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- All Subjects: Biological Sciences
- All Subjects: gender roles
- Creators: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Description
This thesis shows analyses of mixing and transport patterns associated with Hurricane Katrina as it hit the United States in August of 2005. Specifically, by applying atmospheric velocity information from the Weather Research and Forecasting System, finite-time Lyapunov exponents have been computed and the Lagrangian Coherent Structures have been identified. The chaotic dynamics of material transport induced by the hurricane are results from these structures within the flow. Boundaries of the coherent structures are highlighted by the FTLE field. Individual particle transport within the hurricane is affected by the location of these boundaries. In addition to idealized fluid particles, we also studied inertial particles which have finite size and inertia. Basing on established Maxey-Riley equations of the dynamics of particles of finite size, we obtain a reduced equation governing the position process. Using methods derived from computer graphics, we identify maximizers of the FTLE field. Following and applying these ideas, we analyze the dynamics of inertial particle transport within Hurricane Katrina, through comparison of trajectories of dierent sized particles and by pinpointing the location of the Lagrangian Coherent Structures.
ContributorsWake, Christian (Author) / Tang, Wenbo (Thesis director) / Moustaoui, Mohamed (Committee member) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Affecting over 34 million people worldwide, (0.5% of the world population) HIV/AIDS is a pandemic that is not receding its control anytime soon (Sidibe 2011). Thirty years since the chaotic emergence of fear and misunderstanding, our knowledge of the virus and its subsequent syndrome has grown exponentially, but how much of this information is really getting to the people that need it? In the corners of the Earth, where scientific knowledge rarely reaches, what can we do to stop the deadly spread of this virus? And what of the countries with a large amount of knowledge, but still a ravaging problem present in their countries? When this information is disseminated- sometimes a matter of ‘if’ in certain countries, it is primarily through unreliable sources, most of the countries examined through the media, which has a tendency to skew and misinterpret information-specially scientific. This is the information that enters the lives of people in several different countries, for example, the United States, France, China, Brazil, Uganda, and South Africa: Misunderstandings of how to protect themselves from the virus, and its effects on the body. These misunderstandings have led to millions of lives lost as myths such as showering to cure AIDS and that AIDS only infect the ‘sinners’ continue to surface throughout the globe. The Public Health threat is due to knowledge deficits, and incorrect perceived ‘knowledge’ and ‘awareness of the problem’. Here, in a six-country analysis of common misconceptions and the subsequent policies and prevalence rate, it has begun to be clear that the hardest hit areas are those with the most stigma, the most misguided policies, the most uninformed leadership, and because of this, the most mislead citizens. The biological misunderstandings of HIV/AIDS are at the root of the public health threat continuing to keep its hold in the modern world, 30 years after its documented outbreak.
ContributorsSwanson, Marissa (Author) / Verrelli, Brian (Thesis director) / Rosenberg, Michael (Committee member) / Tassone, Erica (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
This study was conducted as part of an underlying initiative to elucidate the mechanism of action of natural antibacterial clay minerals for application as therapeutic agents for difficult-to-treat infections such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)-derived skin lesions and Buruli ulcer. The goal of this investigation was to determine whether exposure to the leachate of an antibacterial clay mineral, designated as CB, produced DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) in Escherichia coli. A neutral comet assay for bacterial cells was adapted to assess DSB levels upon exposure to soluble antimicrobial compounds. Challenges involved with the adaptation process included comet visualization and data collection. To appropriately account for antimicrobial-mediated strand fragmentation, suitable control reactions comprised of exposures to water, ethanol, kanamycin, and bleomycin were developed and optimized for the assay. Bacterial exposure to CB resulted in significantly longer comet lengths compared to negative control exposures, suggesting that CB killing activity involves the induction of DNA DSBs. The results of this investigation further characterize the antimicrobial mechanisms associated with a particular clay mineral mixture. The adapted comet assay protocol described herein functions as an effective tool to assess double-strand fragmentation resulting from exposure to soluble antimicrobial compounds and to visually compare results from experimental and control reactions.
