2022-2023 Senior Honors Theses
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This collection contains theses produced by Class of 2023 Honors students
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Item A Future of Building The Old Way: A case study of bio-based materials substituting for general construction materials(2023-05-01) Wilcox, BlakeStudying The Implementations of Bio-Based Materials And Bio-fabrications To Reduce Residential C&D Landfill Waste. In today's era of architecture, we have made monumental strides in changing our built environment. The developments in technology from the industrial revolution spawned the ability for the mass production and assembly of materials that have been standardized for the ease of construction. For this reason, developers have been able to use these general materials to expand out to new destinations and develop more settlements. Though growth is a good thing for humanity, it also demands the need for more consumption of the materials used for construction. The downfall is that these general materials we are using now are not all sustainable and do create waste at the end of their life cycle. Therein lies the problem that will continue to grow if nothing is changed. [...]Item A Historical Review of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: Developmental Advancements Then and Now(2023-04-23) Wade, JoshuaA review of the history of regenerative medicine focusing on the use of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from their initial inception in bone marrow transplantation for blood disorders and diseases to their expanded uses today through advancements in technology. Commonly treated malignant and non-malignant bone marrow transplant conditions include but are not limited to leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and aplastic anemia. Bone marrow transplants are performed by autologous or allogeneic transplantation with multipotent HSCs. The first unrelated allogeneic transplant was performed by Dr. Edward Donnall Thomas in 1957. The initial approaches using stem cells as a form of treatment resulted in great difficulty and failure with few exceptions. However, discoveries such as the major histocompatibility complex within humans known as the human leukocyte antigen (HLA), allowed researchers to identify genetic matches between donors and recipients resulting in an increased rate of successful procedures. Since then, advancements in the field have introduced new techniques that improve the efficacy of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and expanded use to more populations. Such advancements include improved conditioning regimens, matched unrelated donors, umbilical cord HSCs, and more potent immunosuppressants and antimicrobial drugs. For patients that experience tissue damage due to conditioning regimens or cancer malignancy, HSCs use a “homing” mechanism to mobilize to the affected area and release chemical factors that promote tissue recovery. Patients that undergo transplantation are put at risk of several conditions including graft-versus-host disease and opportunistic infections, however, complication-prevention regimens have been put in place to decrease the mortality rate. This literature review serves to roughly gauge how this field of medicine has developed since the 1950s and where future implications lie. Said implications include emerging ways to treat graft-versus-host disease, improved HLA typing matches, and HSC uses in transplantable organs like the liver.Item A Partial Sarcology: Short Stories on Identity(2023-05-06) Reyes, AlfonsoA Partial Sarcology is a short story collection that explores the intersections of identity and positionality through a lens of queer discomfort and euphoria. These four short stories represent the beginning of the author's journey of self-exploration about the intersections of his identity as a queer, trans, Latinx individual following months of research about how to write transpositionally-a journey that looks inward, instead.Item About Time: Redressing the Runway(2023-05-01) Asuncion, TriciajaneThe fashion industry remains one of the most profitable and significant markets of the global economy. The eminence of the industry often overshadows its own negative impacts that play a role in the social and environmental well-being of the ecosystem. The terms, “back of house” and “front of house” are used in this investigation to indicate the fashion production process the everyday consumer does not see, and the point of sale retail environment that the consumer experiences, respectively. “Back of house” operations such as the exploitation of natural resources and workers, and the production of contamination and pollution, are asked by the extravaganza and glamour of the “front of house.” The selected “front of house” design precedent for exploration and deconstruction is the fashion runway, which displays an idealized image of commodity. Created for the intention of desire and spectacle, runway shows encourage consumption and even overconsumption, employing allure to conceal the ugly reality of the industry. The architectural design in this thesis incorporates semi-transparent