Honors Projects
Showing 21 - 30 of 298 Items
Student Activism and Malaysian Politics, 1955-74: Revising the History of the Malay Language Society (PBMUM)
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Song Eraou
Access: Open access
- In the literature on student activism in Malaysia, the years from 1967 to 1974 are emphasized as vibrant years—students organized large-scale demonstrations, regularly asserted their opinions in the political arena, and even participated in electoral politics. This period was followed, however, with the imposition of strict laws in 1975 limiting freedom of speech and expression. Such laws were part of the broader containment policy pursued by the state after the May 13, 1969, racial riots, which allowed the state to stifle any form of political dissidence to ensure peace between different ethnic groups. One particularly active organization in this period was the Malay Language Society (PBMUM) of the University of Malaya. While PBMUM began with a dream of using language as a mode to foster national unity, after the riots it would be remembered as a race-based organization oriented toward Malays. This thesis offers a historical analysis and reinterpretation of the PBMUM, characterizing it as a platform for students at the University of Malaya to meet, discuss, and mobilize around the most important issues concerning Malaysian society. Importantly, members exhibited a continued devotion towards changing the fate of the rakyat (the people). In revising the history of PBMUM, this thesis also offers a deeper understanding of the Malaysian political landscape in the ‘60s and ‘70s, focusing on political discussions around nation-building in the lead up to the May 13 riots and its aftermath.
An Alternative Perspective on Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs): Underpricing in the “No Target" Phase
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Anna G Constantine
Access: Open access
- Special Purpose Acquisition Companies marked a restructuring of the often-fraudulent 1980s blank check company, an entity gathering funds to merge or acquire another business entity. Based on the Special Purpose Acquisition Company structure, “the stock price should be greater than or equal to the pro-rata trust value, discounted from the SPAC’s expiration date, at all times prior to the shareholder vote date.” In this study, I research the “no target” phase of the Special Purpose Acquisition Company’s lifecycle to evaluate whether there is a difference between their trust value and their market capitalization. Based on previous research, we know that there is a discount to trust value prior to 2009; however, I postulate the decoupling of the SPAC merger approval vote and the vote for investors to redeem may eliminate this discount. Using a first difference regression to establish the premium to the average trust value of 1,057 Special Purpose Acquisition Companies traded between 2005 and 2022, we find that both the period before 2010 and after 2010 trades at a negative premium, or discount. Because the decoupling of the merger vote and the redemption vote did not eliminate the negative premium to trust value, I postulate that the structure of SPAC redemptions, modeled as a call option with decaying time value, may be responsible for this mispricing. I also draw opportunities for future research to investigate if the embedding of a call option into the SPAC redemption structure discourages shareholders from desiring merger outcomes early in the SPAC lifecycle.
The Current Hunt for Nitric Oxide's Effects on the Homarus americanus Cardiac Ganglion
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Joanna Lin
Access: Open access
- The crustacean heartbeat is produced and modulated by the cardiac ganglion (CG), a central pattern generator. In the American lobster, Homarus americanus, the CG consists of 4 small premotor cells (SCs) that electrically and chemically synapse onto 5 large motor cells (LCs). Rhythmic driver potentials in the SCs generate bursting in the LCs, which elicit downstream cardiac muscle contractions that are essential for physiological functions. Endogenous neuromodulators mediate changes in the CG to meet homeostatic demands caused by environmental stressors. Nitric oxide (NO), a gaseous neuromodulator, inhibits the lobster CG. Heart contractions release NO, which directly decreases the CG burst frequency and indirectly decreases the heartbeat amplitude, to mediate negative feedback. I investigated NO’s inhibitory effects on the CG to further understand the mechanisms underlying intrinsic feedback. Using extracellular recordings, I examined NO modulation of the SCs and LCs when coupled in the intact circuit and when firing independently in the ligatured preparation. Using two-electrode voltage clamp, I additionally analyzed the modulation of channel kinetics. Based on previous studies, I hypothesized that NO decreases the burst frequency of the LCs and SCs by modulating conductance properties of the voltage-gated A-type potassium current (IA). My data showed that NO decreased the burst frequency in the LCs and the burst duration in the SCs in a state-dependent manner. Furthermore, NO increased the IA inactivation time constant to decrease the LCs’ burst frequency. Thus, NO mediated inhibitory effects on cardiac output by differentially targeting both cell types and altering the IA current kinetics.
