Based on the influx of stress found in high school students, therapeutic virtual reality is being tested for its effectiveness in this demographic. Since testing anxiety proved problematic in this setting, situational stress is a better fit to be the manipulated variable. 34 Xaverian Brothers High School students voluntarily participated in this trial, consisting of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Participants signed and returned permission forms and attended the open-door trials throughout a 4 week period. Participants took a stress survey before and after using the Solas VR meditation program and were given coded titles for confidentiality. This survey consists of a VR-Stress Survey and State of Stress questionnaire,  asking participants to provide numerical responses reflecting their situational stress. Comparing pre-VR stress to post-VR responses, the results showed a statistically significant decrease in stress by using this technology. The data proves VR to be an effective, non-invasive tool for stress relief.

1 in every 1,600 babies are born with a cleft lip or palate in the United States. In fact, it is one of the most common congenital oral disorders. Still, as of the time this research has been published,  a myriad of reasons can be attributed to cleft palates/lips like ancestry, birth order, gender, mutations, family history of drug abuse, and so many other causes. Yet, no one has narrowed it down to one. Due to the infant being unable to fill out a survey or be interviewed, many parents refuse to give doctors information about their past family's illnesses. Usually, this is because of the guilt or shame surrounding children born with a cleft palate or lip. From poor pre-natal nutrition to family histories of drug abuse and other illnesses, many parents opt out of being a part of study groups out of fear of judgment. What makes cleft lip and palate perplexing is the idea that it is a broad spectrum as to how and where they form on the oral cavity of the face. Every single case is unique and requires care and multiple different specialty doctors to fully diagnose and treat the child. Although each case is different, the treatment for a general cleft lip or palate, no matter where on the lip, is used universally in every case. Due to this, complications are created in the reconstructive surgery portion of treating a neonate with such a condition, yielding a lower quality of life. Induced hypothermia, which eliminates external variables like oxygen intake and faulty equipment is used in other subgroups of congenital birth defects, primarily in the cardiovascular region of the body. Induced hypothermia, although new and has not yet been tested on oral deformity cases, has the potential to prove successful in the future of neonatal oral surgery.

With the United States having some of the highest pollution numbers out of any nation on Earth, it is hardly surprising that, in recent years, there has been an increase in environmental funding and policies being instituted across the country. However, is this doing anything? There seems to be a gap in the literature as to whether or not the policies and funding being put in place actually have an effect on the environment. In other words, there seems to be a lack of studies that point to a correlation between funding and the environment, or a lack thereof. The goal with this project was to fill that gap. Using a sample of 8 states, each had their policy and environmental status measured, with funding being the means of measuring policy and emissions being the measure of environmental status. The funding data was retrieved from each state’s government website and the emissions data was collected from the EPA. After all data was collected, a correlation test was conducted. It was found that the data had little to no correlation and that the funding and emissions were not related. All of which may play into policymaking and the ways in which governments administer their funding as it relates to the environment.  

SLE, HT, and FM are all autoimmune disorders that are characterized by high prevalence in women. Their symptoms have been studied for years, though the molecular similarities between them are not yet fully understood. To study the relationship between three diseases (SLE/HT, SLE/FM, FM/HT), a meta-analysis was conducted, analyzing the antibody prevalence of multiple antibodies between control and experimental groups. After statistical analysis, FM/HT produced the only significant differences, while SLE/HT and SLE/FM both had p-values less than 0.05. These results can be used to further investigate the molecular mechanisms behind FM, and identify the antibody production triggers between the diseases. Regardless, further research must be conducted in order to continue our understanding of these diseases and their immunological backgrounds.

Millions of people worldwide suffer from the autoimmune condition known as type 1 diabetes. An emerging technique called adult stem cell therapy has the promise of curing type 1 diabetes. In this study, I look at the effectiveness of adult stem cell therapy in reducing the insulin and A1C levels of type 1 diabetics. I collected data from 10 articles that ran adult stem cell therapy trials on type 1 diabetics. Using a paired t-test, I compared that patient's data before and after the stem cell therapy. The p-value < 0.001 for both A1C and Insulin levels, indicating a significant drop in both from before to after the therapy. However, in these experiments, there were patients who became insulin free, then relapsed to small amounts. Future research should focus on preventing insulin relapses and ensuring that the levels of both insulin and A1C remain low over the long term.

The loss of body parts and limbs affects people worldwide, requiring the need for prosthetic devices. But with the high cost of modern-day prosthetics, the newest and best models are unaffordable to many. Myoelectric prosthetic devices are becoming increasingly popular, as they use electromyographic signals from residual limbs to prompt movement in the prosthetic. This eliminates the need for manual control in prosthetics while allowing more natural and precise movements. But this improved technology comes at a much higher cost. In this work, I recreate a low-cost, functional myoelectric prosthetic hand. By using 3-D printing and Arduino products, I replicated a prosthetic hand for significantly less money than modern-day alternatives. To assess functionality, I tested the hand for seven different movements and reported my results for each one. In this paper, I discuss why my results appeared the way they did as well as compare my model to the modern-day prosthetics. Although not marketable, the product in this experiment has implications for prosthetic devices in the future.

The world of organ transplantation has not undergone significant changes since its beginnings in 1954. Whilst the medicinal practice has saved many lives the shortcomings of the technology and practices have cost many patients their lives. Innovations over the years such as xenotransplantation have offered short-term solutions for the growing issue, but bioprinting offers a sustainable future that encapsulates all types of transplantation. From skin grafting, heart transplants, and the ability to print functioning eyes,  bioprinting presents a world where medicare is brought to the forefront of clinical work. However, bioprinting is a growing technological field that demands millions of dollars in infrastructure and labor. The results of this research provide a proof of concept to show how bioprinting can be brought to a global scale while on a budget costing less than a thousand dollars. This concept tackles questions for the future and provides insight into where we can expand and explore possibilities heading into the future of transplantation globally. I aim to open discussion and progress the current knowledge we have on all types of organ transplantation on every possible level of the ecological scale to show how this technology can change the world as we know it.

Common methods to improve attentional capabilities are limited in that they are either not easily implementable, have side effects, or only effective long-term. Brown noise is both easily implementable, has no known side effects and is a potential treatment for improving attention. A sample of 18 participants between the ages of 14 and 16 were equally split into 2 control groups (negative and positive) and 1 experimental group. All three groups completed the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) while wearing noise-canceling headphones. The experimental group completed the task while listening to brown noise. Although the experimental group had higher average scores, there was no statistically significant difference between the experimental group and either of the control groups (p = 0.07, p = 0.12) This study was limited in sample size; future work is needed to assess the relationship.

This experiment is a small sample size experiment testing the correlation between emotion regulation (ER) in its subcategories of clarity and goals and the category of procrastination in general and in academics. The sample for this study is high school  college preparatory students from Xaverian Brothers High School in Westwood Massachusetts. A modified version of the Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and Tuckman Procrastination Scale (TPS) was used for data collection. These modified instruments were combined into one form and gave students scores in the subcategories of ER goals, ER clarity, procrastination, academic procrastination, and attention difficulty. The scores from each subcategory had linear regression tests run with them to look for a correlation between ER and procrastination. A positive correlation was found between ER Clarity and procrastination and academic procrastination and ER goals and academic procrastination.