Honors Projects
Showing 181 - 190 of 298 Items
The Mérida Initiative and the Violence of Transnational Criminal Organizations in Mexico
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Brianna Madison Canning
Access: Open access
- Organized crime related violence in Mexico remains at unprecedented levels despite decades of effort and billions of dollars spent attempting to weaken Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) through the Mérida Initiative (MI): a bilateral security partnership established in October 2007 between US President George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderón. The MI sought to combat TCOs (often called cartels), their drug trafficking operations, and their networks of corruption. However, since then TCOs have expanded their businesses beyond drug trafficking, and they have adopted violent practices that target civilians. Extortion, torture, murder, and human trafficking have become common as TCOs look to other illicit markets to make up for losses in drug profits, and to signal strength to their opponents. More specifically, the homicide rate in Mexico increased by more than 100% between 2007 and 2008, aligning with the creation of the initiative designed to have the opposite effect. However, case study research into the violence in Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana determined that the MI was not actually implemented until mid-2009 because of bureaucratic delays, meaning it did not impact the initial spike in homicides in Mexico in 2008. Instead, the violence starting in 2008 is a result of changing dynamics between and within TCOs, as they adapted to survive and maintain control of resources. By supporting the Mexican government’s drug war efforts over the next several years, the Mérida Initiative became one of many complex domestic and international factors that ultimately contributed to extreme levels of violence in Mexico.
Forests as Fuel? An Investigation of Biomass’ Role in a Just Energy Transition
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Brianna Cunliffe
Access: Open access
- Although wood pellet biomass corporations frame their recent rapid growth as a victory for “green energy”, troubling evidence of their adverse impacts on climate and environmental justice calls for rigorous investigation of these claims. Contextualizing biomass within the envirotechnical regimes that have created industrial ‘sacrifice zones’ in BIPOC low-income communities in the US South, this paper recharacterizes it as an innovation within oppressive regimes. It further critiques carbon accounting frameworks that designate biomass as renewable despite its greater emissions per capita than coal and carbon debts created by deforestation that could take centuries to rectify. Biomass pellet production plants, cited disproportionately in environmental justice communities, also emit serious and often under-reported amounts of pollutants including PM 2.5, VOCs, and HAPs, linked to higher rates of chronic illness and premature death in impacted communities. The current regulatory paradigm guarantees neither distributive nor procedural justice. Ethnographic research including participant-observation, interviews, and site visits revealed that community members felt that regulatory bodies serve corporations above vulnerable citizens, that their voices were not valued in public hearings or by elected officials, and that the pollution, dishonesty, and ecological harms plants bring far outweighs their meagre economic benefits. Communities enact robust resistance to biomass as both a global climate threat and a local injustice. This paper traces how coalitions connecting intersectional grassroots activist networks to larger advocacy organizations are achieving victories on the ground and in the court of public opinion, and the lessons this synergy holds for the endeavor of a truly just transition.
Can Small Donations Have Big Consequences? Candidate Ideology, Small Donations, and Election Results in the 2016 and 2018 Congressional Cycles
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Michael Borecki
Access: Open access
- Small donors have provided an increased share of total campaign contributions in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 U.S. federal election cycles, including about $3 billion of the $14.4 billion raised in 2020. Campaign funding is still dominated by an influential set of large donors, but small donations may be the basis for an effective response to the disproportionate amount of “big money” in politics. This study investigates whether candidates who are more extreme perform better with small donors, and then examines the impact of small donations and overall funding on election results. These analyses were performed using linear sum-of-squares regression models. The results in Chapter 2 show that candidates who are more politically-extreme receive more of their funding from small donations, but perform worse in general elections when fundraising is equal. Chapter 3 shows that small donations do not have an impact on candidate performance in general elections more generally, but candidates who outraise their opponent also outperform relative to the district’s partisan lean. However, that effect disappears when looking only at elections decided by less than 10 percent of the vote. These results suggest that small donors are more likely to support candidates who are more politically polarized, but the effects of small donors on the makeup of Congress is marginal at best, at least as far as general election outcomes are concerned. The project concludes by considering reform proposals that seek to broaden the pool of Americans who donate small sums to political candidates.
