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Examining Water Quality and Blue Crabs (Callinectes sapidus) Gut Content in Blackbird Creek, Delaware State University Kayla McKinley, Jackie Maina, and and Gulnihal Ozbay, Ph.D. Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dover, DE Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Delaware State University, Dover, DE, 19901 Blue crabs are an important part of the Delmarva local economy. They bring in revenues amounting to 4 to 6 million dollars annually. Blue crab habitat use is dependent on life cycle stage. Marsh habitats are especially essential for juvenile blue crabs as they provide shelter from predators. Marsh dynamics are influenced by nutrient input, affecting their ability to support crab populations. The objective of this study was to examine water quality conditions and investigate blue crab feeding behavior in Blackbird Creek, Delaware. Five sites were identified based on dominant vegetation. Site 1: Sporobolus alterniflora and Phragmites australis. Site 2: S. alterniflora and Sporobolus cynosuroides. Site 3:S. alterniflora, S. cynosuroides and P. australis. Site 4: S. alterniflora.Site 5: P. australis. As 51% of the land surrounding Blackbird creek is agricultural land, water quality monitoring targeting nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients was conducted in 2017 and 2020 to determine the creek’s suitability as a blue crab habitat. Fifty-two crabs in total were collected using crab traps. Percentage gut fullness and volume were determined. The preliminary results indicate that the highest mean nitrate, nitrite, ammonia and orthophosphates were from sites 5 (0.44 mg/L) site 2 (0.0136 mg/ L), site 5 (0.068 mg/ L) and site 1 (0.498 mg/ L) respectively. All the nutrients were within Delaware’s regulatory ranges for surface water quality. The crab gut content analysis indicates that the highest percentage fullness mean (75%), and the highest gut volume mean (4.57 mL) were from site 5. The water quality values are almost similar across sites, and they are unlikely to influence blue crab feeding habits in Blackbird Creek. The vegetation is therefore the most likely determinant of food availability in this habitat meaning that although P. australis is an invasive species, it provides a better feeding environment for the blue crabs. Keywords: Blue crab, Gut content, Blackbird Creek, Water quality, Marsh grass Acknowledgements: We acknowledge USDA NIFA Capacity Building Grant Awards# 2016-06642 and 2016-06476 for funding my internship and the project as part of the student experiential learning goal and the Project Director, Dr. Gulnihal Ozbay, and the Project Director, Dr. Shobha Sriharan, respectively for providing this internship opportunity.

DSU Summer Research Symposium 2021

Examining Water Quality and Blue Crab Gut Content in Blackbird Creek

Welcome to Delaware State University’s Annual Summer Research Symposium, and thank you for attending! Our symposium represents the culmination of students’ summer experiences in research at Delaware State University. This event showcases the work of college students working on faculty-led research projects, as well as middle and high school students experiencing research for the first time working in research groups. Whatever the case, this summer has been a unique experience for the students, and we hope a transformative one. Even for students who are not planning a career in scientific research, their summer experience has given them skills they will draw on for years to come. 
 Please join us on the mainstage and in Gather for the live event, and visit the recorded poster presentations any time.
 The student participants and organizers of the various summer programs at DSU would like to thank all of the research mentors who guided our summer program participants. There were many DSU faculty, graduate students, and other research and program staff who gave their time and energy to help our students have a fun and educational summer experience. Without their generosity and patience these summer programs would not be possible.
 For the research participants, we hope that you will maintain contact with your research mentors and colleagues. Science is a relatively small community made up of disciplinary “neighborhoods”. If you continue to work in a discipline, the other folks in that discipline will be like your neighbors that you run into regularly. Staying in contact with them will help you keep up with the news of the neighborhood, and open doors to educational and career opportunities. Whether you continue in science or take a different career path, for this summer you have been part of the world of research, and you will benefit from that perspective for the rest of your life.

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Welcome to Delaware State University’s Annual Summer Research Symposium, and thank you for attending!

poster

Gestational age (GA), period of time between conception and birth, is directly related with fetal maturity at birth. There is a developmental sequence of organ systems and functions in utero. Therefore, children born at different GAs generally possess varying health status at birth and later in life. Both pre-term (GA < 37 weeks) and post-term (GA ≥ 42 weeks) births have been reported to be associated with elevated prevalence of adverse health outcomes affecting organ systems and functional domains. Many studies investigated prevalence of specific diseases over gestational terms. No published studies examined how different GA terms are associated with any kind of diseases. In this study, we have investigated the prevalence of diseases (ICD 9 code-based individual- and group-health conditions) during the first 5 years of life over GA categories. We have used electronic health records to retrospectively follow the first five years of life of 2772 children who made clinic visits to Nemours Children Health Systems. A total of 2007 unique diseases occurred during the first five years of 2772 children. More commonly occurred (>100) disease conditions were selected for formal examination. We have identified diseases with varying prevalence over GA categories. Findings of the study could be informative for streamlining the resources of public health surveillance and prevention services targeting those who most need it.

