Nicolas Pappas
The Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP), a Medicare value-based purchasing program, was established in 2012 to reduce the number of hospital readmissions by improving the quality of health care. This would not only improve patient health care, but also save each person’s tax dollars by reducing excess readmissions. Excess readmission ratios are used to measure hospital performance for six specific diseases: Heart Failure (HF), Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI), Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Pneumonia, Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) Surgery, and Elective Primary Total Hip Arthroplasty and/or Total Knee Arthroplasty […]
Macyn Vogel
This summer, I will continue my apprenticeship with the Office of Laboratory Animal Care, learning all the different aspects that go into the proper care of the laboratory animals on UC Berkeley campus. During the school year, my role as a URAP is to assist my mentor, Dr. Frohlich, and the Animal Health Technicians, with triage and treatment of research animals. I have also been working with a population of training rats rat enrichment as part of my URAP duties. The URAP summer stipend will allow me to expand on […]
Homza Hireed
During Exercise, there is an increased demand for energy. To produce energy required to perform work and sustain physical activity, respiration must match the elevated metabolic demand. Although the signaling mechanisms is unknown for the acute ventilatory response to exercise, lactate is known to accumulate in the blood stream. To determine lactate’s role as a chemical signal, I will be conducting behavioral experiments to assay whether lactate and other metabolites play a key role in exercise-induced hyperventilation through activation of the carotid body. I will be doing treadmill experiments as […]
Phoebe Goulden
Water is a precious resource in California and in many Western states, but it often hasn’t been managed as such. Impacts of overuse on surface water are easy to see, but groundwater, which occupies the spaces between pieces of rock and soil underground, is more easily overlooked. In 2014, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, SGMA, which recognized the detrimental effects of withdrawing too much groundwater and set out a plan for local sustainable management of underground water sources, called aquifers. The research I contribute to aims to help […]
Siyana Hristova
This summer I will be working on analyzing neurological data from consumer memory studies aimed at differentiating between and better understanding the neurological processes that occur during decision-making in the human brain.
Madeline Kushner
I’m particularly interested in how mentorship relationships form in the workplace and academic settings, and what may precede or facilitate their development. One essential component of a mentor-mentee relationship is the ability to feel comfortable asking for advice. This summer I will begin data collection on a project examining gender differences in how people think they think they will be perceived when they ask a superior for advice, versus how they are actually perceived.
Linshanshan Wang
Low back pain is the leading cause of disability and is closely linked to disc degeneration. Intradiscal biologic therapy is a promising strategy for managing disc degeneration. However, an unresolved issue is whether a degenerated disc has adequate nutrient supply to support the higher metabolic demands required by these therapies. The overall premise of our project is that low cartilage endplate (CEP) permeability limits disc nutrient supply and cell function, and that we can identify patients with adequate nutrient supply who might benefit from intradiscal therapy through non-invasive assessment of […]
Addie Wilson
Many people are familiar with the musical “”Chicago,”” which follows the stories of women imprisoned for murdering their (often abusive) husbands. In reality, however, a vast majority of women in 1920’s Chicago who killed their husbands were exonerated by all-male juries. This phenomenon has been described as the “”new unwritten law.”” Women in Chicago were protected from criminal convictions for husband-killing by an unofficial legal understanding that gave impunity to many who were accused of this particular crime. This summer, I will continue to investigate the origins of the new […]
Luke Birdsong
I will distill Tweets from 10 different individuals and organizations that are recognized as leaders in the alternative food movement in regards to how they (or how they fail to) mention, portray, and discuss farmers and their contributions to the food system.
Rosa Lee
Telomeres are repeats of DNA bases that cap the ends of chromosomes, involved in protecting our genetic information. Telomerase is the enzyme responsible for maintaining telomere length – when activated, it adds repeats to telomere ends. Consequently, telomerase activity is implicated in aging and cancer, carrying important therapeutic implications. For the past year, I have been working with a postdoctoral fellow, Kelly Nguyen, in the Nogales Lab and Collins Lab to characterize the function and structure of shelterin, a protein complex involved in recruiting telomerase to the telomeres. In addition […]