CRISPR Cas9 is a programmable single guided RNA (sgRNA) ribonucleic protein (RNP) that has demonstrated their ease and practical use as a gene editing tool for in vitro and ex vivo applications. For in vivo applications of the Cas9 RNP, physiological barriers must be overcome and gene editing to occur transiently, demonstrating the need to develop biocompatible imaging agents to protect and locate Cas9 RNP in vivo. Graphene quantum dots (GQDs) are biocompatible carbon-based nanomaterials that have served as delivery and imaging agents for drug and gene medicine due to their ease in synthesis and repertoire of complexation capabilities arising from the choice of precursor materials. In this work, we have synthesized visible and near infrared emitting GQDs with glucosamine HCl and polyethylenimine (PEI) using a bottom-up approach to use them as non-viral delivery vehicles for the Cas9 RNP. PEI increases the net positive charge of GQDs allowing their electrostatic complexation with the net negatively charged RNP. We further demonstrate their complexation with gel retardation assay and TEM. The GQDs+PEI+RNP in vitro editing capability is shown by targeting the TP53 414delC frameshift mutation locus present in PC3 cancer cell line for prostate cancer. This form of editing serves as a guide for future cancer therapy using GQDs as non-viral delivery of Cas9 RNP to mutant TP53 genes overexpressed in about 50% of cancers.

One of the large unanswered questions in astronomy is: How does the Milky Way galaxy evolve, chemically and dynamically? Of all the objects that we could use to probe this question, groups of stars which were all born from the same gas cloud, known as open clusters, are the most reliable. This makes open clusters ideal for exploring the evolution of our Galaxy because we can determine not only the distance, position, velocity, and chemistry of the cluster, but we can also pin a reliable age to the cluster as well. Historically, assembling a statistically significant dataset of open clusters has proved to be challenging without inducing large systematic uncertainties by collecting data from multiple sources. The Open Cluster Chemical Abundance and Mapping (OCCAM) survey is a uniform dataset of star clusters that uses dynamical data from the Gaia space telescope and 16 different chemical abundances from the APOGEE survey, which is a part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This new update to OCCAM includes uniformly measured data for 153 open clusters and a total of 2061 member stars, which we use to investigate the chemical evolution of the Milky Way.

Through the use of large-scale surveys, astronomers are able to investigate Milky Way galaxy evolution, both dynamically and chemically; however, determining reliable stellar ages has been elusive.  Star clusters are the most reliable way to measure ages of stars, and new surveys are measuring detailed chemistry for cluster stars that may be able to be correlated with age. For our study, we are using carbon and nitrogen abundances within red giant stars as age indicators. Using the Open Cluster Chemical Abundances and Mapping (OCCAM) survey, we utilized stellar parameters and abundances, and created a uniform empirical relationship between stellar ages and carbon-to-nitrogen abundances using star clusters. This new calibration will allow us to determine reliable ages for over 100,000 stars across the Milky Way galaxy, allowing us to measure the chemical evolution of the Galaxy.

With the development of personalized cancer medicine and moving away from a conventional biopsy, there is a need in creating a multifunctional platform for cancer diagnosis and treatment monitoring. Sonography offers many advantages over standard methods of therapeutic imaging due to its non-invasiveness, deep penetration, high spatial and temporal resolution, low cost, and portability. The benefits of the ultrasound method make contrast agents an ideal platform for the efficient strategy of cancer diagnostic and therapy. In this work, we developed metal-doped graphene quantum dots that demonstrate high-contrast properties in ultrasound brightness mode. The successful imaging enhancement was observed in tissue phantom and chicken breasts tissue. The relatively small size of the metal-doped graphene quantum dots makes them easily be internalized into the cells, while functional groups on their surface allow binding a cancer-targeted marker and therefore be used as a cancer-targeted delivery. By a combination of imaging and targeting capabilities, ultrasound contrast agents based on metal-doped graphene quantum dots enable desired cancer-focused nanotherapeutic and imaging approaches.

For billions of years, our Milky Way galaxy has churned out countless stars. However, the best star-forming days of our galaxy are long gone and our galaxy is in a midlife crisis! It’s running out of gas to make new stars, and extraneous resources are scarce. Worse yet, high stellar winds might eject some gaseous material, such as the Smith Cloud. After it was ejected, the Milky Way’s gravity caused this cloud to reverse course and fall back toward our Galaxy. The Smith Cloud is now only 40,000 light-years away and carries with it the equivalent of over 1 million Suns worth of material. As it makes the journey back to our Galactic Plane, it must endure heavy winds that have temperatures in excess of 1 million degrees Celsius from the Milky Way galaxy’s coronal gas. I have already measured the amounts of various ions in adjacent cloud fragments positioned on the side of the Smith Cloud using Hubble Space Telescope observations. These ions include C+, Si+, Si2+, Si3+ , and S+. I will then determine the effects that these high winds have on the adjacent fragments and the trailing wake of the Smith Cloud to better understand the perils that gas clouds must undergo to reach massive galaxies.