Association of gestational age (GA) and early childhood diseases

Clean water is essential to life on earth. An average person uses 80-100 gallons of water each day. However, much of the earth is covered by salty and even polluted water. Water remediation becomes important in preparing fresh and potable water. It ensures access to clean water and avoids contamination of rivers and seas. Water filtration is an important step in the water remediation process. In this middle school science project, under the supervision of Dr. Kimberly Milligan, students build a water filter using common household items. Different filter materials are tested for the filtering quality.

DIY Water Filter

In the age of the COIVD-19 pandemic, a newfound importance has been placed on washing your hands . People use their hands to interact with the environment and their bodies. This leads to circumstances in which people can easily transfer bacteria from common surfaces to their eyes, mouths, noses and become sick. If people knew what kinds of bacteria are present on common surfaces, they would become more mindful of washing their hands more regularly. We cultured bacteria from various common surfaces and identified the bacteria found on them.

What’s That on Your Hand?: A Bacterial Scavenger Hunt to Identify Microbes on Common Surfaces

Chitosan, one of the most abundant biopolymers in nature, is derived from the exoskeleton of crustaceans such as crabs, shrimp, and lobsters as well as yeast and fungal walls of algae. Water is one of the world's foremost environmental stress concerns. Chitosan nanoparticles have functioned as novel sorbents in eliminating an array of aqueous pollutants and contaminants, including ionic metals and organic/inorganic pollutants from wastewater. In this study, students from Dover, Delaware Middle Schools prepared chitosan nanoparticles via ionotropic gelation at various chitosan concentrations to determine the efficacy of removing E.coli from wastewaters received from the Wilmington Wastewater Facility in Wilmington, DE.

Toilet to Tap: Using Chitosan Nanoparticles to Remove Bacteria from Wastewater

My research was about NV centers and the noise that forms on the service. We did research to get a better understanding of the noise. I learned that the surface roughness is bad the NV centers sensing . There are also different causes that produces surface roughness. I was assigned to research how Charge Density/ Trapped Charges causes noise. For future research we plan on using time dependent trapped charge density formal and noise spectrum equation to calculate the noise in surface.

Noise in Nitrogen-Vacency Centers Surface

Portable prototype design of a mid-infrared laser-based methane sensor Andrew Horne, Yvens Louis, Abdullah Al-Rubaye, Marwan Rasamny and Mohammad A. Khan Division of Physics, Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science Optical Center for Applied Research, Delaware State University, Dover, DE It is estimated that about 60 percent of total global methane emissions are from anthropogenic sources and about 40 percent from natural sources. Anthropogenic sources encompass a wide range of human activities, including food and energy production and waste disposal. Atmospheric methane, a greenhouse gas, is 25 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. This project aims to enhance our understanding of spatiotemporal profiles of methane concentrations in the state of Delaware. To this end, we show the portability and performance of a mid-infrared laser-based prototype methane sensor that is field deployable at multiple sites across the state. We will also investigate the impact of thermal effects on molecular density due to sensors surface effects using a combination of a 2D-sonic anemometer and a thermal anemometer. During the calibration of the sensor purged using 1790 ppbv of certified methane, the current signal-to-noise ratio is 12 that accounts for a 180 ppbv detection limit at 1-second averaging timescales. Funder Acknowledgement: We acknowledge the Optical Science Center for Applied Research (OSCAR), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA MIRO grant # NNX15AP84A). We also acknowledge support from NSF grant 2011728, and, Department of Defense grant (ARO) W911NF-20-1-0316.

