Description: This poster discusses research on how non-native, western speakers acquire languages involving Sino/Japanese characters. Specifically, it addresses how elements from instruction in the native language and culture may be modified to enhance mastery of the given language with regard to character use and literacy.

Description: This poster discusses research on the biocompatible graphene-based growth of cancer cells. Graphene is made of a single layer of carbon atoms. Recently is has been used to successfully differentiate stem cells in neural cells. The authors experiment using cancerous cells from human patients in place of neural stem cells.

Description: This poster discusses research on chiral porphyrins as selective pharmaceutical receptors. Can a chiral metallo-bridged porphyrin be developed that selectively binds to a single chiral pharmaceutical in a heavily competitive setting? This poster includes the methodology, background and literature review, and UV titration.

Description: This paper discusses research on the factors affecting the rate of execution in the state in the Texas. Abstract: The Supreme Court of the United States, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), invalidated death penalty statutes across the country because offenders, under existing laws, were vulnerable to capricious sentencing. Despite attempts by states to reduce arbitrariness in the three decades since 'Furman' (1972), extra legal factors, particularly race, continue to influence every phase of capital punishment from the indictment to the sentence. The Court, in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), refused to consider widespread racial bias as reason to overturn an individual's death sentence, but directed statistical analysts towards state legislators to affect change. In this paper, the author examines the effects of legal and extra legal factors to see if they continue to influence decision makers after the verdict. Specifically, the author examines the relationship between race of the offenders and race of the victims to see if that relationship is correlated with the length of time between conviction and execution. The author also considers the effects of the victim's cause of death, the reason the offender was eligible for the death penalty, and the nature of the relationship between the ...

Description: This poster discusses research on depression and obesity. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between depression and obesity and to answer the question: does depression cause obesity, or does obesity cause depression, or both? The research survey will question the indirect factors caused by depression like the taking of anti-depressant medications, body temperature levels, and direct factor questions, like eating habits during depression.