2020-2021 Senior Honors Theses

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/8168

This collection contains theses produced by Class of 2021 Honors students

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 50

A Comprehensive Analysis of Covid-19’s Impact On Food Supply Chains
(2021-05) Patel, Shivani
The Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic’s influence on the food supply chain was felt by all stakeholders in the food supply chain, including consumers, retailers, distributors, industrial suppliers, processors, agriculture producers, workers, and governmental agencies. This paper aims to utilize COVID-19’s impact to analyze the food supply chain's key components and determine strategies the private and public sector can use to support food supply chain stability. This paper is an intensive literature review and analysis ofCOVID-19’s impact on the food supply chain. In summary, this paper shows that the food supply chain proved resilient to COVID-19 related disruptions, but several improvements to food supply chain operations are warranted to ensure future healthcare, or other types of disruptions, can be more effectively mediated.
A Study of Cis-Regulatory Sequences Of Wnt1 in the Disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta
(2021-05) Dalibalta, Maria Saad
Wnt1 is known to be mutated in the inherited cases of the disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a bone genetic disorder also known as the brittle bone disease. The canonical Wnt signaling pathway has a known role in bone homeostasis and development and studies have shown that wnt1, an evolutionarily conserved member of the Wnt signaling pathway, is particularly important for the Wnt canonical pathway in osteoblast differentiation. This suggests a potential role of wnt1 in bone homeostasis. Understanding the regulation of wnt1 expression by cis-regulatory elements during development is important to understand the role it plays in bone development and homeostasis. This project uses ATAC seq (Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin) datasets available to the public to study regions within and surrounding the wnt1 gene to find open chromatin regions, as this is associated with enhancer activity. The enhancers that are shown to be active are studied closely using the ENCODE project to obtain information on the expression profiles of the enhancers and the tissue in which they may be active. The activity of the enhancers was compared in tissues where wnt1-signaling is known to be important: hindbrain tissue, adipose tissue, and bone marrow macrophage and two enhancers with the highest activity were identified. By knowing these cis-regulatory sequences of wnt1, now it could be easier to possibly use wnt1 expression as a therapeutic target in the disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta.
Across the Partition: A Creative Exploration of Black Queer Literature
(2021-05) Reed, Devion T.
This thesis is a creative project containing three short stories and a critical introduction that explore the intersection of black and queer literature.
Aerodynamic Modeling of Leading-Edge Slat Morphing in Low Reynolds Number Flow
(2021-05) Diaz Villa, Benjamin E.
Atmospheric flight is becoming more prevalent and congested from the use of drones for delivery of goods to the increased accessibility of international travel in jumbo jets. Current methods of flight control consist of discrete flaps and slats that decrease flight efficiency and consequently consume more energy and fuel than in their non-deployed state. Wing morphing allows for a non-abrupt motion and smooth contours of the control surface that proves to be a solution to this dilemma. This thesis examines two novel morphing techniques in the leading-edge of a NACA0012 airfoil compared to a conventional slat deployment. Both the second order (quadratic) and third order (cubic) morphing proved to have better aerodynamic performance than the conventional rigid slat between angles of attack (AOA) of 0-14 degrees. Their smooth shape outline that connected to the rest of the airfoil maintained the flow separation point at a later distance than their discrete counterpart. However, between the two types of morphing, each excelled at different regimes of AOAs. In addition, this thesis also laid the framework for future analysis in the unsteady motion of these control surfaces, as it proved that the distance at which the far-field boundaries are located from the airfoil play an important role in the accuracy of the results. In addition, the constants used in the quadratic and cubic deformations greatly determine the time-step size by which the unsteady motion of the slats is analyzed. In essence, wing morphing is a promising mechanism that may improve flight characteristics and enhance aerodynamic efficiency, if simulated correctly.
Agnès Varda and the Reinvention of the Flâneuse
(2021-05) Zidon, Naomi G.
This interdisciplinary thesis examines Agnès Varda’s inhabitation of the flâneuse in the city space, the national space, and the international space. Varda goes beyond showing a character as a flâneuse, but is the flâneuse herself. The flâneuse is a female wanderer who observes the cityscape. The term originates from the male wanderer, the flâneur. Varda extends flânerie beyond the cityscapes and goes into unfamiliar territories. This work closely analyzes Varda’s narrative and documentary films that take place in Paris, the French countryside, California, Iran, and Cuba. By studying these films, the thesis reveals Varda’s relationship with psychogeography, feminism, and space. Ultimately, the thesis will lead to an understanding of the essence of the female perspective and of how the female gaze observes the changes that occur around her and the subject as she documents it through film. Varda embodies this idea as she moves from portraying the flâneuse by following the rules of flânerie to becoming the flâneuse by breaking all the rules of flânerie and presenting other scenarios in which flânerie can take place.
