Humboldt County is home to a uniquely large and diverse Cannabis industry comprised of a variety of operation styles, leading to different associated energy intensities and carbon emissions. This project aimed to deploy a detailed, accessible carbon accounting model for Cannabis operations - one which is adaptable to various operation styles and industry practices. Our Cannabis Carbon Accounting Model, is a fully-functional user-friendly tool for the rapid assessment of Cannabis operations carbon footprints. Understanding the extent of Cannabis operation emissions and their source will allow governments, businesses, and the general public to find ways to lower their environmental impact.

The states bordering the US and Mexico are very diverse. California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas each have different factors influencing the way they continue to advance. The past 50 years have experienced a large shift in technology as well as accessibility to renewable energy. In this project, we constructed energy profiles for each state, along with analysis based off of their unique aspects. Based on this analysis, we determined the state with the best quality profile and provided predictions for their energy usage in the years 2025 and 2050.

After harvesting the merchantable conifers decades ago, many secondary forests in northern California regenerated naturally and are now fully stocked with low value hardwoods intermingled with conifers. Partial harvesting to reduce hardwood densities and release conifers is expected to enhance tree vigor and reduce risk of stand-replacing wildfire. Planting a new cohort of merchantable conifers in the understory would enhance structural complexity and future value. A flexible new forest restoration treatment called variable-density retention (VDR) was designed to achieve these objectives.

The idea of this study is to conduct more research on farming in the city, to be specific, Hong Kong. As I grew up in Hong Kong, space is one of the biggest challenges in the city. While citizens are looking for ways to implement their lifestyle, rooftop farming can be one of the great opportunities to build up a community around the neighborhood, provide fruits and vegetables for the residents, and promote a healthy living lifestyle. While promoting the idea of rooftop farming, there are obstacles that the residents need to be overcome. Therefore, I will be analyzing the ecosystem, finance, and government policy that might help the city farmers in Hong Kong.

For California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, increasing renewable energy production and consumption is important in the face of climate change. We develop a model to analyze these states’ current renewable energy production and future projection. Findings from the model could lead to policy changes in favor of renewable energy.

The basis of our research is to assess why learning gains are low within introductory astronomy courses and how scores can be improved. Examining pre and post scores from an Astronomical Diagnostics Test we were able to examine learning gains of fifty-six students. We used Hake’s normalized gain formula to quantify learning gains. The average learning gain found was 0.20 and the highest gains fell among questions such as phases and position of the moon, eclipses, and seasons on Earth, with gains between 0.5-.64. Because Hake’s normalized gain formula is biased, we are looking into other methods of quantifying our data.

We present the first survey of extremely high velocity outflows (EHVO) in quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release nine quasar catalog (SDSS DR9Q). Our survey draws from the 87,822 spectral targets in DR9Q. EHVO candidates were identified by measurement of one of the transitions due to absorption in carbon ion (C-IV), which appear in the spectrum as broad absorption features. Spectrum analysis was carried out by python codes developed by our group with results confirmed by visual inspection. The presented survey is composed of 45 quasars EHVO ranging in velocity from ~50,000 to 30,000 km/s. Our survey will be made available online as a publicly accessible database.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in planets outside of our solar system, also known as exoplanets. Our research involves looking for trends in these planets’ potential habitability, through archival information about the planet’s radius, its distance from its parent star, and its atmospheric composition. The latter is obtained using transmission spectroscopy, which shows absorption on different regions of the planet’s spectrum depending on the composition of the atmosphere. We are working in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Kane, the creator of the Habitable Zone Gallery, to include the spectroscopic information in this database, which will allow the community to access it.

Huntington’s disease (HD) is associated with CAG trinucleotide repeats in the HTT gene, which encodes the huntingtin protein. Our central hypothesis is that overexpression of normal huntingtin, with the eventual inhibition of cells’ autophagy pathway or other route of clearance, will lead to a disease-like state. In order to address this hypothesis, we are developing a novel human cell model that will allow us to assess how excess huntingtin is managed and/or cleared by cells, and precisely how cell death occurs upon buildup of huntingtin protein. Using this model as a starting point, it is possible to study the response of human cells to huntingtin overexpression.

There are approximately 6,900 languages spoken around the world today. Of those, there are ten languages deemed most widely spoken by humans. Due to the trends in globalization, it is important for companies that exist internationally to take into consideration language trends. In this research performed as part of the international contest in modeling, we seek to predict the future top ten languages based on the generalized Abrams-Strogatz model of language competition.