The Mariposa Galaxy is a high red-shift galaxy that spans 200 kiloparsecs and contains a turbulent Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) at its core. Surrounding this AGN is a nebula referred to as the Mariposa Nebula. Building on Becca McClain's 2022 honors thesis, I contributed to ongoing research under Professor Ryan Trainor’s direction. My focus was on analyzing emission lines in the nebula using data from the Keck Cosmic Web Imager for comparison with previous measurements from the MOSFIRE instrument. These data, forming a three-dimensional cube with two spatial and one spectral axis, allowed for detailed analysis. I extracted emission lines from two slits and interpolated data within the spectral cubes to enhance resolution and accuracy. These efforts advance our understanding of the nebula's processes and the nature of its AGN.  This project was supported by funding from the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement.

Project Mentor:  Professor Ryan Trainor, Department of Physics and Astronomy

The bones of every animal are full of minerals, and the main inorganic constituent is apatite (Ca10(PO4)6OH2), while the rest of the bone is collagen. Apatite in bones contains carbonate (CO₃²⁻), and can be found in three different locations, which are classified as A-, B-, and A’- type. A-type and A’-type carbonate can be found in the mineral’s channel, where A’-type substitutes for a sodium ion. B-type carbonate replaces a phosphate ion. This study focuses on the different percentages of each type of carbonate found in a variety of deproteinated animal bones, including mice, rats, rabbits, and turtles. Using FT-IR spectrometry and Grams/AI programming, graphical representations of the percentages of the varieties of carbonate have led to the understanding that B-type and A’-type carbonate are the main constituent of bone matter. This represents a foundation for future studies involving the mineral composition of other animal bones. This project was supported by funding from the Yoder Research Fund.

Project Mentor:  Charles A. Dana Emeritus Professor Claude Yoder, Department of Chemistry

Thioethers, molecules containing two carbon-sulfur bonds, have applications in organic synthesis, biochemistry, and materials chemistry. The Tasker lab recently discovered a new way of making these products with good yields by reacting an S-aryl thioformate with an alkene, using a radical initiator, and a hypervalent iodine reagent. This summer focused on exploring the scope of this anti-Markovnikov addition. During this process, we discovered that thiols rather than thioformates also produce high yields, which is an already well-known and simple way to synthesize thioethers. This drawback led us to investigate an interesting result we noticed; when using substituted allyl benzenes and thioformate, the reaction was moderately selective for Markovnikov addition for the first time. Furthermore, the combination of hypervalent iodine reagent and radical initiator shows promise for optimizing the synthesis of thioether derivatives using thiophenols. This project was supported by funding from the Organic Syntheses PUI Grant.

Project Mentor:  Professor Sarah Tasker, Department of Chemistry

In the past, reactions involving a dialkyl diselenide reagent at different temperatures have yielded nanoparticles with various shapes, phases, and regioselectivities. At higher temperatures, the resulting particle was wurtzite, Cu2-x(S,Se). We explored other dialkyl deselenides such as diphenyl diselenide, dibenzyl diselenide, and didecyl diselenide. Utilizing different characterization techniques such as XRD, TEM, SEM-EDS, and remote STEM-EDS, we observed how these post-synthetic transformations affected the behavior of our nanoparticles. Didecyl diselenide yielded a similar metastable wurtzite phase, while dibenzyl diselenide and diphenyl diselenide yielded an unstable berzelianite phase. Computational work was also done to calculate the bond strengths using ReaxFF force field with DFT calculations of each of the diorganyl diselenides. Anion exchange is suggested to be driven by dialkyl diselenides due to the similarity between their C-Se and Se-Se bond strengths, advancing the production of H2Se. Exploring helps discover more about the driving forces of anion exchange. This project was supported by funding from the F&M’s Hackman Summer Scholar Program and the National Science Foundation.