ContributorsSolanky, Dipesh (Author) / Haydel, Shelley (Thesis director) / Stout, Valerie (Committee member) / Adusumilli, Sarojini (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Parenting magazines within the U.S. have long been a source of comfort and information for parents. As evidenced by subscription numbers in the millions, parents’ desire for ‘expert’ advice on all aspects of child rearing make them prime consumers for the magazine industry. One study found that when parents seek advice, parenting magazines were second only to friends as a resource, and were consulted more often than professional resources such as doctors or health organizations (Koepke & Williams, 1989). Ultimately, the images and concepts parents retain from their exposure to parenting magazines are conveyed (explicitly or implicitly) to their children. At its very core, gender scripts serve as an institutionalized form of social control, or as Bem believes, “a basic organizing principle for every human culture” (1981). Further, researchers have elaborated, “gender inequalities and sex stereotypes hurt the majority of individuals by limiting their range of experiences, and thus their growth” (Spees & Zimmerman, 2002). This provides an absolute disservice to individuals and to our communities two fold, as gendered messages in parenting magazines can shape (or indeed limit) the experiences and perceptions of both parents and their children. The intention of this study is to examine the ways in which editorial content in Parents magazine has the potential to influence parents’ perception of gender in relation to their children and child rearing practices. It also seeks to explore how these gender messages have changed over the last ten years, as well as what these messages may be communicating to parents about their children. I aim to frame this discussion within a condensed review of literature that supports the importance and influence of parenting magazines in recent history. I will also consider how early on children display an understanding of gender and a few of the many ways gender typing may affect them in childhood and beyond. In this thesis, I approach this issue through the theory of socialization, in which I argue the magazine’s gender messages are communicated to parents, who then convey these messages to their children during childhood. However, this study acknowledges the importance of observing an issue from multiple standpoints and I believe that further research on this topic should be done from both a socialization and a social construction viewpoint. I will then critically analyze, through a feminist theoretical framework, gender implications found among the images and some of the accompanying text in Parents magazine in 2002 and 2012. Through this thesis, I argue that Parents magazine, through its editorial content, provides some unique spaces in which gender equality can be furthered, while it has also become more stereotyped and restricted within other areas in the last ten years.
ContributorsSheldon, Jessica (Author) / Scheiner, Georganne (Thesis director) / McGibbney, Michelle (Committee member) / Katsulis, Yasmina (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Previous research has yielded an equivocal answer as to whether speaking aloud while performing intelligence tasks improves, impairs, or has no effect on performance. Some studies show that it impairs performance while others show it aids performance. In the studies in which speaking aloud has been shown to help, only children and older adults benefitted. The present study investigated whether college-aged students benefit from speaking aloud while performing a fluid intelligence test. Subjects performed a battery of working memory and intelligence tasks silently. Once they had completed each task, the participants took them again, though this time they spoke aloud while completing the tests. Results showed that subjects did insignificantly worse on the working memory tests when speaking aloud. However, subjects performed significantly better on the measures of fluid intelligence while speaking aloud as opposed to doing them silently. At an individual differences level, low working memory capacity participants benefited more from speaking aloud than the high working memory ones. Finally, we found a positive correlation between working memory scores and fluid intelligence scores, offering further evidence that the two constructs are related, yet different.
ContributorsRice, Z. Douglas (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis director) / Duch, Carsten (Committee member) / Ball, Hunter (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Spongiform Encephalopathies are a rare family of degenerative brain diseases characterized by the accumulation of plaques and formation of tiny holes in the brain tissue making it look "spongy". Spongiform Encephalopathies have a relatively short history but their origins date back to a time long before they were recognized as a disease. It was not until the 1700s that the first record of their existence was made. In 1732 a shepherd in England noticed that some sheep in his flock had become itchy and were "scraping" themselves on nearby trees and fence posts; he reported it to the agricultural authorities of the time. As the symptoms seen in his sheep progressed they also developed problems walking and began to have seizures. Eventually their neurological symptoms progressed to an unmanageable level and they died. In 1794, over 50 years later, the Board of Agriculture in the UK termed this illness in sheep "the Rubbers". In the following years while coming in and out of mention in many flocks of sheep "the Rubbers" remained a disease of minimal consequence showing negligible ability to spread among sheep and having no precedence for jumping the species barrier and affecting humans. The first mention of "the Rubbers" as Scrapie was in 1853, and it is still the designation of the disease in sheep today.
ContributorsPruniski, Brianna (Author) / Green, Monica (Thesis director) / Hurlbut, James (Committee member) / Hunter, Joel (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
It has been 30 years since research has tried to determine how adults decide if an infant is male or female (Seavey et al., 1975; Sidorowicz & Lunney, 1980), with research at that time indicating that participants tended to label infants as male. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether adults today can identify infant gender above chance, and what tools adults use to assign gender labels to babies. I hypothesize that females, social science majors, students who frequently interact with children, and students who are very confident will all assign gender labels more accurately than their counterparts. I showed a video to University students featuring five sets of parents playing with their infants. The video featuring three male and two female babies was edited to remove any gender identifying information. Students were asked to guess whether each of the infants was male or female, and to explain how they came to that conclusion. One sample t-tests revealed that students overall were able to correctly identify infant gender significantly more than what would be expected due to chance for 4 out of 5 infants. The results did not support my hypothesis that social science majors or people who frequently interact with children are better at assigning gender labels. This study did find a significant correlation between confidence and accuracy. When asked to explain how participants assigned infant gender labels, I found a significant correlation between infant physical movement and correct students labeling the infant as male. There was also a significant relationship between parental voice being and participants labeling infants as female whether the infant was actually female or not. Unlike research from the late 1970's and early 1980's, college students today can accurately assign gender labels to infants. This suggests that either the conceptualization of gender in the U.S. culture has changed enough since previous research over 3 decades ago, that there is something about parent-baby play that helps people correctly identify infant gender, or both.
