Like so many others, COVID-19 has had a major impact on my life. My home state, New York was caught unprepared for the pandemic, at great loss. The ensuing response from government and private entities was scattered at best, and at times dangerous. The immense impact COVID has had on my family, community and country inspired me to research it. As the shock of a pandemic began to wear off, and states began reopening, conjectures about the differences between parties and states were widely articulated in the media and public discourse, with little data to support it. As a result, I decided to analyze the differences in lockdowns and reopening’s in each state, hoping to provide data and evidence for these assumptions. To do so, I knew that no study could be perfect. Comparing 50 states lockdowns, often created using arbitrary benchmarks, would undoubtedly be difficult. I categorized the severity of each state’s lockdown for a period of over 18 months. As I collected data, I read about what became of Wisconsin’s lockdown, where state Republican lawmakers caused the overturning of the Democratic Governor’s restrictions. I then decided to expand my study to analyze not just the differences between states’ governor’s political parties, but the differences between their legislative control in comparison to the governor.

Starting from a young age, I had seen people in my life suffer as a result of domestic violence as well as seen and experienced firsthand the stress associated with financial instability. In 2020, the first case COVID-19 was reported in America, thus sparking the news to be flooded with stories of the toll this pandemic was taking on our well-being and the economy. Due to my understanding of the connection between relationship and economic instability from personal experiences, I became concerned about how the economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic could affect marital relationships … For many individuals, being in debt and living paycheck to paycheck or based on future paychecks is their reality (Cecchetti et al., 2011). In 2020, the total credit card debt in the United States was $756 billion (“Credit Card Debt”, 2020). Additionally, household debt totaled $14.6 trillion at the end of 2020 (Cox, 2021). Historically, financial hardship has been exacerbated by extenuating circumstances like disease. An example of this is the SARS epidemic in 2002-2004 (Beutels et al., 2009). A similar economic crisis occurred in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unique non-economic circumstances result in economic crises by prohibiting travel, closing business, increasing unemployment, etc. (Borio, 2020). For example, during the pandemic, unemployment rates hit an estimated 16% (“Frequently asked questions”, 2020). Also in 2020, there were 764,282 bankruptcy filings in the United States and 473,349 more in the first four months of 2021 (“New Bankruptcy Filings”, 2021). These factors may lead to economic stress (Elder & Caspi, 1988) …

Cognitive distortions are individually generating thoughts or feelings that are negative, persuasive, and usually inaccurately based on reality. Cognitive distortions can also be referred to as types of thinking. Cognitive distortions all share the commonality of representing an individual’s private negative thinking about themselves and could cause an individual to interact negatively with others. For example, one cognitive distortion type is mental filtering. Mental filtering is when an individual focuses on the negative instead of the positive in a specific current situation. In other words, they filter anything optimistic. Cognitive distortions are important to study because it relates to daily negative thinking that an individual can experience. It is important for mental health professionals to be able to identify cognitive distortions when treating depression, stress, and anxiety because it is essential to modify an individual’s core beliefs in supporting their mental well-being … The purpose of this study was: 1.To determine which cognitive distortions affect high school students more frequently in achievement and social situations and whether it mirrors the college students found by Covin (2011). 2. To examine whether the students who reported higher GPAs and engaged in more rigorous academic courses reported higher frequencies of cognitive distortions …

I have always enjoyed science, ever since I was 7 and read that over 6 billion bacteria live in your mouth. For a 7 year old, this was a scary thought. I refused to eat during meals. I never closed my mouth, as to let the invaders out. I stopped breathing through my mouth and relied only on my nose. However, I am proud to say that I am no longer afraid of being a home to my microscopic friends. Instead, I enjoy their company as they allow me to be immersed daily by science … Anxiety is the normal response of fear that occurs during threatening or stressful situations, but, if this feeling persists, it could be diagnosed as an anxiety disorder [1]. More specifically, social anxiety disorder is a common anxiety disorder. Social anxiety disorder affects 15 million adults, or about 6.8% of the United States’ population [26]. Symptoms for the disorder appear in both females and males around age 13 [26]. Females have been found repeatedly to be more likely than males to suffer from and be diagnosed with anxiety, including social anxiety [27]. People who experience this disorder feel symptoms of anxiety or fear in specific if not all social situation (e.g. meeting people for the first time) and doing daily tasks in front of others [1]. These people have a fear that they will be humiliated, judged, and/or rejected [1]. This disorder may be hereditary, but it is unknown why some family members may experience social anxiety while others do not [28,29] … Current studies have yet to examine the effects of MDMA on social anxiety in healthy human volunteers while also considering sex as a factor. Thus, this study evaluated prosocial effects of MDMA through the administration of modified questionnaires that addressed social anxiety, depressive experiences, and mood states with sex as a contributing factor …

