David and Lorraine Freed Undergraduate Research

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major risk factor for the development of epilepsy, or epileptogenesis. Approximately 1.5 million people in the United States sustain a TBI annually. Insulin-like Growth Factor-I (IGF-I) is found in the cerebrospinal fluid of healthy individuals, and following head injury, IGF-I levels are elevated in the brain tissue. Akt-mTOR and MAPK are downstream targets of IGF-I signaling that are activated after brain injury. However, both brain injury and mTOR are linked to epilepsy, raising the possibility that IGF-I may be epileptogenic.

Poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) is a biodegradable and biocompatible elastomer that has been used in a wide range of biomedical applications, including drug delivery, microfluidic devices, and tissue engineering scaffolds. The material possesses similar mechanical properties to those of soft body tissues and is mechanically tunable by altering cure temperature. An increased cure temperature correlates to an increased amount of cross-linking, resulting in a greater elastic modulus.

Epoxy resins filled with silica are used in a wide array of applications. When used in microelectronic packaging, chiefly as an underfill encaplsulant, it is critical that such epoxy resins possess low viscosity as well as high fracture toughness. Traditionally, micron-size silica fillers are used but there is much interest in the use of nanometer size fillers as the feature size on silicon chips decreases.

Although biosand filters (BSFs) have been implemented in over 55 countries to provide safe drinking water, the necessity of operating filters on a daily basis has raised questions about filter efficacy after a period of abandonment (e.g., due to travels away from home or school vacations when students/faculty are not present to use institutional filters every day). Presently, the safe recommendation for abandoned filters is to deconstruct and rebuild.

The Phone Analytics for Ground Crew Efficiency (PAGE) project revolved around researching how mobile G.P.S. technologies can help PPL better track its groundcrews on a day-to-day basis. Specifically, PPL was interested in capturing statistics such as driving habits, work site locations, and damage reports in a much more automated and granular fashion. The first half of the project consisted of researching business requirements, possible project issues, and designing an application infrastructure, whereas the second half consisted of the programming and deployment of the team's solution.

According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, epilepsy affects 2.2 million Americans, and 65 million people worldwide. Traumatic brain injury is one of the major risk factors causing epileptogenesis, or the development of epilepsy taking place in the latent period between injury and the appearance of spontaneous seizures. In order to prevent epilepsy from developing, therapeutic approaches need to target molecular events that lead from injury to the formation of epileptic circuits.

Since its discovery in the late 19th century, synthetic rubber has become a popular replacement for natural rubber. Currently, the world produces and consumes more synthetic rubber than natural rubber. In the first half of 2015, the United States alone produced and consumed 1.5 million tons of synthetic rubber, more than 20% of all synthetic rubber produced in the world at the time. To manufacture synthetic rubber, 1,3butadiene must be produced and polymerized. Presently, steam cracking of petroleum naphtha remains the most popular and costefficient manufacturing process.

The proposed work aims to develop novel membrane technology for efficient, high selective high-temperature carbon dioxide and simultaneous carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide capture. Realization of high-performance membranes for such applications is widely recognized as a potentially revolutionary technology for continuous carbon capture. The research focuses on two materials: sodium oxide promoted alumina and silicalite-1. The main objectives involve synthesizing and characterizing the materials. Membranes will then be modeled, synthesized, and characterized.

Dissimilar Metal Welds (DMWs) are critical for design, development, and manufacturing of Very High Temperature Reactors (VHTR). When the DMW is in service, experience has demonstrated that premature failures of DMWs can be caused by carbon diffusion across the weld interface from the ferritic to austenitic material, driven by the large concentration gradient. This creates creep voids near the weld interface that are the leading cause to premature failure in service.

Acid mine drainage (AMD) and its elevated concentrations of heavy metals are a widespread source of water pollution throughout Pennsylvania. Current AMD treatment methods are costly to operate and maintain due to the large volumes of waste sludge produced as a byproduct of treatment. The sludge requires regular removal and disposal yet has no practical use or commercial value. New resource recovery methods of AMD treatment aim to reduce waste by extracting metal contaminants in alternate usable forms which can be marketed and sold to recoup treatment costs.

The objective of this research is to develop a simplified and accurate computational model for DNA behavior that can be used to provide molecular level understanding of experimentally observed phenomena. The ultimate goal is to apply this predictive DNA model for improving design principles in nanotechnology applications such as sequence-dependent separation of carbon nanotubes from a mixture and DNA-mediated particle assembly to create novel hierarchical structured materials.

Hydrogen passivation is an important step in the fabrication of optoelectronic devices. Passivation isolates components on a semiconductor substrate by electronically and/or photonically deactivating doped regions. Hydrogen has been identified as a passivating species for n- and p- type III-V semiconductor materials. The substrate is exposed to hydrogen plasma, which diffuses through the doped film. The hydrogen reacts with dopant atoms to form neutral complexes, thereby passivating the region.

Once a patient is diagnosed as HIV-positive, tests of viral load (the concentration of virus circulating in the blood) are performed routinely in order to monitor disease progression and ensure treatment effectiveness. Currently, there is no procedure to measure viral load in a point-of-care setting. It often takes upwards of two weeks to receive a patient's viral load results from central facilities, making it difficult for doctors to make treatment decisions or adjust medication in the case of drug resistance.

Sapphire, a crystalline type of alumina (Al2O3), is a ceramic compound with several industrial applications. It is commonly used as a substrate wafer for compound semiconductor growth and LED manufacturing. In addition, it is often used as an optical window due to its high degree of optical transparency. The growth of large grain or single crystal sapphire however, is a time- and energy-intensive process, motivating new growth techniques. This investigation develops alternative pathways to produce large grained sapphire films on a variety of substrates.

Oligodendrocytes are neuroglial cells whose function is to support and myelinate axons in the CNS. Oligodendrocytes have been found to arise from oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) during late embryogenesis and early post natal development. A single oligodendrocyte can myelinate as many as 40 or more different axons, wrapping the axon with between 20 and 200 layers of highly modified membrane processes1.

Sapphire (?-Al2O3) thin films can have applications as optical and scratch-resistant coatings, as well as in microelectronics. Typical sapphire substrate fabrication requires the material be in the molten state at temperatures above 2000°C. This study examines the crystallization of amorphous atomic layer deposited (ALD) alumina thin films at low temperatures (950-1050°C) by seeded lateral epitaxy. Decoration of the film with sapphire nanoparticle seeds before annealing provides nucleation sites for crystal growth.