Showing 1 - 25 of 5830 Items
International Courts as Venues for Climate Activists: Conceptualizing the Effectiveness of International Climate Litigation Through Norm Development
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Ciara McMillan Tran
Access: Open access
- This thesis explores the emergence of international courts as venues for climate activists, and how climate litigation connects climate change-related damages to human rights law to broaden human rights norms related to the environment. Through three case studies of international climate cases, this project evaluates the effectiveness of international climate litigation through direct effectiveness, indirect effectiveness, and normative effectiveness. It argues that international climate cases are involved in the work of larger transnational advocacy networks who engage with issue framing that presents their causes to both a legal and a public audience. Framing is an ongoing, contested process that both activists and respondent states engage with, but the processes of norm development and socialization it prompts may ultimately work to advance the idea of climate and environment-related rights.
Exploring Auditory Compensatory Neuroplasticity and Negative Phonotactic Behavior in G. bimaculatus Through Computer Vision and Machine Learning-Driven Analysis Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Chongye "Tom" Han
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Introgression and adaptive gene flow in a Tropical Eastern Pacific parrotfish hybrid swarm This record is embargoed.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Jolie R. Ganzell
Access: Permanent restriction
Hybrid Pixel-Superpixel Structures for Enhanced Image Segmentation:
Integrating Boundary Information in Deep Learning Models
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Jack Roberts
Access: Open access
- This project explores novel approaches to image segmentation using U-Net, leveraging superpixels to enhance accuracy. The first part investigates augmenting standard image inputs by encoding and integrating superpixel information, including an extension that reintroduces this information throughout the encoder. While results show that these methods can offer consistent improvements over the baseline, the gains are modest and suggest room for further optimization. The second part introduces a hybrid data structure, the Superpixel-Integrated Grid (SIGrid), which embeds superpixel boundary, shape, and color descriptors into a regular n × n grid. SIGrid enables more efficient training on smaller architectures while achieving noticeably higher segmentation accuracy, highlighting its potential as a lightweight and effective input representation. The code developed for this project can be found at: https://github.com/JackRobs25/Honors
Where Have All the Black Americans Gone? -- Black Americans, Black Immigrants, and Descendants of Immigrants at Elite, Private Colleges Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Gabrielle Nicole Waller-Whelan
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Time series of carbonate chemistry parameters, process investigation, and parameter modeling in the Basin Preserve, the New Meadows River, and Harpswell Sound, Maine Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Eli G. Franklin
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Forest regeneration and understory plant communities after introduced herbivore eradication on a boreal island Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Mitchell F. Zell
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
A Suite of Tools for Analyzing Hydrology and Geomorphology in Impounded Rivers
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Benjamin Wong Halperin
Access: Open access
- Large impoundment dams have well-documented impacts on hydrologic and geomorphicfunction. Numerous tools and metrics have been developed over time to characterize theseimpacts, but they remain disparate, are often applied in a small number of studies, and rarelyapplied in concert with each other. Utilizing the open-source programming language R, Iassemble a suite of metrics known as DAMS – the Dam Analysis and Metrics Suite – thatcombines several pre-existing metrics for characterizing dam impacts into one script. Thesemetrics include the Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration to characterize hydrologic change; themean streambed elevation to characterize vertical change in the river; and sediment mass balanceand flood magnitude reduction. By combining these schemas, DAMS provides a flexible andcomprehensive way to characterize the impact of dams on hydrology and geomorphology.I apply DAMS to two dams in diverse geographic settings: the Buford Dam on theChattahoochee River in Georgia and the Harris Station Dam on the Kennebec River in Maine.Both are hydroelectric dams with long stream gage records before and after dam construction. Ifound that the Buford Dam has caused a decrease in high flows in the Chattahoochee River aswell as a change in the seasonality of flows. I found that the Kennebec River has seen anincrease in high and peak flow volume after the construction of the Harris Station Dam, but thisincrease is less than comparable unimpounded rivers. The geomorphic data the ChattahoocheeRiver is fairly limited and cannot be access for the Kennebec River at all, meaning that DAMSwas unable to tell a complete story about how these rivers changed due to impoundment,highlighting the need for increased monitoring on all of the United States’ rivers.
