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COVID- 19, also known as the SARS- CoV- 2 identified in 2019/ 2020 as a disease that caused a case of pandemic and panic throughout the world. As of currently, the world is still under the effect of COVID- 19 and its aftermath. The notable and common symptoms recognized by the CDC include fever, cough, shortness of breath, congestion, etc... However, current research shows that there could be a new possible symptom that could help better diagnose and recognize the signs of COVID- 19. Delirium is a common consequence of COVID- 19 but it is rapidly developing into psychosis. Psychosis is a mental disorder that can cause a patient into mental disarry, confusion, and distraught along with disconnection from reality. Symptoms of psychosis include hallucinations, allusions, agitation, difficultly thinking and understanding, and disorientation. There have been countless case reports of patients with no medical or family history of psychosis or any mental health problems who were later diagnosed with psychosis. Suspicions have been raised of the virus causing inflammation in the brain which directly impacts the kynurenine pathway through activation. In this conceptual review, we will be analyzing multiple case reports of being diagnosed with psychosis after contracting the COVID- 19 virus, the possible reasons why behind this phenomenon, possible changes in the brain during COVID- 19 virus caused by psychosis, and possible solutions. It is to be noted that most, if not all, patients in the cited studies and cases have no previous records of any sorts of mental illness or any family/genetical history of mental illness that could have caused the psychosis.

Clinical Psychology, Psychology, Neuropsychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroscience, Neuropsychological Assessment, Neuroimaging, Dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, Primary Progressive Aphasia, Traumatic Brain Injury, Epilepsy

Relationship between COVID-19 and Psychosis: a Conceptual Review

Comp Sci - AI/ML, Law, Software Engineering

Research Question: How do {Tesla’s, Waymo’s} autonomous systems work and how safe are they compared to human driven cars?

Abstract:
Autonomous vehicles are vehicles which leverage the artificial intelligence systems of the future to automate the act of driving. In recent years, many automotive companies have started to incorporate AI systems in their cars to reduce driving workload with an emphasis of increasing safety. In recent years however, automotive companies have done a poor job explaining how their systems work, especially when it comes to creating an understanding with their consumers. If AI systems are really the future, the people who are going to be using these systems and even those who are going to encounter them on the road should understand how they work. In my study, I looked at the safety of driverless cars including severity of injuries, rate of car accidents, as well as other safety metrics. I found that autonomous vehicles have helped to reduce the severity of car crashes in comparison to those driven by humans, however, driverless cars still have a long way to go before they can help reduce the rate of car accidents that occur on streets. Additionally, we sought to explore how autonomous systems are developed and in what ways their safety can be improved. Using AWS Deep Racer, we were able to create and train a CNN to classify and localize objects. This system was then tested using AWS SageMaker to evaluate and compare the safety of our model to the likes of a human driven vehicle. As AI and technology as a whole begin to improve, the safety of autonomous vehicles will improve as a result.


Aerospace controls, robotics, computer vision, unmanned aerial vehicles

Autonomous Vehicle Safety

In this paper, I will talk about the nature of discrimination and the many struggles it has caused through the years. The first question to be asked is about how far back discrimination goes. When did it begin? Then, after we find its historical origin, the next question is to understand all of the different forms, variants, and manifestations of discrimination - including racism between races, as well as racism within a race, sexism, religious discrimination, and so on. Third, after identifying different forms of racism, I will look at various arguments or justifications people have provided in favor of discrimination. Finally, I will show why those arguments are wrong, demonstrating why discrimination has always been unjust.

