Traditional crop production faces a significant challenge due to overapplication, mining, and decreased supply of mineral nutrients. In addition to this, the urgent need to address global food waste has become increasingly apparent, as discarded food scraps in landfills contribute to harmful greenhouse gas emissions. A promising solution that addresses both of these critical challenges includes the innovative utilization of food waste anaerobic digestate as a fertilizer for crop production. This study investigated whether using anaerobically digested food waste as fertilizer can fully replace or reduce the use of chemical fertilizer in vegetable and ornamental crop production. The seeds of lettuce (Lactuca sativa) ‘Nancy’ and petunia (Petunia × hybrida) ‘Easy Wave Velour Berry’ were sown into a soilless medium and grown in the indoor vertical farm at 22℃ under sole-source lighting at a photosynthetic photon flux density of 180 µmol∙m–2∙s–1 with a 20-h photoperiod. Four weeks after sowing, seedlings were transplanted and grown for three weeks in a greenhouse with an average daily temperature of 20 °C under ambient sunlight with an average daily light integral of 22 mol∙m–2∙d–1. The plants were fertilized using tap water mixed with different fertilizers, including a chemical fertilizer (15N-2.2P-16.6K), an organic fertilizer derived from anaerobically digested food waste (0.06N-0.026P-0.1191K), or a blend containing 50% chemical fertilizer and 50% food waste-based fertilizer, at the electrical conductivity of 0.7 mS·cm-1 during the young plant stage and 2.1 mS·cm-1 after transplant. At the young plant stage, lettuce and petunia have similar growth characteristics, including leaf number, SPAD index, and shoot and root fresh mass, when treated with either chemical or chemical + food waste fertilizer. In contrast, in both species, leaf area was 93-152% larger and fresh mass was 82-141% greater in plants treated with chemical or chemical + food waste fertilizer compared to food waste fertilizer. At the finishing stage, lettuce and petunia also showed similar growth and flowering characteristics under chemical or chemical + food waste fertilizer. However, in the lettuce finishing plants, fresh mass was 127-199% larger when supplied with chemical or chemical + food waste fertilizer compared to food waste fertilizer. In petunia, the number of flowers was 123-190% greater in chemical and chemical + food waste fertilizer compared to food waste fertilizer. In both lettuce and petunia at the finishing stage, the SPAD index, leaf number, root fresh mass, and root dry mass were similar among all treatments. These results suggest that food waste fertilizer applied as the sole source of plant nutrition is insufficient in comparison to chemical fertilizer at the same electrical conductivity. However, partially substituting some food waste fertilizer for chemical fertilizer reaps similar plant yield to chemical fertilizer on its own.

This project is centered around a decade-old video game called League of Legends, which is one of the most popular video games in esports. Due to its nature of being a complex team-based strategy game, intuitive human predictions of the game’s outcome are relatively unreliable. Many approaches have been adopted to assist intuitive human predictions in traditional team-based sports, such as the Least Squares Method and various supervised machine learning algorithms. These methods have been significantly outperforming human predictions. The objective of this research is, hence, to test whether the predictive models generated using these methods can achieve a similar level of reliability in a more complex game like League of Legends.

The interconnection between family contexts and sleeping patterns play a crucial role in childhood development, with disturbances in either being indicative of future health outcomes in adulthood. It is unclear whether sibling relationships and sleep would have a similar effect as there are not many studies that have examined these links by using subjective sleep and sibling relationship assessments. Given this gap in the literature, the present studied aimed to 1) examine potential bidirectional relations between sibling relationships (warmth, conflict) and sleep variables (duration, efficiency, and sleep midpoint variability) across ages 8 and 10, and 2) test whether a novel sibling interaction task with measures of sharing and competition conducted at age 8 predicts sleep variables both cross sectionally and two years later at age 10. Data are from the Arizona Twin Project which includes a racially and socioeconomically diverse representation of children in Arizona. Twins wore an actigraph watch at both age 8 and age 10 to capture sleep duration and efficiency. Primary caregivers also reported sibling relationships via a questionnaire during both waves. Twins completed a marble pulling task to measure negotiation and cooperation behaviors at age 8 only. We tested cross-lagged prospective associations between sleep and sibling contexts. My study identified a longitudinal, positive association with sibling warmth at age 8 and sleep duration at age 10 and another concurrent, positive association with sibling conflict at age 8 and sleep midpoint variability at age 8. A negative association was identified between sibling warmth and sleep efficiency at age 10. Stability over time was also identified in both sleep variables and sibling relationships. Future studies can further investigate the different ways siblings may influence sleep behaviors, or vice versa, by taking into consideration the quality of the relationship, age, gender, and overall family dynamics. Due to the complexity of sibling relationships, the relations between sleep and siblings may vary among different individuals and families. These additional factors may need to be considered when evaluating the effects of sibling relationships and sleep on child development and well-being.

As the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, Parkinson’s affects around 1 million people in the United States, and 10 million worldwide (Parkinson’s Foundation). Thus there are 10 million people who are suffering from a disorder with no cure. Because of this, treatment of Parkinson’s disease and management of symptoms is crucial as the disease advances. Some non-physical symptoms include anxiety, sleep troubles, fatigue, and loss of smell, while some physical symptoms include a resting tremor, bradykinesia, dyskinesia, instability, and rigidity (Parkinson’s Foundation, 2023). These symptoms lead to gait instability, gait freezing, higher fall risks, an overall lack of flexibility, and a struggle with dual-task performance (Johannson et al., 2023). The goal of this thesis project is to create a game design document and potential study outline of a Virtual Reality (VR) game that targets upper body bradykinesia and allows Parkinson’s patients to improve their arm mobility and decrease rigidity and reaction time. This game, REACH, is designed to be used in conjunction with weekly physical therapy, and progress within the game should be monitored by the therapist. Because it is important for rehabilitation to be individualized for each patient, in this game, the patient’s physical therapist will select a “level”, which corresponds to the patient’s range of motion (ROM) and reaction time. However, the exercise game will keep track of performance and log the degrees of motion, corresponding reaction time, and time on task. This performance profile will allow the therapist to monitor the patient's progress and make well-informed decisions about the patient’s progress and goals.