How the Caregiver Learns to Care: Institutional, Resource, and Emotional Tensions Among Sexual Assault Support Staff
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Hanna Cha
Access: Open access
- This study examines the institutional and emotional dynamics within a multidisciplinary team that consists of law enforcement (LE), the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and sexual assault support staff who handle child sexual abuse cases. Employees interpret trauma differently depending on the organizational framework they operate within. The way professionals construct trauma shapes caregivers’ outlook on the process and ultimately affects how they care for their children. While LE and DHHS prioritize legal compliance, the sexual assault support staff advocate for trauma-informed care. Using semi-structured interviews with seven sexual assault support staff members who identified as women or non-binary, this research explores the way they manage the gendered burden of emotional labor, the systemic undervaluation of trauma-informed practices, and the emotional challenges caregivers face in supporting child survivors. Findings show the friction between the multidisciplinary team, emphasizing the need for integrated trauma-informed training and community-based support systems for caregivers.
The Voice of "Real America:" Trump, Trumpism, and Rural Voters Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Matthew Russell Duthaler
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
The Contemporary Role of International Courts:
Challenges Faced in the Conflict in Gaza Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Mary E. John
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
A Fatal Mistake or a Paradigm Shift? Noguchi Hideyo and the Global Reimagining of Yellow Fever
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Seth Gorelik
Access: Open access
Mythologisation, magnification, et modification : La Culture de la langue française
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Rachel Houston Scruby
Access: Open access
- Across three chapters, this thesis examines how the French language plays a vital role not only as a vehicle for communication but as an incarnation of culture, and how France makes sense of linguistic and cultural changes today through the lens of its long history. An analysis of historical documents from key moments in this history illuminates French’s central role as an instrument of power reliant on a prioritization of elegance and beauty, an equivalency between language and people based in a grand history, and a global influence. It shows how this history constructed the language as a political tool, capable of bolstering France’s global importance through “soft power.” This created not only the conditions for the imposition of French to combat fears of decline in military and political domains, but also a simultaneous conflict between the language as an expression of elegance and as a tool to be spread widely to assert the country’s dominance, particularly during the colonial period. Close examination of this long and intricate history illuminates our understanding of how France currently works to reconcile its history with its present in a world where the French language is far more widely spoken than at any other period but is no longer the primary possession of France itself.
Fitness and sex effects of a novel microsporidian parasite on its Daphnia host
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Gracie Scheve
Access: Open access
- Parasitism can influence host ecology and evolution in powerful ways, although the specific impacts on host fitness and life history may be context dependent and involve complex trade-offs. In this study, I investigated the effects of a novel microsporidian gut parasite on Daphnia ambigua, a freshwater zooplankton with a cyclical parthenogenetic life cycle. Combining extensive field sampling at Sewall Pond, Maine, with chronic exposure experiments in the lab, I assessed the parasite's impact on Daphnia fitness and propensity to shift from asexual to sexual reproduction. Field observations revealed a correlation between gut parasite prevalence and increased production of males and sexual females, independent of known sex inducers such as crowding, food limitation, and photoperiod. Lab experiments confirmed that chronic spore exposure significantly reduced Daphnia survival and reproductive output, particularly in clones previously naïve to this strain of the parasite. However, no induction of sex or male offspring was observed in response to parasite exposure under laboratory conditions. This suggests that more complex environmental interactions might be triggering sex in Daphnia. While sex provides the benefit of increased genetic diversity for future generations, I hypothesize that while Daphnia undergo sexual reproduction their ability to resist or tolerate parasite infection is diminished. Phylogenetic analyses indicate the parasite is closely related to the less virulent microsporidian Ordospora pajunii but genetically distinct, potentially constituting a new species or genus. These findings provide insight into the ecological and evolutionary tradeoffs involved in host-parasite interactions and introduce a new host-parasite system for this study.
