each TKI-inhibitor combination. For this project, I aim to show that this stands within a cell culture environment, continuing to use the two common TKIs Afatinib and Lapatinib, and determining the difference in efficacy with used in tandem other inhibitors, namely Verapamil and Chloroquine, a drug that inhibits the progress of the cell cycle. To do so, I will be using a bulk cell viability assay, which allows for the observation of the difference in the value for which 50% of cells are inhibited, and observing differences in this point to determine the optimal treatment and concentrations for a TKI-Inhibitor treatment. Combining a single-cell, non-invasive spectroscopic technique and a cell viability assay, we can better understand the mechanisms behind how typical non-cancer therapeutics can be used in tandem with chemotherapeutic treatments to increase drug uptake, while at the same time acknowledging that a balance is needed for the best synergistic effect.

Diabetes has emerged as a leading cause of death in America and can affect the kidney, liver, heart, and lung system. Around 34 million Americans, primarily people of color, are currently diagnosed. Diabetes is a leading comorbidity of SARS-CoV-2 fatalities (~15%), highlighting a pertinent need to establish a human diabetic pulmonary model that may unveil dynamic mechanisms behind this phenomena. This project aims to establish a pulmonary model that reflects how diabetic conditions can affect the cellular phenotypes and morphologies of alveolar lung tissue. We utilized a previously established protocol to differentiate human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into lung organoids (LOs). These LOs serve as biologically relevant lung models because they share the same complex, 3D cellular structures as human pulmonary systems. In this project, LOs were differentiated over 25 days and subsequently treated with varying glucose concentrations (5, non-diabetic; 10, diabetic; 21, experimental control; and 80, extreme) mM in growth media for 15 days, when morphological differences appear. The LOs were fixed on day 40 and analyzed using immunofluorescence to quantify lung markers. The primary antibody used was ACE2, the receptor for SARS-CoV-2. Additional markers included surfactant protein C (SFPTC), and NKX2.1, a lung progenitor marker, to compare phenotypic differences across the conditions. Our results demonstrated a pattern of upregulation of ACE2 with increasing glucose concentrations, suggesting diabetic conditions enhance susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection, compared to normal glucose levels. Furthermore, SFPTC (Alveolar Type II cells) and ACE2 co-localize, which may play a key role in increased mortality rates amongst diabetic SARS-CoV-2 patients. Further studies, including qPCR analysis, may provide additional insights into these observations. In conclusion, our model highlights the increased vulnerability of diabetic pulmonary systems to SARS-CoV-2, emphasizing the need for targeted therapeutic strategies and investigation of dynamic disease mechanisms.

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a promising host material for spin defect qubits due to its direct and wide band gap, low spin-orbit coupling, and ability to be isotopically purified to eliminate the nuclear spin bath [1]. Progress in developing practical devices in ZnO critically depends on superior defect optical and spin properties, provoking a search for advantageous new defect candidates. A particularly promising class of impurities in ZnO are shallow neutral donors. Along the column of shallow donors in ZnO (Group IIIa), attractive qubit properties have been observed, including a longitudinal electron spin relaxation time approaching 0.5 seconds from Ga donors [2], and a strong hyperfine (100 MHz) interaction from In donors [3]. Hyperfine interaction strength increases going down the column [4]. This trend prompts the investigation of the next Group IIIa element, thallium. In contrast to the spin 9/2 115In nucleus, all stable isotopes of Tl have nuclear spin 1/2, improving the prospects for full control of the nuclear spin manifold. Tl ions were introduced through ion implantation and annealing, allowing for control of donor concentration and spatial extent within the sample. Through low-temperature photoluminescence spectroscopy, we observe a sharp, excitonic line exhibiting Zeeman splitting consistent with a neutral donor, the first optical signature reported for thallium-doped ZnO. We present progress towards conclusively identifying the donor. This work provides an example of the purposeful creation of and search for a novel semiconductor defect. This material is based upon work supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-23-1-0418. [1]: X. Linpeng et. al., Phys. Rev. Applied 10, 064061 (2018). [2]: V. Niaouris et al., Phys. Rev. B 105, 195202 (2022). [3]: X. Wang et al., Phys. Rev. Applied 19, 054090 (2023) [4]: Phys. Rev. B 25, 6049 (1982)

Restoration practices are crucial to the sustainable management of city parks, constructed wetlands, and natural ecosystems that have been disturbed or invaded. Oftentimes, restoration sites have some level of disturbance, such as soil contaminants in urban parks. Therefore, selecting plants for restoration comes with a list of considerations based on the goal and scale of the restoration project. Commonly, plants transplanted into these disturbed or polluted environments experience shock from transplanting stress, making finding solutions that increase restoration planting success invaluable to these practices. Soil fungi and bacteria have potential to boost the success of these efforts through their synergistic interactions with each other and plants. These microorganisms have high potential for use as biofertilizers in place of conventional nitrogen- and phosphorus-based fertilizers, which both have negative environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions and water contamination. We hypothesize that by enriching plants by encasing these beneficial bacteria and fungi in alginate-based hydrogel beads, both plant biomass and overall fitness would improve. Further, this improved fitness has the potential to increase post-transplantation survival rates for plants used in restoration and/or phytoremediation regimes. To determine the effect of hydrogel biofertilizers on early stage development and transplant success in a contaminated restoration site, we are examining the response of blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata) to our novel biofertilizer. This plant is rapid-growing, used in restoration, and is drought-tolerant. Therefore, we are pursuing two questions: 1) How does our mixed-consortium hydrogel impact early development of these plants in greenhouse conditions; and 2) Does transplant survivability increase when planted in contaminated soils? Based on previous studies showing the strong efficacy of hydrogel-encapsulated biofertilizers, we predict that plants treated with biofertilizers will have better outcomes (improved early-stage growth and higher survival rates post-transplant) due to their supplemented nutrient accessibility and accelerated growth and development in early adolescence.