ContributorsLove, Echo (Author) / Shapiro, Alyson (Thesis director) / Mikulski, Ariana (Committee member) / Martin, Carol (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
The front cover of Uncle What-Is-It is Coming to Visit, a 1993 children’s book by Michael-Willhoite, features two white children frightened by the hairy arm and upturned wrist of an unseen adult. The arm is clad in a frilly pink and orange sleeve, and gaudy bracelets hang from the wrist. The plot hinges on the children’s uncertainty about an uncle they have yet to meet; they know he is gay but are unsure of what it means. Before their mother can explain, she is distracted by a kitchen mishap and the siblings turn to other neighborhood children for answers. They encounter a host of descriptions that terrify them: one neighbor describes gay people as “fags [and] queers [who] really want to be women.” He shows the children a newspaper clipping photo of “a large man dressed in a frilly dress [with] a turban piled high with fruit on his head,” an implicitly racialized caricature reminiscent of Latina style icon Carmen Miranda. Another neighbor describes gay people as “dressed up in black leather. Zippers and chains all over...Dark glasses [and] chaps” (Willhoite, 1993). After having nightmares of men with sinister expressions in tropical-themed drag and leather, the children are overjoyed to discover that their uncle seems “normal.” Relative to depictions of other gay people in the book, Uncle Brett is normal because he is nonthreatening—he is white with short, straight, brown hair; he wears a plain, blue, collared shirt and brown dress pants; he carries a brown briefcase; and he enjoys and excels at activities appropriate for his gender, like catch. Although the book seems to have an affirming message about accepting queer people, it sends a clear message about which queer people are to be feared by children and which are nonthreatening. Nonthreatening queers are those who seem most like people mainstream western society considers normal: people who conform to expected gender roles, who have a vested interest parenting, and who are white and middle-upper class. These nonthreatening queers are by far the most represented in queer-themed literature for children. Based on a survey of 68 children’s books with queer characters, this paper argues that the representation of queer identities in children’s literature upholds more than challenges heteronormativity. I will first address ways many of the books perpetuate gender normativity by problematizing young male characters’ gender-transgressing behavior, portraying queer adults with less threatening gender presentations, and upholding gender binarism; next, I will address how the majority of the books promote repro-narrativity by focusing on monogamous couples’ strong desires and concerted efforts to have/raise children; I will then address race and class and the way white and upper-middle class queer characters are overrepresented while non-white and lower-class queer characters are underrepresented or not represented at all.
ContributorsLester, Jasmine (Author) / Danielson, Marivel (Thesis director) / Blasingame, James (Committee member) / Kuo, Karen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Glioblastoma multiforme is associated with a very low survival rate and is recognized as the most vicious form of intracranial cancer. The Akt gene pathway has three different isoforms, each of which has a different role in the tumors of GBM. Preliminary data suggests that Akt3 may work to decrease tumorigenicity. A produced image that visualizes the subcellular localization of Akt3 led the author to believe that Akt3 may reduce tumorigenicity by decreasing genomic instability caused by the cancer. To explore this, flow cytometry was performed on GBM cell lines with Akt3v1 over-expression, Akt3v2 over-expression, and a control glioma cell line.
ContributorsGhorayeb, Antoine (Author) / Neisewander, Janet (Thesis director) / Diehnelt, Chris (Committee member) / Moussallem, Suzan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Plants are essential to human life. They release oxygen into the atmosphere for us to breathe. They also provide shelter, medicine, clothing, tools, and food. For many people, the food that is on their tables and in their supermarkets isn't given much thought. Where did it come from? What part of the plant is it? How does it relate to others in the plant kingdom? How do other cultures use this plant? The most many of us know about them is that they are at the supermarket when we need them for dinner (Nabhan, 2009) (Vileisis, 2008).
ContributorsBarron, Kara (Author) / Landrum, Leslie (Thesis director) / Swanson, Tod (Committee member) / Pigg, Kathleen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12