fabric as a front-of-house set design element to tell a narrative on the back-of-house of the fashion industry. As a way to communicate flow, movement, excess, contamination, and suffocation of the industry, the fabric set design transforms with a modeled choreography throughout the duration of the show. The choreography is designed after the movement of workers in the supply chain in order to convey the toll that labor takes on the body. The runway is sited in the fashion capital of Milan, Italy, due to its prestige and history of manufacturing and craftsmanship. The runway show is divided into three acts: (1) Construction, (2) Consumption, and (3) Deconstruction. Within the three acts, the circulatory relationship between the audience and the models changes, as a way to change the perspective of the audience to reveal their influence within the fashion cycle. Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project and Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle offer philosophical sources in the development of the thesis objective and design. Benjamin's work investigates architecture in its development to host the uprising of modern consumption in nineteenth-century Paris, more specifically, the arch as a symbol and fetishization of commodified goods and experiences (3). He specifies the series of arches as a designed “dreamworld” that cloaks the realities of capitalism (13). Benjamin’s proposal of “dialectical images” suggests that by collaging the past and present into a single moment, its contradictions become apparent (462). Within the runway design, the back of house acts as the “past,” while the front of house acts as the “present,” coming together to uncover the beauty and ugly of the fashion industry. Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle expands upon Benjamin's criticism on consumer culture, where Dubord proposes that everything that was once living has now become mere age reproduction (2). “Spectacle” as defined by Debord is “the autonomous movement of the non-living,” which influences and arbitrates relationships and perceptions amongst humans (2). Furthermore, Debord cites the method of “détournement” as a way to subvert existing mass media images to generate new criticism (8). The use of depicting Milan’s monumental arches in the form of catenary arches within the runway design is a form of détournement to critique the fashion industry. Semi-transparent fabric is used as a metaphorical material to create a transformational runway design that subverts and uncovers the spectacle of runway shows. Generally used as a construction element in fashion, the fabric becomes redefined in the runway show to expose the underbelly of the problematic industry. This is done through the formation of catenary arches with the fabric, juxtaposing the existing traditional architecture of arches in the Brera courtyard. The purpose of transforming the once solid architectural feature of the arches into a new materiality that is light and flexible is to metaphorically see through the façade of the industry and into the production process that the everyday consumer does not understand in the garments they purchase from retailers. Through draping, stiching, and layering, the fabric is manipulated in a number of ways throughout the runway show, which is transformed with and by a choreography that mirrors the bodily labor of workers. The transformation of fabric explores the material’s spatial and temporal possibilities on the runway, creating moments of tension, movement, and contradiction. Such moments are to convey the negative impacts of the industry on people and the planet, being labor exploitation and environmental degradation. In presenting issues in a theatrical format, the hope is to start a conversation to propose alternative solutions for a more sustainable and ethical practice. The research methodology adapts the architecture design process to produce schematic variations of fabric as a narrative piece in the runway design. Sketches, models, diagrams, and architectural drawings are tested and developed to inquire various design strategies and concepts. The final result is a runway design that incorporates fabric as a set element to redress the essence of the runway, fashioning a critique on the spectacle that challenges and informs the audience about controversies associated with the fashion industry. Benjamin, W. (1999). The Arcades Project. (H. Eiland & K. McLaughlin, Trans.). Harvard University Press. Original work published 1982) Debord, G. (1995). The Society of the Spectacle. (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Zone Books. (Original work published 1967)Item An Analysis of Colony Movement and The Effects of Movement on Fitness in the Western Harvester Ant, Pogonomyrmex Occidentalis(2023-08-07) Ramsaroop, MaxximusColony movement in ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), is well documented and several studies have explored the fitness costs and causes of colony movement in different species. Attempts to describe the purpose or patterns of colony movement have been made on many species within Pogonomyrmex spp. However, research into these aspects of colony