Assessing the Accuracy of Quantum Monte Carlo Pseudopotentials for CO2 Capture in Metal Organic Frameworks
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Chloe Renfro
Access: Open access
- As global emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases rises, global warming persists as an imminent threat to the environment and every day lives. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, there is a need to design materials to separate and capture the different gasses. Current gas capturing technologies lack efficiency and have extensive energy costs. A class of materials for CO2 capture is Molecular Organic Frameworks (MOFs). In order for a MOF to be efficient for this type of separation, the MOF needs to be able to selectively bind to the gas, while also not suffering a high energy cost to remove the gas and reuse the material. Computationally calculated binding energies are used to determine the usefulness of a MOF at capture and separation of a certain gas. Each computational method has its advantages and limitations. In this work, diffusion quantum Monte Carlo is being explored. This paper focuses on the accuracy of recently developed pseudopotentials for DMC use. These pseudopotentials have been tested on smaller molecules but have not been systematically tested for systems such as MOFs. Results from a DMC calculation of Zn-MOF-74 show a binding energy of -18.02 kJ/mol with an error bound of 16.74 kJ/mol. In order to assess the accuracy of the DMC results for binding energies of this magnitude the uncertainty need to be reduced, a subject of ongoing work.
Characterization of the ELMO2 Protein that Mediates Cell Adhesion in Arabidopsis thaliana
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Devaki Rajiv
Access: Open access
- The binding of adjacent cells to one another, or cell adhesion, is critical for the growth and development of multicellular organisms. In plant cells, much evidence suggests that the amount and modification of pectin in the cell wall largely determines how well cell adhesion occurs. ELMO1 is a Golgi protein involved in pectin-mediated cellular adhesion, and mutations in ELMO1 lead to disrupted cell organization in Arabidopsis. ELMO1 is predicted to be a scaffold for pectin biosynthesis enzymes, and thus its absence leads to the adhesion-defective phenotype of elmo1-/- plants. There are four other ELMO homologues (ELMO2,3,4 and 5) which remain to be characterized as to their function and role in cell adhesion. This thesis focuses on the characterization of ELMO2, which has 79% amino acid similarity with ELMO1. A genetic analysis that evaluated elmo2 double mutants revealed that ELMO2 and ELMO1 have redundant functions. elmo1-/-/2-/- double mutants, but not elmo2-/- or elmo1-/- single mutants, have reduced tensile strengths. While elmo1-/- phenotypes are most pronounced in liquid media, they are partially rescued by growth on agar, suggesting a role of turgor in maintaining cell adhesion. Like ELMO1, ELMO2-GFP colocalizes with Golgi markers. The results suggest that like ELMO1, ELMO2 also functions as a scaffold for pectin biosynthesis enzymes in the Golgi.
Playing the Fool: Analyzing the Phenomena of Iurodstvo In Contemporary Russian Cinema and Civil Society.
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Colby Silva Santana
Access: Open access
- Of Russia's cultural and religious icons, the holy fool (iurodivy) is quite possibly the most significant one of contemporary times. The holy fool – a historical and cultural character that feigns insanity to produce moral and spiritual reflections and hide the purity of their souls – has left its traces over a significant portion of Russia's literary history, postmodern tradition, and socio-political thought. In its uniquely positioned role as a powerful form of institutional critique, today taking shape in modern-day political protest performance culture, the holy fool has often been utilized to interrogate the intertwined relationship of the Russian state and the Orthodox Church. This analysis reviews the scholarship on holy foolery and how it has manifested in various fields of study. Although scholarship on this subject is significant, there exists a lack of research into representation of the holy fool in contemporary Russian cinema. Cinema is uniquely positioned to portray holy foolery, thanks to the unique form of spectatorship the film camera allows. This thesis analyzes several case studies of 21st-century Russian cinema that feature characters representing qualities of iurodstvo and its related models. In doing so, this work traces the history and development of iurodstvo through the lens of cinema and suggests new ways of understanding holy foolery's manifestation as a political tool.