Project Mentor:  Professor Kate Plass, Department of Chemistry

Climate change has led to significant shifts in the flowering time of many plants, including the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). Previous work on this plant has indicated that warming temperatures have caused a shift toward earlier flowering in the recent past (2011-2016). My study expands upon the previous work by incorporating flowering time data from the years 1840 through 2024. These data came from herbarium specimens manually collected from the Mid-Atlantic Herbarium Consortium. Temperature and precipitation data were cached from NOAA and incorporated into multivariable linear regressions used to quantify statistical relationships. My results support previous findings that as time progresses, the flowering date is advancing by 3.93 days per year. Also, both temperature and precipitation were associated with this advance. This shift in flowering time may have significant ecological consequences. It may negatively influence the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) that obligately relies on milkweed (Asclepias) as hosts.  This project was supported by funding from the Ellen and Carl PIke Biology Endowment.

Project Mentor:  Teaching Professor Aaron Howard, Department of Biology

The unnatural amino acid 4-Cyano-L-Phenylalanine (pCNF), is an effective vibrational reporter used to probe local protein regions. pCNF contains a nitrile group which falls in a relatively quiet portion of the IR spectrum, with different stretching frequencies in polar and nonpolar environments. We hypothesize that pCNF could also be used to understand local folding/unfolding patterns in proteins as the local solvation environment of many sites change during protein unfolding. This summer, pCNF was incorporated into Adenylate Kinase at various sites using the Amber codon suppression methodology. By incorporating pCNF at a wide range of sites in the protein, we have collected temperature-dependent IR data suggesting that the protein does not globally unfold at the same temperature and the folding pattern is not reversible. Additionally, it has been determined that further purification of Adenylate Kinase on fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) is necessary to obtain homogeneous protein samples for IR studies. This project was supported by funding from the F&M’s Hackman Summer Scholar Program, the Eyler Biochemistry Fund and the Snavely Research Fund.

Project Mentors:  Professors Scott Brewer, Ken Hess and Christine Piro, Department of Chemistry

Children's education shapes their worldview and intellectual growth, but providing individualized guidance is often challenging due to limited resources. In today’s tech-driven world, social robots offer a way to address these challenges by providing more personalized learning experiences. A key aspect of this support involves developing Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) that can understand and respond to children’s emotional expressions during interactions. This study examines the emotional expressions of 32 children aged 5-7 years during interactions with the Misty robot and human instructors, analyzing 16 facial action units (AUs) with the OpenFace tool. The aim was to explore differences in AU rates to identify patterns in emotional expressions, including smiles. Findings revealed a significant negative correlation between AU25 (lip part) and age, gender differences in AU05 (upper lid raiser), and higher smile rates with the robot instructor. Smile rates also varied across different phases, highlighting the importance of context in emotional responses. This project was supported by funding from the F&M’s Hackman Summer Scholar Program.

Project Mentor: Professor Willie Wilson, Department of Computer Science

Athletics served as a significant medium through which Franklin and Marshall College and the Carlisle Indian School engaged with one another in the period from 1872 to 1917. F&M was the host of numerous athletic competitions against the Carlisle Indian School throughout the three decades in which Carlisle elected to field teams. Sport was a powerful instrument for upholding Carlisle’s mission.In the history of the Carlisle School’s athletic department, there are two Olympians, the invention of the forward pass (Football), and multiple professional athletes in both football and baseball to name just some of their major accomplishments. However, the entrance of the Carlisle student into American collegiate athletics brought along with it the frequent use of racialized and stereotypical imagery and language utilized in sports media, along with clear intent to utilize sports as a method of making civilized men out of Carlisle students. An examination of Carlisle Indian School archives and articles published in various Lancaster newspapers, reveals the power dichotomy between Native and White Americans in athletics. This project was supported by funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Project Mentors:  Professors Mary Ann Levine, Department of Anthropology and Eric Hirsch, Department of Earth and Environment.