Philosophy, Law, Social Sciences

The Origins of Discrimination Pertaining to All Kinds

Political polarization may well be one of the most dangerous forces in our government, and as a country, the US is experiencing unique levels of polarization. So we endeavored to explore, what has been the trajectory of elite polarization in American politics since the 1970s, and what does that indicate about our current situation? We hypothesize from the literature that there would be low legislative productivity and high inflation in periods of heightened polarization and vice versa for low polarization. This is due to the inability of legislators to cooperate to find solutions that will work for the American people in polarized times. To answer our question, we consider elite polarization in Congress from four perspectives: aggregate polarization, Congressional cooperation, the state of the economy, and overall legislative effectiveness. The aggregate polarization and Congressional cooperation dimensions provide a model to identify ideological differences and levels of bipartisan legislative cooperation, respectively and act as a benchmark to identify how polarized Congress was at any given time. In contrast, the overall effectiveness and state of the economy analyses will provide an external measure to determine effects. The analyses suggest that polarization has broadly increased since 1970, with few exceptions, regardless of the state of the economy, indicating that economics is not a strong predictor of polarization, nor is polarization a strong predictor of economics. Furthermore, although not definitive, predictive analysis suggests that polarization will only increase. 


*Keywords***:** Polarization, Legislative Effectiveness, Inflation, Congressional Representation, Time Series Analysis

Political psychology, Political behavior, Public opinion, Political Science, American Politics, Survey research, Social networks, GIS in R, R programming, Text as data, Machine Learning, Data visualization, Data science

Four Perspectives on Elite Polarization in Congress Since 1970

Fragile X syndrome is a severe autism spectrum disorder (ASD) caused by the mutation of a single gene. Many researchers have tried to treat Fragile X syndrome. With the explosion of gene editing as a precise way to induce genetic changes, severe single-gene disorders like Fragile X syndrome are particularly attractive genetic targets. This project will review gene editing approaches to treat Fragile X syndrome and speculate on the future of gene editing in treating this disorder. 

Genetics, genome editing, molecular biology, neuroscience, bioethics, science policy, genetics in human health/medicine

Examining Gene Editing for Fragile X Syndrome

Bioprinting is the use of 3D printing technology to produce constructs using living cells and bioinks. Bioprinting is a powerful tool that can help regenerate tissue in the body or print organs to be used in transplants. This could potentially eliminate the problems of complicated reconstructive tissue surgeries and organ shortages. In recent years, 3D bioprinting has been used to print *in vitro* organs, create models for clinical trials and test new drug formulas. Although these small steps have helped the scientific community learn more about the challenges that have to be overcome during the bioprinting process, *in vivo* bioprinting, bioprinting that takes place directly in the body, is a common goal that many researchers are striving to achieve. This paper will review the most successful bioprinting processes that have been used, different bioinks that have emerged, the current research that has been conducted for *in vivo* bioprinting and how *in vivo* bioprinting combined with robot assisted surgery could improve the outcomes of musculoskeletal surgery. Also, we will offer new perspectives on how robot-assisted surgery could be combined with *in vivo* bioprinting to create new surgical technology. The musculoskeletal system requires long and invasive procedures to fix problems that occur. Most musculoskeletal injuries are caused by strains on muscles that lead to tears in ligaments and the need for soft tissue replacement, like ACL tears, or the deterioration of joints from overuse. Through *in vivo* bioprinting, the reconstruction and regeneration of skeletal tissue can be possible without long and invasive procedures. Utilization of bioprinting could bring the elimination of complicated surgeries and the implementation of newer surgical techniques, specifically surgical robots to print inside the body with greater precision than humanly possible at reduced cost.

Bioengineering, Bioprinting, Cancer Biology, Cell Biology, Epigenetics, Biophysics

Applications of In Vivo Bioprinting in Coordination with Robot Assisted Surgery for Musculoskeletal Tissue Repair

Glioma is a malignant and poorly understood cancer that occurs in the glial cells of the brain. Subtypes are divided into Proneural, Neural, Mesenchymal, and Classical subtypes based on the mutational signature, which all have varying responses to intense treatment. The complement system, a branch of the innate immune system, has shown to have various pro-tumor effects, including immunosuppression and maintenance of glial stem cells, and has been shown to be mutated in various cancers. We analyzed the expression of complement system genes across the 4 transcriptional subtypes and 2 mutational subtypes of gliomas in order to determine whether the genes were differentially expressed.