To hum or not to hum: analyzing and provoking sound production in the American lobster (Homarus americanus)
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Renske Kerkhofs
Access: Open access
- American lobsters (Homarus americanus) produce humming sounds by vibrating their carapace. These sounds have a fundamental frequency on the order of 100 Hz, with multiple higher harmonics. Though I found no relationship between lobster carapace length and hum frequency, I observed sounds similarly structured to hums but with frequencies an order of magnitude higher, suggesting that lobsters may use a wider range of sounds than previously thought. Using laser vibrometry, I was able to pick up high frequencies of carapace vibration that were similar to those I observed on sound recordings. Lobsters seem to hum most readily when approached from above, but many studies have found it difficult to reliably find soniferous lobsters. To find a way to reliably evoke sound production in American lobsters without contributing to the sound environment, lobsters were exposed to overhead abstract visual stimuli on a screen, after which their behavioral reactions were recorded, as well as any sound production in response to the stimulus. Lobsters responded to the screen stimulus with the same types of behaviors with which they responded to general overhead physical stimuli. This study demonstrates that American lobsters may produce high-pitched sounds and that abstract visual cues can be used as a silent tool to elicit lobster behaviors, but not sound production.
The Crossroads We Make: Intergenerational Trauma and Reparative Reading in Recent Asian American Memoirs (2018-2022)
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Josh-Pablo Manish Patel
Access: Open access
- This project extends reparative reading practices to recent Asian American memoirs, specifically trauma memoirs from the past five years (2018-2022) that detail personal trauma and communal, intergenerational trauma. Reparative reading is explored within five memoirs: Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know (2022), Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), Phuc Tran’s Sigh, Gone (2020), Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings (2020), and Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know (2018). In considering the reparative turn in Asian American memoirs, this thesis draws on and extends Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s reparative frameworks and bell hooks’ theories on pedagogy and love. A critical analysis of self-writings through pre-existing reparative reading models alongside traditional Asian American scholarship on racial melancholia resists the monopolistic dominance of overwhelming negative affects (such as shame, guilt, and anger) that saturate Asian American lives and life-writing. Instead, this alternative interpretative practice exposes how authors seek love, pleasure, and positivity within their texts and within their own lives, while also exploring the methods through which the memoirists themselves embody the reparative in writing and self-analysis. Thus, shaping the reparative turn for Asian America illuminates the productive ways reshaped methods of writing and criticism, and its resultant ethics of living, can push back against lived racial oppression and pain as well as decades of cultural erasure and intergenerational trauma. This varied engagement with love-based and reparative frameworks allows Asian American authors to begin healing from trauma, and this is evidenced through non-traditional psychiatric healing methods, literary methods, and strategies of communal formation.
Ethnicity and Territory: Cultural and Political Autonomy for African Descended Colombians through Law 70
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Ayana Opong-Nyantekyi
Access: Open access
- Colombia has the second largest African descendant population in all South America due to the transatlantic slave trade that stripped millions from their homeland and brought them to present day Colombia. While African descendants have been a part of the region’s history for over five centuries, it was not until 1993 with the establishment of Law 70 that the Colombian government acknowledged the culture and rights of African descendants. This thesis analyzes the historical, social, and political underpinnings of Law 70, its implementation, and aftereffects. I argue that Law 70 acknowledges a lived identity of rural African descended Colombians as the mechanism for Black communities to obtain rights. The thesis addresses the deep connection between ethnicity and territory, and how Law 70 recognizes that, for rural African descendants, ancestry, culture, and territory, cannot be separated. Law 70 codified a legal transition from a racial to an ethnic frame, which was necessary for African descendants to live their difference and be recognized by the nation.
What Policies Cannot Express: An Examination of Sri Lanka’s Continuing Inability to Bridge the Sinhala-Tamil Ethnolinguistic Divide through National Policies and Programs
Date: 2018-01-01
Creator: Lillian Eckstein
Access: Open access
The Rising Tide of Indigenous Mobilization: Identity and the Politics of Refusal in Mexico and Ecuador
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Kelsey J Freeman
Access: Open access
The Federal Disproportionate Minority Contact Mandate: An Examination of Its Effectiveness in Reducing Racial Disparities in Juvenile Justice
Date: 2014-05-01
Creator: Hanna Leigh Wurgaft
Access: Open access
- This paper challenges the effectiveness of the federal Disproportionate Minority Contact mandate. It first traces the legislative history of the mandate, from the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Act of 1974, to the establishment of the Disproportionate Minority Confinement mandate of 1988, to the final shift to Disproportionate Minority Contact in 2002. It then describes and analyzes implementation of the mandate in the New England states, showing uneven data collection and limited compliance with the mandate. The next chapter explores factors outside the jurisdiction of the DMC mandate that create and perpetuate racial disparities in juvenile justice, including concentrated poverty, police tactics driven in part by federal initiatives, and school disciplinary policies. Ultimately, this paper reports that racial disparities in arrests of juveniles have increased significantly- not declined- during the life of the mandate. It then discusses the limits of federal legislation in remedying racial disparities in juvenile justice.
The Role of Protein Kinases ROG1 and SRF6 in the WAK Stress Response Pathway
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Jaepil E Yoon
Access: Open access