An Analysis of Errors and Discrepenices in Analyzing Single Cell RNA Sequence Data
(2021-05) Modi, Paulomi Sanjaykumar
Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) is an extremely vital sequencing technology that has enabled High-throughput mapping of cellular differentiation hierarchies. scRNA-seq has excellent sequencing potential with a wide range of applications beyond regular transcriptome profiling. scRNA-seq process involves analyzing data using 3' end counting technology, which involves sample composition and analytical processing including pre-processing, normalization, alignment and clustering. In order to accomplish this task bioinformaticians around the world have developed many computational tools. As of 2019, there exist 385 different tools that can be used to analyze scRNA-seq data, and that number is growing. Although this continuous addition of new features to single-cell data analysis confronts technical gaps with bulk RNA-seq, there have been very few attempts to standardize these practices. This study explores the various approaches to re-analyze previously published single cell RNA-cell sequencing data and discusses subsequent challenges to utilize publicly available data sets to conduct a multicenter study. Considering the differences in data publication formats, there are several methods that can be employed. 1) Analyzing BCL files 2) Analyzing FASTQ files 3) Analyzing matrix files 4) Analyzing Seurat or ScanPy objects. This thesis provides a concise overview of some of the steps, algorithms, and approaches that are currently used in the analysis of single-cell RNA-sequencing data, with an emphasis on recent developments. Hence, I propose that in order to develop reproducible algorithms and analysis software for scRNA-seq data sets, it is vital that standardization across all analysis platform exist and the software developers recognize and understand the computational challenges posed by the analysis tasks.
An Improvement for the Pharmaceutical Value Chain: Using Lean Methodologies to Create a Patient-Centered Supply Chain
(2021-05) Farooqui, Salman
The pharmaceutical supply chain and medication-use process function to deliver medications to the right patients at the right time. Together, these two segments form the pharmaceutical value chain. The processes of the pharmaceutical value chain have become more complex, with new technology, new types of therapeutics, changing supply chain designs, and stringent government regulations. However, these changes also offer many opportunities for pharmaceutical value chains to increase value for patients. Value is a function of quality, service, and cost; every organization in the pharmaceutical value chain impacts these three variables. The most important variable is quality, since a lack of quality could translate to a medication error that could cause the patient an adverse drug event. To reduce medication errors and resultant adverse drug events, pharmaceutical value chain organizations must consider process improvements with the goal of maximizing value for the patient. Lean methodologies and tools provide an improvement framework that can help achieve greater value. This includes concepts such as continuous, incremental improvement, multi-level employee involvement, experimental thinking, standardization of processes, and error-proofing.
Antisocial Traits and Risky Sexual Behavior In Inpatient Adolescents
(2021-04) Pearson, Caroline
Introduction: Risky sexual behavior (RSB) during adolescence increases risk for sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDs, and teenage pregnancy. Youth with externalizing disorders are more likely to engage in RSB, and antisocial traits in adolescence may be particularly relevant to RSB. It is still not clear which specific antisocial traits are most relevant to RSB and RSB attitudes, or how gender influences RSB and RSB attitudes in adolescence. The present study examined RSB and RSB attitudes, and their relationship with gender among inpatient adolescents with antisocial traits. Methods: 128 female and 52 male (N=180) inpatient adolescents ranging from 12 to 17 years of age (M = 5.28, SD = 1.41) completed self-report measures of antisocial features, RSB, and RSB attitudes. Pearsonâ€™s correlations, followed up with multiple linear regressions, were used to examine relations between antisocial features, adolescent age, RSB and RSB attitudes. Results: Results indicated no gender differences in RSB; however, significant gender differences in RSB attitudes were found. All antisocial facets, with the exception of stimulus seeking, were not related to RSB. Most antisocial facets were found to be related to RSB attitudes, most significantly antisocial behavior. Age at admission was the variable most significantly related to RSB and RSB attitudes. Conclusions: Results suggest that for inpatient adolescents, antisocial features may not be related to engagement in RSB; however, the presence of riskier attitudes may affect future engagement in RSB among adolescent males with antisocial traits later in life and therefore present important preventative targets.
