Jeni Hagan
Learning a motor skill takes a use of error-based learning to devise new strategies towards mastering that skill. Motor skills are perfected through attempting new solutions based on previous movement errors. The presence of motor noise, which is variability between repetitions of the same motor movement, can interfere with error learning as the previous movement error could be from incorrect planning or baseline motor noise. Past research on motor learning has found that while under certain conditions high motor noise is beneficial in learning during a motor task, it is […]
Ron Cook
Nearly all life on Earth depends on oxygenic photosynthesis, the process by which light energy is used to create sugars and oxygen from water and carbon dioxide. In plants and algae, it is carried out in organelles called chloroplasts, which are cousins of photosynthetic bacteria known as cyanobacteria. Both chloroplasts and cyanobacteria contain membrane-enclosed sacs called thylakoids, and the light-dependent reactions of photosynthesis take place in the thylakoid membrane. Here, light hits the protein complex Photosystem II (PSII), and this energy is used to split water into oxygen, protons, and […]
Alex Onishi
Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide. 53% of all Americans over the age of 75 have cataracts or have had cataract extraction surgery. Connexin protein subunits form gap junction channels in the lens and transport metabolites required for lens transparency. Previous work has indicated that when connexin is knocked out in the 129SvJae mouse strain, severe cataracts results. Disruption of the same connexin in the C57BL/6J (B6) strain displays a mild cataract that is hardly noticeable. Several loci in the B6 background likely containing genes that function to […]
GeorgeAnn DeAntoni
Paleoethnobotany is an archaeological research method which allows plant remains surviving from the archaeological past to be studied and identified. In doing so, researchers can analyze plants that were used by Native peoples and deposited in sites pre-European colonization. Utilizing this methodology, past landscapes can be reconstructed as means to determine how Native peoples interacted with their surroundings, as well as to hypothesize about landscape change over time. Using paleoethnobotanical methods, I will systematically study recovered charred wood remains from a prehistoric, Central California archaeological site and create a charcoal […]
Olivia Dill
I intend to look at three sets of botanical illustrations by three artists, all produced in Europe between 1585 and 1614 and all copied from the earliest of the three sets of illustrations, an album of watercolors by the French Artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. The realm of botanical illustration is one which straddles the lines between art and science and as such these illustrations are ripe with assumptions about what artwork can do, how the artists related to the natural world and how to gain and communicate information […]
Jae Ho Paek
Reactive oxygen speciesincluding hydrogen peroxide, superoxide, and hydroxyl radicalare commonly blamed for causing a variety of oxidative damages in cell. However, there are scientific papers published that suggest these reactive oxygen species actually play fruitful, not harmful, roles in cells. The increasing need for studying these reactive oxygen species calls for the development of tools that can be used for effectively detecting these reactive oxygen species in vivo. Hydroethidinethe reduced state of ethidium bromide, a common DNA dyeis recognized as a reliable superoxide probe. However, hydroethidine can be much improved […]
Meghana Eswarappa
“Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease that places about three billion people at risk for infection yearly in tropical and sub-tropical regions worldwide. Infected individuals can be asymptomatic, or they can show clinical disease, including an acute debilitating fever (Dengue Fever) that can progress to life-threatening conditions of severe dengue, including Dengue Shock Syndrome (DSS). The goal of this research is to investigate whether cell-free nucleic acids in patient serum can serve as biomarkers to distinguish between cases of mild and severe dengue disease. I will accomplish this by characterizing […]
Yaul Perez-Stable Husni
Past attempts to define the prose poem as a genre depend on the oppositional status of prose and poetry, thinking then of the prose poem as a space for synthesis. However, because these accounts imagine stable definitions of prose and poetry, specific prose poems can only invokeand not reconfigurethose definitions. Through literary analysis, I will trace the development of the prose poem in American literature in the twentieth century, with attention to how individual literary texts rework the aforementioned opposition between prose and poetry, and how these texts in turn […]
Sean Khalifehzadeh
When student-athletes are in the midst of managing their athletic and academic obligations, what factors contribute to higher rates of graduation success? Looking at the academic readiness of student-athletes, the culture of the campus, and academic support, I will attempt to understand how student-athletes from two UCs navigate through the academic rigors of a research university in addition to fulfilling their personal and contractual obligations as athletes. Employing a mixed-methods approach, using both surveys and interviews, I will attempt to study what athletes feel works for them, and what doesnt. […]
Anneliise Rehn
The pace and nature of language change has significant impact on everything from grammar textbooks to natural language processing. With the internet providing new and inventive avenues for this change, we have an opportunity and a necessity to study these avenues. My SURF project researches a new grammatical construction which has emerged on the internet wherein because can be followed by a single word, usually a noun, but in some cases an adjective or interjection. I will create a database with quantitative and qualitative data, a sub-corpus extracted from the […]