Cohoes City School District, Board of Education Meeting, January 19, 2022

001Thanks PJ for your Chrome. It doesn't work. All right, so this is live and it should be working and it's picking up. Yeah, I think it's good. I think I think we're good. Mr. Pasco, are you good? I got it to work on my Chromebook, but not the district one. I can start. All right, we're gonna start. Good evening everybody. Good evening. Good evening. Um I'm so excited to welcome you here to our annual science symposium. Um this is a wonderful culminating event. Although it doesn't necessarily get the numbers of other end of year events, it's a very important time for our students to reflect on years of research that they've done and years of hard work that they have put in. While I've always respected and understood the symposium and been highly engaged, um

002I don't know if I ever really understood how much work goes into the research until I became a student of research myself over the past few years. And um in a few weeks I'll defend my dissertation and as a doctoral student I understand peer review peer review journal articles like I get it it's painful right I get that you're u thinking about APA7 and the different styles in which you have to write and organize and so I can tell you with certainty that the work that these students are doing at the high school level is essentially synonymous with the work that I'm doing in a doctoral level master's program. That's incredible to think about that 17 year olds, 16 year olds, maybe 18 year olds are doing the work of individuals earning their doctoral degree.

003So that comes with the hard work and dedication of our science department, the partnerships with local universities, colleges, researchers, mentors, and just the commitment to pushing ourselves into areas of educational academics that are rigorous, that are challenging, and that push students to explore new heights. And so I'm so proud to stand as a high school principal and be part of such a symposium event. I've always been proud, but I think I get it a little bit more and respected a little bit more now as a as a student of of the work as they say in the program. So, congratulations to all of our students that are here tonight. Um, we have five student presentations this evening, which is a high number of graduating seniors. And so, I'm very proud and excited to see the

004work of the seniors. At this time, I would like to introduce Mr. Mike Kasco who is the teacher for this program and has been engaged in in doing this work for several years. So Mr. Costco [Applause] thank you. So, um, this Laura always says that she's not going to steal my thunder, and then I feel like she does, but, um, so we we switched orders just so, uh, so if you're following our order events, it's a little bit backwards. Um, because I always like to give you guys a little bit of idea of what the program is for anybody that doesn't know. Um, so this is a three-year program. Um, most classes, you know, you go for one year and you're done and then you don't have to see the teacher anymore. Um these guys

005uh get to see me for most of them four years in a row. Um so that's fun for them. But um they have to commit to something for three years. So the first year is them trying to figure out what they want to do. Uh they read journal articles. By the time they are in end of October, beginning of November of their sophomore year, they are reading peer-reviewed journal articles. um usually by the end of their sophomore year, beginning of their junior year, they are reaching out to research professionals in the field of research that they are doing. Um so they are emailing people and asking them for help, which um is not an easy thing to do. Um especially if you've text messaged any teenagers, um it's a little bit different of a communication

006than text messaging. So we go through the process of learning how do you communicate with someone? How do you make sure you do it professionally? Um, and how do you get to that point that you're comfortable having a conversation with these people? Because I help them for the beginning, but my seniors, I don't I don't check their emails anymore. They're often they're even by the end of their junior year, they're communicating with researchers by themselves, and they're expected to be able to do that. Um, through their junior and into their senior year, they put together their own research project. So these are research projects that might be modeled after something that they've read. Um but nobody has done it before in most of those cases. So this is something that again you're doing at the

007master's or PhD level. You're creating their own research project and then they complete that research project and then they get the opportunity to present for you. So part of today um is the project and it is making sure that they are fulfilling that part of the program but more importantly it's an opportunity them for them to show off and you guys get to see and be a part of their work for three years and their time for three years and it's not something that um they they take lightly or I take lightly and they have done a really good job. Um, so at the end, um, I always talk a little bit more about it, but I would like them to have the opportunity to do that, um, and present to you. So, this will

008be a little bit longer. Normally, we only have one except for when Brandon was in it and we had like six people and we had to do breakout sessions. He just walked in the back, I saw. Um, but other than that, we usually have like two or three students. So, it'll be a little bit longer in here because they we want to make sure they all get their time and get a chance to present. Um, but our first person was always a keynote speaker and I will allow Sha Fonte to present for her. [Applause] Hello everybody. Um, I will be presenting my mentor Dr. Karen Rogers. Karen Rogers is an associate professor in the earth environmental sciences department at Renselier Polytechnic Institute and director of the Renolier Astrobiology Research and Education Center. also known as

009rare. With expertise in geochemistry and geomicrobiology, Dr. Rogers investigates the planetary conditions that foster the emergence of life on Earth and can generate habitability throughout the solar system. Building on her experiments experience exploring life in extreme environments, Dr. Rogers focuses on how the early Earth gave rise to the first biomolelecules and eventually to life. Her lab focuses on designing novel experimental devices that replicate geologic systems including deep sea hydrothermal vents, impact screeners, and terrestrial pools and hot springs to explore how simple molecules can be transformed into the precursors for life. Dr. Rogers is also co-lead of NASA's prebiotic chemistry and early Earth environmental environments condesium and was recently appointed as co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences. Dr. Rogers grew up in New Hampshire and received an AB in

010Earth and in Planetary Sciences and Environmental Science and Public Policy in 1996 from Harvard University. She completed an MS in geological and environmental sciences at Stanford University in 2001. She went on to receive an AM and PhD in earth and planetary sciences from Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Rogers was a post-doal scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and a research scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science before joining the faculty at RPI in 2013. I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Rogers throughout the summer to complete my research project. So now I'll let you guys meet her. She's a wonderful person. So Dr. Rogers, come on up. [Applause] Awesome. Amazing. Um, sorry. I I think I'm a little intimidated by all of you. Um, what you guys do here in this science

011research um, sort of program. It's phenomenal. I've I I'll tell you a little bit about myself and I have far too many slides and I'm going to go as fast as I can because I really want to hear from the students. But I want to say I've I've been everywhere. I I I go everywhere. I listen to all the people and this inspires me. This right here, the students right there. This is what inspires me. And so I know it can seem like, oh, how do we get, you know, real research? That's what it's called, right? Like real research. How do we get that into high schools? How do we how do we give our children an experience that isn't something that we make up just for students in high school? Well, this is it.

012And this is this I mean, please don't ever stop. I I have to say thank you. Is it soon to be Dr. Laura? Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations. Not easy to get there. And I I really want to thank um Michael who has this is not an easy thing to sort of shepherd this program. I mean this is a lot of work and so you know I don't know do do you like cookies cookies? Um chocolate I I don't know but but please because this is inspiring to me. I go to I go to work at RPI every day and I have undergraduates and graduate students and doctoral students and postocs and I go to the nationalmies in DC and I talk to people at NASA but I can tell you right now that this is what

013I'm inspired by. So please just keep going with this. This is this is amazing. Okay, so I'm not supposed to talk forever and yet I've already like not even started. I'm terrible. Um okay, so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what we do in the lab. um research for sort of life's or origins, but I wanted to start with a little bit of a picture of who a scientist is and who I am. Um because I think in general it can be it can be a little different than what than what you might think. And so um there I am. Yeah. So I'm a lot of things that are also sort of not a scientist, right? So I'm a I'm a daughter. I'm an aunt. I'm a great aunt. Um, my

014little little ones. Um, my great nephew calls me great aunt Karen and that's too long. So, I'm Gakapak. Um, an answer to Gak. Um, I'm a quilter. I'm a gardener. I'm a kayaker. What else do I have up there? I'm an adviser. As you can see, I'm kind of a dog lover. So, you know, scientist fits into all of that, but it's all one sort of whole big package. And so particularly for the students who are going off and trying to think about what they're going to do for the rest of their lives, make sure it's a whole life, right? Make sure you do all your things. I was watching the slides go by and you know like that you're all sort of in clubs and playing sports. Keep doing all of those things too,

015right? You get to be a whole person and that's really important. It makes you it makes you a better person, but it will also make you a better scientist. What quilting makes me a better scientist. It just it just does. So, I I encourage you all to sort of keep with that. So, I'm going to really quickly go through sort of my story. Um, I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire on a Christmas tree farm. Um, when I was a junior in high school, so you guys really know what that's like. Um, I was thinking about going to college, right? And I was trying to figure out where to apply and my guidance counselor came to me and he said, "Well, Karen, where are you going to apply?" I was like, "Well,