This research explores the formation and evolution of galaxies by building a statistical model to analyze high-redshift nebular emission lines. It extends the work initiated by Charles Reisner in his undergraduate thesis, where he utilized the Cloudy spectral synthesis code and Monte Carlo-Markov Chain (MCMC) algorithms to simulate and compare spectral data with observational results from the CECILIA survey. I focused on refining this model by adjusting key parameters, such as hydrogen density, spectral energy distribution, and metallicity percentages, to enhance its predictive accuracy. The ultimate goal was to bridge the gap between theoretical simulations and empirical observations, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of galaxy formation processes. This poster presents the methodology, key findings, and the potential implications of our work. This project was supported by funding from the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement.

Project Mentor:  Professor Ryan Trainor, Department of Physics and Astronomy

My work this summer has been focused on understanding and implementing the Python package riptide-ffa in order to search for long period pulsars in FAST and Parkes telescope data. Riptide is a pulsar searching script that utilizes the Fast Folding Algorithm (FFA) to identify and single out periodic radio signals characteristic of pulsars. Finding more long period pulsars would aid general pulsar research in understanding pulsar demographics, formation, and firing mechanisms. My ultimate goal was to utilize Riptide to search for long period signals indicative of pulsars in data from a FAST search of M31. Our preliminary results revealed no new pulsars in the survey, but the data will need to be run again at a larger range of dispersion measures to confirm this. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholar Program and the National Science Foundation.

Project Mentor:  Professor Fronefield Crawford, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Howard White Wolf Chawip was a member of the Comanche nation, who was part of the first group of children removed from their indigenous homelands and transported to Carlisle Indian School. In an effort to integrate into mainstream American society, Chawip participated in the school band and received instruction in the shoemaking trade. While at Carlisle, Chawip participated in the Outing Program and was among the first students to be placed in Lancaster County. Chawip spent the rest of his life navigating his experiences and identities at Carlisle. He first tried to keep the “white man’s way in dress” but ended up rejecting it for the “Indian way.” He continued down a path of alcoholism and hardship until he converted to Christianity after joining his family at a mission. Carlisle Indian School harmed Chawip by removing him from his community and stripping him of his culture. This project was supported by funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Project Mentors:  Professors Mary Ann Levine, Department of Anthropology and Eric Hirsch, Department of Earth and Environment.

Based on the second law of thermodynamics, this study will assume the movement of particles in a closed space and simulate it with code. Based on the simulated data, this study will derive the entropy increase expression of particles diffusing in a closed system. This project was supported by funding from the F&M’s Hackman Summer Scholar Program.

Project Mentor:  Professor Calvin Stubbins, Department of Physics and Astronomy

A retelling of Frank Morris's known life helps us better understand the student experience of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School - an aspect of reckoning with the now-denounced parts of Lancaster history. Like many of his peers, Frank attended Carlisle as a teenage orphan, and went on outing to Lancaster to work with, and thus become like, the local white populace. His story also shows the struggle of reckoning with a lost history. Like most of his peers, the only surviving records on Frank are Carlisle's basic administrative book-keeping information like attendance records, health examinations, and parental information. The only appearance of him after his discharge and return back home - due to sickness - in all known surviving records, is "dead" on a standard former student check up. For their sake, we have to show how lost stories like his obscure a systematic cultural genocide to which Frank Morris was a victim. This project was supported by funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Project Mentors:  Professors Mary Ann Levine, Department of Anthropology and Eric Hirsch, Department of Earth and Environment.

From 1879 to 1918, the Carlisle Indian School operated under the institutionalized philosophy of “kill the Indian, save the man.” Throughout these 39 years, individuals associated with F&M, and the institution itself, had a wide variety of interactions with Carlisle and its students. Oneida student Julia Powless was sent on “outing” to the house of President Emeritus E.V. Gerhart. Trustee John C. Hager and his wife were “patrons” to at least six Carlisle girls. And from at least 1892 to 1917, F&M and Carlisle competed against one another athletically, necessitating financial transactions between the schools. These are just three examples of complex interactions between individuals and institutions, and of a history that aids no one if kept in the dark. Therefore, this presentation reports on preliminary findings of the Reckoning With Lancaster initiative, as they pertain to F&M and Carlisle. This project was supported by funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Project Mentors:  Professors Mary Ann Levine, Department of Anthropology and Eric Hirsch, Department of Earth and Environment.

