Bicultural Kids
By Jason Weiss

"One of the toughest challenges that immigrants in the U.S. face," says Smita Sonti, a senior majoring in biobehavioral health, "is assimilating their children into American culture." Sonti rated the personal ethnic identities of 30 female immigrants from India and explored how these women's self-images relate to their relationships with their children. She found that Indian mothers generally support the biculturalism of their kids, but as the child grows older and begins to take on more "American" characteristics, the mother begins to experience increasing levels of stress.

HIV: A Thief
By Laura Zajac

"You have to know what the virus is all about before you look for a cure," explained Na Young Lee. Lee studied the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). When HIV attacks a human immune cell, it "borrows" the cell's own proteins and uses them to replicate itself. Lee identified C/EBPß factor as one of these important proteins. "It's just one of many factors involved in the HIV cycle."

Life at the Extremes
By Dan DeJoseph

How can life survive in the harsh environment of the deep sea? In the case of tubeworms, the answer is through a symbiotic relationship with certain bacteria. For the past three years Jason Andras has researched how tubeworms living at the hydrocarbon seeps on the ocean floor provide nourishment to their bacterial symbionts. Working with biologist Charles Fisher, Andras, a senior majoring in biology and chemistry, experimented on samples collected in the Gulf of Mexico and found evidence for a new theory regarding how the tubeworms obtain nutrients.

Might as Well Face It
By Andy Gathman

When Clinton took office, there were just five websites on the Internet; today there are several hundred million. This changing infoscape has brought new sociological problems, among them Internet addiction, according to undergraduate Daniel Brown. Of the 232 Penn State students Brown surveyed, 16 percent displayed symptoms of Internet addiction, which include at least 15 hours on the net each week and interference with everyday life. "The effects of Internet addiction can have long-term detrimental consequences on our society," says Brown. "It is important to expose the problem and begin working on solutions."

Tracking Tires
By Laura Zajac

How does a small tire company measure up against industry giants like Wal-Mart and Pep Boys? Using a technique known as "competitive intelligence," Margaret Horne — a business student at Penn State Shenango Campus — gathered asset, liability, and income data on major competitors of a small tire business in Western Pennsylvania. Charting this data Horne spotted strengths and weaknesses and calculated a total cash value for a specific small company. "This is something all companies should do if they're looking to sell their business or find ways to grow," she said.

Art Graffiti
By Marleah Peabody

Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program is turning acts of vandalism into works of art. According to geography major Eliot Westerman, the goal of the program is to redirect potential vandals and create graffiti artists. The Mural Arts Program interviewers ask locals about social problems in their neighborhoods, and graffiti artists paint tailored murals that support the social changes for each neighborhood. Residents told Westerman, who studied the murals last summer, that they appreciate the murals, which are seldom vandalized. —

Singing Violin
By Liz Gallagher

Sure, fourth-graders are adorable standing behind music stands, bowing at violins. Ryan Williams is working so those kids will sound as appealing as they look. He says children are taught to focus too much on the technical aspects of music while learning an instrument, and not reminded to actually listen to the sounds they produce. Knowing children can often sing on key, Williams theorizes by integrating voice lessons with violin lessons, the young musicians will be able to fine-tune their violin intonation because they will be aware of what good pitch sounds like.

Miniature Flypaper
By Jeff Wolovitz

What's the best way to clean up after a nuclear accident? Find someone else to do it. Chemical engineering student Tim Durbin studied one such lucky volunteer, a bacterium called Shewanella puerfaciens. As part of the Natural Accelerated Bioremediation Research Program, Durbin studied the use of biological organisms to collect nuclear pollution from the environment. He noted how efficiently positively charged iron ions stuck to S. puerfaciens bacteria. The bacteria get the job. S. puerfaciens have a very high surface area for ion adsorbtion, thus radioactive atoms in soil can be concentrated into a very small amounts for safe removal.

Black Hair
By Cory Holding

Nekose Elene Wills asks, "Why do black women straighten their hair?" Despite the skin and scalp damage of hair "relaxers" (which contain lye, an ingredient in drain cleaner), and the natural kink of black hair, many black women continue to straighten their hair. Eighty-percent of the women Wills surveyed used chemical hair straighteners to make their hair "easier to manage." Most preferred the look of straightened hair to natural hair. "Black women straighten their hair," Wills proposes, "because it is more socially acceptable." Media, family, and peers, she says, further the cause of straight hair.

X-Ray Vision
By Anna Hershenberg

When factory pipes corrode, they break, causing property damage and potential loss of life. Machines that read a pipe's thickness cannot filter out the insulation lying outside the pipe. To get an accurate reading, companies have to spend millions tearing off and replacing insulation. Until now. Exxon and other power industries funded Penn State's developent of a machine that uses gamma rays to "see through" the pipe's insulation. Nuclear engineering sophomore Simon Lobdell molded the "collimator," the part of the machine that counts how many gamma rays per second bounce back from the pipe, so that it would only absorb echoes from the pipe, not the insulation, thus giving an accurate reading of where a pipe is thinning out.