016I don't know. my two sisters went to the University of New Hampshire, right? It's 20 minutes down the road from me. Um, so I was going to apply there and he said, "Well, have you like have you thought about applying to Harvard?" And like, true story, you're not going to believe me, but it really is a true story. I looked at him and I said, "Well, I've never heard of it. Where's that?" Um, to just to give you a little context, I I grew up on a Christmas tree farm. I understood Christmas trees. I understood my dog. I understood crackers. I I certainly understood my dad's garden, but I wasn't sort of all into this like what the academic world is like. I had no idea. Um you know, but but yet I applied and

017you know some what are what is it like 16 months later you show up in Cambridge, Mass and oh my what like what a shock and it's been a quite a journey since then. So I did my undergrad at Harvard and then I decided that the east coast was interesting and I should see the west coast. So I went to Stanford for my masters and then I decided to stop in the middle of the country. So I went to WashU for my PhD. Um to be honest I really missed my mom and dad and the rest of my family. So I did a posttock back at what's on Cape Cod which was only a few hours away. Um and then I went back to Missouri. Um I'm not you know that was a rough one

018because I should have known how humid it was and about the ice storms but I went back to Missouri for a little while. Um, I came back to the east coast and I was in DC for a while. Um, and then I finally ended up here at RPI in 2013. It has been a journey. But this isn't the travel I want to tell you about. The travel I want to tell you about is what I've been able to do and been able to see as a scientist. This is where I've been. I think I'm actually currently missing a few dots because I haven't updated the slide for the last two years. But I got this I was actually a math major when I started and I got this like I was I had to take

019some intro geology course, right? And we went outside and I was sitting there and I was like in my sophomore year and I was doing linear algebra and you know differential equations and this was like really hard. And I was inside in my dorm all the time or in the library and that's all I did. I took this geology course. We went outside and oddly it reminded me of the Christmas tree farm I grew up on. Um, and then I became a geologist because I decided it was like way more fun to like be outside. Um, and I've kind of been outside of the And so I I have a bunch of slides here of places I've been um to go outside and do science. I was fascinated by how the natural world works. That's

020kind of just what I've done and I can't seem to get away from it. Um, I've worked on sort of contamination. Um, in northern Quebec, I've worked on some shallow marine hydrothermal systems. Um, this is Etna. So, I've been I've been to Italy several times. It turns out cool. It's a really great place to go see volcanoes. And so, volcanoes are almost always in cool places. So, I study a lot of volcanoes now. Um, this is in Nicaragua. Um, all kinds of fun in Nicaragua. You got to be a little careful, but it's all good. Active volcano there. Here's some more of that. And then of course I also get to go look at the volcanoes at the bottom of the ocean. This has been just the opportunity sort of of a lifetime to to

021do all of these things and see all of these places. And it, you know, I'm inspired by all of you, but what gets me out of bed every morning is like I don't understand that. Like I I don't get all that. It's a fascinating place. I went to I went to Yellowstone when I was I don't know it's like 20 years ago and I walked up to this hotring which if I put my foot into it I will lose my foot and everybody I was with studying the microbes living in there. I'm like okay so foot not so much but microbes super happy. I don't understand that. So for all of the students whether I like I know we have the seniors over here but for the for I don't know are there any like

022freshman and sophomores here who are like entering this program. Yes. No, we should get them next time and we should make them come. Listen to me. But this is the thing like I I'm asking the same questions I asked 40 years ago. How how does that work? That's the coolest thing about science. How does that work? So that's that's largely what we do. So we ask these questions. I'm going to try and speed up. I know I don't have nearly enough time. We ask these questions, right? So are we alone? Is there life elsewhere in the universe? How did it start? Should we go look for life? if we should where should we look because we probably can't get to every single planet in right so where where should we go look this is what

023I do so today I'm going to tell you just a little bit about what we do in the astrobiology center at RPI and then I'm going to tell you how we do it and that's the most important part so I'm going to kind of go through these a little fast so we think about how life started kind of a crazy thing to think about this is a picture of a micro has lots of bits when we think about micro microbes it's probably you know microbes are like the smallest most primitive organism when we think about microbes we think of their parts right they have DNA and proteins and membranes and metabolic cycles and so when we think about the origin of life we think about how did we make the parts and in fact each

024of those parts has parts and so we try and figure out how the parts of the parts get made on the early earth before there was life so how do you make a peptide How do you make an amino acid? How do you make a sugar? You are actually all made of amino acids and sugars and fats. I hate to tell you. I mean, you're mostly bags of water. So, don't feel too bad about yourselves. But other than the bags of water, it's, you know, sugars and fats and and that's about it. And so, how do you make those before life is around you? That's what we try and study. But the perspective I have is a little different because I I was raised in school as a geologist, the same as your teacher was

025as a geologist. We think about the earth all the time. How does a natural environment do that? And so what I try and do is I try and build the earth, all the little bits of it in the lab because I can't actually go outside every day of the week, every single minute. I can't like get all of the students, all of my colleagues outside all the time. So we try and build the earth in the lab. Um and then we try and interrogate it. And so we do this. Turn it up. Okay. It's still behind him. Um, we're building a brand new lab. Um, and so this is this was the brand new lab 3 months ago. It actually has a bunch of stuff in it now. And I'm going to just walk you

026through a few of the environments that we built and what they look like, how we build them, and then I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we do. But I'm really actually going to leave it to Shay's talk to to do the science of what we do. I'm just giving the overview. So I have some pictures of what we think the early Earth was like. Um, this is just sort of the early Earth, not blue at all. Sky probably orange, ocean probably green. Um, and this is probably what it looked like at the bottom. This is actually a picture um off the coast of Kawaii. We also probably had some emergent land, right? So, mountains and things, but those mountains and sort of emergent land probably had a bunch of hot springs

027on them. So, what you should be thinking is something more like this, but of course without the trees. The early Earth before life started also was regularly pelted sort of by incoming meteorites, right? And so this is a picture of what that early Earth might have looked like with meteorites constantly hitting it. Um, and of course, so what we're trying to replicate is an environment like this. And then of course at the bottom of the oceans where we're making new parts of the planet, um, it turns out it's hard to make new parts of the planet. You essentially have to melt rock and then erupt it at the bottom of the ocean. And so when you do that, you get sort of these deep sea hydrothermal vents. And this is one of the potential places

028where life might have started. And so now we're trying to replicate a place like this. And so what we do in the lab is we literally try and build all of those things in the lab. So I have a few pictures of that. And so we can do this, we do this in mostly high temperature and high pressure devices. And so, yes, parents, when your students are in the lab with me, we're very, very careful. We have lots of safety and they're never alone because I know when you think like high pressure, high temperature, G gee, that sounds dangerous. It actually is, but we kind of we've been at this and so we we've got it. So, it's okay. Um, but we try and literally build hydrothermal systems, right? And so, we do this at

029pressures up to a thousand times surface pressure. We do this at temperatures up to 300 degrees. And so here's another example um of some of the pressure temperature devices we have. We also replicate surface areas of the of the early Earth. And so we can have different gases. The earlier Earth didn't have an atmosphere of nitrogen and CO2, no oxygen, really weird kind of stuff. Um and so we can replicate that in the lab, which changes the chemistry of everything. Oceanceans's different, lakes are different, rainwater is different, everything is different. And then we can also replicate these deep sea hydrothermal vents. I'm going to show you two of my favorite things that we've done in the lab recently. Um, this was last fall. We finally built a hydrothermal chimney and made it grow. So, this

030white one is our test chimney. You can see it over there on the right. But this one is the chimney made of iron and sulfur which is what we find today at the bottom of the ocean. And this is built over about a half an hour. So we actually built the hypothermal chimney. Go home, watch NOVA, right? Watch their like deep sea hydrothermal vents thing and then think to yourself, "Oh my goodness, I can like literally just hop across a river and build one of those myself." Yes, you can. And then you can ask it any question you want. Gee, what happens to my fats or my sugars or like my amino acids in something like that? That's why we build it. So, this is one of my favorite things that we've done recently is

