Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

In the current race for technological innovation, companies are striving to be the best and most prominent in the industry. A major way companies are setting themselves apart is through personalized experiences for their customers, so they have a huge incentive to collect consumer information. Consumers have limited knowledge of how much information companies collect and what goes on behind the scenes. Therefore, it is becoming extremely important to ensure companies are held accountable for upholding consumers’ right to privacy. One way this can be done is through the implementation of privacy legislation. The United States has not yet enacted federal preemptive privacy legislation, so this thesis examines the feasibility of enacting such legislation using the European Union’s GDPR as a model. California’s current state-level privacy law, the CCPA, is compared to the GDPR to determine the elements of a successful privacy law and find that the CCPA has many problems, most of which are solved by the GDPR. Because of this, it is concluded that it is necessary for the United States to adopt federal privacy legislation which would be most successful if the GDPR was used as a foundation.

The purpose of this study is to create and establish an efficient and cost-effective solution to decrease the effects of sedentarism in pregnant women. Our team was given a propelling question, from which we had to narrow down our scope and conduct primary and secondary research to determine our ideal customers. The design of our study intends to imitate the development of a startup where ideas are created from scratch and the final deliverable is a business model plan that shows some sort of traction. Our first major finding is that a sedentary lifestyle can be treated without major challenges in low-risk pregnancies. We determined that uncertainty and lack of concise and clear information is one of the main causes of an increased level of sedentary behavior in low-risk pregnancies. A significant driver for women to do some sort of activity or exercise stems from feeling supported, which doesn’t necessarily come from their partner or couple, but instead from other women that are going to a similar process as them. There are apps in the market that intend to serve pregnant women; however, there is not one that incorporates a social aspect to achieve their goal. In conclusion, there is opportunity in the market for a socially integrated pregnancy fitness app. The Gleam concept has been consciously developed to decrease sedentary behavior through concise, clear, and reliable information and by encouraging women through a socialization platform.

Affective computing allows computers to monitor and influence people’s affects, in other words emotions. Currently, there is a lot of research exploring what can be done with this technology. There are many fields, such as education, healthcare, and marketing, that this technology can transform. However, it is important to question what should be done. There are unique ethical considerations in regards to affective computing that haven't been explored. The purpose of this study is to understand the user’s perspective of affective computing in regards to the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Code of Ethics, to ultimately start developing a better understanding of these ethical concerns. For this study, participants were required to watch three different videos and answer a questionnaire, all while wearing an Emotiv EPOC+ EEG headset that measures their emotions. Using the information gathered, the study explores the ethics of affective computing through the user’s perspective.

In this essay, I set out to explore and analyze how Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and the character of Eleanor Vance in particular, disrupts and redefines the traditional conventions of the Female Gothic within the context of the 20th century. I utilize Tania Modleski's gendering of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis in her exploration of the ‘Female Uncanny,’ arguing that the source of the Uncanny in the Female Gothic can be found in the "fear of being lost in the mother." I argue that Jackson's complex personal life, including her fraught relationship with her mother and her difficult marriage with literary critic Edgar Hyman, color her fiction and the primary motivations of her protagonist, Eleanor Vance. I also outline the traditional structure of the Gothic novel and the heroine's journey. With the necessary context provided, I then explain how Eleanor Vance’s character rejects these Gothic traditions and ushers in a new era of Female Gothic fiction.

The goal of this project was to design and create a genetic construct that would allow for <br/>tumor growth to be induced in the center of the wing imaginal disc of Drosophila larvae, the <br/>R85E08 domain, using a heat shock. The resulting transgene would be combined with other <br/>transgenes in a single fly that would allow for simultaneous expression of the oncogene and, in <br/>the surrounding cells, other genes of interest. This system would help establish Drosophila as a <br/>more versatile and reliable model organism for cancer research. Furthermore, pilot studies were <br/>performed, using elements of the final proposed system, to determine if tumor growth is possible <br/>in the center of the disc, which oncogene produces the best results, and if oncogene expression <br/>induced later in development causes tumor growth. Three different candidate genes were <br/>investigated: RasV12, PvrACT, and Avli.

