Ocean Lakes High School

Topic: Neurodegenerative Diseases Title: Lipid Metabolism Disruptions as Early Noninvasive Biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease: A Lipidomics Review Objective: To analyze how disruptions in lipid metabolism and cholesterol processing, which include changes in the levels of sphingolipids, ceramides, plasmalogens, and cholesteryl esters, help in early detection of Alzheimer’s disease, and to analyze whether these lipid alterations are reliable, noninvasive biomarkers for diagnosis and disease progression. Background: Alzheimer’s disease is increasingly linked to early disruptions in how the brain processes lipids and energy. Studies in metabolomics and lipidomics show that individuals with Alzheimer's often experience shifts in cholesterol-related lipids, fatty acids, and other metabolic pathways before noticeable symptoms develop. Because these changes can be detected in blood or cerebrospinal fluid, they raise the possibility of identifying the disease much earlier. However, lipid patterns widely vary between individuals, and the complexity of measuring so many lipids makes it difficult to determine which markers are the most reliable predictors of disease and age. Methods: To investigate whether cholesterol-related lipid biomarkers can aid in early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, we conducted a structured literature review using Web of Science. We screened studies focused on lipidomics, metabolomics, and cholesterol-transport pathways. Articles analyzing blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and post-mortem brain tissue were included in the analysis. Across studies, we compared reported alterations in sphingolipids, ceramides, plasmalogens, cholesteryl esters, desmosterol, and ApoE/ABCA1 activity. We synthesized findings to evaluate which lipid signatures most consistently distinguished early neurodegeneration and predicted disease progression. Results: A total of 141 articles were extracted from Web of Science using targeted keywords, revealing that altered lipid metabolism and cholesterol transport are early indicators of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. It was primarily identified using lipidomic, metabolic and multi-omics profiling. Findings included decreased sphingomyelins, cholesterol esters, desmosterol, plasmalogens, increased ceramides, and altered ApoE and ABCA1 activity Conclusions: Biomarkers of lipid metabolism and cholesterol transport are sufficient methods of indicating onset Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Despite this method not being wildly used due to not being a conformities method, we can further use biomarkers to eventually benefit early diagnosis.

This study presents DAISY (Disaster Awareness and Information Serving You), an intelligent chatbot designed to enhance public access to real-time natural disaster information. DAISY integrates Large Language Models (LLMs), GPT-3.5-turbo and Zephyr-7B

Existing deep learning models for chest radiology often neglect patient metadata, limiting diagnostic accuracy and fairness. To bridge this gap, we introduce MetaCheX, a novel multimodal framework that integrates chest X-ray images with structured patient metadata to replicate clinical decision-making. Our approach combines a convolutional neural network (CNN) backbone with metadata processed by a multilayer perceptron through a shared classifier. Evaluated on the CheXpert Plus dataset, MetaCheX consistently outperformed radiograph-only baseline models across multiple CNN architectures. By integrating metadata, the overall diagnostic accuracy was significantly improved, measured by an increase in AUROC. The results of this study demonstrate that metadata reduces algorithmic bias and enhances model generalizability across diverse patient populations. MetaCheX advances clinical artificial intelligence toward robust, context-aware radiographic disease detection.

Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs) are sensors originally developed at CERN, which measure precise positional data of passing electrons. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) will install the world’s largest GEM rotator in Experimental Hall A for the MOLLER experiment. The GEM sensors must be aligned around the beam line, requiring six degrees of freedom (6DOF). This paper details the engineering design of the GEM rotator alignment system using Siemens NX. The alignment system is then structurally analyzed using ANSYS Finite Element Analysis. Our GEM rotator alignment system achieved 6DOF and met structural integrity standards. Finally, a drawing package was created to specify the design before manufacturing.