031we built a chimney. Um, one of my other favorite things we've done is we're building an impact crater, right? Because if you can build a hydrothermal chimney, you can definitely build an impact crater. So, we're working on that. And so, here are sort of some of the things we do. This is just sort of a a static high pressure high temperature device. But if you look at impact craters, um, in this picture behind me, what you're seeing in that red arrow is a flow line of how water moves through an impact crater. And we looked at this, this is this, uh, that flow line was made by a colleague of mine. And we looked at this and said, "Oh my goodness, if meteorites come in with organic compounds on them, and those organic compounds might

032actually help us like develop life, what happens to them in this weird impact crater?" And the water moves. And it water it moves from one temperature and pressure to another temperature and pressure to a third temperature and pressure. And the rocks are different everywhere. So you can't just like like stuff this in a little beaker and stick it in the oven and be be done. Have to move it through these conditions. And so we're moving it through these conditions. And so this is what we envisioned. The picture on the bottom is this flowth through system. And then we built it. And this literally I was I was showing Michael earlier. I still have grease on my hands because we're building a brand new version of that thing. It's neater now. have to apply to be

033involved anymore. A super neat version of this um this afternoon. So, and then I ran one, which is why I'm a little late. So, this is what we do. We build pieces of the early Earth in the lab and then we ask those pieces questions. What can you do to start life? How is it that microbes might live in a vent system or a chimney? Do they like it? Do they not like it? Do they only like it at the edges where it's not so hot? Do they like it in the middle? We have no idea. But now we can ask questions. And so I have just a few things left to say. This is sort of my pause. I this and this really is for the students. This is a quote from Newton. You

034might have heard of the guy. Um and I think this is I actually have to turn around to read this. This one's important because this says that all of science isn't about me and what I've done, right? It's somewhat about what you're going to do, but it's more importantly even about the students who are going to be here in 10 and 15 and 30 years and what they're going to do because I I I it was my job to lay the path before you and now it's your job to lay the path for them. And so this is what he says. I think it's really fascinating. To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one human. He didn't say human, but we're going to go with that. um or even for any

035one age, it is much better to do a little with certainty and leave the rest for others that come after you than to explain all things. And so to me, science is this tapestry that gets built through time. We each contribute a little bit, a little tiny dot in some impressionist painting and eventually the the sort of the natural world evolves that we understand. And so this is something I really want you students to think about. But as I say this, this is the last thing I'm going to say and I promise I'll get out of here. The most important thing is that none of the science is about the hydrothermal vent chimney or about the high temperature pressure systems or the new lab I built. The science is about the people. People do science.

036regular normal human beings who quilt and grow gardens and pet their dogs and you know play flying football and whatever it is and who cook and who bake. Science is done by people. We think of it as this thing sometimes that is separate from us. But science is done by people and particularly for me the people that I work with to do the science are students. It's all of you. And so this is the best part of my life and this is why I love coming here. So this is I'm going to show you lots of pictures. They're just there's students, there postocs, there everyone. There's undergrads, there's high school students, everyone is in here because everyone contributes to all of that stuff you just saw. I don't do all of that all by myself.

037Are you kidding? I have to go home with my dog. You saw my dog. He's really cute, right? Like I No one can do this alone. And no one does this in a small amount of time. No one even does it inside a career. We just do a little bit and then we hand it off. And so with that, I'm actually going to stop and hand it off to all of the scientists who are coming up behind me because they're the ones who are going to take it forward. Thank you both. [Applause] Good evening everyone. My name is Ethan Beck and I'll be introducing Jackson Phelp who has spent three years researching the efficiency of 3D printed prosthetics. Jackson has been able to interact with professionals and companies in the prosthetic industry from all across

038the world because of the science research class. Jackson was also named saludiatoran of CHS class of 2025. He'll be graduating with a 99.94 GPA in a co in 82 college credits which is a new record for CHS. [Applause] Good good evening everyone. Today I'm going to be presenting my research on the efficiency of 3D printed lower limb prosthetics compared with traditional plaster lower run prosthetics. So to begin, one of the largest opportunities in the field of prosthetics is to greatly reduce the amount of time needed to fabricate lower limb prosthetics. A little bit of background on current production of lower lower limb prosthetics. The first step is that the patient's limb is wrapped in plaster or a fiberglass wrap. The second step is that the wrap is removed once it is dry. Then it is

039filled with plaster. That plaster is then used to create a positive model of the patient's residual limb. That plaster mold will take about 3 to 5 days for it to set up and dry before it can be modified. And then for the fifth step, the socket interface is then formed over the modified mold. And the sixth step is final fitting of the patient's prosthetic device. And any modifications will be done up to and including recasting with plaster from step one. Um, some of the pros to 3D printing lower than prosthetics. It allows for faster production. It takes less time to print prosthetics compared to to plaster production. It is also much cheaper as labor cost for 3D printing is reduced greatly. It also allows for rapid prototyping. Models can easily be modified instead of repeating

040those six steps stated on the slides previous, which all take days worth of work. It also allows for customization. 3D printed limbs can be easily customized from graphics to using different types of plastics to produce limbs like carbon fiber is greatly chosen as it is very light. And lightweight prosthetic limbs, they're they're much lighter and they move a lot easier. Some tools currently used by 3D printing to 3D print prosthetics, excuse me. Digital scanning utilizes LAR and the front-facing camera of an iPhone to scan a residual limb. Digital rectification software. It is also known as a slicer software. It converts a digital scan of a file that is able to be 3D printed. Large format 3D printers are also used as they are capable of printing sizes up to 19 in x 13 in x

04125 in and they print in speeds up to 400 mm per second. And for those that use the imp or the imperial system, it would be about 15.748 in per second. And then the purpose of this study is to determine if 3D printing lower limb prosthetics is more efficient than standard plastic production and to provide an outlook of the field of advancements currently taking place in the process of manufacturing without impacting the current standard of care. The objectives of this study were to collect data for both traditional plaster pros prosthetics and new 3D printed prosthetic technology. It was also to examine collected data as in time spent designing and manufacturing both plaster prosthetics as well as 3D printed prosthetics and to determine which process is more efficient. Data was collected from prosthetists who currently utilize

042plaster and/or 3D printing to produce prosthetic devices. data was collected only from certified prostatists and the American board of certified prostatists was used to verify certifications before they were questioned and a Google form was sent out to prostatists to ask the questions and then some of the questions that were asked on the Google form were what company clinic do you currently work for what is your current job title which process of plaster 3D printing do you currently use to fabricate prosthetic legs and there was an option for both on this question and then of the two process processes, which do you feel is more efficient? And then my my practice currently uses either scanning, digital rectification software, carving, 3D printing, or none of the above for prostatists that utilize plaster manufacturing. Number six was on

043average, how long in days does it take for a typical patient to receive a prosthetic leg from an initial consult to fitting? And number seven was if not using 3D printing, why not? If so, what has been the biggest advantages in terms of effort saved? some sources of data collection. I was able to attend the New York State chapter of American Academy orthotists and prostatist conference in May of 2024 that was held up in Saratoga. I was able to make collect five data points from that. I then sent out messages on the professional networking platform LinkedIn where I was able to receive two data points. And then the rest of my data came from emails that were sent to prostitists who you who stated it on their website that they currently utilize 3D printing in

044their daily workflow. And I received eight data points from that. And then the conversions for the data all data points were collected regarding how long in days or and weeks to produce a prosthetic limb and that was converted into terms of days using seven days per week and four weeks per month. Data analysis was used was done on the jamovi statistical analysis software. It was then used to an analyze time spent to manufacture pro a prosthetic leg. And onto my results. This first graph shows which processes used by prostatists to manufacture lower limb prosthetics. 76.5% of respondents utilized only 3D printing to manufacture prosthetic limbs. 17.6% of respondents utilized only plaster to manufacture prosthetic limbs. And finally, 5.9% of respondents utilized stated they utilize both plaster and 3D printing to manufacture prosthetics. Figure two shows