For my thesis/creative project, I created a prototype for a mental health app. Each section of the prototype has a purpose of instilling mindfulness and healthy habits that can promote and lead to sustainable mental health. Throughout the paper I explain my reasoning for starting this project, the science of mindfulness and how it can bring about positive mental and physical changes, and the design theory behind the prototype.

Soccer is bar none, the most popular sport in the entire world. It is played, followed, and loved by virtually every single country on Earth. Despite this massive support for the sport which houses some of the world’s biggest names in the world, its shortcomings when dealing with issues of racial injustice and incidents of racist behavior have become more pronounced in recent years. Although this open discussion regarding racism within the sport has recently begun to sprout, its roots can be tied back to decades ago while continuing to the present day, with players, referees, coaches, fans, commentators, and more all involved on both sides of the issue. <br/> We found this topic to be most prevalent in today’s society after witnessing multiple shameful racist incidents that have occurred to some of the world’s biggest players throughout European football in 2019, as well as the recent ongoing fight for racial reform and increased awareness regarding racial injustice in the United States. By doing comprehensive research and<br/>analysis on such incidents that have occurred throughout the years we hope to raise more<br/>awareness regarding this subject that has plagued the beautiful game. In addition, we hope to<br/>offer ways to remedy the problem one step at a time, all while answering the tough, but necessary questions regarding what specifically should be done in the sport, that others have been afraid to talk about for far too long. Specifically, we wanted to mainly highlight the experience of black players, with a further discussion on other minority groups, in English and Italian football as these two leagues have been a part of the largest debate between how club traditions, player-fan interactions, league policies, and staff management have all affected the way we view the game as the endemic of racism within the sport is exacerbated.

Soccer is bar none, the most popular sport in the entire world. It is played, followed, and loved by virtually every single country on Earth. Despite this massive support for the sport which houses some of the world’s biggest names in the world, its shortcomings when dealing with issues of racial injustice and incidents of racist behavior have become more pronounced in recent years. Although this open discussion regarding racism within the sport has recently begun to sprout, its roots can be tied back to decades ago while continuing to the present day, with players, referees, coaches, fans, commentators, and more all involved on both sides of the issue. <br/> We found this topic to be most prevalent in today’s society after witnessing multiple shameful racist incidents that have occurred to some of the world’s biggest players throughout European football in 2019, as well as the recent ongoing fight for racial reform and increased awareness regarding racial injustice in the United States. By doing comprehensive research and analysis on such incidents that have occurred throughout the years we hope to raise more awareness regarding this subject that has plagued the beautiful game. In addition, we hope to offer ways to remedy the problem one step at a time, all while answering the tough, but necessary questions regarding what specifically should be done in the sport, that others have been afraid to talk about for far too long. Specifically, we wanted to mainly highlight the experience of black players, with a further discussion on other minority groups, in English and Italian football as these two leagues have been a part of the largest debate between how club traditions, player-fan interactions, league policies, and staff management have all affected the way we view the game as the endemic of racism within the sport is exacerbated.

Microfluidic devices represent a growing technology in the world of analytical chemistry. Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) utilizes microfluidic devices to generate droplets of an aqueous buffer containing protein crystals, which are then fired out as a jet in the beam of an X-ray free electron laser (XFEL). A crucial part of the device is its method of droplet detection. This project presents a design for a capacitive sensor that uses a unique electrode configuration to detect the difference in capacitance between the aqueous and oil phases. This design was developed using MATLAB and COMSOL Multiphysics simulations and printed using high-resolution 3D printing. Results show that this design can successfully distinguish between the two immiscible liquids, confirming it as a possible detection method in future SFX experiments.

Cryptojacking is a process in which a program utilizes a user’s CPU to mine cryptocurrencies unknown to the user. Since cryptojacking is a relatively new problem and its impact is still limited, very little has been done to combat it. Multiple studies have been conducted where a cryptojacking detection system is implemented, but none of these systems have truly solved the problem. This thesis surveys existing studies and provides a classification and evaluation of each detection system with the aim of determining their pros and cons. The result of the evaluation indicates that it might be possible to bypass detection of existing systems by modifying the cryptojacking code. In addition to this classification, I developed an automatic code instrumentation program that replaces specific instructions with functionally similar sequences as a way to show how easy it is to implement simple obfuscation to bypass detection by existing systems.