Dwarf galaxies are the building blocks larger galaxies. Their shallow gravitational potentials makes them extremely sensitive to explosions of stars. To understand how dwarf galaxies form and evolve, we must study their formation, evolution and fate in a range of environments. Located 13 million light years away, Centaurus A is the closest massive elliptical galaxy making it ideal for investigating the effects of local environment on the formation and evolution of dwarf galaxy populations. We model the dwarf satellite populations of Centaurus using a suite of high resolution N-body simulations and the semi-analytic model (SAM) Galacticus (Benson, 2010). We determine the best fit parameters for well studied Milky Way satellite, before applying those parameters to generate simulated satellites around our Centaurus A's analog. Given the relatively low computational cost of N-body simulations and SAMs, we are able to explore the effects of uncertainties in the Centaurus A system, including its relatively unconstrained mass. Here we present initial results from our study for the first Centaurus A like galaxy.

Research suggests that cannabidiol (CBD) can act as an anxiolytic when injected (Blessing et al, 2015). We investigated whether these findings could be replicated in rats using chronic (12 day) voluntary oral consumption of non-pharmaceutical grade CBD oil at 20mg/kg. A control group consumed distilled water. An elevated plus maze (Test 1), open field (center vs. outer, light vs. dark, Test 2 and 3), and running wheel (Test 4) were used to examine the anxiolytic effect of CBD beginning on day 12 of administration and two hours after consumption. One test occurred each day. It was hypothesized that CBD rats would spend more time in the open arms of the elevated plus maze than the control group, and more time in the center and lit areas of the open field compared to the control rats. For the running wheel, we expected the CBD rats to turn the wheel more times than the control group. Results revealed that in the open field, the CBD group spent more time in the center compared to the control group, as was expected. There were no other differences between groups. These results are discussed with respect to administration route, timing of test, and type of test.

Varied practice, or studying many different examples of a given topic, can be a more effective method for learning a concept compared to studying one example repeatedly, as demonstrated in motor learning (e.g., Kerr & Booth, 1978) and category learning (e.g., Wahlheim et al., 2012). The present study examined how varied practice affects learning vocabulary from examples used in sentences. Although potentially beneficial for long-term understanding, varied practice can make initial vocabulary learning challenging because the example sentences for a given term may vary greatly. The current study presented participants with a sentence and asked them to select the correct vocabulary word that completed the sentence. For half of the vocabulary terms, participants were tested on that vocabulary word in the same sentence repeatedly (constant practice); for the other half of the words, participants were tested on that vocabulary word in different sentences (varied practice). Participants were also asked to answer questions about their attention during the task. After a short delay, participants took a final test to investigate how well they could identify the studied vocabulary words in novel sentences. The results will be discussed in terms of desirable difficulties, the distinction between learning and performance, and whether the type of practice may influence attention.