045which process of the two did they feel was more efficient and 93.3% of the respondents said that 3D pinning was more efficient. Meanwhile, while 6.7% of respondents stated plaster was more efficient. And figure three shows the tools that were utilized by processes to create lower prosthetics. 14 respondents utilize digital scanning. 14 also utilized visual rectification software which is also the slicing software. Nine respondents utilized 3D or carving, excuse me. 14 respondents utilized 3D printing and one responder one respondent stated that they did not use any of the tools in the category above as they primarily used plaster. Figure four shows my paired samples t test which analyzed the days it t took for a patient to receive their prosthetic device. And on this study there was a p value of242 meaning that this study had

046a 75.8% confidence interval. There was a for 3D printing there was a median of 24.5 with a standard deviation of 27.1 meaning 50% of the population took around 51 days to receive a limb on the high end and around 3 days on the low end to receive their limb. And for plaster had a median value of 36 with a standard deviation of 17.1 meaning 50% of the population took over 53 days to receive the limb and in the high end and around 19 days on the lower end. The biggest time-saving benefits of 3D printing are familiarity with machines, digital transferability of prosthetic skills, automation of socket fabrication, and allowing processes to work on other aspects of their jobs while their prosthetic device prints, for example, submitting paperwork to insurance companies. Some limitations to the study

047include unfamiliarity of a new technology as 3D printing is a very new technology and has yet to be fully accepted. Time spent by insurance companies to approve a prosthetic device. This was one of the largest limitations in the study and skewed data as a result of limitations due to these insurance companies and spreading new technology and reducing approval times is key to fully implementing 3D printing into the prosthetic industry. In conclusion, this study supports the hypothesis that 3D printing is more efficient than plaster for for prosthetic device manufacturing. And future research is definitely needed to be will definitely need to be done, including researching the time taken by insurance companies to approve manufacturing of prosthetic limbs for patients to hopefully decrease the time it takes for a patient to receive the prosthetic limb also without

048impacting the standard of care. And then one closing statement I have is that spreading information regarding new technologies is key to creating a new industry of prosthetic manufacturing which will better patient satisfaction and get them up walking faster and more efficiently. With that, does anybody have any questions? [Applause] Uh, hi my name is Jack P and I have the honor of presenting the next person I will present is Shay Montaine who has conducted research on the stability of prebiotic molecules in impact generated hydrothermal systems. Her mentor is Dr. Karen Rogers from RPI and she worked along PhD student Mary Herrera Perez. Uh in the fall she will attend Union College to study environmental engineering heading towards environmental law. She is also the valadictorian of the go high class of 2025. [Applause] Hi again. Um my

049name is Shay as you just heard and this is my project on the stability of macro prebiotic molecules in impact generated hydrothermal systems. So I will not get as close to as good as Dr. Rogers explained it. So bear with me. So first in order for life as we know to be formed a very specific group of molecules needs to be present on earlier. These include sugars, fatty acids, amino acids and nucleic acids which all create larger and more complex polymers including carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and DNA and RNA which all of you have heard of. Life as we know it makes use of these molecules to nourish itself and to reproduce. So an environment that is able to provide these molecules is essential to the early earth environments in order to create life. These essential

050molecules have been detected in meteorites and thus hypothesized to to be delivered to the early earth through impact events. Collisions that transferred these molecules significantly caused the Earth to have a diverse supply of materials, which may have allowed for the synthesis of more complex molecules, leading to the Earth's first organisms. So, one idea that has yet to be implemented is the idea that meteorite impacts may be able to generate these hydrothermal systems containing all the transferred molecules that I just told you about. These organic compounds need to be able to survive in high pressure, high pressure and high temperature environments within the hydrothermal systems in order to develop prebiotic chemical pathways. After impact, a series of events occurs which creates this system. Specifically, after melting and recristallization of the rock underneath the surface, a hydrothermal

051system is generated by the cooling process driven by water circul circulation. And then much energy from the impact from the meteorite as soon as it hits the earth is stored within the earth's surface which causes heat to allow the rocks to heat below and start a water circulation system. The rising and falling basic water circulation. So this energy now used is the fluid flow and cooling of the hydrothermal systems to allow it to fully stabilize and understand what has to happen in order to create these processes. In addition to the rocks being broken down into smaller solids after the impact system, creating pores and fractures that allow water rock reactions can actually change the composition of the rock found within these systems. So this change in composition and the rising temperature and elevated pressure can

052all determine the survivability of the transferred organic compounds from the meteorite. So all these carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and DNA and RNA can now be altered just like the one, two, three in that little um that diagram. Same thing happening here. So the purpose of this research is to investigate the potential breakdown of key biologically pre relevant precursor molecules, specifically proteins I used that may have been delivered to the Hadian Earth. from the Haiti nerf is just the very beginning. The study will evaluate the stability of ribos which is an amino acid under elevated temperature and pressure conditions which are characteristic of impact generated hydrothermal systems. If ribos is able to endure the elevated pressure and temperature replicated in this experiment then the molecule was also able to survive on the earth. If the concentration of

053rivals does not decrease dramatically, then there's a strong hope that these conditions allowed rivals to strive on the earlier. So just to recap kind of the purpose, the objective objectives of this experiment was to gain an understanding of if ribos is able to survive in this elevated temperature and pressure environment. Because if it didn't survive, then it wasn't on earlier. it couldn't have led to the to the first organisms. Next, we had to determine the rate at which biomolelecules decompose in a hydrothermal system just to see if the rate at which they compos decompose now also occurred then. And then we had to test if the conditions on prebiotic earth were mild enough for rivals not to decompose. So the the environment was too harsh then it was not able to thrive. Okay. Now on

054to the methodology which is what I did. So in this experiment a 15ml solution of dissolved ribos and distilled water was prepared. All of these experiments that I'm about to show you I have pictures on the next slide will be conducted in threes or a triplicate just to en ensure accuracy. And then also in this experiment, 1 milll of the solution was put into a plastic syringe with the needle tip. And in order to ensure that there was no leakage from the tip in the hell's bells in the pressure chamber, um aut rubber stopper was pushed onto the end just to make sure none could leak out. So these I have a little laser to show you. These are the syringes that were used. So they're all labeled in blue Sharpie towards the top. They're

055labeled in Rs and W's. So the three that are closest to your right um those went into the pressure chamber um and then retracted after and then the one with the W was water that was also put in there just to make sure there wasn't any inaccuracy and then the one all the way to the left that ribos was left on the lab bench just to make sure that it wasn't contaminated. It really it was really to see if ribos survives more or didn't decompose as much as in these conditions rather than the earlier. Okay. So after like I just said off after they were all secure they were placed into a fixed volume stainless steel pressure vessel. I'm pretty sure I have a picture on the next slide too. And that was filled with

056water because water can help pressurize and heat. Along with the triplicates, a plastic syringe only distilled water was also put into it. And then the positive control was the ribos left at room temperature and pressure. So around 64 to 74° F and one bar. Then after closing the vessel with proper technique, you have to screw it on really tight to make sure nothing comes out since it's being pressurized so much. Um the syringes were left undisturbed for 7 days at 80° C and 500 bar. So 500 times what we're sitting in right now. So, this is the pressure chamber right here. His name is Angus. Um, and they were put in there. Right here, it was screwed on super duper tight. And then back here, there's like a captain's wheel that we spin and spin

057and spin and that pushes the pressure into the vessel just to make sure super pressured. And then this is the control board. Um, this is the one that goes in Angus. As you can see, the yellow matches up. This just allows us to control the temperature that it was at. So, it was left at 80°C. So after the seven days was up, the syringes were then extracted from the pressure vessel. So taken out of there very carefully. One did explode on me, but it was only water, so it's okay. Um, and then they were distributed into a well plate to be put into the UV visual spectrum just to see how much light can pass through leading to how much was in the solution based on at the end of the high temperature and high

058pressure. And then after obtaining the proper calibration curve just to see that what equation will allow us to get the final amounts of the ribos um that was obtained which is a graph. It'll be on the next slides after this. So this is the weld plate. This is the ribos that that we used. We just syringed it out of there and put it into the to the weld plate after the seven days. And then that was put in onto a little tray in the UV spectraometer and light was passed through. It did a little computer stuff and then it gave me the results. So, super cool. This is the calibration curve. So, Mary and I who I worked with, she's the PhD graduate. Um, um, she actually made this for me because it's really high