movement has yet to be described in P. occidentalis, The Western Harvester ant. This thesis examines the fitness costs, potential causes, and behavioral syndrome associated with colony movement in P. occidentalis. I analyzed Dr. Cole & Dr. Wiernasz's data from 1993-2023 on colony movement, age, size, distances traveled, and survivorship for 6,066 colonies. Moved colonies were found to have a smaller colony size, shorter colony lifespan, and lower rates of survivorship when compared to unmoved colonies using t-tests and a Kaplan-Meier survivorship analysis. Moreover, moved colonies were compared against 1-year-old colonies, and were found to have a larger colony size. Colonies were also found to have a greater tendency to move later in age, and 16.6% of colonies had moved at least once. These results suggest that colonies that move incur fitness costs, as colony size and lifespan are proxies for fitness, and that colony movement is more costly for younger or smaller colonies. Furthermore, because P. occidentalis is notably long-lived, shows high nest fidelity, and their movements are associated with a loss in fitness, they likely exhibit an adventitious nest relocation syndrome. Through this thesis, we can better contextualize P. occidentalis in the greater scheme of animal architects and the decisions they make.Item Behind The Wall: Re-Defining The Monastic Enclosure(2023-05-01) Martinez-Gallardo, LuisHow to design a monastery for a contemporary order of monks that, due to inefficient enclosures based on outdated models, fail to remain faithful to the fundamental ideal of living a truly cloistered life.Item Blurring the Borderlands: Strategies to Creating Spaces of Extraterritoriality on the U.S. - Mexico Border(2023-05-05) Medina, AndrewThe U.S. - Mexico border has been a topic of contentious debate and political intervention. The flow of people, culture, language and knowledge has been obstructed by the installation of physical barriers and harmful reforms. This project look to mend these broken ties by crafting spaces of extraterritoriality and autonomous zones in the border region. Cy re-ttoling existing infrastructure and terraforming of the landscape, the project critiques the strategies set in place at the border that is anti-people.Item CO2 Open Metal Site Selectivity in MIL-100 (Cr): A Computational Study(2023-05-02) Fleming, KevinMetal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous organometallic compounds that are of high interest due to their capability to trap industrial greenhouse gases, such as CO2, that contribute to anthropogenic global warming. A promising MOF that has gained the attention of the research community in recent years is the CO2 adsorbent MIL-100 (Cr). This compound consists of two primary structural components: a set of Cr3-?3-oxo clusters referred to as secondary building units (SBU) and organic linkers derived from trimesic acid. Thermally activated SBUs possess coordinatively unsaturated sites Cr sites -- or open metal sites (OMS) -- that can have oxidation states of +2 or +3. Previous experimental work indicated that CO2 molecules bind more strongly to Cr2+ OMS than to Cr3+ OMS at low adsorptive pressures. In this thesis project, two central questions were addressed. Firstly, can the experimentally observed OMS selectivity be verified through density functional theory (DFT) simulations? Secondly, what electronic processes are responsible for OMS selectivity? DFT computations of the binding energy, enthalpy, and Gibbs free energy of CO2 adsorption onto Cr2+ and Cr3+ OMS verify that CO2 exhibits a significantly greater affinity for the +2 OMS. In addition, a comparison of the adsorption charge transfer and optimized binding geometries reveal that this selectivity arises from the energetically favorable chemisorption of CO2 onto +2 OMS – relative to the weaker physisorption of the greenhouse gas onto +3 OMS. The novel methodology utilized for this study -- which addresses the issue of charge delocalization in DFT simulations -- can be implemented in computational investigations of CO2 OMS selectivity for other promising MOFs being considered for carbon capture applications.Item Constraints, Resourcefulness, and Resilience in the Immigrant Latinx Community: Alternative Health Promotion Strategies for Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management(2022-11) Acuña-Mena, AshlítaThis preliminary investigation explores how socioeconomically vulnerable Latinx immigrants self-manage their Type 2 diabetes symptoms in a large urban city in the Southwest United States. Currently, the existing health disparities literature relating to this topic highlights how marginalized Latinx individuals fall short of Western biomedical standards for optimal diabetes self-management (Ortega, Rodriguez, and Vargas Bustamante 2015). This work emphasizes diabetes treatment centered on receiving care from a licensed medical professional. Largely absent in existing scholarship is a more holistic evaluation capturing how Latinx persons facing multiple dimensions of social constraints may draw upon their rich heritage, indigenous roots, and traditional remedies to supplement a Western biomedical regimen (Gomez-Beloz and Chavez 2001). For this pilot study, I conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with six diabetic Latinas to discuss the culturally-informed, alternative health promotion strategies they engage in to circumvent constraints to modern healthcare. Utilizing intersectionality as the overarching theoretical framework (Collins 2000) in addition to tenants of grounded theory, this preliminary study aims to provide a more nuanced outlook on immigrant Latinx health behaviors as they relate to diabetes care.Item Covid-19's Effect on International Trade and Productivity(2023-05-08) Samperio, Alexandra R.In this paper, I aim to analyze the long-term effects from the Coronavirus epidemic in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Through the mechanism of international trade, my research aims to bridge the gap between the data we know and our expectations for the future. Within this research paper I begin with an augmented gravity trade regression using aggregated and sectorized data. I employ a case study to assess relative changes in the degree of Covid stringency. Relying on Arkolakis et. al (2012) and preliminary assumptions, I translate Covid's effect on trade into an effect on welfare and ultimately productivity. I conclude my research with a Solow model simulation and predict the components of growth for the next 50 years. Based on my research, I conclude that long term growth experiences a close to instantaneous drop in the level of inputs and outputs of growth.Item Crossing the Weaponized Landscape(2023-05-09) Perez, Allan VidalThe study area of the thesis encompasses 259,981 hectares of the Sonoran Desert on the Arizona border, named the Altar Valley. Centered on Arivaca, Arizona, the Altar Valley has been one of the most popular crossing corridors along the US-Mexico border in the past two decades. Due to Customs and Border Patrols' strategic efforts in deterring future migration, this desert landscape has been efficiently weaponized as a barrier for informal crossing and is now the site of hundreds of migrant deaths per year and hundreds of unidentified remains. The study examines the spatial conditions created by key surveillance technology the CBP uses to survey the landscape and develops a route and information system that mitigates death and detection as much as possible.Item Death Anxiety and Executing Life's Financial Denouement: Death Anxiety's Effect on Lifespan Estimation and Financial Planning(2023-05-09) Royer, Joseph D.Retirement planning consists of two distinct phases: accumulation and decumulation. Accumulation is the process in our adult life that financially prepares us for retirement through saving and investing. Decumulation consists of determining one's lifespan expectancy and deciding how to spend the wealth one has accumulated. While some retirees spend too little, many retirees underestimate their lifespan and how far their savings will need to go. These retirees are left with little to sustain them later in life when expensive health problems tend to arise. The problem of decumulation has become of much interest in recent literature as researchers seek to understand retiree spending decisions. This research seeks to explore the relationship between age and death anxiety and the effects that death anxiety has on lifespan estimation and retiree spending. Utilizing a multimethod approach, this research consisted of four interviews with retiree- aged individuals, two interviews with financial advisors, and an Amazon MTurk survey with 130 subjects. In all three studies, there was no indication that increased age leads to an increase in death anxiety. Study 3 found a Pearson correlation of -0.007 between age and death anxiety (p = 0.9; N=130). Study 3 found some evidence of death anxiety influencing live-to age estimation accuracy (r = -0.094; p=0.29; N=130). However, mother's age had a stronger effect on an individual's live- to age estimation than death anxiety (r = 0.271) and every interviewee in study 1 cited their mothe's age as reasoning for their own live-to age estimation. And finally, this research found that individuals high in death anxiety could plan to spend more than those lower in death anxiety shown by how an increase in death anxiety can lead to an increase in the tendency to spend. Study 2 found that spending had to be encouraged as many clients had been hyper savers their entire life. Study 3 also found that the statement, “I worry about running out of money,” had a strong negative Pearson Correlation of -0.424 (p < 0.05; N =130) with Death Anxiety.Item Emancipation square: Old Thread, New Fabric(2023-05-09) Romero, SaraEmancipation Square is a proposal for a community development in Third Ward along Emancipation Avenue. This area has been underserved for a long time now. Because of this, it has suffered the impact of gentrification due to developers taking advantage of the low prices of the land and its geographical proximity to downtown. These developers have little to no care about the rich cultural and historical significance Third Ward possesses, having no problem proceeding with the aforementioned erasure. The goal of the project is to address