Music Emotion Recognition (MER) is a prominent area of research in engineering and data science. With the development of music feature extraction systems, the focus has been selecting relevant features and building predictive models based on them. This study aims to build a small structure that can extract music features, and compute the parameters used in classifying emotions. In this study, Marsyas is used to extract music features, and then LASSO regression model is applied to estimate the valence and arousal with the music features. The calculated valence and arousal are used to classify the music emotion based on Russell's Circumplex Model. This approach provides a view of the whole process of classifying music emotion, from extracting the basic features to calculating the parameters, to classifying the emotion.

There is a crucial need for a vaccine that produces a robust immune response against Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), particularly for those without access to effective treatments. We investigated the immunogenicity of a novel self-amplifying RNA (RepRNA) vaccine for HIV in non-human primates (NHPs). RepRNA vaccines encode subgenomic sequences that enable the self-amplification of additional copies of RNA, inducing strong immune responses with lower doses of RNA. The repRNA was formulated with a lipid nanocarrier called LION (HDT Bio), which protects the RNA from degradation and enables its delivery into the cell. This platform has shown success in a licensed SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, suggesting it may be similarly promising as an HIV vaccine. I aim to evaluate whether the RepRNA/LION vaccine can elicit robust systemic and mucosal responses in NHPs. I hypothesized that the vaccine would increase HIV-specific T-cell responses in PBMCs and induce HIV Env-specific antibody production in nasal and rectal secretions. To investigate the immunogenicity of this vaccine, we vaccinated twelve cynomolgus macaques, divided into three groups, with HIV Env and/or HIV Gag-Env. To determine vaccine efficacy, I measured the frequency of antigen-specific T-cells in blood using interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSpot (ELISpot) assays because activated T-cells secreting IFN-γ help eliminate infected cells. I also assessed HIV Env-specific Immunoglobulin A (IgA) levels in nasal and rectal secretions using Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays (ELISAs) because IgA is key in neutralizing pathogens at mucosal surfaces. My preliminary results show an increase in IFN-γ production after the first vaccination, which indicates a systemic antigen-specific T-cell response. We will continue to run assays to see if further vaccination doses can induce more robust immune responses. Results from this study indicate that the RepRNA/LION HIV vaccine may be a promising approach to induce mucosal and systemic immune responses against HIV.

Given the pressing challenges of climate change caused by human interference in natural systems, the civil engineering industry must adopt more sustainable solutions. One approach is the use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), as cement production is a major source of CO₂ emissions. This ongoing study investigates the use of zeolite as an SCM in pervious concrete. During the summer of 2024, over a dozen pervious concrete specimens were cast with 0%, 25%, and 50% zeolite powder replacing traditional Portland cement. Zeolite, a naturally occurring mineral formed from volcanic eruptions millions of years ago, has been shown to adsorb pollutants and, when used as an SCM, can reduce CO₂ emissions from cement production and potentially increase the material's levels of strength. To assess the impact of zeolite on the mechanical and hydraulic properties of pervious concrete, tests on compressive strength, porosity, and permeability shall be conducted during the Winter 2025 and early Spring 2025 quarters. Results will be shared as laboratory tests are conducted and data is analyzed. The filtration capacity of pervious concrete for different types of pollutants, both with and without zeolite, is a key focus for future phases of this research project.

TikTok has transformed how health information, including sensitive topics like eating behaviors, is shared and consumed by predominately young and female audiences. A growing trend on TikTok, "What I Eat in a Day" videos showcase users' daily intake to highlight dietary habits, preferences, or fitness goals. This study aimed to understand popular eating behaviors on TikTok, how content creators discuss body image and health, and the extent to which content is evidence-based. We conducted a qualitative thematic analysis of the most popular TikToks under the hashtags, or keywords: #WhatIEatinADay, #WIEAD, and #WhatIEat. Thematic analysis was conducted using a qualitative descriptive methodology, and videos were selected and prioritized based on popularity. A deductive codebook was developed to abstract the analytics from each TikTok and code video content for meal components, health perceptions, body image, language related to food, visual descriptions, and the evidence behind supporting claims made. The ten most popular videos were analyzed to understand prevalent messages about food, health, and fitness goals. Common themes included: 1) Fixation on strict calorie counting, reflecting creators' emphasis on weight loss; 2) Supplementation to meet nutritional goals, suggesting a perceived necessity for dietary aids and 3) Guilt related to perceived unhealthy decisions. Among the dietary claims made, less than half were evidence-based. Together, the three themes emphasized a relationship between food and weight loss. Themes from TikToks were derived from popular videos which often trend to impressionable audiences, while content on health perceptions and nutritional goals can impact personal perceptions of body image and eating behaviors which are not evidence-based. By evaluating the messages underlying trending "What I eat in a Day" TikToks, this research provides insights to inform audiences to be critical of the media that we digest and be mindful of content that may promote stigmatizing themes.