059level and as much as I'm doing high level stuff, this is insane. I could not do it myself. Um, so pretty much the R square value would allow us to calculate how much ribos left at the end of the seven days. So now now we can get into more of the results. So this is just the table of the results. I have a graph on the next one. So this study as a reminder um examine the stability of ribos under high temperature at high pressure conditions simulated in hydrothermal systems. So the results showed here that ribos remains relatively stable rather at room temperature than high temperature and pressure. So as I said before we started at 15 millmer and these are the triplicates E1 through three and it ended at four. So it went from

06015 to four showed that it decomposed greatly and then the positive control which was the room temperature at one bar only went from 15 to 10. So ribos is actually more stable under where we are right now than on the earlier. And then the negative control is just water. We shouldn't have expected anything. It's just water. And then the temperature control which I didn't have a picture of that one. We did on a different day. Um, but that one was the same ribos, but we put it in the oven, no pressure, and it was left at a higher um, it was at 80 degrees Celsius, just like the pressure vessel, but no temperature. So, it was at one one no pressure. So, it was at one bar. Um, and that went from 15 to 9.

061So, pressure was the main factor here that was affecting the ribos. And this is just like a visualization of how you can see it. So the water is the one that goes down. The ribos and the temperature water, all of that was up. That's a good thing. That means we didn't get rid of matter that never existed. So we don't want to be creating matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Um so here are the triplicates. Once again, as you can see, the positive and temperature control were way higher. So then these results that I just explained suggest that in the absence of extreme environmental stressors rivals can persist for extended periods ex supporting its potential role in prebiotic chemistry yet only under milder conditions not the harsh environment. While ribos is capable of remaining stable

062under ambient earthland conditions. So it didn't go from 15 to zero only 15 to four. Some is still there. um it is less resilient in the more extreme environments potentially created by the meteorite impacts. And then these findings suggest that although impact events could deliver the organic molecules to early Earth, the survivability of certain compounds such as ribos may be limited under post impact hydrothermal conditions. The degradation of ribos at high temperatures shows the need to consider the robustness of various precursor molecules under different environmental scenarios. So while ribos is essential to the RNA world hypothesis, just that massive pool of things could have happened altogether, its instability under these harsh conditions suggests that either ribos formed later or accumulated in more temporate environments. So not these harsh ones that we are talking about or

063there were more stable sugars instead of proteins that may have played a role in the earliest stages of life. So those carbohydrates and those lipids and those nucleic acids rather than the proteins at this time at least not ribos. There's so many different proteins. So in conclusions, the results show that ribos remains relatively stable at room temperature but degrades significantly under high temperature and pressure such as those found in impact generated hydrothermal systems. These findings suggest that while meteorite impacts could have delivered essential molecules to ribos on Earth, their long-term survival and contribution to the origin of life may have depended on more temporate environmental niches. The instability of ribos under extreme conditions also raises the possibility that more other complex molecules may have played a role in early biochemical pathways. Further research is needed

064to explore the survivability and broader research in a broader range of organic compounds and varying prebiotic environments to better understand the chemical foundations of life. Thank you. [Applause] Hi, my name is Shia Jim and I have the honors of introducing the next person presenting Nadia Osami who has conducted a study researching the effects of mental illness on criminal behavior. Her mentor is David Farbe from NYU who specialized on this topic. researching this topic. She hopes to spread awareness to this overlooked issue. She will be attending Alman College of Pharmacy, going into the 3 plus three law program and playing college basketball. [Applause] Good evening everyone. Um, my topic is not as sciency as shade, but I promise it's still interesting. Um, my topic is the perceptions of the effect of mental illness on criminal behavior.

065The criminal justice system has struggled with understanding and differentiating the mental illness population from the general population that are incarcerated. The relationship between psychiatric illness and mental illness are always being a topic of heated debate. Many people believe that those with mental illness or health conditions are more prone to traits of violence and aggression when in all it's a common miscon misconception fueled by media negative portrayals in media such as we often see criminals as crazy or mentally ill. However, substantial research and studies have proven that that individuals with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violent crime rather than the perpetrators. This previous condition of viewing mentally ill individuals as violent has carried over into the criminal justice system. The system tends to treat individuals with mental illness more harshly by being

066arrested, charged, and incarcerated for longer periods of time compared to the general population. Addressing this issue requires collaborative effort that can potentially increase treatment opportunities and debunk these misconceived perceptions. Public perceived opinions and stigmas have increased the likeliness of criminals recitivism. And recitivism is just the likeliness of a criminal to commit a crime again. This study will reveal the possible relationships between stigma impacting people with mental illness based on perceived criminality. predominantly the negative correlations. Going into the study, my mentor and I devised objectives or a plan of how I was going to gather my information in an efficient way. We came with up with find any pre previous relationships concerning perceived criminality and mental illness. come up with survey scenarios. Look into variables that tie into stat statistical evidence and results will test both

067hypotheses and then come up with a discussion that will show any inconsistencies. For example, population demographics and student participation. And lastly, I would summarize and conclude findings from the t test I will do. So my study had two hypotheses. The first one is this study hypothesizes that students will be more likely to rate vignet subjects as being at risk of committing a violent crime if the subjects are described as having schizophrenia compared to otherwise identical subjects described as having anxiety disorder or no mental health disorder at all. The second hypothesis is that in these same vignett scenarios, mental health status will not be associated with perceived risk of committing a property crime. Basically, it's showing that severe mental illnesses are more stigmatized and that property crime, which is like shoplifting, won't have like much correlation

068with mental health conditions. Participants were all from Coo High School. They were all students, freshman to senior, ranging ages 14 to 18. The study was an opt out option which allowed access to 90 student participants. A survey was randomly distributed, which was me going into classrooms and handing out sheets um consisting of three vignettes. A vignette is typically a scenario where the variable where one variable is being changed. In this case, the study or the vignet described a college student with one of three diagnosis. Seasonal asthma, generalized anxiety or schizophrenia, which is basically no mental health disorder, mental illness, and like severe mental illness. The V vignettes were then followed by two a two item survey which respondents were asked to rate the likeliness of the college student committing a violent act or property crime.

069So here is the likeliness scale I use very unlikely to very likely. Nothing's too crazy. We've all filled out a Google form that's just like this. And then I know it's hard to see, but this is just an idea of what the students had to um or received in the classroom. It shows the beignet scenario which each different condition and there was three and then the two item like surveys which show violent crime and property crime. The results proved that both hypotheses were correct. The data showed that participants will be more likely to rate vignet subjects with schizophrenia as being more likely to commit a violent crime than otherwise like liked subjects who are described as having generalized anxiety or no mental health disorder at all. So here it's a little bright, but the orange

070line shows the um property crime and it's pretty average throughout. Most of them are the same. Maybe schizophrenia is a little higher because it's more stigmatized, but just only a little. And the blue line is violent crime. And you can tell that the schizophrenia section is significantly higher than um on the left which is seasonal asthma and then the middle was generalized anxiety disorder. These findings align with existing literature suggesting that schizophrenia in particular is strongly stigmatized and often inaccurately associated with violence. While the study offers valuable in information on youth attitudes towards mental illness, few limitations exist in the study. Um sample size was affected because this the sample was very small only 90 students which affects the statistical power. Also the demographic scope was pretty narrow was just our high school. And additionally,

071student previous condition stere conditioning and stereotypes have affected their um and reflected their answers when answering the surveys. Future re research should look into larger, more diverse samples and include interventions to reduce stigma. This study demonstrates that adolescents frequently associate schizophrenia with violence. Violent crime reflecting and enduring and detrimental misconceptions about mental illness that may influence societal attitudes. Despite limitations, the findings highlight the critical need for early educationbased intervention to mitigate stigma and promote a more accurate and equitable understanding of perceptions of the effect of mental illness on criminality. Thank you. This concludes my presentation. [Applause] Hi, my name is Adriana Wilkinson and our next presenter is Kalia Filbert. She is currently researching the effects of perception on the groovability of music. She worked with Professor Doug Kolicowski at Skidmore College and in the upcoming