Rhythmic behaviors: Understanding neuromodulation at the neuromuscular level
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Kenneth Garcia
Access: Open access
- Neuromodulation allows for the flexibility of neural circuit dynamics and the outputs they produce. Studies of the stomatogastric nervous system (STNS) have expanded our knowledge on the actions of neuromodulators, small molecules that most often activate G-protein coupled receptors and reconfigure circuit activity and composition. In these systems, modulation has been found to occur at every level, from sensory-motor coupling to neuromuscular transmission (Harris-Warrick and Marder 1991). Neuromodulators have complex effects on motor output; they can alter the firing of individual neurons while also modulating muscle properties, neuromuscular transmission, and sensory neuron response to muscle activity (Fort et al. 2004). We investigated this further by recording the motor output produced by the gastric mill rhythm of the lobster STNS under neuromodulator conditions. How is this neuromuscular system as a whole modulated to produce motor flexibility? We hypothesized that these neuromodulators act on individual receptors of component neurons of central pattern generator (CPG)-effector system themselves and at the periphery, coordinately altering muscle contraction by altering all levels of the crustacean neuromuscular system. Application of NRNFLRFamide, RPCH, oxotremorine, and proctolin to the gastric mill 4 (gm4) muscles of the Cancer crab showed that neuromodulators that have been found to have variable, yet significant effects on the activity of the neurons of the STNS directly alter the activity of the gm4 muscles as well, suggesting that coordination of peripheral actions and direct neuronal modulation regulates patterned motor output.
Invisible Ailments: A Collection
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Jane L. Godiner
Access: Open access
- "Invisible Ailments" is a collection of short stories that trace the depth, breath, and sweeping range of lived experiences of people struggling with mental illness. While it is a work of fiction, the people in these stories might feel eerily familiar — to your friends, your family members, your loved ones, or, if you're brave enough to admit it, yourself.
Racial Bias within Capital Punishment: Instructional Comprehension
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Marcus Gadsden
Access: Open access
- This dissertation examines the existence of racial bias within capital punishment. Since colonial times discriminatory death sentencing has impacted racial minorities, and despite living in a post-colonial epoch, the United States Justice system continues to produce alarming racial disparities. Consequently, both law reviews and social science journals indicate that race remains a significant factor in criminal trials. So, to what extent does racial bias influence capital punishment trials? Given that it does exist, how can it be alleviated? Through a statistical/qualitative analysis of psychological studies, Supreme Court cases, and jury instructions, this dissertation suggests that implicit cognitive bias continues to produce daunting realities in contemporary criminal punishment processes. Notably among juries, traditional judicial procedures have ostensibly triggered implicit bias and psychological intimidation, i.e. jury instructions. Moreover, do long and complicated jury instructions heighten instances of partial judgment? In Racial Bias within Capital Punishment: Instructional Comprehension, I argue that inaccessible jury instructions provide a space where jurors adhere to subtle racial preferences. Consequently, the swaying capacity of juries in capital punishment trials proceeds to arbitrarily produce discrepancies in sentencing rates.
The Shah Bano Case: An English-Language Democratic Practice in Post-Colonial India
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Hafsa Hossain
Access: Open access
- In 1985, Mohd. Ahmad Khan v. Shah Bano Begum, known commonly as the Shah Bano Case, became a flashpoint for Indian democracy. The Shah Bano case revolved around the maintenance of a divorced woman, not the first of its kind by any means. A case that sparked major social and political upheaval during a broader period of political turmoil, the Shah Bano case has long been interpreted as an expression of the crisis and contradictions between the democratic rights of women as citizens and the democratic rights of Muslims as a religious minority in the Indian nation-state. In the immediate aftermath of the case, critical feminist and post-colonial scholarship grappled with the dilemmas it involved, but to some extent remained caught up in those dilemmas. This thesis builds upon the important work of these and later scholars, but it also draws new attention to the specific role of the English-language public sphere in shaping the terms of debate that surrounded the case in the 1980s. This paper argues against the binary understanding of the landmark Shah Bano Case as either a failure or success of Indian secularism. I argue that the case and its aftermath demonstrate the continual nature of Indian secularism and democratic practice, especially laden in the post-Emergency era.