the more pressing concerns the community has at the moment related to security, infrastructure, quality of life, housing, and job opportunities. Proposing a series of strategies based on the combination of programs such as Houston Complete Communities, Main Street America, and the Walkable Places and Transit Oriented Development initiatives provides the opportunity to address those issues while producing a physical space where connections of different natures occur. While that segment of the project is taken care of with the previously mentioned actions, an effort to preserve the history of the area will run in parallel by utilizing the concept of palimpsest, consisting in adapting a new program to the existing building while keeping visible traces of the history of it.Item Ensuring Quadrotor Safety Through Geofencing with Run Time Assurance(2023-05-09) De la Barcena, ArturoSafety assurance in autonomous safety critical aerospace systems has become an increasingly relevant area of study as mission objectives, hardware, and even human lives become endangered when integrating complex and intelligent control system designs. With this rise of control and mission complexity for autonomous aerospace systems, a balance must be struck between mission objectives and system safety. A recent method of creating this balance has come to be known as online safety assurance techniques or Run Time Assurance (RTA), a control intervention method designed separately from a system's primary controller to assure safety in real time. The research presented in this thesis analyzes two RTA intervention methods, a switching-based filter known as the Simplex method, and an optimization-based filter known as the ASIF method, in the control of simulated quadcopters to create an impassible safety cube or 'geofence' in each of the quadcopter's reference axes. The safety barriers created for the geofence are formally defined using the nascent topic of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs), independently defined for each flight direction (X, Y, Z), and implemented with Python, the primary language of the simulated environment. This thesis will conclude with a comparison of the two RTA methods and the effectiveness of their implementation on different quadcopter mission objectives.Item Ethnic Identity and COVID-19 Psychological Consequences: An Evaluation of Distress Tolerance as a Potential Moderator Among Latinx Persons(2023-05-10) Argueta, SalmaBackground: As a multifaceted disease, the COVID-19 virus has engendered a range of mental health consequences among Latinx. Ethnic identity has been established as a protective factor against negative mental health symptoms in prior-non COVID-19 work, but has not been evaluated within the COVID-19 context. Moreover, potential interpersonal factors such as distress tolerance may further inform the dynamic between ethnic identity and mental health symptoms occasioned by the COVID-19 virus among Latinx persons. To empirically evaluate these relationships, the moderating role of distress tolerance was evaluated between Latinx ethnic identity and COVID-19 related fear, sleep disturbance, and emotional vulnerability related to COVID-19. Methods: The current study sought to test the role of distress tolerance as a potential moderating factor between ethnic identity and COVID-19 related fear, emotional vulnerability, and sleep-related anxiety symptoms among 182 Latinx adult persons (70% male; Mage = 35.3 years; SD = 9.36; age range: 18-72 years). Results: Indeed, results were in line with expectations in that among Latinx individuals, ethnic identity worked synergistically with higher (versus lower) levels of distress tolerance to decrease risk across all four criterion variables. Conclusions: Overall, the current work provides initial empirical evidence that distress tolerance potentially mitigates the adverse psychological effects among Latinx persons during COVID-19.Item Exploring the Relationship Between Parental Mental Health and Parental Perceptions of Infant Vulnerability(2022-12) Sampige, RituA mismatch in vulnerability perception occurs when parents’ perceptions of their children’s medical vulnerability level differ from children’s objective medical risk status, and such mismatch negatively affects children’s health. The goal of this thesis is to determine how parental perceptions of infant vulnerability compare with objective infant vulnerability status and to identify the role of parental mental health in this relationship. This thesis fills the current gap in vulnerability-related research by elucidating parental perceptions of infant vulnerability across a broad range of infant health (NICU and well-baby nursery infants). Deidentified longitudinal data from the BabySeq Project was utilized for this study. Conducted between May 14, 2015 and May 21, 2019, the BabySeq Project was a randomized controlled trial that aimed to determine the psychosocial impact of newborn genomic sequencing results on families (519 parents of 325 infants). Data collected at 3 months and 10 months after disclosure of sequencing results were the focus of this present study. The data set included information regarding