Biology, Cancer biology, Genetics, Epigenetics, Genomics

An Analysis of Complement System Gene Expression and Outcome across the Transcriptional and Mutational Subtypes of Low-Grade Glioma and Glioblastoma

The goal of the project is to improve upon loop detection for SLAM using novel methods created for solving the same problems used for bag of words and feature-based image clustering. Loop detection is a method in simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) that is used to detect when a robot's pose has reached a previously known location and close the path. The current state of the art methods are bag of words and feature image clustering which both use a symbolic representation of landmarks to determine when a location has been reached for a second time. The paper will compare both prior methods as well as improvements to the methods, and alternatives to those methods developed by Shuhul. The comparison will be done on publicly available datasets using a common baseline SLAM algorithm. In this paper, we present a method of loop closure detection that relies on both
geometric and human salient features. Our algorithm is built on SuperPoint, which identifies a set of interest points based on geometric features, and SalientDSO that creates a saliency map from which features are extracted. The SuperPoint model is inherently prone to rotations, so we retrained it on rotated images to make it more resistant. Both the point and semantic features are then fed into ORB SLAM to return a set of features. Finally a bag of words model is used to detect loop closure. A more detailed version is as follows. Keyframes are extracted from the video from the monocular camera. Keyframes are fed separately into SuperPoint feature extractor and SalGan feature extractor. Salgan returns a heatmap which is then processed such that the maximum gradient points are selected. These are then combined into a custom feature with a custom feature descriptor based off of ORB. These then are used in only the loop closure part of ORB SLAM by being added to ORB SLAMs built in bag of words model. Along with a custom vocabulary this then is compared against a threshold, which determines whether there was a loop closure. The algorithm is then tested with the New College and Tum Mono datasets. Overall this is a much more reliable solution to loop closures as the number of false positives is drastically lower than ORB SLAMs built in loop closure. The number of false negatives is also low, comparable to the built- in loop closure.

Robotics, Machine Learning, Generative AI, Quantitative Finance, Algorithmic Trading, Statistics, Computer Science

How do we improve loop detection for SLAM?

The generation of novel molecules is an important step in drug discovery and the creation of new therapeutic agents. Traditional approaches to molecular design often require vast time and resources, relying on iterative processes of synthesis and testing to identify candidates with therapeutic potential. However, recent advancements in artificial intelligence — particularly large language models (LLMs) — present an opportunity to revolutionize this domain. LLMs — with their capacity to understand, generate, and manipulate text-based information — can be repurposed to recognize patterns and relationships in molecular structures and bioactivity data. When trained on extensive chemical databases, LLMs can predict potential drug-like molecules, recommend modifications to existing ones, or even generate entirely novel molecular structures; this not only expedites the molecule discovery phase but also reduces costs and resources. Furthermore, by integrating LLMs with other computational methods like molecular docking and dynamics simulations, a more holistic approach to drug design can be realized. This project will entail leveraging the transformative potential of LLMs with an eye towards laying the foundations for a healthcare startup by either: 

a) developing an executive summary (downside scenario);

b) clarifying product-market fit (base case); or

c) preparing an investor-ready pitch deck (upside scenario)

Pharmaceutical sciences, nanomedicines, drug delivery, virology, cancer biology, molecular biology, pharmacology, biotechnology, biotech entrepreneurship

Beyond Traditional synthesis, using transformer models for molecule generation

We are still looking for a dataset that will give definition to this project

data science, computer science, computational linguistics, natural language processing, web scraping (Twitter) and analytics, probability theory, statistics, calculus

Understanding differences between natural and artificial "cognition"

