Efficient food production is vital within farming. Out of the many crops made not only in America, but in the world, soybeans pose many benefits in terms of consumption. Soybeans have a vascular system that causes production and analyzing could help us alter growth yield for the better. During research we examined cross sections of vascular bundles and wanted to focus our study on fiber cells; strength fibers that help with structure of branches to produce high fruit yield within the plant. We found that through image analysis, strength fibers do not correlate with increased seed production, but other tissues within the plant may such as water conducting xylem or turgor producing pith. This is important because we will be able to research what exactly increases growth yield and in the long run help soybean producers as well.

In modern society, heart-related incidents claim a life every 33 seconds, underscoring the need for real-time health-tracking devices. The challenge of monitoring poses significant risks for those without access to systems capable of responding to real-time biological changes. Hence, enhancing smart monitoring and responsive devices is essential for addressing various patient supervision issues. The SmartSecur System aims to mitigate these monitoring challenges by providing timely feedback on biomarker data, a task exemplified by technologies like the EmbracePlus smartwatch in conjunction with SmartSecur. These advancements offer a holistic approach to continuous health monitoring for at-risk individuals, such as those with diabetes or a predisposition to heart attacks.

Nevertheless, devices like EmbracePlus may not realize their full potential without proper data interpretation and processing. SmartSecur enhances human-computer interaction and enables potentially lifesaving automated notifications by enabling real-time in-depth analysis of collected health data. This research presents SmartSecur as an innovative solution, empowering patients to conduct daily activities without fearing their physiological conditions adversely affecting them. By combining smart wearable technologies with responsive monitoring systems, a significant shift is made towards a safer, more informed health management paradigm, effectively closing the gap between data collection and actionable health interventions.

Over 9000 children are born in the U.S. each year with hearing impairments, the vast majority to parents with normotypic hearing. These parents are presented with an audiogram that scientifically describes the degree of their child’s hearing loss at various frequencies, but most parents have no context to interpret the audiogram. They struggle to understand the world that their child experiences. I propose to create a free program that will allow parents to intuitively understand and experience their child’s hearing impairment. This is the final phase of a project that has been worked on by several ECE students for 8 years. I took the core of the last student, a published peer-reviewed, open-source, frequency-sampling filter design, and I embedded it into a graphical user interface, while collaborating with an audiologist at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind to make the program useful for parents of hearing-impaired children. This project is available for anyone who wants to know how a person with a specific audiogram experiences sound. Working on this project has required me to learn a new programming language, develop collaboration skills with people outside VMI, and learn how to apply project management to complex projects involving multiple people over many years. This project will improve the ability of others to understand and empathize with the hearing impaired.

Green space interaction is a term used to signify the encounters one has with nature in their everyday life. While green space is thought to lower stress levels in humans, more data needs to be collected to support this thinking. This study was conducted to determine the presence of stress hormones such as corticosterone in R. norvegicus living in rural locations across Rockbridge County, Virginia. The assessed levels were then viewed in comparison to hormone levels of R. norvegicus in urban environments such as Richmond, Virginia. In this research, we report levels of corticosterone levels in (n=8) rats captured over a ten-week process during the summer of 2023. The protocol for specimen processing used in this study was adopted from the study by Jacob et al. (2022), which surveyed rats in Richmond, Virginia and was used as an example of hormone levels present in an urban setting. Body weight (to the nearest 0.01 g), tail length (tip of tail to base of tail: mm), and body length (base of tail to snout: mm) were measured. Biological samples were also taken from each rat, consisting of liver sections, both adrenal glands, the entire spleen, hair samples, and fecal matter from the large intestine. Additionally, samples of blood were taken and the brain was removed and stored for later sectioning. Average male corticosterone was 5360 ± 2431 pg/mL, while average female corticosterone was 8380 ± 4437 pg/mL. An independent sample t-test showed there to be no significant difference in corticosterone between males and females trapped in Rockbridge County (t = 0.595, p = 0.578). However, males in Richmond were found to be significantly smaller in size than those captured in Rockbridge County (p = 0.04). Lastly, Richmond rats averaged a significant increase in spleen size compared to those trapped in Rockbridge County (p = 0.0005). This study is crucial to understanding the dynamics of environment and hormone release in the body. If rats in urban environments are encountering higher corticosterone levels due to limited green space interaction, it may be plausible to investigate the same occurrence in humans. Accordingly, the study by Roe et al. in 2013 showed that self-perceived stress in humans was significantly higher for those who had less neighborhood green space interaction, compared to those who had higher interactions with green space.

Going to the moon and building a colony is the next step in space exploration. Before colonization can begin many technical challenges need to be solved here on Earth. One of those challenges is power generation for a lunar colony. It is proposed that the colony will rely on photovoltaic arrays to power the colony. To find an effective site to put the arrays illumination conditions at each proposed site need to be examined. The purpose of this study is to find the average illumination fraction, longest darkness period, and longest illumination period of each site. The study made use of a NASA developed program to look at each site at different altitudes off the moon's surface. The program used Digital Elevation Maps to visualize the lunar terrain around the site and to find when shadows produced by the sun were on the site. Results of the study showed that of the 63 sites examined 9 sites had an illumination fraction over 90%, 29 from 80%-90%, 15 from 70% to 80%, and 10 from 50%-70%. The study also showed that 7 sites had maximum darkness period of over 300 hours, 26 sites had a darkness period of 200 hours to 300 hours, 17 sites had from 100 hours to 200 hours, and 13 sites had under 100 hours of maximum darkness. The study also showed 12 sites are illuminated continuously for over 200 days, 23 sites from 100 days to 200 days, and 28 sites under 100 days.