072fall she plans on attending Boston College for international studies with a minor in economics. [Applause] Hello everybody. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for being here. My name's Kalia and I'm going to be presenting my science research project about the effect of perception on the groovability of music. So to start off my study, I just wanted to give a little history and a background of the word groove because it has evolution or evolutionized from the beginning of like the English language to what we use it as now and what we use it as psychologically as well. So um Oxford dictionary has done a very good job of um doing the ranges of what group can look like and what group can be. So in early uses it was actually used as a word for mining

073or physical channels such as wood and metal and stuff like that. But as music progressed it kind of got more into vinyls because there's group between each vinyls. And in the 1920s and the 1940s, jazz musicians kind of took over this word and used it as slang to basically mean in the groove that music or um stuff like that is more um musical routine and it has a preferred preference to you or it has a preferred style to the music that you like to listen to. And then groovy basically evolved from jazz slang back in those 1940s and 1920s to more mean like cool or hip or be more of a slang word. And that's kind of how it progressed to now the 1970s where it was mostly associated with funk and soul music and

074it kind of move way it meant cool and it was kind of used more as a slay word. Okay. So basically from this word that once upon a time meant metal or once upon a time meant a wood or a channel, it kind of evolved to a more psychological word. And according to Jana 2012 study which a lot of um psychological people who study the effect of groove um uses the definition of the pleasurable desire to move to music. And this kind of is what I used the definition for in my study as well and what a lot of people who study groove use this definition. It's kind of the basis of groove when it comes to science. And then also there is a lot of ways that you can explore groove. So there's groove

075integral regularity which basically is like how you can put on music and groove to the music while doing different activities and different chore chores as well as sports um as well as cleaning the house and stuff like that. And it kind of um is like a method to like calm yourself and to have like reassurance when doing these things. Okay. So there's many of factors that may in experience influence the experience of group and listeners. So there's music related factors and then there's also listener related factors. So musical related factors are more involved with the different type of things that go into making a song and curating a song such as micro timing which is basically the timing between beats and how fast and slow the beats between a song is. There's also the tempo

076as well as synopation which is you know if the beats are um synchronized or if the beats are kind of static and moves along to the song or does the beats change up and switch up or go slower at one point go faster at another. And then there is what I explored which is listener related factors. So this is musical abilities, your expertise on music, um whether or not you like the genre of song that you're listening to, whether or not you know the song. So those are different factors that affect the provability of music as well. So there are many um articles that I read that influenced me into choosing this topic and furthering this topic. One of the ones that stood out to me the most was this one, which is signs. and

077some of his colleagues that he did back in 2019 which explored the taste of familiarity of music and how that affected groove. So basically for this one he kind of went and did certain things like familiarity expertise things that I was talking about when it comes to the listener effect on music and stuff like that. and he explored these in a college setting and he also went more into age factors and stuff like that. And so basically for mine I wanted to expand on this in a high school setting and kind of expand on what he was talking about also when it came to auditory attention which this study focused on auditory attention which is basically how focused you are on the music. How much are you listening to the music? Is it something that

078is just in the background of what you're doing or is it something that you're actually listening to and you're exploring and you're listening to the lyrics and you're tapping your feet to the beat and stuff like that. So basically Connor um and Spec and a bunch of his colleagues basically um did track EEGs which is like eye movement and publicary eye movement of many participants to see how focused they were when listening to a bunch of songs and how that affected groove which went into my study as well. And then finally, this kind of explored this article with Park and some of his colleagues kind of explores um physical activity in groove. So this kind of goes hand inhand with temporal revelation. Does physical activity and music, if you listen to music while doing these

079physical activities, do you succeed better when doing this stuff? And this article did say that you succeed better and you have more of a focus and it's kind of like a pleasure reward system when it comes to listening to music while doing physical activities. Okay. So my purpose of this study like I was mentioning before is basically to expand on science study when it comes to taste and familiarity and the effect that it has on groove. I wanted to do it focusing more on auditory attention and also focusing more on like a high school setting as well. And then also I wanted to investigate the role of the role of auditory attention in group perception which I kind of explained before and then the effects of individual factors such as preference, pleasure seeking, familiarity and

080genre. So whether or not you actually want to do this studying, whether or not people are actually listening to the songs and stuff like that, whether that affects the groovability of the music or not. My objectives is to investigate groove as a dynamic term and not just, you know, as a slang word that was used back in the 1970s. And then as well as to examine perspectives on group influences. So what affects the provability of music which I was kind of getting to with familiarity and things of that nature and then to analyze questionnaire data which I submitted a questionnaire for this study. Um and to also determine key factors affecting groups. So what are the most things that are affecting group? Is this familiarity? Is it genre preference? What affects group the most? So

081basically for the study I had 30 28 different music expert excerpts about 30 seconds long and I had to go into different classrooms at the host high school where I allowed students to take out their Chromebook and then they would do this questionnaire for me and there was 28 different questionnaers about each sample of the songs. So the questionnaire basically um included some things like I would like to dance to this music. I like to listen to this music. This music is great for a party. And the songs ranged from Miley Cyrus to Metallica. It was a entire array of different genres. And I wanted to get different genres in so that it could be like a range of what people like to listen to. as well as there was a questionnaire at the end

082asking the prevalence of what people like to listen to as well. And then it was also a questionnaire um a question on each questionnaire asking if people were familiar with the song or if they listen to the song in their free time. So I had hypothesized that familiarity would have a positive effect on groove. So if people were more familiar with the song, they would groove with the song and they would make the groove scale a little bit higher as well as style preference. So which kind of genres that you like to listen to those genres will get more of a groove scale than the others. And then as well as I predicted that funk, pop, rock, and disco, which had the highest groove ratings as well as rhythmic entertainment is positively related to groove.

083So whether or not somebody's tapping their feet, dancing along to the song, this also goes handinhand with auditory entrainment, whether you're focus or not on the song and stuff like that. I thought that that would have a more positive effect on the group. So these are the results. So this is my first chart. It seems like a lot, but this kind of is the summary of the study and it shows how people responded to each one of my questions when it comes to I like to dance to this music, I like to listen to this music, and I like to party to this music. And it kind of summarizes what I'm going to be showing you in the next few charts. But things to stand out from this chart is that genres such as pop,

084such as electronic music, such as dance music got way higher scores um when it came to the groupability of what people were rating it on on a scale of one to five. And then also scores such as jazz and classical were very much lower than those. So up here, um, the ones that are highlighted in blue and purple are electronic. And then it's also, um, it's also dance music. And you can see in comparison to the one highlighted in orange, which is classical music, how lower it is compared to the other ones. And then this is just the other side of the graph. And this one includes pop, which is highlighted in yellow. and you can see just how much higher it is from a genre like folk or fk. So this is my first

085chart and this one kind of explores the correlation of familiarity and group and you can see a very high correlation when it comes to the R score which is 689 and the ROR basically explains the correlation between two matters and in this case it's familiarity and group and the closer it is to one the higher the correlation pattern is and you can see through the chart that the higher the improvability gets, the higher the familiarity score is. And that kind of is projected in the R score that I got for this study. And for the groupability and for familiarity, I basically took all of the different um responses that I got from the questionnaires and I found the mean of each one and that's how I made this graph. And then for the final graph

086that I'm going to show you, this one is analyzing the correlation of preference in group which as you can see the R is only 0.2285 which kind of shows that there is not very a very significant correlation between the two which is kind of explained with the first chart that I showed you and will be further explained in the discussion. So, um, again with familiarity, the groove ratings were significantly higher for songs that students recognize. Um, songs that they've listened to a lot or they heard a lot, students tend to groove more to them. Um, this supports my first hypothesis and it also supports the data that Stein had in that original study that I was talking about that kind of inspired this one. And then it also showed that pop and disco um showed

