2017 Berea College Research Symposium

The 17th annual Berea Undergraduate Research Symposium (BURS), held this fall the same weekend as the Berea College Trustees (of which Rocky Tuan is a member) visit campus. This has been organized by the science programs in the past but participation is open to all members of the college community. In recent years we have structured the symposium with both talks and poster presentations as well as a plenary session.

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The program for Fall 2017 will be held on Friday, October 20th. The 2017 BURS will start in the afternoon with student oral presentations, continue with student poster presentations, and end with a plenary talk by Dr. Rocky Tuan, Berea College Alumnus and Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Abstract - Skeletal disorders, including osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, present a significant disease burden for the general population, and are specifically associated with space flight, such as accelerated bone loss. We have recently developed a 3D microphysiological system (MPS), utilizing adult stem cells, biomimetic materials, and 3D printing technologies, that mimics osteochondral tissues. The microfluidically perfused MPS bioreactor can accommodate both stem cell-engineered tissues and primary osteochondral tissues, and is amenable to high-throughput screening and testing of potential therapeutics for bone and cartilage health. The MPS is particularly suitable as an on-board experimental model to study the accelerated skeletal pathologies observed during space flight, as well as a high utility system applicable for predictive toxicology and drug development for skeletal tissues, both on the ground and in space.

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We will start at 2:30 PM with two simultaneous oral presentation sessions (15 minutes each) in rooms 101 and 106 of the Science Building. The sessions are grouped by theme as much as possible. The poster session starts at 3:00 and is held in the lobby of the science building with posters from various fields (previous posters from chemistry, biology, physics, psychology, sociology, education, African American Studies, economics, industrial arts, computer science, physical education & health, and mathematics). All students who pursued substantial research projects over the previous year are encouraged to present their research.

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We have been hosting the BURS since 2001 and have records of participants going back to 2007 online (see links to the left).

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Students and faculty interested in attending or participating in the 2017 BURS should either contact Jay Baltisberger or Anes Kovacevic of the chemistry program. Alternatively a student may elect to register online via the link on the Chemistry department web server.

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Combinatorial games have the property that there are exponentially large number of possible outcomes. Therefore, the players cannot reasonably investigate all outcomes when searching for the the best overall winning strategy at a particular point in the gameplay. We examined a simplified version of a partizan game called “A Little Bit of Aggression” in which the playing board consists of a ring of territories. The goal is to place armies first and then to attack in such a way as to win. A successful attack neutralizes an opponent’s territories, and a player can only do that if the sum of the armies in neighbor territories exceed that of the opponent. Winning consists of holding on to as many territories as possible at the end of attacking. We created a system that uses a point mechanism to evaluate the effectiveness of specific moves in order to decide the optimal given a specific layout of the gameboard. Our proof of concept system is able to make reasonably good moves in response to a human player. Our plans are to extend the point evaluation system to machine learning in order to optimize for the best possible outcome for the game.

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Registration for the 103rd Kentucky Academy of Sciences Meeting should follow this link KAS Registration

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