Application of Transport Tube Method For Flow Visualization
(2021-05) Laroche, Vincent Valerius S.
The use of transport tubes is a relatively novel approach to creating visualizations of complex fluid flow phenomena. While this method of analysis has been used to study some limited flow cases, it needed to be applied to additional scenarios. The aim of this project was to test and apply the transport tube method for the purpose of studying a relevant, real-world flow case: underwater bubble plumes. The structure of the plumes was examined using this transport tube method, an analysis model that visualizes the transport of mass, momentum, and kinetic energy as three-dimensional (3D) tube structures. Numerical integration was used to create transport tubes based on mass flux, momentum flux, and kinetic energy flux vector fields. These tubes represent regions in 3D space where there is no flow of the corresponding quantity across the boundary of the tube. The transport tube method was implemented using codes developed in both MATLAB and Python. Before examining the primary case of interest, the method was first applied to multiple sample flow fields of varying conditions in order to gauge its accuracy. These sample cases included plane Couette flow and a basic wind dataset. Additionally, the analysis of both a laminar axisymmetric jet and wake provided a basis from which to consider the similarly structured bubble plume. The results for these preliminary cases indicated that the transport tube method was effective at identifying complex flow features (e.g., eddies) and transport patterns of mass, momentum, and kinetic energy in a variety of flows both 2D and 3D, laminar and turbulent. Once finally applied to the primary case of underwater bubble plumes, the transport tube method was able to demonstrate the mechanism by which momentum and kinetic energy were exchanged between the plume and the surrounding flow. Peeling events from the plumes created a dual plume structure that led to turbulent interactions between rising and falling plumes. The transport tube method was able to capture these peeling events and resulting effects for the three different bubble plume cases that were studied.
Augmented Intelligence Approach To Educational Data Mining: Student Drop Prediction
(2021-05) Freeman, Keegan
Educational Data Mining (EDM) and Augmented Intelligence (AUI) are two upcoming fields in the machine learning research industry. EDM refers to the use of machine learning elements in an educational format. Typically, this is in the form of utilizing educational data to better understand the learning process. Augmented Intelligence, on the other hand, is a niche of machine learning that refers to people taking a much larger role than typical in artificial intelligence projects. For example, a professional in a given field may provide better insight as to what metrics should be weighed more when considering a given prediction. In this thesis, I review the feasibility of using Augmented Intelligence in the genre of Educational Data Mining to predict the likelihood of a student dropping a course based on demographic, study habit, and student perception information recorded through a survey. Additionally, I will be testing three optimization algorithms to see which is most beneficial in the application of this research. The goal of this research is to ultimately provide instructors with a machine learning model capable of highlighting at risk students such that the instructor can provide intervention techniques in a more timely fashion.
Cross-Pollination: The Effect of Rock Music on Jazz in the Late 1960’s and Early 1970’s as Demonstrated by Miles Davis’s Album Bitches Brew
(2021-07) Ackerman, Glen Andrew
The question of “What is Jazz?” has been vigorously explored in academic and cultural circles. While defining it is not within the scope of this thesis, a common feature of the genre has always been to adopt into its core elements, the nuances of the popular music of the times. Jazz, as it is currently understood, has equal footing in traditional and modern conventions. A technological and musical analysis of Miles Davis’s critically acclaimed release “Bitches Brew”, will reveal the effects of rock music of the late 1960’s on jazz. This new adaptation of jazz (still performed today) was later dubbed “fusion-jazz” or “jazz-rock”. That is to say, the fusion of rock rhythmic and harmonic styles into jazz. Additionally it represents the fusion of electric instruments into a historically acoustic genre. During the late 1960’s, rock music was still a relatively new genre. However, it’s undeniable popularity in the late 1960’s inspired Miles Davis to rethink his approach to rhythm and harmony. Several albums of his in this era share this new approach. The most notable of this new genre being “Bitches Brew”, released in 1969. An analysis of compositions featured on this album reveals what later became a trend in jazz performance of the period; single chord or limited harmonic movement over a simpler repetitive rock drum beat (what Bitches Brew keyboardist Chick Corea describes as “Beat music”), with both features being in sharp contrast to the standard performative methods of the era. The secondary point of this thesis will be the “fusion” of electric instruments into jazz, which up until this era, was a traditionally acoustic genre. Davis’s choices of instrumentation reflect his desire to achieve a more “rock” sound and the continued body of work by the sidemen on this album are the test of this new sounds durability. As demonstrated by “Bitches Brew” with it’s inclusion of electric rhythm section instruments (those used predominantly in rock music), and the absence of many of their acoustic counterparts, is the beginning of a genre-wide change in the instrumentation used in jazz.
