Honors Projects
Showing 71 - 80 of 298 Items
Exploiting Context in Linear Influence Games: Improved Algorithms for Model Selection and Performance Evaluation
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Daniel Little
Access: Open access
- In the recent past, extensive experimental works have been performed to predict joint voting outcomes in Congress based on a game-theoretic model of voting behavior known as Linear Influence Games. In this thesis, we improve the model selection and evaluation procedure of these past experiments. First, we implement two methods, Nested Cross-Validation with Tuning (Nested CVT) and Bootstrap Bias Corrected Cross-Validation (BBC-CV), to perform model selection and evaluation with less bias than previous methods. While Nested CVT is a commonly used method, it requires learning a large number of models; BBC-CV is a more recent method boasting less computational cost. Using Nested CVT and BBC-CV we perform not only model selection but also model evaluation, whereas the past work was focused on model selection alone. Second, previously models were hand picked based on performance measures gathered from CVT, but both Nested CVT and BBC-CV necessitate an automated model selection procedure. We implement such a procedure and compare its selections to what we otherwise would have hand picked. Additionally, we use sponsorship and cosponsorship data to improve the method for estimating unknown polarity values of bills. Previously, only subject code data was used. This estimation must be done when making voting outcome predictions for a new bill as well as measuring validation or testing errors. We compare and contrast several new methods for estimating unknown bill polarities.
Non-Naturalism and Naturalism in Mathematics, Morality, and Epistemology
Date: 2018-05-01
Creator: Nicholas DiStefano
Access: Open access
Policy Making, Decision Making, and Advocacy: The U.S. Asylum System Since 9/11
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Clara Jergins
Access: Open access
- Immigration justice advocates and immigration restrictionists alike are unhappy with the way that the U.S. asylum system functions. This project seeks to develop a better understanding of policy changes and the politicized influence of the president and executive authorities over the asylum system since 9/11—in particular, these individuals’ ability to implement their policy preferences through the hiring and instruction of Asylum Officers and Immigration Judges. Through case studies of nonprofit organizations, it identifies the key points in the asylum process where asylum has been restricted, and the ways in which these restrictions can be responded to. On the basis of these factors, this project identifies four key changes, made by Congress, through which the asylum system could be improved: the establishment of an Article I immigration court, encoded testimonial and credibility standards, universal representation, and an end to asylum seeker detention. These changes are asserted to depoliticize the asylum process and to create a stable asylum system in which those that should qualify for asylum do qualify.
Africa and the International Criminal Court: Behind the Backlash and Toward Future Solutions
Date: 2017-05-01
Creator: Marisa O'Toole
Access: Open access
- Fifteen years into its operation as the preeminent international institution charged with the prosecution of the most serious international crimes, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has faced and continues to face intense backlash from the African continent. Once the Court’s most fervent advocates, many African leaders now lambast the ICC. In recent months, three African countries and the African Union en masse have attempted withdrawal from the Court, thus pushing the ICC-Africa relationship into the international spotlight as a topic of acute global interest. This paper seeks to explore the critiques behind this backlash through both a historical and present-day lens, as well as from the perspectives of African leaders, victims-locals, and civil society actors. In doing so, it investigates historical critiques of the ICTY and ICTR, concerns raised during the Rome Statute negotiations, current African leader perspectives as viewed through the case studies of Darfur, Kenya, Uganda, and the AU-ICC relationship, and present African victim-local and civil society opinions of the Court. By understanding the current and multi-faceted African opposition to the ICC and such criticisms’ historical roots, as well as the pockets of hope for the Court within Africa, this analysis reveals the ICC’s main challenges in its relationship with the African continent. With such hurdles unveiled, the ICC can pursue several strategies, located primarily on the state and individual levels, in its endeavor to address these important critiques and regain African support.
