In the summer prior to my sophomore year, I remember reading a Wall Street Journal article titled “Feeding Billions, a Grain at a Time,” discussing how both rising food prices and climate change threatened decades of progress on global agriculture. Then, a few months later, The New York Times launched an article series called “The Food Chain,” highlighting issues in international agriculture. I found it puzzling that while two prominent newspapers were featuring agriculture coverage, very few people in the United States were aware of global food issues.

Looking up at night, it is easy to get lost in the grandeur of the view. Space seems infinite and the myriad stars inspire a multitude of feelings. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to understand the great mysteries of the universe first getting excited via buzz words like “black holes” and “curved space time.” Such fascinating ideas easily captivated my childhood curiosity . . . My interest started to become more tangible in elementary school when the school’s librarian recommended me to read Stepehen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time.

Adolescents who exercise regularly are less likely to be overweight or obese. The population chosen is adolescents in the age group of 12 to 19. Adolescent overweight and obesity is very prevalent in the United States. Results of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 2) 2003-04 study points out that 16% of adolescents nationwide are overweight. It is a huge human health issue because obesity increases the risk of serious health conditions like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

I hear like an 85-year-old man, but I am not alone. Twenty-five million Americans are already affected by hearing loss (Hearing lost statistics), and this staggering number is expected to double by 2050 (qtd. in Schmid), especially considering how many students are currently damaging their ears by the combination of loud music and earphones. What they do not realize is that sound has a physical force that damages the stereocilia, the delicate hair cells in the cochlea that pick up vibrations.

First noted in the United States in 1980, the obesity epidemic has since increased twofold in recent decades. In the 21st century, obesity has become one of the leading health problems in the United States; over 34% of all adults age 20 years and over and 18% of all children age 6-11 years are obese (CDC Faststats, Obesity and Overweight). In fact, obesity is more prevalent in the United States than in other Westernized country.

The summer after my junior year, I went to the Research Science Institute (RSI) program at MIT. I had a blast there, and I strongly encourage any eligible students reading this to apply. I had two mentors: a graduate student named Dustin Clausen and a professor named Pavel Etingof. My mentors contacted me before the program to tell me about a potential project on representation theory in complex rank, following a paper of Deligne that laid the groundwork and beginning work on a program that Etingof himself had proposed in a talk at the Newton Institute.

From the very beginning of civilization, humans have pondered their future through innumerable myths and legends. Through the times of the ancient Greeks’ tales, with their stories of oracles prophesying the ruin of empires, and the Middle Ages, with seers like Nostradamus appearing to peek into the future, the idea of an ultimate destiny has become an obsession for many. Only nowadays do we have the scientific tools coupled with ultra-fast processing power necessary to make a well-substantiated picture of the distant future of the Solar System, which seems harbor large uncertainties for this planet.

My project began on my flight from Long Island, New York to Northfield, Minnesota. I have always been a highly curious person, drawn to new knowledge and understanding of any topic. Yet, as I sat on that plane, beginning to read about the latest research in the behavioral biology of baboons, I did not realize Primatology would become a passion . . . At the Carleton College Summer Science Program I studied under Professor Annie Bosacker .

Cold Fusion has been an active research field in the quest for next-generation energy. In Andrei Lipson’s CR-39 experiments, oscillating deuterium atoms or other particles were accelerated (collective acceleration effect) through an electric field and collided with each other to undergo fusion. Another procedure conducted by Roussetski involved the bombardment of TiD2 with a Deuteron beam. In all these scenarios of fusion research, a significant bottleneck is the detection of reactant molecules.

My parents, both Chinese citizens at the time, came to the United States in the late 80’s to attend graduate school. Later on, my mom got a job offer and they moved to the town I was born and raised in, a small town in North Dakota by the name of Grand Forks. We have been here since then. The Red River of the North runs through Grand Forks, and one summer, I was deemed old enough to ride my bike down to the river so that I could explore.

Mathematics has always been important to me. When I was little, I liked to do mathematical puzzles out of a book I had bought from a catalog. I would think and ponder about these puzzles and discuss them with my family and friends. The answers were not straightforward, and I found the solutions interesting to read. Doing the puzzles, I discovered that mathematics is more than just a set of drills to memorize.

Dengue fever affects 50-100 million people annually (Rigau, 1998). Scientists have recently developed genetic manipulation techniques to create transgenic mosquitoes refractory to disease transmission. The success of this strategy hinges on the dispersal of such genes throughout a population via matings of transgenic with wild-type mosquitoes. However, little is known about mating competitiveness of transgenic mosquitoes, or female mating patterns of mosquitoes in general . . . This study explored assortative mating of mosquitoes.