Nanomedicine is one of the most promising areas of nanotechnology, aspiring to use nanoparticles and structures to diagnose, analyze, and treat medical conditions. Current research in nanomedicine relies on larger scale measurement and there has not been a study that shows how the individual cells react to the presence of nanoparticles. It is our belief that understanding how a cell reacts and interacts with semi-conducting or metal nanostructures, specifically nanowires (NW) is important for designing future nanodevices, particularly Neuroprosthetics. Adult rat hippocampal progenitor cells from female Fischer 344 rats were cultured to be kept in its undifferentiated state and were allowed to settle by gravity on top of three types of NW chips - ones with horizontal, vertical, and random growth of silicon nanowires to answer the following questions : 1. Are cells viable with nanowire structures? 2. How does the cell interact with nanowires by observing changes in cellular component, specifically cytoskeletal movement (contents or arrangements) when in contact with the NWs. Results showed that there were significantly less viable cells found on horizontal NWs than vertical ones, although mechanical difficulty with imaging vertical NW may have contributed to death or loss of cell interaction with NW on imaging. There was evidence of cells actively and preferentially interacting with NWs with horizontal NW chips. Future direction of the study would be to use NWs to stimulate and detect electrical activities within the cell and study how the ion gradients are affected in/around the cell

How the properties of a first language (Mandarin, Korean)influence the comprehension of sentences in a secondlanguage (English) was investigated in a series of self-pacedreading time studies. Native Mandarin- and Korean-speakinglearners of English were compared with native Englishspeakers on how they resolved a temporary ambiguity aboutthe relationship between a verb and the noun following it in asentence (e.g., The club members understood [that] thebylaws would be applied to everyone.). Frequency biases ofverbs’ subcategorization structure (direct-object-bias vs.sentential-complement-bias) was manipulated in Experiment1. Results showed that L1-Mandarin learners of L2-Englishwere able to use both the verb bias and the complementizercue, and their usage of these cues was not modulated byproficiency. L1-Mandarin learners’ use of the verb bias cuecontrasts with previously reported findings with L1-Koreanlearners of L2-English, who showed sensitivity to verb biasonly in higher proficiency learners (Lee, Lu, & Garnsey,2013). The difference between L1-Mandarin and L1-Koreanlearners suggests that L1 word order (Mandarin & English,SVO; Korean SOV) influences how quickly L2 learners learnword-order-dependent cues about structures in the L2.Experiment 2 added plausibility manipulation (e.g., The clubmembers understood the bylaws/the pool...). Neither thenative speakers or the L2 groups (L1-Mandarin L2-English &L1-Korean L2-English) used plausibility to disambiguatesentences, challenging the claims that L2 learners rely moreheavily on plausibility than syntactic cues during sentenceprocessing.