2020 Abstracts

Dustin, Malia; Holden, Maliea; Peterson, Rob; Chilom, Gabriela (Dixie State University)
Faculty Advisor: Chilon, Gabriela (Dixie State University, Chemistry)

Particulate matter (PM) is a complex mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets suspended in air. Particles vary in terms of origin, chemical composition and size. Particles with diameter of 10 µm and smaller carry an increased risk for human health as they can penetrate deeper into the lungs, even to the alveolar regions. Recent studies suggest that trees can remove particles from the atmosphere through their leaves and their removal capacity depends on the chemistry and morphology of the leaves.

The goal of this project is to analyze the composition of PM for three species of trees commonly grown in St George, Utah: Pyrus Calleryana Bradford, Prunus x Cistena, and Chilopsis Linearis. The amount of PM accumulated on the surface of leaves was determined gravimetrically for two size fractions (2.5-10µm and 10-100µm). Both fractions were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP MS) after acid digestion of filters that collected PM. The average concentrations of the following metals: Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ti, V, Cr, As, Zr, Mo, Se, Cd, Sn, Sb, Pt, and Pb is reported.

The accumulation of heavy metals on leaf surfaces can prevent the metals from being airborne, therefore reducing the exposure of residents to PM pollution.

Lake, Alexander; Soboleva, Tatiana; Berreau, Lisa (Utah State University)
Faculty Advisor: Berreau, Lisa (College of Science, Chemistry and Biochemistry)

Carbon Monoxide (CO) has been found to have a wide range of potential therapeutic effects. For example, low concentrations of CO have been shown to produce anti-inflammatory, anti-hypoxia, anti-proliferative, and anti-apoptotic effects, as well as vasodilation. CO-releasing molecules (CORMs), particularly those which release CO upon triggering with light in the visible range (photoCORMs), are of significant current interest for targeted CO delivery. Our laboratory is developing extended flavonols as highly tunable tunable photoCORMs. In this presentation, the synthesis, characterization, and CO release reactivity studies exploring the use of flavonol esters as CO delivery molecules will be presented.

Gee, Joshua; Clark, Daniel (Weber State University)
Faculty Advisor: Clark, Daniel (Weber State University, Microbiology)

Naegleria fowleri is a fatal human pathogenic free-living amoeba capable of infecting the human central nervous system. The causative agent of an extremely rare and fatal infection known as primary amoebic meningoencephalitis. N.fowleri is dangerously lethal in the fact that it rapidly deteriorates the brain and is most often diagnosed at death. It is believed that N.fowleri CD59-like complement regulatory protein is important in the infection process. The function of this protein has not been made clear, but is thought to play a protective role in resistance to lytic cell death caused by complement. Consequence of this function results in the amoeba becoming camouflaged by the host's native immune system. Inhibition of this protein is a novel step toward treatment of infection. An established and successful approach to treating infectious organisms is to use antibodies that target and interrupt the function of outer membrane proteins involved in the infection process.The goal of this research is to evaluate the hypothesis that human anti-CD59 antibodies can neutralize the amoeba's CD59-like protein in the presence of complement, which would normally lyse the cells. To do this, we established an experimental infection model using human cells (HeLa cervical cancer cells) grown to confluence in a monolayer, which are susceptible to infection by N. fowleri. This model mimics the natural infection of N. fowleri, and will provide a greater understanding of its pathogenesis.

Gomez, Nathaniel; Blumel, Daniel; Dueñas, Davis; Hazel, Matt; Yu, Ming* (Utah Valley University)
Faculty Advisor: Yu, Ming (Utah Valley University, Chemistry)

Kidney cancer in both men and women is among the top ten most common cancers, where the risk in men is estimated at 1:48, and women at 1:83. The issue with kidney disease is that it is difficult to accurately diagnose early-on. Methods of diagnosis that are currently established are expensive and highly invasive if at all accurate. Our research is focused on developing a fast, reliable and cost-effective method of diagnosing kidney disease by the use of fluorescent quantum dots (QDs). When mixed in a solution that contains protein biomarkers, QDs can act as biosensors because the protein alters their fluorescent properties. With QD biosensing, optimal conditions were discovered for the size of QDs and buffers used for detecting different protein biomarkers. The study provides empirical evidence that the alteration is distinguishable between healthy and cancerous levels of protein.

