Climate Change Narrative for the Indonesian Village

The sponsor for this project was the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES), a community environment park in Australia. We conducted interviews with 32 Indonesian living in Melbourne collecting 10 hours of footage. Using the major themes raised by the interviewees we produced five short-form educational videos on flooding, changes in seasons and weather patterns, air pollution, development and deforestation, and improper rubbish disposal. These videos will be used by CERES to educate the school groups in the Indonesian village, and be accessible to all visitors through the CERES mobile app. We created an archive with detailed, timestamped notes that will enable the efficient creation of future videos by CERES staff as well as later IQP teams

Changes in Acute Stress Response in Cells of Patients Affected with Fragile X Syndrome

Fragile X Syndrome is characterized by loss of function of FMRP, which causes autism spectrum disorders and mental retardation. Stress granules (SGs) are dynamic aggregations of stalled mRNA and protein formed during the cellular stress response to halt their translation and promote cell survival. FMRP reversibly halts translation in cells, and loss of function may result in upregulated translation in FXS-affected cells. Therefore, we hypothesized that FXS cells would form SGs at a faster rate, and/or at a lower level of environmental stressor, than wild type cells. We used fluorescent microscopy to quantify SG formation in wild type and FXS-affected human B lymphocytes. Our results suggest that loss of FMRP does not contribute to higher stress sensitivity in FXS-affected cells