087the strongest familiarity effect. So if somebody recognized a pop or a disco song, they were to rate it more um higher on the root scale than if they were to recognize a jazz and classical song. With the study, I did try to find like very popular songs of each genre. So, it's very interesting to see that even if somebody recognized a jazz song, it didn't really spark them to rate it more groovable. And then this is when it comes to genre. So, that's what I was saying. People's personal preference of what kind of genres they like didn't really impact the groupability of the music. um songs from a participant's favorite genre did not score a higher score than songs from a genre that they didn't particularly like to listen to, which I thought was pretty

088interesting. And an example of this is that many participants like rock songs, they like indie songs, they like folk music, and they rated it very high on one of the questions where I like, do you like to listen to this music? but they didn't rate it very high on would you like to dance to this music or would you like to listen to this music at a at a party and that kind of affected the group score of each thing. So personal preference doesn't really impact it like that. Um and then yeah pre preference didn't outweigh actual engagement or recognition. It didn't impact familiarity. It didn't impact any of that and it was way less impactful rather than familiarity. So in conclusion, group is mainly influenced by familiarity in music genres. It's impacted mainly by

089familiarity as you can see in my study. And it also is impacted on who you are as a person on what you like to listen to on what you like to do and what do you like you know what do you like music? Do you not like music? Um and further research should explore more individual traits. So like I was saying more like do you like music? Do you like to listen to music? Um if explores are you more of a positive person, are you more of a negative person? Um do you use music as an escape? Stuff like that. Further research can kind of go into that and explore that. And some limitations of the study is that it was only about like 150 participants which it could have been more. And then there's

090also like bias or some people might have not wanted to do the study and they did it anyways because it was kind of required and they probably maybe went through it and chose one for all the answers instead of like actually going through it and rating it which kind of impacted the study. But other than that, this is concludes my research study. Thank you all so much for being here and coming to see all of us. Um, I hope you have a good rest of your afternoon. Hello, my name is Logan Brown and I have the honor to do our last presenter, Lolos Teams, who researched the effectiveness of two different type of eye movements in relative in relation to school stress. She worked with Dr. Mike Dminger who is a counselor and trainer in

091Tuxen UN Arizona. then going to Hudson Valley where she is going to study biological sciences with plans to transfer to Rochester Institute of Technology to complete her under degree in biochemistry. Thank you. [Applause] Hello everybody. Um thank you all for being here. So my presentation is on testing the effectiveness of bilateral versus multidirectional eye movements in relation to academic stressors. So for my introduction almost 40 years ago in 1987 psychologist Francine Shapiro went on a walk after a stressful day at work. By the end of her walk, she noticed that all of her stress was gone, and she correlated this with back and forth eye movements while she was thinking about why she was stressed. This led to her theory of bilateral eye movements, which she worked on for two years before releasing her first

092book with a study of war veterans with PTSD. In the study, she mentions other eye movements that she used, but not which ones are why she found that bilateral eye movements, which she later named eye movement desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR, was the most effective. She was the first to develop eye movement protocol, but she was not the first to develop the study of desensitization and essentially why it works. John Grinder and Richard Bandler worked at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and they took a psychological approach through neural linguistic programming. With this, they focused on the thoughts, language, and behaviors. In 1979, in their books, Frogs and the Princesses, they explained how eye movement patterns indicate sensory processing. This was developed prior to Francine Shagiro and through this there was controversy over her work

093and they believe that she used the NLP protocols and what they believed to develop her own study without citing a source although she claims in interviews she did not. Um I'm of this sort have been deemed effective in many studies. There are a few that focus mainly on the brains of mice. And what they did here is they mainly focused on the brain mechanisms and they wanted to know why it worked in the brain but they didn't necessarily focus on the individual and how it worked that way. So multi-channel eye movement integration or mei was developed by my mentor Dr. Mike Deninger who was going to be here tonight but his flight was canceled. um and he developed this study based off of Steve and Coney Andreas who were researchers of NLP um and they

094focused on eye movement integration. So they took NLP and essentially continued to develop it on their own and this is what they came up with. So again they focused on the psychological problems but they also tied in emotional problems. So mei as the first word letter stands for multi-directional. It covers all locations of the visual field as a client projects the image in the background. So essentially there will be a therapist sitting in front of them and they'll project it behind them. So the six portions of the visual field are past visual imagery which are memories, future or constructed imagery. Constructed meaning it's something that you think about. Um past and future auditory physical feeling, emotional feeling and internal selft talk. And this study uses two of the five eye movements which are the standing

095and sitting triangles and they're the two that go over the entire visual field. So here is just a comparison of the two eye movements. So the first one being eye the bilateral eye movements which you can see go back and forth just across your field of vision. And then the multidirectional eye movements the two triangles indicate the standing and sitting triangles. So you can see that they go over all six aspects of the visual field. So in schools it has been proven that students will experience stress from workload, exams or personal issues and it causes severe anxiety and problem behavior. So here's my purpose in this study. the effectiveness of the eye movements used in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and multi-channel eye movement integration will be tested to determine which is more effective in

096altering the severity of reactions and distressing memories in a school setting. I would like to add to this that I was only comparing eye movements and not the theoretical or procedural differences in the two eye movement protocols. When Francine Shapiro developed her study, she used a lot of trial and error to see what worked best as she explained and Dr. Mike Daninger proposed in one of his studies that variability in the different research that has been done makes it seem like me is more effective even though it could not be because again it was a trial and error study. And because comparing the two eye movements specifically has never been done before, this study has been proven to be very significant and will be done in the future as already being talked about. Um, and

097all procedures moving forward as I talk about them will be consistent because again we aren't comparing the protocols. We're just comparing the eye movements. So the objectives were to gather participants from grades 9 through 12 at Coast High School. They were randomly assigned into two separate groups, one being bilateral and one being multi-directional. Then to run experiments on participants using EMDR and two of the five me eye movements which were again the standing and sitting triangles. Then to collect data and arrogate into a spreadsheet for analysis and to analyze collected data of participants from high school to determine differences between bilateral and multidirectional eye movements. So for the first part of my methods was the participants. So again they were in grades 9 through 12 and permission slips were given to science classes specifically. Extra

098credit was given by teachers to for students to participate in these studies which I will mention later in my discussion. Um the permission slips explain briefly what my study was about and it needed both student and parent consent. Then students were blindly randomized and how this was done is I just alternated the eye movement type down the student list that was developed. So names were put into a Google sheet and they were organized by the class period. So what was mandatory for this study was to have some sort of sensory grounding technique. So I took this from my mentor. Um he uses this when he does his protocols. And what is done here is three objects were sat in front of us the participant at the start of the session and the session was paused

099if a participant expressed emotion um for personal reasons. It was emotional an emotional regulation safety mechanism and what was done is the students were given each item individually and asked to describe each object using their five senses to redirect their thoughts. and they were able to return to the study once they were calm and they gave the consent to continue. So the pre-EST assessment and all of the assessments were the same. So before an eye movement session was started, they were asked a series of questions about school stress which included academics, drills and other student behaviors that they were asked to identify which was most stressful to them. Then different um sections were rated on a severity level of distress from 1 to seven. One was no severity, four was the moderate and seven was

100the highest level of severity. The assessment report was again developed using a previously de design designed checklist developed by my mentor. So for the assessment report specifically, first a student was asked to identify what was stressful to them. A visual image portion was done to ask about the memory associated with an identified stressor and the exclusion criteria will be talked about later. Next was the physical feeling. So where you felt it and what you felt and there were examples of feeling it in your chest or your stomach. Then there was the emotional feeling which was examples of sadness or anger and they were asked to describe that and again read it. So again the procedures were the same for the two besides the eye movements being different. So these were some of the report questions.