We began the calculation of one of the last remaining contributions to the energy levels of muonium (the electron-muon bound system) at order alpha^7. Specifically, we worked on the contribution from three-loop processes having three photons exchanged between the electron and muon accompanied by a single virtual-photon radiative correction on the electron line. We identified all the Feynman graphs that contribute to this process and completed the first step in their evaluation: working out the gamma-matrix traces for the various graphs. We grouped the graphs into twenty groups having the same denominator structure and simplified each group using the "integration by parts" identities. We identified the relatively small number of "master integrals" that will need to be evaluated. The next step in the process is the evaluation of these master integrals, which is the subject of ongoing work.  This project was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

Project Mentor:  William G. and Elizabeth R. Simeral Emeritus Professor Gregory Adkins, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Post-synthetic transformation introduces structural and compositional complexity to nanomaterials with minimal shape, size, and crystal structure perturbation. Selenium anion exchange is a recently developed post-synthetic transformation that creates metastable phases of copper selenide from non-stoichiometric copper sulfide nanoparticles. Diphenyl diselenide and didodecyl diselenide are currently known to promote anion exchange, though the exchange pathway is unknown. Bond dissociation energies of various diorganyl diselenide molecules can be determined through simulations on a reactive force field, ReaxFF, and Amsterdam Density Functional, ADF. Informed by the carbon-selenium and selenium-selenium bond strengths, predictions can be drawn to determine a plausible range of bond dissociation energies that promote selenium anion exchange. Hopefully, this range can be used to examine other diorganyl diselenide molecules to identify their likelihood of encouraging selenium anion exchange without requiring physical reagents, setup/cleanup, and reaction time inside the laboratory. This project was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

Project Mentor:  Professor Kate Plass, Department of Chemistry

Molybdenum has been used as a paleoproxy to better understand past oceanic redox conditions. The oxidation state of molybdenum provides information about what type of redox environment it was in when it precipitated, but how it transitions from the aqueous to the solid phase is not well understood. This research simulates sulfidic marine conditions by generating iron sulfides and adding ammonium tetrathiomolybdate to them after aging times of 2 hours, 24 hours, or 45 hours, all in oxygen-free environments. The concentrations of iron and sulfide were kept constant for every experiment and pH was maintained at 8.1 ± 0.3. Every experiment with added molybdenum had a counterpart experiment with FeS controls only, which were aged for the same amount of time. Both the resulting liquid and solid phases were analyzed to better understand the process of molybdenum capture into the solid phase. Although the PXRD results were inconclusive for the solid phase, ICP analysis of the aqueous phase showed the removal of aqueous molybdenum to the solid under all conditions. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholar Program and the National Science Foundation.

Project Mentor:  Professor Jennifer Morford, Department of Chemistry

In this project, we observe how yarn samples stretch under varying amounts of external force. The properties of the knitted object, such as the elasticity or the bending modulus, are significant features from the knitting pattern (the topology of the stitches). Our ability to model knitted fabrics depends on knowledge of those properties. Part of the work this summer involved measuring the bending modulus of 11 different types of yarn. To do this, we had to design an experiment to carefully measure how yarn strands bend under their own weight and model that bending to extract the modulus. We present the method and the exact process of the measurement and how this property will be helpful in the overall picture of the project with the compressibility and the stress & strain measurements.  This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholar Program.