Da Silva, Adrik; Greenwald, Michael; Li, Yongtai; Manseau, Julianna; Woods, Ciera (Westminster College)
Faculty Advisor: Conwell, Peter (Westminster College, Physics); Kamenetzky, Julia (Westminster College, Physics)

The long jump is a track and field event that has a history dating back to 656 BC. Understably, much theorizing and experimenting has been done to find the ideal conditions necessary for an athlete to win such an event. This experiment tests the efficacy of such a theory by using an equation derived by Yongtai Li and comparing its calculations to measurements from a force sensor. Based on Newton's Second Law, the force and its respective range produced from a jump were analyzed and Yongtai's equation proved to be similar to the actual force due to the theoretical results overlapping with the measured results, but will be modified in the future to include angle and initial running velocity to provide an accurate measure of the force necessary to travel a certain horizontal distance. This equation and the ease of calculations will prove useful to long jumper's who attempt to defy the limits of the human body by breaking world records in their events

Lange, Christian; Shen, T.-C. (Utah State University)
Faculty Advisor: Shen, T.-C. (College of Science, Physics Department)

An ideal black surface should have low reflectance uniformly across the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Black paints are not ideal because they have specific reflection peaks and bands. Vertically aligned nanopillars of proper shapes and physical properties are good candidates, but the fabrication and oxidation in air are challenging. Carbon nanotube (CNT) forests could be a cheap alternative but the optical properties are sensitive to the density, length, and alignment of the CNTs in a forest. A model to understand the correlation between the morphology and optical reflectance of CNT forests and strategies to achieve extremely low reflectance in the infrared region will be presented.

Perdue, Perdue; Burke, Joshua; Bylund, Kevin; Stephen, Daniel (Utah Valley University)
Faculty Advisor: Stephen, Daniel (Utah Valley University, Earth Science)

The Sundance Sea covered much of western North America during the Middle to Late Jurassic Period. Deposits from this vast epeiric sea are now widely exposed across the region, including the Stump Formation in northeastern Utah, which consists of sandstones and shales reflecting shallow marine deposition. Well-preserved belemnites (Pachyteuthis densus, Oxfordian Stage, ~156 Ma) collected from this unit preserve stable isotope data (_18O and _13C ) that can be used to better understand the paleoceanography and paleoclimatology of the area, as well as possibly some paleobiologic characteristics such as migration patterns through the life cycle and age at sexual maturity and death. Incremental growth of belemnites created growth bands that record isotopic values through various life stages, thus potentially providing information about the life history traits of these organisms, in addition to seasonal temperature variations. Preliminary results suggest our material is consistent with previous reports from other locations in the region, with paleotemperatures in the 17 to 20° C range. In addition, there is some indication of seasonal variations. However, analyses of more samples and further evaluation of potential diagenetic alteration is necessary before more robust conclusions can be drawn.

Hedelius, Bryce; Millecam, Todd; Wingate, David; Della Corte, Dennis (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Della Corte, Dennis (BYU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Physics); Wingate, David (BYU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Computer Science)

Substantial progress has been made in the past several years towards the accurate prediction of protein tertiary structures from primary sequence, aided greatly by the integration of machine learning. Current success is based on two-stage protocols: first, the training of a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to predict macromolecular structure restraints, and second, the use of these restraints to construct a folded three-dimensional structure of the target protein. Such a two-stage folding protocol was used by DeepMind in the recent Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP13), which outperformed all established groups. However, DeepMind has not expressed a plan to publish the code of their AlphaFold protocol. Here we present ProSPr, a network representing the first part of the AlphaFold pipeline for predicting interatomic distances, and demonstrate its abilities in the contact prediction task relative to other state-of-the-art methods. We also investigate and report on the roles of certain input features in prediction quality. ProSPr is made freely available to the scientific community both as source code and a Docker container, which we anticipate will encourage the development of better techniques for assembling protein structures from restraints.