Chains for Change: Mathematical Modeling of Boston’s Eviction Court Cases Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Brian Liu
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Mesurer l’identité : pourquoi les jeunes français se détournent du vin ?Measuring Identity: What’s Turning the Young French Away from Wine?
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Siyi (Jonathan) Li
Access: Open access
- We use a randomized discrete‑choice experiment with 381 French adults to investigate why France’s wine consumption decline is most pronounced among the young. The treatment group subjects were primed via a video about France’s viticultural heritage, which raises the probability of choosing French red wine over French amber beer by 14 percentage points for Generation X but lowers it by 15 points for Generation Z. Using observational data collected after the experiment, 2SLS estimates show that the decline of wine in France is primarily due to a weakened sense of “French wine identity.” The study provides the first causal evidence for the role of identity in consumption choices and cautions that heritage‑based marketing may backfire with younger cohorts, suggesting instead modernity‑ and sustainability‑oriented strategies for the wine sector.
Building (Cellular) Barriers: Identifying cellularization dynamics involving somatic Xchromosome eliminations in Bradysia coprophila embryonic development This record is embargoed.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Aale J. Agans
Access: Permanent restriction
Convolutional Squeeze and Excitation Networks
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Kavi Sarna
Access: Open access
- Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) networks improve CNN feature learning by channel-wise attention, but their global pooling strategy discards spatial context. In this work, we reinterpret the SE block’s excitation mechanism as a convolution operation, which leads to a novel patched pooling design. Instead of global average pooling, we propose to divide feature maps into patches and pool within each patch, preserving local spatial information for attention. The excitation step is implemented with 1x1 convolutions (replacing the original SE fully-connected layers), enabling the model to learn adaptive channel reweighting efficiently across those patches. This Convolutional Squeeze-and-Excitation (CSE) approach yields spatially aware feature recalibration with minimal overhead. We evaluate CSE across multiple CNN architectures (including a custom ConvNet and ResNet) on image classification tasks (Fashion-MNIST, CIFAR-10). The results show consistent accuracy improvements over standard SE blocks. Moreover, we demonstrate the generality of patched pooling by integrating it with other attention modules like Efficient Channel Attention (ECA) and Global Context (GC), achieving further gains. Our findings highlight that incorporating localized pooling in SE-style attention significantly enhances representation learning across diverse scenarios.
Gracefully Navigating Industry Exit: Modeling Regional Climate Change-Driven Decline in Maine’s Lobster Fishery and the Urgent Need for Statewide Comprehensive Cost Data Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Luisa Isabelle Louchheim
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Modulation of migratory and breeding phenologies by Maine’s common loons (Gavia immer) in response to climate conditions Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Henry Grant Marriott
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Enchantresses through Time and Space: Examining Feminine Agency and Narrative Resistance
from Camelot to Salem
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Isabelle Sungsil Lee
Access: Open access
Rescentment: Reclaiming the Olfactory Sense in Contemporary Asian Diaspora Literature
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Maya Juliette Le
Access: Open access
When Populists Come to Power: A US-UK Comparative Analysis Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Ari Edward Bersch
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
The Art of Distancing Desire: Queer Female Possibility in British and French Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Julia Smart
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Transcending the Clinical: Empathic Care Work, Moral Injury, and the Community Health Worker in Rural Maine
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Anneke Halliday
Access: Open access
- The Maine Mobile Health Program is a federally qualified health center and community health organization that provides healthcare to migrant and seasonal farmworkers in rural Maine. The MMHP employs community health workers to act as negotiators between unjust systems, physicians, and patients. This thesis investigates the ways in which community health workers provide patients with “empathic care” and details how this happens in practice based on field observations and interviews. It also addresses how empathic care benefits patients by creating empowerment, building trust, and giving patients agency in their healthcare decision making. Furthermore, this thesis discusses the cost of providing empathic care as “moral injury” and considers how community health workers are emotionally and psychologically impacted by the work that they do. Ultimately, this thesis illuminates the transformative capacity of empathic care and the burden it imposes on community health workers operating within inequitable systems.