Data-driven Rules for Individualized Lifestyle Recommendations
(2020-12) Odo, Chiwetalu P.
Heart failure (HF) is a global pandemic affecting more than 26 million patients worldwide. Effective management of risk factors is extremely important for reducing heart failure. Lifestyle modification can effectively reduce the risk of heart failure but clinical guidelines are generalized and not tailored for individuals. This project developed a rule-based framework that automatically generates personalized lifestyle modification recommendations for heart failure risk reduction. The proposed framework integrates an ensemble learning-based rule discovery model (RuleFit) that translates the patient-level profiles into actionable patterns (rules), and a rule-based optimization algorithm that searches for the optimal lifestyle modification recommendations based on the patient’s unchangeable profile. The proposed framework was applied to a large population in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study to manage patient risk of fatal coronary heart disease events.
Dating Violence and Peer Conflict In Adolescents With and Without Borderline Personality Disorder
(2020-10) Asim, Nabeeha
Background: A hallmark feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD) is unstable interpersonal relationships. Adolescents with BPD may be more likely to experience teen dating violence (TDV) and peer conflict. Yet, there is little research studying TDV and peer conflict in the context of BPD. The overall aim of this study was to examine whether adolescents with BPD or BPD features report higher levels of TDV and peer conflict. Method: The sample included 235 inpatient adolescents with BPD, 417 non-BPD psychiatric inpatient adolescents, and 441 healthy adolescents. Self-report measures of BPD features, TDV, and peer conflict were completed by the three groups of adolescents. A semi-structured BPD interview was conducted across the two inpatient groups. Results: While controlling for relevant demographic variables, results revealed that TDV victimization, perpetration and all forms and functions of peer conflict had a significant association with borderline features. Furthermore, the BPD group had higher levels of TDV victimization and reactive overt aggression than the psychiatric controls and healthy controls, even after controlling for relevant demographic variables. There were no significant differences between BPD and control groups in TDV perpetration and other forms and functions of peer conflict. Conclusions: Findings suggest that TDV and peer conflict are important correlates for BPD pathology. TDV and peer conflict ought to be considered for early prevention and treatment of BPD.
Depersonalizing Virtue: Against An Externalist Account
(2021-05) Ezquerra, Paulina
While philosophers agree that virtues are excellences and vices are defects, they disagree about their precise nature. Julia Driver (2001) defends an account of virtue that argues against the relevance of internal states and emphasizes outcomes. On her view, a person is virtuous if and only if she systematically produces good consequences, regardless of her motives or intentions. In this paper, I argue that a fully externalized approach to virtue is unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons, primarily because it depersonalizes virtue. States of affairs are insufficient for determining the moral quality of an agent’s character and the traits that compose it, because two people could produce the exact same effects and yet we’d evaluate them in completely different ways. Based on their internal states, we would praise one and blame the other. Further, states of affairs fail to communicate anything about the most profound qualities of a moral agent, such as the things that they care about and value. This serves as evidence against the idea that a fully externalized approach captures the precise nature of moral virtue and character evaluation.
Directing Delmas, A Chamber Opera in One Act
(2021-05) Green, Miriam E.
Exercise Enhancement of Cognitive Reserve: Promotion of Mental Health in Older Age?
(2020-12) Ahmad, Mahnoor
The concept of cognitive reserve is one that quite recently has been discussed in clinical neuroscience literature. Cognitive reserve posits that there is an established amount of supply in the brain that compensates for brain functions during normal age-related decline or when there is pathology present. Many factors contribute to the growth of reserve throughout an individual’s life, but one that is seen to be significantly beneficial, even in older adulthood, is aerobic exercise. The focus of this paper is on the promotion of healthy aging through exercise enhancement of cognitive reserve to assist the brain through the normal process of aging. In addition, one of the most prevalent mental illnesses afflicting older adults is depression. Not only is it more prevalent in older adults, but because it manifests differently in older adults, it is more detrimental to overall brain health. It is hypothesized that exercise enhances cognitive reserve, which may prevent or minimize negative aging effects on the brain such as depression, leading an individual to age without decline in quality of life.