Taylor, Madison; Ault, Alexis; Newell, Dennis (Utah State University)
Faculty Advisor: Ault, Alexis (College of Science, Geosciences Department)

Hematite-coated fault surfaces offer the potential to characterize and understand the mechanisms and timing of past deformation in exhumed fault zones. We apply integrated micro- to nanoscale microscopy and geochemistry with hematite (U—Th)/He (He) thermochronometry dates to document hematite textural evolution and timing of fault slip on the seismically-active Hurricane fault in southwestern Utah. Hematite is preserved on this bedrock fault scarp that cuts the Triassic Moenkopi Formation. It occurs in elongate, striated, mm- to cm-scale lenses on the slip surface, and we target this material for thermochronometry. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) shows hematite within ~100—200 μm of the fault surface comprises rounded hematite particles ~100 nm to 2 μm in diameter that lack grain boundaries. Away from the surface and beneath these nanoparticles are randomly-oriented, ~70—150 nm-thick hematite plates. Plate and rounded, "fused" particle morphologies likely reflect initial hematite crystallization from fluids and deformation, respectively. SEM imaging and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy also reveal a featureless, ~3 μm-thick, Al-rich silica film enveloping the hematite nanoparticles at the fault surface, suggesting it is amorphous silica. This layer is exclusively found in contact with deformed hematite, implying association with fault slip. A preliminary mean hematite He thermochronometric date is 375 ± 54 ka (±1σ std. dev.; n = 11). This date is appreciably younger than previously-reported, regional apatite He thermochronometry data. This suggests hematite He data may record hematite formation or thermal resetting from friction-generated heat during fault slip. Ongoing hematite He analyses targeting the distinct textural domains will discriminate between these possibilities, and scanning/transmission electron microscopy will evaluate the crystallinity of the surface silica and hematite nanoparticles. Collectively, these data will allow us to decipher the timing and mechanisms of past deformation of the Hurricane fault and understand analogous relationships in other hematite-bearing fault zones.

Johnston, Olivia; Preston, Kolten; Hoyt, Tyson; Owens May, April; Bentley, Kaden; Gunnerson, Shane; Johnson, Alex; Parr, McKenna; Reeves, Duncan; Parry, Whitney; Rawson, Clayton; Hart, Vern (Utah Valley University)
Faculty Advisor: Hart, Vern (Science, Physics)

Recent efforts in early cancer detection require identifying the disease at a cellular level, by distinguishing cancer cells from healthy cells at low concentrations (<0.1%). Cancerous cells typically have larger nuclei than healthy cells and can be distinguished using a variety of optical techniques, however, this process is complicated when the fraction of malignant cells is extremely low. As such, high-precision detection requires highly accurate measurements of cell confluence and the ratio of healthy to cancerous cells. Techniques such as machine learning and Fourier analysis have been used to auto-segment cells in microscopy images. However, these techniques often lack a ground truth standard to validate the segmentation results. We present a methodology for producing agarose tissue phantoms embedded with mixed polystyrene microbeads of varying diameters. These phantoms were imaged using a 2D translational stage and a microscope camera, collecting hundreds of images that were input to an artificially intelligent neural network for training and classification. The ability of this binary classifier to identify and quantify micro-beads in the images was assessed by comparing the automated results to manual counts, producing accuracies above 90% for bead sizes ranging from 50-200 microns. Auto-segmentation results will also be presented for mixtures of micro-beads and U-87 (glioblastoma) cancer cells, which differ in shape and morphology from the beads but whose boundaries are significantly less defined. The ability to accurately segment two different cell types in vitro would be highly beneficial for future cellular imaging studies.