Portable prototype design of a mid-infrared laser-based methane sensor

Remote sensing technology, such as ENVI has helped in agriculture, natural resources, and conservation of natural resources. Satellite imageries are used to apply remote sensing technique to demonstrate the adoption of precision agriculture for agricultural production. In Virginia, the Appomattox River is one of the five rivers feeding the Cheapskate Bay. Agricultural farms are located around this river, and the farming practices are of concern due to pollution from the runoff points. The hypothesis of this study is to locate the agricultural farms along the Appomattox River in counties such as: Appomattox, Prince Edward, Buckingham, Cumberland, Powhatan, Amelia, and Nottoway. Therefore, studies were taken to locate the land cover within the above-mentioned counties by particular interest by obtaining satellite imageries from United State Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Explorer. A spatial subset of the Area of Interest (AOI) was created by using ENVI software 5.6. With this software, the AOI was selected to perform the supervised and unsupervised classification of the following landcover classes: 1) Water, 2) Urban, 3) Agriculture/Herbaceous, 4) Forest, and 5) Barren. These land cover classes were mapped by using ArcGIS Pro 2.6. The results showed that the unsupervised classification of the AOI did not display the landcover classes as accurate as the supervised classification. The unsupervised classification displayed misclassified landcover classes in the AOI. The supervised classification was more precise in determining each landcover class in the AOI. Research is in progress to apply accuracy assessment for each of the classifications. This enables to determine the accuracy of the classification by the user (author: Latia Jackson) for demonstrating each of the land features (water, urban, agriculture/herbaceous, forest, barren) of the land cover surrounding the Appomattox River. Acknowledgement: DSU/ VSU Grant NIFA CBG Integrated 2017-38821-26431 and VSU Grant NIFA CBG Grant, 2017-38821-26404.

Land Cover Classifications of the Appomattox River Using ENVI Software

Alkali atoms, like rubidium (Rb) are used in precision measurements of physical quantities such as time, electromagnetic field, rotation and acceleration etc. In my experiment, I have used two different spectroscopic techniques to study various possible optical transitions resulting from laser excitation in a rubidium cell containing a mixture of 85Rb and 87Rb isotopes. The two methods used were saturated absorption spectroscopy (SAS) and dichroic atomic vapor spectroscopy (DAVS). A pump-probe technique is used in SAS to obtain Doppler-free SAS spectra. A high magnetic field is applied along the cell axis to obtain the Doppler-broadened DAVS spectrum. In both cases, we have identified the spectral signatures of 85Rb and 87Rb isotopes. This study helps us in understanding the atomic structure of rubidium, and the effect of atomic motion on the spectra

The Doppler-Free and Doppler-Broadened Atomic Spectroscopy in Rubidium Vapor

Surface roughness noise of nitrogen vacancy center

Studies On The Water Quality Indicators and Mapping Its Locations In The Five River Basins Of Chesapeake Bay Student Author: Jarell Hines1 Faculty Advisor: Dr. Shobha Sriharan1, Research Mentors: Ms. Darlette Meekins1 and Gulnihal Ozbay2 Assisting Graduate Student: Latia Jackson1 1Department of Agriculture, Virginia State University, Petersburg, VA 23806 2Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Delaware State University, Dover DE 19901 Research has shown that non-point source pollutants such as sediments, nutrients, pesticides, fertilizers, and animal wastes, account for more than half of the pollution in U.S. waters. One such polluted system is the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, which extend into more than six states. The Chesapeake Bay and the rivers, Appomattox, James, York, Rappahannock, Potomac, and Susquehanna serve as a source of drinking water. However, the water quality of these rivers are a concern due to nonpoint source pollution from the agricultural farms and industries. The hypothesis of this study is that the water quality is affected by the runoff from these rivers. Therefore, studies were conducted to collect data (5 year and 10 years: 2012 and 2018) on the chemical indicators. Nitrogen, nitrates, total phosphorus, dissolved orthophosphate, and suspended sediment in the above mentioned five river basins from the USGS Water Data Dashboard. Further, the location point was mapped by using Arc GIS Pro. The results showed that the Appomattox River Basin is the least impaired due to lack of intensive agricultural practices and industries. The York River Basin and Rappahannock River Basin were impaired due to farming practices that result in high concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus, and suspended sediments. Our observation indicates that the agricultural practices and materials discharged from the small industries (energy, coal plants) contribute to the impairment of water quality in a few of the above-mentioned river basins. Further research to identify these observations will be undertaken. The mapping of the five river basins of Arc GIS Pro showed that the runoff points in York River Basin and James River Basin were from the surrounding industries and agricultural farms. Our findings suggest that factors such as agriculture and industry are the biggest contributors of the accumulation of chemical indicators. Furthermore, the health of these river basins can be improved through the cooperation of government agencies, industry professionals, and citizens. Acknowledgements: We acknowledge USDA NIFA Capacity Building Grant Awards# 2016-06642 and 2016-06476 for funding my internship and the project as part of the student experiential learning goal and the Project Director, Dr. Gulnihal Ozbay, and the Project Director, Dr. Shobha Sriharan, respectively for providing this internship opportunity

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Association of gestational age (GA) and early childhood diseases

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