Background
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that causes deficits in reciprocal social communication and restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviors, interests, and activities (APA, 2013).
Previous work has found disagreement between parents in their perception of characteristics of their child (Duhig et al., 2000). These differences in perception have been termed ‘informant discrepancies’ and have been linked, in neurotypical (NT) families, to phenomena within the family system such as maternal depression and family distress levels (Christensen et al., 1992; Whiffen et al., 1990). Previous work with NT and ADHD children also found that mothers rated their child’s symptoms as more severe than fathers did (Langberg et al., 2010; Christensen et al., 1992). There is, however, a paucity of research examining possible discrepancies between parents of autistic children (Stratis & Lecavalier, 2015). Because the entire family is impacted by characteristics of each individual member, parents of children with autism may differ from parents of NT children and consequently, research utilizing parents of NT children may not generalize to parents of ASD children.
The current study seeks to examine possible patterns of discrepancies in parents’ perception of their child’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors in parents with ASD children. I aim to determine the rate at which parents agree about their child’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors and to determine which parent perceives behaviors as more severe when parents disagree. Lastly, I aim to determine whether discrepancies in parent perception of child behavior predict depression for either parent.
Method
Participants in this multi-site study included 117 mothers and fathers with a child between 10 and 17 years old with autism. Parents were required to be married or cohabitating for at least one year, to be living with their child at least 50% of the time, and to be able to read and speak English. Their children were required to have a community diagnosis of ASD and must not have a co-occurring intellectual disability. Mothers’ average age was 43.15 years (SD = 6.42) and fathers’ average age was 44.99 years (SD = 6.90). The majority of parents were White and reports of annual family income revealed that 47% earned more than $100,000. Families came to the testing site and completed a series of questionnaires.
The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL: Achenbach, 1999) was used to measure parents’ perceptions of their child’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors. The CBCL contains a total of 73 items and two subscales; one for internalizing behaviors (mothers, α = .87; fathers, α = .86) and one for externalizing behaviors (mothers, α =.92; fathers, α = .91). Using a three-point Likert-type scale, parents were asked whether statements about their children were not true, somewhat true, or always true in the last two months. Parent depression was measured using the Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms (IDAS; Watson et al., 2007). This 64 item measure uses a five point Likert-type scale (1 = not at all, 5 = extremely) to measure how true statements are of the participant in the previous two weeks.
Results
Parent scores were considered to be discrepant if they were more than half of a standard deviation apart. Raw scores were converted to Z scores in SPSS and the difference between Z scores was calculated. Analyses revealed that about half of parents agreed about their child’s symptoms while half disagreed for both internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Additionally, when parent did disagree, fathers rated behavior as more severe about half of the time, while mothers rated behavior as more severe the other half of the time (see Table 1 for precise descriptives).
Table 1. Percentage of instances of parent agreement, mother rating higher than father, and father rating higher than mother for internalizing and externalizing behaviors.
Externalizing Behaviors Internalizing Behaviors
Agreement groups Percentage Agreement groups Percentage
In agreement 50.90 In agreement 50.90
Mothers > fathers 24.10 Mothers > fathers 24.10
Fathers > mothers 25.00 Fathers > mothers 25.00

Further analyses will be conducted using polynomial regression with response surface analysis to determine whether discrepancies in parent perception of their child’s internalizing or externalizing symptoms predict depression for either parent.
Discussion
Results revealed that parents agreed about their child’s symptoms about half of the time for both internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Additionally, in instances where parents disagreed, mothers rated behaviors higher than fathers half of the time and lower than fathers half of the time for both internalizing and externalizing behaviors. This is inconsistent with prior work using parents of NT children, which found that mothers tended to rate child behavior higher than fathers. Further work needs to assess both the potential factors contributing to each discrepancy type and possible individual and family outcomes associated with each type.
Analyses will be run before the conference to determine whether the discrepancies in parents’ perception of their child’s symptoms predict depression for the mothers or fathers included in our sample.
 
References

Achenbach, T. M. (1999). The Child Behavior Checklist and related instruments. In M. E. Maruish (Ed.), The use of psychological testing for treatment planning and outcomes assessment., 2nd ed. (pp. 429–466). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.
Christensen, A., Margolin, G., & Sullaway, M. (1992). Interparental agreement on child behavior problems. Psychological Assessment, 4, 419–425.
Duhig, A. M., Renk, K., Epstein, M. K., & Phares, V. (2000). Interparental agreement on internalizing, externalizing, and total behavior problems: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 7(4), 435–453. https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy.7.4.435
Stratis, E. A., & Lecavalier, L. (2015). Informant agreement for youth with autism spectrum disorder or intellectual disability: A meta-analysis. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(4), 1026–1041. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-014-2258-8
Watson, D., O'Hara, M. W., Simms, L. J., Kotov, R., Chmielewski, M., McDade-Montez, E. A., & Stuart, S. (2007). Development and validation of the Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms (IDAS). Psychological assessment, 19(3), 253.

In a feature-positive discrimination, responding to a target stimulus (A) is reinforced only when presented with a feature stimulus (X), but not when presented alone (XA+/A-). The manner in which animals solve this type of discrimination is affected by the temporal arrangement of the feature-target compound. Presenting the compound in a serial fashion (X --> A) results in X acquiring the ability to set the occasion to respond to A. When the compound is presented simultaneously (X:A), X could either directly control responding or X and A could form a unique stimulus configuration (i.e., configural learning). The present experiment used a spatial occasion setting procedure with pigeons to examine the ability of a feature (a diffuse background color) to modulate responding to a landmark (LM). For two of the feature-positive trial types, the feature and LM were presented simultaneously, and the LM and goal were always in the same spatial location (simultaneous/static). During other trial types, the feature preceded the presentation of the LM and the location of the LM and goal varied across trials (serial/dynamic). Responding was reinforced at the location to right or left of the landmark when presented with an occasion setter (static: +<-- WA, XB -->+, dynamic: +<--YC, ZD-->+), but not on LM-only trials. Transfer tests (WB, XA, YD, ZC) were used to differentiate between the features as occasion setters or direct control/configurations. The results of LM transfer tests will be discussed with respect to the mechanisms of feature-positive discrimination learning.