Timothy P. McFadden; Chideraa I. Nwachukwu; Andrew G. Roberts (University of Utah)
Faculty Advisor: Roberts, Andrew (College of Science, Chemistry)

Carbon—nitrogen (C—N) bonds are easy to form relative to carbon—carbon (C—C) bonds due to reliable and predictable reactions. Previous methods to form a C—C bond from a C—N bond require four independent chemical reactions. We report a new method to achieve the desired transformation in one flask. Optimization of this method is ongoing; ultimately, we hope to define a new strategy for accessing future C—C bonds with C—N bonds.

Morris, Nathaniel; Jensen, Joseph (Utah Valley University)
Faculty Advisor: Jensen, Joseph (Utah Valley University, Physics)

We measured the brightness of Milky Way stars to determine if they have an effect on extragalactic surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) distance measurements. When SBF measurements are made on background galaxies near the Galactic plane, we observe a large number of stars in the foreground. With most SBF measurements, we can mask out the brightest stars, and make measure SBF with a relatively uncontaminated background. This becomes more difficult with galaxies that are close to the Galactic plane because there are many more foreground stars, and undetected fainter stars that escape the masking process can bias the distance measurement. My research will determine if these unmasked foreground stars have a significant effect on the SBF measurements on these galaxies near the Galactic plane.

Gray, Daniel; Durfee, Dallin (Utah Valley University)
Faculty Advisor: Durfee, Dallin (College of Science, Physics)

IPSII is a fully lensless single pixel imaging technique using mechanically scanned interference patterns. The method uses only simple, flat optics; no lenses, curved mirrors, or acousto-optics are used in pattern formation or detection. The resolution is limited by the numerical aperture of the angular access to the object, with a fundamental limit of a quarter wavelength, which is twice the Abbe limit. ISPII also has no fundamental limit on working distance as well as a depth of field and field of view independent of resolution. Normally, an interference pattern is projected across the target object to obtain information. Currently this uses interfering plane waves which produce sinusoidal interference patterns allowing us to measure in the Fourier basis. Mechanically scanning the laser angles to change the interference pattern is slow. Image times usually require hours or days as regular scan times produce approximately one pixel per second. We intend to improve the time to scan an object by utilizing a micromirror array to modify the interference patterns, such that multiple measurements can be made at one angle. Updating the micromirror array is much faster than changing the angles at which the target is scanned. This will greatly reduce the time required as we will not need to measure with as many angles to obtain an image. With the micromirror array we will be able to generate a wider range of basis functions. In addition to increasing the speed this may allow us to better utilize compressive sensing techniques where an n-pixel image may be obtained by scanning only a fraction of n-points on the object.

Backman, Natalia; Bell, Mckenzie; Gostick, Anthony; Kiggins, Kendrick; Koller, Christopher; Naylor, Emily; Porter, Tyrel; Rawlings, Bree; Domyan, Eric, Ph.D (Utah Valley University)
Faculty Advisor: Domyan, Eric (Utah Valley University, Biology/Biotechnology)

The domesticated rock pigeon has been the subject of selective breeding for hounds of years and so displays an immense variety of phenotypes. This variety provides opportunities to further understand the genetic basis of phenotypic evolution. Pigmentation of pigeon feathers is controlled by multiple alleles at different loci, which influences the type and amount of melanin deposited in the feathers. A specific phenotype, known as "recessive red", consists of distinctly red plumage and is caused by a mutation that greatly reduces the expression of the gene Sox10. This gene encodes a transcription factor, known to play a key role in melanocyte maturation and proliferation. Sox10 likely regulates the transcription of multiple downstream genes but the identities of these genes are largely unknown. To identify downstream targets of Sox10, we compared the transcriptomes of regenerating feathers from wild-type and recessive red birds to identify genes that had different expression levels between the two groups. We identified 46 genes that are expressed at different levels between wild-type and recessive red birds, and thus are potential targets of Sox101.
While several of the target genes have known roles in pigmentation, the role that many of the targets play in pigmentation has not been studied, making them interesting candidates for further investigation. Using CRISPR-Cas9, we introduced mutations in candidate genes that were chosen because of their unusually low expression in recessive red birds due to the mutation of Sox10. By observing the effects of the mutated genes, we can determine their roles in pigmentation. The genes that we are mutagenizing in our research is Tbx2, Arsg, and Abcb5 to see if they play a role in the melanin synthesis pathway.