Project Mentors:  Professors Etienne Gagnon and Amy Lytle, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Many reef-building corals form symbiotic partnerships with single-celled photosynthetic algae where they provide the coral with energy in exchange for protection. When water temperatures rise, the symbiosis can break down, resulting in coral bleaching. Previously we crystallized the metabolic enzyme GAPDH from Acropora millepora, a stony coral. Currently we are attempting to crystallize the comparable enzyme from a variety of algal symbionts, which vary in their thermal tolerance. The GAPDH enzyme from Cladocopium is thermally unstable, whereas the Durusdinium enzyme retains its activity at elevated temperatures. We are interesting in learning what the structural basis for this difference might be. By measuring the activity of the enzymes across a range of pH, we identified that the greatest activity was seen in a citrate buffer at pH 5.5. When this relatively acidic buffer was used as the lysis buffer, we were able to obtain crystals of both GAPDH enzymes. This project was supported by funding from the F&M’s Hackman Summer Scholar Program and the Fred Suydam Chemistry Student Research Endowment.

Project Mentor:  Professor Gabriel Brandt, Department of Chemistry

In the early 20th century Lancaster was a “wide open” city for vice–commercial sex, gambling, and drinking. Anti-vice reformers and investigators tried to eradicate these vices in Lancaster, as they did in other cities across the United States. This project uses the papers left behind by one group of investigators to explain the economics, geography, and politics of commercial sex in Lancaster in the early 1900s. We focused in particular on the life of a toddler who lived in a brothel in Lancaster in 1913. We uncovered her in the investigators’ unpublished reports from their interviews and travels throughout the brothels, bars, and streets of Lancaster. This toddler is now the topic of two episodes of The Lancaster Vice Files podcast. The first episode is “Fair Elise, Child of the Brothel.” It has been edited by the sound engineer and will be released when part II is finished. We used several sources to reconstruct the life of this toddler: the unpublished papers of the undercover investigators (1913), historic Lancaster newspapers, the census, and Lancaster County estate records. This past summer the project aimed to understand brothels as homes for displaced children. We now understand a brothel as a fairly positive place compared to other childcare options for impoverished, wage-earning mothers, such as unsafe “baby farms” and charity services, which sometimes involved illegal placements. We present the portrait of a brothel as a surrogate family, which ultimately allowed the biological family of the toddler to reunite, after significant struggles. We believe this story counters assumptions about brothels as dangerous and immoral places in the early 1900s, although we also recognize the violence and coercion that were also part of brothel life. This project was supported by funding from the David Schuyler Urban Studies Fellowship Endowment, F&M’s Committee on Grants Program and the Center for Sustained Engagement with Lancaster.

Project Mentor:  Professor Alison Kibler, Department of American Studies

A central challenge in pharmaceutical design is balancing drug efficacy against its potential side effects. One strategy to minimize side effects involves engineering a version of the drug that is highly specific for its target. To design more specific drugs, it can be crucial to visualize, at the atomic scale, precisely how the compound binds to its target. In this study, we examined a potential anti-cancer compound known for its severe side effects, by incubating it with its purified human enzyme target and then crystalizing the complex. X-ray diffraction experiments conducted at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (Brookhaven National Laboratory) seem to confirm the covalent modification of a cysteine residue at the active site. Structural refinement is ongoing, with additional experiments planned to confirm these preliminary findings and improve the spatial resolution. This project was supported by funding from the F&M’s Hackman Summer Scholar Program.

Project Mentor:  Professor Gabriel Brandt, Department of Chemistry

Solid tumors are particularly dependent on glycolysis, the metabolic pathway that turns sugars into energy, whereas normal tissue is better able to utilize alternative energy sources. Attempts to use this sugar dependence against cancer cells have often been derailed by the toxicity of such drugs. There appears to be a narrow therapeutic window between efficacy and toxicity. Inhibitors of the glycolytic enzyme glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase have been reported that permanently inactivate the enzyme through covalent modification. Although these compounds have been effective in animal models, they have shown significant toxicity in clinical trials. In this work, we combined structural analysis with activity assays and synthesis of related compounds to try to understand the precise interactions between the compounds and their human enzyme target. We compare the inhibitory activity of a variety of compounds and show progress toward the synthesis of a perillyl ester analog of a known covalent GAPDH inhibitor. This project was supported by funding from the Eyler Biochemistry Fund and the Fred Suydam Chemistry Student Research Endowment.

Project Mentor:  Professor Gabriel Brandt, Department of Chemistry