The spacecraft industry is advancing and growing faster than before. According to the Space Foundation, the space economy grew at the fastest annual rate last year since 2014. So far, in comparison to unmanned missions, fewer manned missions have been launched. Past space missions have shown that manned and unmanned missions both have certain advantages and disadvantages which must be considered so future space missions can be carried out more efficiently and effectively. First, future unmanned space missions, such as the Europa Clipper and Artemis I missions were studied to learn how they will be conducted successfully. Then, future manned space missions, such as the Artemis II mission and the launch of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft to the moon and mars, were researched to determine how they will be executed successfully. Lastly, the advantages and disadvantages of manned missions in comparison to unmanned missions were considered, where it was found that manned missions are 20% more successful than unmanned missions, but that unmanned missions tend to cost less than manned missions. This research highlights that manned missions allow astronauts to conduct experiments and create new solutions to problems that arise but can also be risky and costly. On the other hand, unmanned missions don’t endanger human lives, are less costly, and can reach farther planets with harsh conditions that humans can’t survive in. Accordingly, the cons of unmanned missions are the opposite of the pros of manned missions and the cons of manned missions are the opposite of the pros of unmanned missions. Overall, this work concludes that a combination of manned and unmanned missions need to be carried out in future space missions to make space exploration as safe, successful, and informative as possible.

I have degrees in chemical engineering, earth & planetary science, and aerospace engineering, but my work also intersects mechanical engineering, materials science, and environmental engineering. I welcome opportunities across these fields.

Who Should Be the Main Characters in the Space Exploration Narrative: Robots or Humans?

The immune system is a body system made up of cells, organs, and proteins that work together to defend the body against foreign pathogen invaders. However, there are times when the immune system attacks and kills its own healthy tissue and cells, a condition known as autoimmunity. An autoimmune disease occurs when the immune system does not know the difference between the body’s own cells/tissue and foreign pathogens, so it attacks its own cells. We examined two such autoimmune diseases: Lupus and Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease that is often separated into five types: systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), discoid lupus erythematosus, subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus, neonatal lupus, and drug-induced lupus. Lupus is mostly characterized by the inflammation it causes throughout the body, including a noticeable butterfly rash on the face. Over 5 million people worldwide are affected by Lupus. Lupus tends to affect women more than men, likely due to higher estrogen levels. There is no current treatment for lupus, but experimental trials have had varying results depending on the severity of the disease, with some treatments including Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) or B Lymphocyte Stimulator (BLyS) -specific inhibitors. MS is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by fatigue, impaired vision, and tremors. MS is caused when the immune system destroys myelin, the protective sheath of nerve fibers, thereby disrupting the flow of information in the nervous system and causing nerve damage. Worldwide, there are about 2.3 million people diagnosed with MS. For research on these diseases, as of 2022, Lupus received over $139 million in funds while MS received just over $20 million. Although MS and Lupus are both autoimmune diseases that affect a significant population in the world, they do not receive nearly as much funding as compared to other diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s. 

Tumor Immunology, cancer biology, Immunology, Biotechnology

Lupus and Multiple Sclerosis: Understanding the Pathophysiology of Under-Funded Autoimmune Diseases and Potential Treatments 


Lung cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in both men and women. This form of cancer occurs when a malignant tumor forms in any of the structures of the lung, which can then spread throughout the rest of the body and lead to other problems. There are two main types of lung cancer, small cell carcinoma, and non-small cell carcinoma. Non-small cell carcinoma is more common and less aggressive than small cell carcinoma. The main cause of lung cancer is smoking and using tobacco products. A single cigarette contains thousands of chemicals, including over 70 carcinogens, that can damage the cells of the lung and lead to the formation of cancer when inhaled. Lung cancer is more commonly diagnosed in its later stages, making it harder to treat in the long run. Currently, there are three main treatments for cancer, surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. While these treatments have worked for a number of patients, they generally do not have a high success rate, specifically for patients with small cell lung cancer. There is a new treatment method that can change the course of cancer treatment in the future: stem cell therapy. Stem cell therapy can be used to repair the lungs of lung cancer patients and provide them with the needed cells for their lungs to return to normal function. Outside of cancer, stem cell therapy can also treat many disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, type 1 diabetes, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, and many more. The stem cells would be removed from the skin or blood of the patient and genetically transformed into embryonic stem cells, which provides more utility for the stem cells in the body. Once they are modified, these stem cells can be transferred to the body through in vitro scaffolds, tissue engineered scaffolds, and local injections. After the transfer has occurred, the stem cells would be able to rebuild the lungs and help the body return to normal conditions.