101So again they were asked what was stressful to them. Then next was the visual image. So it was what memory do you attach to this issue? Then for physical it was when you think about the experience or event where do you feel it in your body to kind of specify what I was looking for? And then emotional was what emotion do you attach with this image. So for the bilateral eye movements used in EMDR, it was back and forth eye movements and it was two sets for 20 seconds. So there was the pre-est and then they did the 20 seconds of eye movements and then they were retested and then they did another 20 seconds and then there was the post test which was compared to the pre-EST later on. And then the same thing

102for multi-directional eye movements used in NEMI. Again, it was two of the five. So how it was split it was it was same the same 20 seconds as the bilateral eye movements but the first 10 seconds was done with the standing triangle and the second 10 seconds was done with the sitting triangle and again it was the pre-EST the first set the retest the second set and then the post test. Then for data analysis the assessment report results were put into two Google forms. one being the bilateral eye movement data and one being the multi-directional eye movement data. Then it was converted into a Google sheet. Jamovi was used to run t tests to compare simply the pre-est to the post test of the physical and emotional for each eye movement separately. And then data

103tab which is actually a European software um ran an analysis of variance or an ANOVA and that was comparing the eye movement effectivenesses to each other. So these are my results. So the first figure here just shows the common scenarios that students found stressful. Um the most common were being the major tests or the heavy workload. And again as you can see almost all of them are academic related even though it wasn't specifically focused on the academic side of school. This figure shows the bilateral t tests for physical and emotional. So the top one is the physical post test to pre-est which is why for the statistics you see the two negative numbers. It just shows that there was a decrease from post to pre. So it's a good thing that it's negative. We don't

104want it to go up after. Um and it showed that there were there was no significance for the physical eye movements but there was a significant for the emotional. So for the physical it was 0.104 which was not very significant. And then for emotional being less than 0.001 001 is incredibly significant because it means that there was a high effectiveness and the eye movements altering the severity of the emotional feeling that was described at the beginning. So then this figure is for the multidirectional eye movements which showed the exact same thing. It was no significance for the physical and a significance for the emotional. So, it wasn't as significant as the eye movements used as the bilateral eye movements that you saw before, but it is still significant data and it just proves that the

105eye movements in general of the two are the most effective in altering the severity of stress. So, this is the first of two analysis of variance. So, this one is done with the physical feeling. So what was done here is all of the data for physical feeling pre-EST and post- tests were put together and there was one section that said which eye movement was done on what data. So here it shows that there's a higher significance when the overall data is combined for pre-est and post- test as before when we did the individual for physical there wasn't much of a significance and at the bottom it shows specifically comparing the multidirectional to the bilateral and there was no significance. So the eye movements were effective but one was not more effective than the other. So

106this one shows the same thing but it was done for the emotional. So it shows again a higher significance when putting all of the numbers for pre-est and post- test together proving that there is definitely a significance in altering the severity but there is not a significance in one eye movement being more effective than the other used in this study. So overall causes of stress revolved around academic aspects of school. The main ones being grades tests and the overall workload that students have. Um, one eye movement was not more effective than the other, but they were both effective in improving the severity of stress that students had in certain aspects of school. Um, there were a lot of limitations in this study. The main one being to keep confidentiality in schools. We were not able

107to mention personal issues. So, I went through a very long process of having to get a lawyer's approval to do this because they didn't want personal information being involved, which I completely understand. So if a student was asked what was the most traumatic experience in general, there would have had higher and more intense reactions along with more variability in data, higher scores, and a larger difference in pre- to post- test data, which could have proved a significance in seeing which eye movement was more effective. Again, as I mentioned before, students were given an incentive to participate, which was extra credit given by their teachers, and this could have contributed to the small variance and the significant of differences. So, students may have participated because they wanted the extra credit, but not necessarily because they were

108interested in doing the study. Um, students were also not actively stressed when in this situation. So, if you were asked about a more traumatic experience, obviously, you would be more stressed when you're talking or thinking about it. Um, in this case, they were asked to recall a memory of what they thought was stressful to them and essentially think about it to the point where they were in that situation again and they almost felt the same. Um, which could have led to the little variance and differences yet again. And they also had a hard time recalling the memory. So, when they were asked about the visual image portion, which as you saw in my results was not included in this study at all, participants had a hard time describing the aspects of the memory, which included

109color, vividness, distance, and motion to recognize the prevalence of how stressful it was to them and how well they could remember it. Um, they rather focused on how they felt and that's immediately what they started talking about rather than the aspects and it was difficult to redirect. So there was no significance in any of that data at all. Um again there was no significance in which eye movement was more effective over the other but it was a successful study because it did prove that eye movements in general were effective which has already been proven. Um future research should go deeper into the eye movement mechanisms focusing on longer periods of time, multiple sessions like most therapy sessions are and higher levels of stress or trauma which again leads to higher significance and understanding the effectiveness

110of eye movements leads to less stress in individuals and the more efficient use of eye movements to heal trauma. Are there any questions? [Applause] Okay. So, you guys stopped for a long time, so I'll try to make this quick. Um, so several years ago, uh, pre Mrs. Tarlo, uh, we had Mr. Wooden, I put him on the spot, and it was actually right here in this room. I said, "Hey, so we get all these all these people that graduate that do all this cool stuff. um they get like ribbons and they get stuff to put around their neck. Can we give a medal out? And he was like, "Yeah, sure." I'm like, "Great. I have one right here." So, you guys all get to wear medals now at graduation. So, Mrs. Tarlo has been nice

111enough to be able to allow that tradition to continue. So, what I do is because they have to sit with me for four years, deal with me for four years, I like to give them a little medal and I also give them a little certificate. So, I'll call them up um and give them that. Now, So uh first one is Kalia Phil. [Applause] Next is Lola Evans. Jackson fellow. [Applause] Yes. Cino [Applause] Sha Fontaine. [Applause] And last but not least is Nadia. [Applause] They wanted to get a picture with everybody. Can somebody take a picture? Um, first we have something to do that Costco doesn't know about. So, as Costco mentioned before, we've had him for all four years of high school. We had him for Earth science and also science research, which is three-year

112program. So, we just wanted to give him a little gift to thank him for all he has done for us. So please open it now. [Applause] That's awesome. So the first thing is a signed um autograph picture of Travis Kelce. If anybody knows me, I wear um can't say cheap stuff all the time and I get a lot of people pushing back on that. Although my son will probably try to steal this from me. And then um kiss to the chief's uh shirt which says head coach of science research. Um we have one more thing. Uh we wanted to give this to you last even though it's a card and it's supposed to be open first but It's a thank you card. I won't read all the surface on it for you though. and then

113um tickets to the cheese city cheesecow. Thank you. I don't know how effectively express thank you for that. So, I'm not good at this stuff as my wife will attest to. She tells me to stop looking so mean to people when I when it's emotional because I don't know really what to do. Um, thank you very muchelcome out there. Um, they got to say thank you to me and I get to say thank you to them, but I want to say thank you to everybody that's here because they're not here without you guys. Um, so this is an opportunity for them to say thank you because I know that they don't always express what they mean in the right way. So, first of all, I'm sorry, but they constantly will talk and because this program

114I've known these guys for a long time, our conversations in our room are different than what you have, especially as a senior in other classrooms. So, the conversations we have about life and what's going on, you guys come up a lot and your support comes up a lot and without you guys, they're not here. Um, so I like to say thank you to everybody that's here. I also like to make sure I say thank you to Mrs. Tarlo and Ms. OSHA because I can tell you in doing this for over 10 years, um, which I've had the pleasure of doing, there has not been once ever that I've ever said, hey, I need blank for science research and they've ever told me no. Sometimes it's come back as no, but it never starts that way.

115It's always it's always, hey, let's see what we can do and they figure it out for us and for them. They're very supportive. This is not a program everybody has. Um it's not a program that some large schools have and we have it and we have it because of their support. And also um I had mentioned that um Brandon had walked in. I don't know if he walked out or he's still here. can't tell back there, but um there are always former students that come here that come back and to see how the program's doing and see what's going on. And we currently now, as of this year, have two former students that I know of that have gotten their PhD in something. Um and we have people that are on the news and I

116had the pleasure while doing this to be able to invite them back and they get to be full circle. Um, so that's kind of an interesting cool thing about this class that you don't get for other ones. So, thank you very much. Um, thank you for sitting. That was a really long one. But out in our little vestibule area out there, there are refreshments, there's drinks, there's um, a couple snacks, and there are also posters for every single student. So, now is the time to ask them as many questions as you want so they can totally geek out and tell you how much they know. So, thank you very much. Enjoy that. [Applause] Wait, hold on. You're holding on a little bit. You have to Yeah, that was amazing, guys. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank

117you. Would you like to see it? That was awesome. We get spoon.