During interpersonal interaction, humans utilize complex language (Hari & Kujala, 2007). Humans utilize such language to cooperate, compete, imitate, help, inform, question, negotiate, bargain, lie, and vote. Until about 20 years ago, much of this communication was conducted in-person or through telephones. However, digital communication within the past 20 years has continued to rise, thus replacing these forms of interaction (Williams, 1977). Emerging adults, who report texting as their dominant daily mode of communication, comprise the largest proportion of texting and instant messaging users. 63% of these emerging adults report exchanging text messages every day, in stark contrast to the 35% of emerging adults who report engaging in face-to-face interaction outside the classroom and the 14% of emerging adults who report speaking to their friends on a landline (PewResearchCenter, 2012). Thus, communication amongst adolescents and early adults has increasingly become digital and text-based. Yet, only face-to-face socialization enables communicators to practice nonverbal cues, such as a smile, head nod, a lean toward the conversational partner, and a hand gesture, which have been found to build feelings and commitment within a relationship (Gonzaga et al., 2001).

The public’s perception of the President of the United States has been a widely studied aspect in American politics since the birth of the nation in the eighteenth century. In recent years, with the inception of the 24-hour news cycle as a prevalent social characteristic, political scientists have deliberately analyzed the potential effects of the news media and its portrayal of the president on the public’s approval of him (Cohen, 2000; Wolf & Holian, 2006; Woessner, 2005; Schiffer, 2009; Cohen, 2004). These studies have concluded that issue saliency and media biases do have a significant effect under certain conditions; when considering an issue that is not salient, and presenting it to persons with little previous knowledge of political affairs, the news media can have a significant effect on the public. But when a salient issue is presented to a politically knowledgeable public with predisposed affiliations, the media effect on presidential approval becomes minimal . . . The majority of these studies, however, does not theorize on the effects of negative media portrayal, but rather focuses on basic media priming, issue salience, and their effect on public opinion. In fact, a long-held assumption of media influence is that when the news media portrays the President in a negative light, his approval ratings drop significantly. Interestingly, however, it has been suggested that this common hypothesis is possibly a misconception.

Last year, a friend of mine from camp was harassed over the Internet. Her “friends” tormented her online by sending a steady stream of emails and instant messages that threatened or insulted her. This occurred for months, and it became so extreme that she was too distressed even to go to school . . . Soon after I heard her story, I read about Megan Meier, a thirteen-year-old girl who committed suicide after receiving hurtful messages online. It was a similar situation, with more devastating results. Such stories piqued my interest in bullying . . . Researchers identify three types of bullying as traditional bullying: verbal, indirect, and physical bullying. The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter (2005) defines traditional bullying as aggressive or intended harm by one person or a group, generally carried out repeatedly and over time, involving a power imbalance. In the past, there had to be physical interaction for victimization to occur, but with modern technology, bullies can extend their power of aggression onto the Internet. This new form of bullying has been called cyber-bullying…..

Even though, at that point, I had a feeling that pressure was the cause of Rodriguez’s failures, I still did not really know why such a thing would happen. How could somebody perform so well in unimportant game-situations and so poorly in the important ones? I was intrigued and was determined to find out. Yerkes and Dodson had found that there was a relationship between arousal and the performance of any task. When arousal was very low, people did not have any motivation to perform their task well, and, as a result, performed poorly. As arousal increased and became more moderate, performance steadily increased, but when arousal became too high, performance decreased again.

Both French and Spanish have masculine v. feminine grammatical gender, while English does not have grammatical gender. For example, the phrase ’the table’ in English has the gender-neutral ’the’ preceding the word ’table’, while in French and Spanish, the feminine article ’la’ precedes both ‘mesa’ in Spanish and ’table’ in French . . . These grammatical differences between the languages led me to wonder whether there is a difference in [gender] attitudes among countries were Spanish, French, and English are predominantly spoken (Spain, France, US).

America has become a country of excess, especially in regards to food. So, when I decided to narrow down my research interests to a branch of human psychology, obesity was the logical choice. In the last fifty years, the percentage of obese Americans has nearly tripled. And, now in 2008, more than half of all Americans are classified as being overweight (1) In this study, three possible causes of obesity were investigated. The first was the link between obesity and fat discriminability, the ability to discriminate differences in fat content. The second potential cause was sensitivity to 6-n-propylthiouracil, a compound that varies in sensitivity based on variations at the Tas2R38 gene. And the third potential cause was the possibility of “tasting” fat, as controlled by the CD36, a candidate fat taste receptor that is found on the tongue.