Biomedical Engineering, Tissue Engineering, Cancer Research

Stem cell therapies for lung cancer patients with a history of tobacco use.

The amount of biracial individuals is rapidly increasing and most of them are young teens. As a biracial teen of both White and Asian descent, the question of my own identity was prominent for me in a majority monoracial world. I have been curious about the difference between biracial and monoracial teens. So this research paper looks at how the processes of identity development of White/Asian biracial are different from White monoracial adolescents.

Advocacy, psychology, social policy, leadership, social justice, Asian American identity, activism

The Identity Development Processes of White/Asian Biracial versus White Monoracial Adolescents

Palliative care and hospice care are medical specialties focused on enhancing the quality of life and alleviating physical, mental, and spiritual suffering among patients with advanced and/or terminal illnesses. These two fields of medicine were initially conceived of about 120 years ago. However, the widespread implementation of these fields into the global practice of medicine only began about 70 years ago. These fields have continued to grow worldwide as has the research on their effect on the physical, spiritual, and existential well-being of patients who are terminally ill. In this literature review, I will be gathering and reviewing the relevant literature on the topic of palliative and hospice care and their impact on the physical, spiritual, and existential well-being of adults with terminal illnesses. The review will be split into a few parts: one section being background and the history of palliative and hospice care, one section about the effects on physical pain and discomfort, one section on the effect on spirituality, and one section on the effect of the existential well-being of a patient. I hope to show people a newer field of medicine that is not being discussed as widely as it could be.

Medicine, biology, anthropology, cryptocurrency/blockchain technology

How do palliative care and hospice care impact the physical, spiritual, and existential well-being of adults with terminal illnesses?

This paper falls under the categories of Biology and Genetics. It covers the following topics: genes, gene editing, cancer, tumors/tumor growth, cancer drugs, and more. Overall, this paper focuses on talking about CRISPR-Cas9 technology, including what it is, how it works, its various components, and how it is useful in discovering information about tumor growth. Then, the paper talks about different types of cancers in which CRISPR-Cas9 has had major successes, including the problem that CRISPR-Cas9 had to solve and how it solved/aided in solving the problem. 

Cancer is a deadly illness that is the 2nd leading cause of death in the United States. As a whole, cancer is a complex disease that has various strains, types, and forms. Cancer forms when mutations (such as chromosome duplications or deletions) occur in cells, creating a cancerous cell that lacks the basic functions that normal cells have. These cells completely change their gene expression and stop functioning normally. CRISPR is an extremely powerful and flexible tool that can be used to analyze specific genes in cancer to understand the effects of one gene on all of the others. It has had a huge impact on understanding and treating cancers, and has allowed many scientists to have major breakthroughs in cancer research. While cancer is a dangerous illness with no real cure, scientists are working hard to understand cancer as a whole, and CRISPR-Cas9 has played a huge part in the discovery of new information, treatments, and more. It is clear that CRISPR is essential to understanding and treating cancer and its various strains. While CRISPR is still young, it has affected almost all aspects of cancer and has become a crucial tool used by scientists and researchers alike. Overall, CRISPR-Cas9’s advances and successes have proven that it will continue to be a key tool in cancer therapy.