Meyr, Katherine (Weber State University)
Faculty Advisor: Matyjasik, Marek (Science, Earth and Environmental Sciences)

The impacts of water quality is among the most highly contested aspects of mining projects. Despite the protection of the majority of land in British Columbia, evidence of the negative environmental impacts of past and present mining activities may be found on the most sacred of lands. Evaluated water samples taken from multiple sites in First Nation territory show evidence of mining contamination, with streams following the sacred Tlingit trail showing the highest percentage of heavy metals. Though British Columbia's regulations have been extensive, mines abandoned before these regulations were put into place may be a source of pollution among current wildlife and vegetation. Abandoned mining sites in British Columbia must be thoroughly evaluated in order to understand the damage that has been done both culturally and environmentally.

Breitenbach, Makenzie; Lyman, Seth; Tran, Huy (Utah State University)
Faculty Advisor: Lyman, Seth (College of Science, Chemistry and Biochemistry Department); Tran, Huy (College of Science, Chemistry and Biochemistry Department)

The Uintah Basin is a rural area in Northeast Utah where the oil and gas industry is prominent. During multi-day temperature inversions that occur during some winters, locally-emitted air pollutants, particularly from the oil and gas industry, react in the atmosphere to produce ozone. While it is well known that oxides of nitrogen and organic compounds are the main precursors to ozone formation, significant gaps exist in understanding of the sources and composition of organics emitted from various oil and gas-related sources. Better understanding of organic compound emissions will allow regulators and industry to make better decisions to reduce ozone-forming pollution to protect the health of residents and workers in the Uintah Basin.

During the winter of 2018-2019, we are deploying 14 remote measurement stations that collect air samples in silonite-coated canisters (for non-methane hydrocarbons and light alcohols) and on 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine-coated sorbent cartridges (for carbonyls). We are analyzing the canister and cartridge samples in our laboratory via gas and liquid chromatography, respectively, to determine concentrations of a suite of 76 organic compounds, all of which are known to be involved in the formation of wintertime ozone in the Uintah Basin. We position these stations in different configurations around the Basin to characterize certain facility types and to characterize organic compound concentrations across the entire Basin. For this presentation, we will use meteorological data and trajectory modeling to determine how facilities in the vicinity of our measurement stations impacted ambient organic compound concentrations and speciation. Later in 2019-20, we will use the 2014 Utah Air Agencies Oil and Gas Emissions Inventory with a three-dimensional photochemical model (WRF-CMAQ) to simulate air concentrations of the measured compounds. We will compare modeled and measured results to determine how well the inventory and model simulate actual ozone precursor concentrations.

Craig, Michael W. ; Valle, Hugo E. (Weber State University)
Faculty Advisor: Valle, Hugo (Weber State University, Computer Science)

Project atmosniffer has provided me a unique opportunity to work with existing code, updating and maintaining both software and hardware.

Project atmosniffer's purpose is to develop a scientific and comercial air-quality monitoring and recording tool. This project has undergone many transformations over the years since its birth and is continuing to be improved during the period of my contributions.

Most of the learning and developing was self-driven with guidance and learning tools provided by Dr. Valle and the university (pluralsight). The atmosniffer has changed much of its hardware, using a new microprocesser, a new gas board, a new OLED screen, and new drivers. Learning to code to hardware, update legacy code, and reading/coding how each module communicates with each other has been very fascinating.

More details covering the development of Project Atmosniffer will be presented.