Recent research has begun to examine the potential of automatically finding and fixing accessibility issues that manifest in software. However, while recent work makes important progress, it has generally been skewed toward identifying issues that affect users with certain disabilities, such as those with visual or hearing impairments. However there are other groups of users with different types of disabilities that also need software tooling support to improve their experience. As such, this paper aims to automatically identify accessibility issues that affect users with motor-impairments. To move toward this goal, this paper introduces a novel approach, called MotorEase, capable of identifying accessibility issues in mobile app UIs that impact motor-impaired users. Motor-impaired users often have limited ability to interact with touch-based devices, and instead may make use of a switch or other assistive mechanismhence UIs must be designed to support both limited touch gestures and the use of assistive devices. MotorEase adapts computer vision and text processing techniques to enable a semantic understanding of app UI screens, enabling the detection of violations related to four popular, previously unexplored UI design guidelines that support motor-impaired users, including: (i) visual touch target size, (ii) expanding sections, (iii) persisting elements, and (iv) adjacent icon visual distance. We evaluate MotorEase on a newly derived benchmark, called MotorCheck, that contains 555 manually annotated examples of violations to the above accessibility guidelines, across 1599 screens collected from 70 applications via a mobile app testing tool. Our experiments illustrate that MotorEase is able to identify violations with an average accuracy of ≈90%, and a false positive rate of less than 9%, outperforming baseline techniques. • Software and its engineering → Software testing and debugging; Software design engineering.

High-intensity nanosecond pulse electric fields (nsPEF) can preferentially induce various effects, most notably regulated cell death and tumor elimination. These effects have almost exclusively been shown to be associated with nsPEF waveforms defined by pulse duration, rise time, amplitude (electric field), and pulse number. Other factors, such as low-intensity post-pulse waveform, have been completely overlooked. In this study, we show that post-pulse waveforms can alter the cell responses produced by the primary pulse waveform and can even elicit unique cellular responses, despite the primary pulse waveform being nearly identical. We employed two commonly used pulse generator designs, namely the Blumlein line (BL) and the pulse forming line (PFL), both featuring nearly identical 100 ns pulse durations, to investigate various cellular effects. Although the primary pulse waveforms were nearly identical in electric field and frequency distribution, the post-pulses differed between the two designs. The BL's post-pulse was relatively long-lasting (~50 µs) and had an opposite polarity to the main pulse, whereas the PFL's post-pulse was much shorter (~2 µs) and had the same polarity as the main pulse. Both post-pulse amplitudes were less than 5% of the main pulse, but the different post-pulses caused distinctly different cellular responses. The thresholds for dissipation of the mitochondrial membrane potential, loss of viability, and increase in plasma membrane PI permeability all occurred at lower pulsing numbers for the PFL than the BL, while mitochondrial reactive oxygen species generation occurred at similar pulsing numbers for both pulser designs. The PFL decreased spare respiratory capacity (SRC), whereas the BL increased SRC. Only the PFL caused a biphasic effect on trans-plasma membrane electron transport (tPMET). These studies demonstrate, for the first time, that conditions resulting from low post-pulse intensity charging have a significant impact on cell responses and should be considered when comparing the results from similar pulse waveforms.

Malaria is a devastating parasitic infectious disease with an enormous impact on public health and economic growth, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Besides advances in anti-malarial drugs and vaccine development, a successful malaria eradication program relies on controlling the mosquito vector. In this study, we pursue a novel approach for malaria vector control by inhibiting an enzyme important for ensuring reproductive success of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae. The enzyme, A. gambiae transglutaminase 3 (AgTG3), catalyzes the cross-linking of its native substrate Plugin, which is then transferred to a female mosquito in a coagulated mass known as the mating plug. Interfering with AgTG3-catalyzed mating plug formation prevents efficient sperm storage, with a direct consequence on fertility. This study demonstrates that the mutation of a highly conserved cysteine residue in AgTG3 (Cys323) abolishes its cross-linking activity without disrupting other properties of the enzyme such as protein folding and oligomeric assembly. These results suggest that Cys323 is an active site residue and support the design of specific inhibitors targeting this site as a promising strategy to reduce the malaria disease burden worldwide.

Abstract This paper outlines a new approach to cultural awareness training, the Individual Differences Approach to Diversity Awareness (IDADA). IDADA is distinguished from other approaches in three ways: (a) it eliminates the need to characterise cultures, (b) it addresses unfair discrimination of any kind (e.g., weight, height, attractiveness), (c) it teaches employees to become aware of how their attitudes affect organisational performance, and (d) it focuses on job requirements. Initial evidence supports the validity of the model. The paper also introduces a new measure of diversity-openness called the Ideal Employee Inventory. Preliminary reliability and validity evidence for the measure is provided.