Tag: Poster 54

Mickey Mouse and the Creation of an Animated Star

Presenter: Brandon Rains

Mentor: Priscilla Ovalle, English

Poster: 54

Majors: Digital Arts and Cinema Studies 

Mickey Mouse is one of the most well-known and influential animated cartoon characters in modern society. All of his mannerisms, voice, personality and characteristics have been created by a team at the Walt Disney Animation Studio in order to achieve success and major stardom. Mickey’s large eyes, rounded shape, inviting smile, energetic and exaggerated actions, versatility and simplicity are all important factors decided by his creators. Other possible influences on his success include technological innovations: synchronized sound, storyboard techniques, and multi-plane cameras. He is a completely fabricated character. I am interested in establishing my own animation and character design techniques based off of the work done with Mickey Mouse. Much of my research will be gathered from extensive analysis of the design, personality and actions of Mickey Mouse in short films from the 1930s. I plan to take all the research I have gathered on Mickey Mouse and alter different processes and techniques in order to fulfill my own goals as an animator. I will also become fully engaged in the creative process and deconstruct drawings and clips by physically drawing Mickey Mouse. My goal is to successfully create an animation that is capable of reaching and influencing a mass audience. As I begin to create my own animated works and star characters it will be crucial for me to understand the sacrifices I am willing to make in order to succeed.

Electrochemical Etching of Silver Scanning Tunneling Microscope Tips in Dilute Acetic Acid

Presenter: William Crowley

Co-Presenter: Ariel Rosenfield

Faculty Mentor: George Nazin, Ben Taber

Presentation Type: Poster 54

Primary Research Area: Science

Major: Chemistry

Funding Source: UROP Mini Grant, Univesrity of Oregon, $1,000

Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) is used to image, manipulate, and spectroscopically characterize individual atoms and molecules to further develop an understanding of materials that have application in the semiconductor field. The fabrication of sharp and smooth metallic tips plays an essential om STM as the radius of curvature of tips used in STM directly influences resolution. The smaller the radius of curvature, the finer the resolution. We describe a reproducible fabrication procedure of silver STM tips. Silver wire is electrochemically etched using an environmentally benign electrolyte solution of volume ratio 1:8 glacial acetic acid:deionized water to form a blunt cone. The roughly shaped tip is then manually electropolished to yield a sharp and smooth cone shape. The tip is then heated at 300°C to remove contaminates such as silver oxide. Silver is used for its plasmonic enhancing properties. The elemental purity and small radius of curvature (~100nm) of silver tips permits atomically resolved STM imaging, as well as photon emission and ultrafast electron emission measurements. These measurements which would not be possible with previous materials used as STM tips such as tungsten will allow for a better understanding of potential semiconductor materials which may lead to more efficient solar panels or smaller computer circuits.

Variation in Tooth Size and Shape In Species of Pinniped

Presenter(s): Caitlyn Boatman – Biology

Faculty Mentor(s): Samantha Hopkins

Poster 54

Research Area: Biology

Animals that maintain constant internal body temperatures have high energy requirements. In a resource limited ecosystem, efficient food processing is vital to ensure that these animals extract enough energy from their food to heat their bodies. Tooth size and shape, along with the precise contact between top and bottom teeth (occlusion), are adaptations that allow for efficient food processing. Because of this relationship between energy extraction and tooth function, the size of those teeth with precise occlusion are often highly conserved in terrestrial species like bears and foxes. Some work has been done on studying dental variation in terrestrial animals with precisely occluding cheek teeth, such as the carnassial pair in some carnivores. However, few studies have investigated dental variation in aquatic carnivores with homodont (homogenous), non-occluding cheek teeth. To fill this gap, I investigated dental variation in pinnipeds, a clade of aquatic carnivores with homodont (identical) cheek teeth that are not used for processing food. Studying these species allowed me to determine if various measures of tooth size are conserved in species that swallow their food whole. Specifically, I examined how tooth number, individual tooth area and size, total tooth area, tooth row length, and shearing-blade length vary within species, across species, and across families in clade pinniped. I used the program ImageJ to make my measurements. I determined that variation is high in pinniped dentition compared to the dentition of terrestrial mammals. These results suggest that tooth shape and size are not evolutionary constrained in pinnipeds.

Advancing threespine stickleback as an outbred immunogenetics model by pinpointing the onset of adaptive immunity

Presenter(s): Emily Niebergall

Faculty Mentor(s): Emily Beck & William Cresko

Poster 54

Session: Sciences

T-cell deficiencies cause a wide range of cell-mediated immunodeficiencies including Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome (WAS), and DiGeorge Syndrome. The genetics underlying these deficiencies is complex and the genetic basis of many cell- mediated deficiencies is poorly understood. Due to the invasive nature of prenatal tests used to study T-cell deficiencies in mammals, the development of an outbred immunogenetics model system is needed to understand how genetic variation impacts phenotypic variation of immune disease. Threespine stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus) provide just such a model. Stickleback are genetically tractable laboratory organisms with a well-annotated genome, and individuals from disparate populations show high levels of genetic variation. Additionally, stickleback provide an excellent system to study T-cell deficiencies, as they experience external fertilization, providing an amenable system to study immune development. To characterize the early development of adaptive immunity in threespine stickleback, we will analyze the expression of known early indicators of adaptive immunity maturation in marine and freshwater stickleback. These include recombination activating genes, rag1 and rag2, and T cell receptor genes, tcr-β and tcr-γ. To analyze gene expression, we will perform rtPCR on a developmental time series of fish. We can then implement in situ hybridization to detect when and where the genes are first expressed, followed by flow cytometry to detect phenotypic variation of T cell activity. Knowing when adaptive immunity onset occurs in threespine stickleback advances these fish as an outbred disease model in immunogenetics studies, allowing manipulative studies of immunological disease phenotypes in the context of genetic variation.