When I was in 8th grade my cousin and many of my friends decided to attend private high schools, instead of public schools. I began wondering if the school that you attend influences the education that you receive. I especially wanted to know what factors influenced the education that I received. My interest in equity continued to grow as I noticed disparities in schools. Time after time the districts of the upper-middle class and wealthy would take home the prize from math and science competitions as my school rode slumped and glum faced in the bus back to school.

Personal Section

“It does appear that on many, many different human attributes - height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability - there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means - which can be debated- there is a difference in standard deviation, and variability of a male and female population”.

As soon as then-Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers made this statement on January 14th, 2005 as part of a speech during the NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce, a storm of controversy arose over his “sexist” pronouncement. But was he really wrong? Conventional wisdom and Educational Testing Service standardized test statistics do in fact indicate that males may well be “better” at math than are females. However, there is no single explanation for gender differences in math related behaviors. When I began this research endeavor, I myself was an above average mathematics student. Was there really a limit to how far I could improve in mathematics because of my gender or was the theory of gender influencing mathematical ability just an outdated sexist rumor?

Section I

Human beings have the natural inclination to ponder the things that frame their day to day lives. After all, isn’t it only natural to question the world around us? Some of the greatest inventions have arisen out of an individual’s sheer curiosity to explore something that fascinated them. Others have arisen after an attempt to simplify a task or improve everyday life. We can trace this idea back to a man who went by the name of Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately, poor Ben had inadequate eyesight and was forced to wear glasses when he wished to read. Naturally, he grew tired of continuously taking them on and off. He realized he must devise a way to use his glasses for both near and far. He resourcefully cut two pairs of spectacles in half and put one of each in a single frame. Today, we still use what Ben named bifocals. Ben’s curiosity and desire to better something that was close to him led to a device that continues to be used today all over the world.

Many times I wondered why I had not been taught grammar earlier, like my friends who attended private schools. Why was it that my brother and my friends in the city spent so much time on direct grammar instruction, while my school and so many other public institutions considered it a non-priority? For that matter, why did our superintendent insist on calling primary schools, “elementary schools” rather than “grammar schools”? There was a distinct philosophical reason at work.

Outside the realm of sports, it was shown that participation in clubs increased social participation and therefore social self-esteem (Lindsay 1984). In a more recent study, Mahoney & Cairns (1997) found that participation in clubs increased school engagement, meaning that students were more comfortable at school and more likely to participate in school. Essentially such students felt better about themselves at school.

ntel Science Talent Search, I wrote a paper entitled “Social Security Reform: A Model Combining Market and Non-market Solutions in Order to Achieve Political Consensus,” in the social sciences category. As the title states, I developed a mathematical model as well as incorporated concepts from both economics and political science.

The first decision I made when I began my Intel research project was choosing what area of social science my project would entail. Many of my interests were in the field of finance and economics, so I thought a project in that area would be the most enjoyable for me.

As a Muslim-American female teenager, I have always found it difficult to balance the religious, traditional world with the modern, secular world. The extent of my conservatism on certain issues has been influenced by both these worlds. My desire to investigate my Muslim peers’ attitudes and reactions toward these differences gave me the idea for my research. However, it was my mother who gave me the strength and determination to actually go through with this experiment. Unlike other parents, my mother did not simply teach me the “right” way to be a good Muslim. She emphasized that practically every practice encouraged by the Islamic community was an interpretation of the Qur’an, not direct law. Her open mindedness broadened my horizons, and I started to question many common religious customs. My study has allowed me to explore the extent to which my peers think in the same manner I do.

In 2003, the Napster craze was in full swing and the Recording Industry Association of America was beginning prosecution of individual kids who downloaded music. It seemed that there was an article about it in the New York Times almost daily. The Internet was giving rise to changes in behavior that could not be anticipated. I felt we were living through a type of revolution, a sea change in behavior and lifestyle not seen since the Industrial Revolution. Reading these articles almost daily made it clear that large segments of the population felt that this illegal activity was justified and the law was wrong. The controversy led me to think of the greater question: had this society-changing, world-shrinking, idea-enhancing phenomenon called the Internet changed peoples perceptions of right and wrong? Specifically, had this one behavior, sharing music with others, changed the way people felt about laws in general? I knew that I had found my topic