Extractable Units of Bywater
(2021-05) Flick, Ariana
William Cronon argues that incoming settlers to the New England landscape could only define their findings in terms of their marketable value rather than their collective value as a system of growth. The danger of extracting profitable elements from an existing ecosystem is that it not only detracts from the overall richness of the place, but hinders any potential for future growth. The Bywater neighborhood in New Orleans is an ecosystem facing this same calculated extraction of its profitable parts: it lays on a natural levee; its located on the Mississippi River; it is in close proximity to downtown; there is cheap property due to the devastation of Katrina. Developers moving into the area buy out parts of the land based off these marketable values without understanding the complexity of the urban fabric. The Bywater neighborhood has a rich history of development from plantation lands to industrial barges to its current identity as an art and residential district. This thesis will seek to develop a rich and equitable infrastructure for the cultivation of both old and new cultural communities while still allowing space for growth in a place that has been historically defined and divided by its profitable parts.
Fault Tolerance in a Two-State Regularity-Based Checkpointing System
(2021-05) Torre, Elena
Embedded real-time virtualized systems serve a wide range of functions in many industries. They can encompass multiple independent applications that must share limited computational resources. The tasks running within these applications may vary in criticality and have different timing requirements. Many models have been introduced to ensure reliability and efficiency when scheduling tasks in these systems. Models in the Hierarchical Real-time Scheduling (HiRTS) framework can enable the virtualization and sharing of resources. The Regularity-based Resource Partition model (RRP) can be used to achieve transparent scheduling for such models. Many use resource-level checkpointing with rollback recovery as a method to resolve transient faults without modifying application code. However, checkpoint insertions are known to incur high time and energy overheads. This thesis project proposes the Two-state Regularity-based Checkpointing model. This HiRTS model will ensure fault tolerance when scheduling independent, mixed-criticality real-time task sets on limited resources. By reducing checkpoint insertions before the first fault, the system will achieve a lower time overhead while still ensuring fault tolerance. Simulation-based experiments were performed using a simple implementation of the proposed scheduling model. Results indicate that the model allows independent mixed-criticality task sets to maintain real-time performance guarantees for their high-priority tasks, even under a high fault rate. In addition, results show that unaffected task sets will still not suffer delays, even if other sets are experiencing an elevated number of faults.
Freeway Architectures Of Biopolitical Disobedience
(2020-05) Polkinghorne, Katherine H.
IH-45 is an inconceivably large ribbon of infrastructure that acts as a border between political and geographic communities. IH-45’s margin shelters socio-politically marginal architectural programming. If we take space to be a material reiteration of power, then the contested and marginal territory of the NHHIP is a critical site for architectural consideration and engagement. Through non-hegemonic site analysis and the imagining of counter-futures at four sites along the NHHIP’s extent, this thesis re-conceives of the freeway’s marginal territory as site for liberatory praxis and theorizes modalities of activist engagement with megastructures and megaprojects.
Identifying Factors Associated With Physical Activity In Middle School Minority Girls
(2020-12) Torres, Jennifer
The obesity epidemic in the United States is an increasing public health concern that is affecting more children every day. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 23.5 million children and adolescents (aged 2-19) are categorized as overweight or obese. Engaging in regular physical activity is critical at a young age to decrease the risk of developing a chronic disease in adulthood. Minority children are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic due to behavioral and social factors. However, Hispanic girls have the second highest rate of obesity prevalence among minority girls. During adolescence Hispanic girls experience a decline in physical activity for reasons that have not been fully investigated. In this study, we investigated the differences in weight loss between Hispanic boys (n=36) and Hispanic girls (n=49) in a school-based obesity prevention intervention at YES Prep Charter School. In a randomized control trial, students that identified as Hispanic with a BMI â‰¥ 95th percentile, were placed in an escalated treatment program (Take CHARGE!). Treatment duration was 3 months and occurred during the participantsâ€™ PE class, five days a week for 45 minutes each day. We compared group differences on baseline using T-tests and chi-square. No differences were found between genders with respect to baseline demographic or anthropometric variables. The Hispanic boys demonstrated a significantly greater reduction in their zBMI when compared to girls (F = 6.72, p < .05), although post hoc analyses revealed that both boys and girls significantly reduced their zBMI at 6 months compared to baseline (t = 4.34, p = .001; t = 2.45, p = .032, respectively). This study demonstrates that Hispanic girls experience sex-specific barriers that impedes them from engaging in physical activity. There is a need for health promotion that isnâ€™t only tailored to culture and age, but to gender as well in order to tackle the obesity epidemic.

Browse

Browsing 2020-2021 Senior Honors Theses by Title