parental anxiety (GAD-7), depression (PHQ-9), perceptions of children’s vulnerability (CVS), and reported medical history of infants. From the data set, two novel variables were developed, including the objective vulnerability score to identify infants’ medical risk status and the Match/Mismatch score to determine parents’ risk for misperceiving their infants’ vulnerability. Parental mental health scores were significant predictors of Match/Mismatch scores and perceived vulnerability, and vice versa, within each timepoint at 3 and 10 months post-disclosure. When controlling for demographic variables, Match/Mismatch scores at 3 months, but not parental mental health at 3 months, longitudinally predicted Match/Mismatch scores at the 10-month timepoint. Additionally, parental mental health at 3 months, but not Match/Mismatch scores at 3 months, longitudinally predicted future parental mental health at the 10-month timepoint. There is a need for health care professionals to identify parents who are at risk for mismatch in infant vulnerability perception. By recognizing such at-risk parents, physicians can subsequently provide resources that will assist parents in better understanding their infant’s objective health status, and physicians can allocate resources to help alleviate parents’ potential mental health severity.Item Field Notes From Carbon Doomsday: Poems(2023-04-28) Williamson, Rosalind JaneI've been obsessed with climate change for as long as I can remember. The first inklings of this project probably started smoldering back in high school; I once wrote a whole chapbook on the theme over the course of twenty-four hours, though the craft of that particular project was rudimentary at best. This project, though, has larger stakes for me, which is perhaps why I had such a hard time synthesizing my experience of writing it. I know intellectually that no single document can cure the world's ills, but that doesn't mean I didn't want to try. [...]Item From Destruction to Spectacle: Utilizing District Identity in Gentrifying Neighborhoods in Houston(2023-05-09) Campos, Carlos, Jr.This thesis will study the two major approaches to gentrification via district revitalization that has occurred in the Midtown and East Downtown districts, in which no cultural identity was used as a reference point for redevelopment and the existing cultural group in the area was destroyed as displacement occurred. I will then focus on the Montrose and East End/Second Ward districts, which presents a spectacle of the culture being displaced as a means to redevelop and create a unique, marketable identity for the district. Through this focus, I aim to connect districts' intensification of the displaced community's culture with broader strategies presented by city-wide growth machines. I examine these changes over time through an in-depth analysis of strategic growth documents created by city, state, and economic elite organizations.Item Geochemical Investigations into a Miocene/Pliocene Tephra Which May Constrain the Timing of Cervidae in North America(2023-05-08) Fields, ShawnCraigs Hill is an outcrop of Pliocene to present deposits located in Ellensburg, Washington, that sits on a resistant portion of the Miocene Ellensburg formation. Within Craigs Hill, there has been a recent discovery of a paleosol containing cervid fossils of the genus Bretzia. An aliquot of hornblende crystals from a tephra unit directly above the paleosol has been dated to 4.9 ± 0.1 Ma by 40Ar/39Ar analyses, indicating the fossils could represent some of the oldest Cervidae occurrences in North America. Using LA-ICP-MS, 47 zircon grains from the same tephra unit overlying the paleosol were analyzed for their U-Th-Pb isotopic compositions. The youngest cluster of zircons define a Tera-Wasserburg lower intercept age of 4.15 ± 0.10 Ma (2σ; n=18). The U-Pb age data of zircon also show that the tephra unit is not a simple air-fall tephra but was reworked and contains detrital zircons ranging from Pliocene to Proterozoic. The approximately 800,000-year discrepancy in the zircon and hornblende dates could be due to excess argon in the hornblende and/or older detrital hornblende grains included in the analyzed aliquot. The new U-Pb age for the tephra suggests this outcrop may not contain a new early occurrence of Bretzia. The Nd isotopic composition of the tephra magma source was determined from ~150 phosphate minerals that were digested, chemically processed, and analyzed by MC-ICP-MS. The Nd isotopic composition, referenced against present-day CHUR, yielded an εNd value of +6.83 ± 0.20 The εNd values from rocks derived from the Yellowstone and Mt. Adams volcanic centers are between -24.8 to +4.2 and between +5.35 to +7.24, respectively. The εNd value of +6.83 from this study is consistent with values found in the Mount Adams volcanic field. We conclude that the tephra layer of Craigs Hill is most likely related to a Cascade Arc magmatic event at 4.15 ± 0.10 Ma.Item Hàu èm t’áu:yà?: Can you hear me?(2023-05-09) Renfrow, KieranUtilizing Indigenous praxes and tradition to challenge Western modes of practice, interpersonal relationships, and establish deeply rooted connections to Environments.