Glia biology, neuroscience/neurodevelopment, CRISPR, image analysis, -omics

CRISPR-Cas9’s Successes in Cancer Therapy

In 1865, James Maxwell put forth a series of equations that sought to explain the forces of electricity and magnetism. These equations have gone on to play an integral part our everyday lives from powering our homes to allowing us to communicate across great distances. In this project we will start with an introduction to Maxwell's equations and how they how they can be applied to everyday life. From there, I will show how each individual equation's effects can be demonstrated through an experiment and some of the pitfalls I encountered designing and then constructing these experiments. Finally, I will discuss how the results of these experiments are utilized in everyday applications and look to how they might be applied in the next 150 years. 

Galatatic Astrophysics, Particle Physics (neutrino/rare event searches), History of Physics, Instrumentation, Instrument Design, Signal Processing, Applied Mathematics in Physics

Maxwell’s World: How the 4 Maxwell Equations Shape our Everyday Lives. 

My project focuses on the development of the US-Indian diplomatic relationship during the term of President John F Kennedy. It specifically focuses on the Sino-Indian War of October 1962. The central question of this research project is the following: What were the factors affecting the nature of JFK’s foreign policy and dynamic relationship with India? The methodology in this research project focuses on close reading of three major primary sources: (1) the autobiography of the US ambassadors to India--primarily, John Kenneth Galbraith, (2) the US and Indian newspapers from the 1960s describing the crisis, and (3) official correspondence between the US and Indian heads of state, JFK and the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. In this research paper, I suggest that (1) the influence and expertise of John Kenneth Galbraith, (2) the threat of communist China, and (3) Kennedy’s complex personal relationship with Prime Minister Nehru were the major factors shaping the US-India relationship during the Kennedy term.

Middle East, Russian history, Islam, colonialism, legal studies, law, world history, European history, digital humanities

Kennedy and the India Years: Factors Affecting JFK’s Foreign Policy and Dynamic  Relationship with India

Electric Vehicles (EVs) have started to become a significant part of transportation. Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are one type of EV to draw attention towards. Despite their numerous benefits over gas-powered vehicles, they still have the potential for improvement. The performance and energy efficiency aspects of their powertrains are often not optimized, affecting their real-world capabilities. Multi-speed gearboxes could have the potential to improve the powertrains of BEVs. To investigate this hypothesis, an experiment was conducted where a three-speed gearbox was implemented into the powertrain of a Nissan Leaf, an existing battery electric car. The car’s powertrain specifications and its electric motor performance curve were used to generate the initial graphs. By applying the gear ratios from the gearbox on the motor’s initial values, new data plots were generated. The experimental data consisted of torque-speed relationship, energy efficiency, and loss in power graphs. The results of the experiment were then analyzed to evaluate the effects of the gearbox on the car’s powertrain data. The gearbox showed overall improved combinations of performance and energy efficiency figures. Enhanced performance figures meant that the output speeds and accelerations of the car increased. High energy efficiency outputs at various speeds occurred, which was not obtainable by the electric motor. The significance of the experiment’s results was then applied to helpful uses in real-world driving scenarios. Further evaluation was made, speculating on future helpful uses of gearboxes in BEVs.

robotics, mechanical engineering, drawing, computer science - python, computer science - machine learning, engineering design, circuits, PCB design

Multi-Speed Gearboxes for Battery Electric Vehicles

Engineering systems in modern cars have become so complex that collecting and understanding information about them is exceedingly difficult. This research website, Learn Your Car, will eliminate search time by providing concise information in one convenient location. A modern car consists of three sections that are thoroughly engineered; the powertrain, chassis, and bodywork elements. Although modern cars' layouts and engineered components differ in numerous ways, they all share common characteristics with one another(like same structure for engine, transmission, electric motor type, and more). The website is structured in a way that connects all these different engineered systems, and unites them into a common layout. For example, a user navigating this website may see that there are three different types of hybrid powertrains available, but their components like electric motors and batteries, are all composed of similar features. Using this approach, the user can interact with the various configurations of a modern car's layout, while understanding the essentials of each component and how they all form a common linkage with one other. From a single Google search, a reader can use this website to gain a deeper understanding on automotive engineering, the flow of all vehicle components working together, as well as the similarities and differences between them.

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