The Epistemology of Observation: Performance, Power, and The Regulation of Female Sexuality in The Duchess of Malfi and The Changeling
Date: 2018-05-01
Creator: Sarah Claudia Bonanno
Access: Open access
Using atmospheric O2 and CO2 measurements to determine the stoichiometry of photosynthesis and respiration in a temperate forest
Date: 2018-01-01
Creator: Margaret Marie Conley
Access: Open access
- The O2:CO2 exchange ratio of the terrestrial biosphere (αb) is an important parameter in carbon sink calculations, but its value is not well constrained. We investigate the stoichiometry of O2 and CO2 at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts over a span of six years, considering the covariation of O2 and CO2 in forest air during 6-hour periods to determine an average value for the O2:CO2 exchange ratio. This approach provides a way to determine the value of αb averaged across seasonal cycles and species assemblages. Our analysis produces an overall average exchange ratio of -1.06 ± 0.01. Comparing measurements within and above the canopy and during nighttime and daytime periods, we observe that atmospheric dynamics and canopy effects produce lower exchange ratios indicative of an enhanced forest signal at the low intake and for daytime periods. We also see an increase in the exchange ratio in the winter compared to the summer that may reflect changes in plant physiological processes or contamination by a fossil fuel signal. To determine whether our observed ratio is truly representative of αb, we use a simple model to estimate the range of variability in CO2 and O2 mixing ratios expected from local influence alone and use this as a criterion to isolate periods dominated by local exchange, yielding an average summer forest exchange ratio of -1.00 ± 0.02. Our analysis provides insight into the average value and variability of αb for temperate forests for use in calculation of the land carbon sink.
Exploring Random Walks on Graphs for Protein Function Prediction
Date: 2018-05-01
Creator: Angela M Dahl
Access: Open access
Identity Formation in the Lebanese-American Christian Diaspora
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Matthew Cesar Audi
Access: Open access
- Since the late 1800s, people have immigrated to the United states from Lebanon and Syria, and the community’s racial and ethnic position within the United States has been contested ever since. Previous research emphasizes that while people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are legally classified as “white” on the U.S. Census. However, many people from the region do not identify as white, and they often face discrimination or threats of violence. For people of Arab and Christian backgrounds this is further complicated because they are a part of the majority through their religion, but part of a minority through their ethnic background. In addition, media depictions of MENAs tend to be homogenizing and stereotypical. This thesis attempts to fill a gap in literature on Christian Lebanese American identities by conducting ethnographic interviews with Lebanese-Americans from a variety of generations. It pulls from theories of diaspora and race, emphasizing the importance of context and migration trajectories when understanding Lebanese American identities. My findings demonstrate wide-ranging diversity in how Christian Lebanese-Americans understand and articulate identity due to three major factors: divergent migrant pathways in multiple countries, generational difference given changing racial politics in the U.S., and generational difference given the impacts of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East upon young Lebanese-Americans.
The combinatorial effects of temperature and salinity on the nervous system of the American lobster, Homarus americanus
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Katrina Carrier
Access: Open access
- The ability of nervous systems to maintain function when exposed to global perturbations in temperature and salinity is a non-trivial task. The nervous system of the American lobster (H. americanus), a marine osmoconformer and poikilotherm, must be robust to these stressors, as they frequently experience fluctuations in both. I characterized the effects of temperature on the output of the pyloric circuit, a central pattern generator in the stomatogastric nervous system (STNS) that controls food filtration and established the maximum temperature that neurons in this circuit can withstand without “crashing” (ceasing to function but recovering when returned to normal conditions). I established a range of saline concentrations that did not cause the system to crash, and then determined whether combinatorial changes in temperature and salinity concentrations alter the maximum temperature the system tolerated. Even as burst frequency increased as temperature increased, phase constancy was observed. Interestingly, the system crashed at higher temperatures upon exposure to lower saline concentrations and lower temperatures in higher saline concentrations. I also established the range of saline concentrations that the lobster’s whole heart and cardiac ganglion (CG), the nervous system that controls the lobster’s heartbeat, can withstand. Then, I examined whether exposure to altered salinity and elevated temperature alters the crash temperature of the whole heart and CG. The CG crashed at higher temperatures than the whole heart in each saline concentration. Like the STNS, the whole heart and CG both crashed at higher temperatures in lower saline concentrations and higher temperatures in lower saline concentrations.
Mathematical Notions of Resilience: The Effects of DisturbanceI in One-Dimensional Nonlinear Systems
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Stephen Ligtenberg
Access: Open access