In the realm of environmental engineering, the compound N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine (6PPD), has recently emerged as an environmental concern. 6PPD serves as a tire additive to prolong the lifespan of rubber but can transform into a more toxic derivative, N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine-quinone (6PPD-quinone), when exposed to ground-level ozone. Initially, my research sought to investigate the biodegradation of 6PPD and 6PPD-quinone using microbial cultures. However, unexpected challenges arising from limited solubility and potential toxicity to microorganisms led to a shift in research objectives. The study then refocused on developing methods for detecting and quantifying 6PPD and 6PPD-quinone. The scarcity of literature available on the environmental fate and transport of these compounds underscores the pressing need for further research to gain a comprehensive understanding of the behavior of these chemicals. Consequently, the development of effective detection strategies will enable the development of effective remediation strategies to safeguard aquatic ecosystems.

Asian Americans are facing unprecedented and growing mental health issues brought by anti-Asian Racism and other forms of hyper-visible oppression (Yellow Horse et al., 2021). In response to racism, one potential solution for bolstering mental health outcomes among Asian Americans is critical reflection. Critical reflection is the process through which oppressed and marginalized people critically analyze oppressive social conditions (e.g., racism, sexism, and more) and consider actions they can take to change them (Watts et al., 2011). Recent research suggests that, overall, there is a strong link between critical reflection and the well-being of youth of color (Maker Castro et al., 2022). However, this relationship may vary based on additional factors, such as strategies used to cope with racism-related stress. For instance, Asian Americans with lower critical reflection about racism (e.g., as evidenced by endorsement of colorblind racial ideology, or the belief that racial differences are irrelevant and racism no longer exists) had a higher tendency to use avoidant coping mechanisms to deal with discrimination (Yi et al., 2022; Lewis et al., 2019). Additionally, there is other evidence to support that Asian Americans who held more colorblind racial attitudes experienced less anxiety when challenged with ambiguous discrimination compared to Asian Americans who held less colorblind racial attitudes (Lee, 2016). Overall, the literature suggests the importance of the relationship between critical reflection and mental health. However, studies have yet to quantitatively explore the impacts of critical reflection and strategies to cope with discrimination on mental health outcomes among Asian Americans (Spanierman et al., 2021) and young adults (Maker Castro et al., 2022). The current study seeks to address this gap in the literature by examining the role of strategies to cope with discrimination in the relationship between Asian Americans’ critical reflection and mental health outcomes. It is crucial to explore these factors as Asian American students continue to shoulder prejudice, stereotypes, and systemic racism in professional and educational institutions. We hypothesize that the relationship between critical reflection and mental health will be mediated by the strategies used to cope with discrimination. More specifically, we expect that low levels of critical reflection (as indicated by high levels of color-blind racial attitudes) are related to greater use of internalization, substance use, and detachment strategies to cope with discrimination, which is related to greater endorsement of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. Data for this study were drawn from a larger study on college students’ experiences in ethnic studies courses. Participants were 288 Asian Americans recruited from ethnic studies courses at universities in various regions of the United States. During the first two weeks of their ethnic studies course, participants completed an online survey about their racial attitudes, critical consciousness, and psychological well-being. Mediation analyses will be conducted using the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2022) on SPSS version 27. Critical reflection, as measured by participants’ total mean score on the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (Neville et al., 2000; Keum et al., 2018) will be included as the independent variable; subscale scores on the Coping with Discrimination Scale (Wei & Alvarez, 2010) will be mediators; and each subscale of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21; Henry & Crawford, 2005) will be the dependent variable in separate analyses. Relationships between the study variables and Asian subgroup (i.e., East, Southeast, and South Asian) will also be examined. While analyses are currently ongoing, preliminary findings suggest that strategies to cope with discrimination and mental health outcomes vary between East Asians, Southeast Asians, and South Asians. Additionally, preliminary findings suggest that the use of substance use and detachment to cope with discrimination explains the relationship between low critical reflection and mental health outcomes. Findings have implications for encouraging mental health specialists and educators to have open conversations about racism while helping those who experience discrimination cope in healthy ways. Thus, this research can contribute to improved psychological well-being of Asian American young adults.

A swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has many potential applications including disaster relief, search and rescue, and area surveillance. A critical factor to a UAV swarm’s success is its ability to collectively locate and pursue targets determined to be of high quality with minimal and decentralized communication. Prior work has investigated nature-based solutions to this problem, in particular the behavior of honeybees when making decisions on future nest sites. A UAV swarm may mimic this behavior for similar ends, taking advantage of widespread sensor coverage induced by a large population. To determine whether the proven success of honeybee strategies may still be found in UAV swarms in more complex and difficult conditions, a series of simulations were created in Python using a behavior modeled after the work of Cooke et al. UAV and environmental properties were varied to determine the importance of each to the success of the swarm and to find emergent behaviors caused by combinations of variables. From the simulation work done, it was found that agent population and lifespan were the two most important factors to swarm success, with preference towards small teams with long-lasting UAVs.