We are constantly exposed to inputs from the outside world, but we do not perceive everything we are exposed to. Some inputs are rather weak: we might perceive them at one point in time, but not at another. The state of our brains right before we receive such sensory inputs influences whether or not we perceive them. Brain oscillations are proposed to play a key role in setting these brain states; however, how exactly these brain rhythms influence our perception remains a topic of active research.

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Scholars would assist with Aim 1 of a new R01 working with our lab and the Health Evaluation and Analytics Laboratory at NYU Wagner.

Congenital heart defects (CHDs) are the most common and resource intensive birth defects managed in the United States (US), affecting ~40,000 births per year in the US. (1) One-year mortality for these children is >10%. It is >30% for children requiring neonatal surgery. (2) Yet there are currently limited data on long-term outcomes and health expenditures for these children. Due to marked heterogeneity in disease subtypes and treatments among CHD patients, the power of single-center studies is limited. Multi-center data are siloed in diagnostic or procedural registries or in-patient databases, or are the product of individual investigations. Administrative data may lack clinical precision, as ICD codes for this population are not based on physiology. Further, data on costs and value typically rely on cost-to-charge ratio based costs, which are highly influenced by hospital accounting.

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Tax evasion is one of the main sources of informal economic activity and has drastic effects on different macroeconomic variables. However, due to various reasons, it is difficult to directly measure the extent of tax evasion. This project aims to develop a novel way of measuring aggregate tax evasion in national economies using Twitter feeds. To this end, using carefully selected keywords in different national languages, we will collect country and regional level data from Twitter feeds in different frequencies for a large cross section of economies and then construct a measure of tax evasion using the collected data. In addition to fully describing the collected dataset, the project will also examine the evolution of the constructed series.

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Single cell sequencing has generated unprecedented insight into the cellular complexity of normal and diseased organ. We are interested in using this technique to understand the mechanisms of eye development, disease and regeneration. We also would like to compare the transcriptomic signatures between mouse models and human tissues. This project involves analysis of large amount of data from single cell sequencing. It requires understanding of statistical analysis and proficient programming skills.

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Project: analyze behavior of Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens) as part of a collaboration between the Bendesky and Cunningham labs of the Zuckerman Institute (NeuroTheory Center)

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Individuals with schizophrenia shows a wide range of cognitive deficits, and lack in the ability to control the variety of inputs (whether internal or external) to create a unitary “self”. This problem has been often associated with a supramodal attentional deficit, but its causes are yet unknown. In the past twenty years, the quest to identify brain regions or networks showing abnormal functioning in schizophrenia has been unproductive; but one question is left unanswered: is it possible that it is the white matter tracts supporting attention (i.e., the superior longitudinal fasciculi I, II, and III) to be compromised in this psychiatric disorder? The present project will attempt to dissect the fronto-parietal branches with DTI by analyzing over 400 images from the Open Access SchizConnect.Org repository (data already available to the PI). Funds will be used to support the work of a junior or senior-year undergraduate student (possibly from URMs) to conduct the data analysis during the summer of AY2020. Results will be made available with the scientific community and published in open access peer-review journals (e.g., Schizophrenia Research). Co-mentoring of the undergraduate student will be done by Dr. Henrietta Howells (https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=nudmODkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao), opening the student to an international collaboration.

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The Milky Way swarms with orbiting satellite dwarf galaxies of astounding diversity. Some galaxies continue to form stars while others stop and dim in brightness. In computer simulations, the evolutionary history of each dwarf galaxy that leads to these differences is known. Galaxies can lose gas and stop forming stars due to early exposure to stellar radiation (reionization), interaction with the hot gas of the host (ram-pressure stripping), or gravitational interactions with the host/dwarf galaxies (tidal effects).

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