Honors Projects
Showing 51 - 100 of 662 Items

- Restriction End Date: 2029-06-01
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Tingjun Huang
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Renske Kerkhofs
Access: Open access
- American lobsters (Homarus americanus) produce humming sounds by vibrating their carapace. These sounds have a fundamental frequency on the order of 100 Hz, with multiple higher harmonics. Though I found no relationship between lobster carapace length and hum frequency, I observed sounds similarly structured to hums but with frequencies an order of magnitude higher, suggesting that lobsters may use a wider range of sounds than previously thought. Using laser vibrometry, I was able to pick up high frequencies of carapace vibration that were similar to those I observed on sound recordings. Lobsters seem to hum most readily when approached from above, but many studies have found it difficult to reliably find soniferous lobsters. To find a way to reliably evoke sound production in American lobsters without contributing to the sound environment, lobsters were exposed to overhead abstract visual stimuli on a screen, after which their behavioral reactions were recorded, as well as any sound production in response to the stimulus. Lobsters responded to the screen stimulus with the same types of behaviors with which they responded to general overhead physical stimuli. This study demonstrates that American lobsters may produce high-pitched sounds and that abstract visual cues can be used as a silent tool to elicit lobster behaviors, but not sound production.
Date: 2014-05-01
Creator: Hanna Leigh Wurgaft
Access: Open access
- This paper challenges the effectiveness of the federal Disproportionate Minority Contact mandate. It first traces the legislative history of the mandate, from the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Act of 1974, to the establishment of the Disproportionate Minority Confinement mandate of 1988, to the final shift to Disproportionate Minority Contact in 2002. It then describes and analyzes implementation of the mandate in the New England states, showing uneven data collection and limited compliance with the mandate. The next chapter explores factors outside the jurisdiction of the DMC mandate that create and perpetuate racial disparities in juvenile justice, including concentrated poverty, police tactics driven in part by federal initiatives, and school disciplinary policies. Ultimately, this paper reports that racial disparities in arrests of juveniles have increased significantly- not declined- during the life of the mandate. It then discusses the limits of federal legislation in remedying racial disparities in juvenile justice.
Date: 2018-01-01
Creator: Lillian Eckstein
Access: Open access

Date: 2018-05-01
Creator: Madeline Schuldt
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Jacob M MacDonald
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Jaepil E Yoon
Access: Open access

- Embargo End Date: 2027-05-15
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Eliza Schotten
Access: Embargoed
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Andrea Rodriguez
Access: Open access
- aeioTU is a Colombian organization that works to enact social change through the field of early childhood education. In collaboration with the Colombian government, aeioTU oversees several public centers located in socioeconomically vulnerable municipalities in Colombia. This thesis analyzes the aeioTU curriculum and the practices of several aeioTU teachers through the theoretical lens of Freire’s critical pedagogy. This thesis argues that by fostering critical awareness of the world from an early age, as well as by collaborating closely with mothers and the communities at large, aeioTU teachers equip children with the tools to become social agents who can challenge and positively change their lived realities. The research presented in this thesis affirms the potential of aeioTU teachers to enact social change in socioeconomically vulnerable communities by building on young children’s social agency.

Date: 2018-05-01
Creator: Elizabeth Teeter
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2014-05-01
Creator: Joshua V Pondick
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

- Embargo End Date: 2029-05-16
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Nicholas Takaki Tienhui Yoong
Access: Embargoed

Date: 2017-05-01
Creator: Arman Ashrafi
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Kelsey J Freeman
Access: Open access

Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Sophia Elisabeth Nigrovic
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Corey Schmolka
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2014-05-01
Creator: Adam Eichenwald
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Carlos Manuel Holguin
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Matthew Russell Duthaler
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Mary E. John
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
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.

Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Chongye "Tom" Han
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Jolie R. Ganzell
Access: Permanent restriction
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

Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Gabrielle Nicole Waller-Whelan
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Eli G. Franklin
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Mitchell F. Zell
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

- Embargo End Date: 2026-12-14
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Hattie Sargent Slayton
Access: Embargoed
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.
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.
Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Casey Breslow
Access: Open access
- Modulation in neural systems is important for regulating physiology and behavior (Wright et al., 2010). Peptides, hormones, and amines are common neural modulators, acting on many neural systems across species. One group of neural networks that can be regulated are central pattern generators (CPGs), which generate rhythmic neural patterns, which drive behaviors (Marder and Bucher, 2001). Octopamine, and its precursor tyramine, are two amines that have been found to regulate (CPGs) across species (Cooke, 2002; Fussnecker et al., 2006). One role of octopamine in the decapod neurogenic heart is regulating the frequency and the duration of heart beats. However, the precise site of octopamine modulation within the cardiac system is not yet known (Kurumoto and Ebara, 1991). One possible site of action is the cardiac ganglion (CG), the CPG in decapod hearts. The transcripts for the enzymes required to synthesize octopamine from tyramine have been identified and localized in the CG (Christie et al., 2018). This would suggest that octopamine is produced in the CG, where it could have a direct action on those neurons, or it could be released peripherally. We have found individual variation in the response to octopamine and its precursor tyramine, and significant effects of frequency and contraction amplitude in the whole heart.
Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Duncan Gans
Access: Open access
Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Connor Rockett
Access: Open access
- Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, this study tests the hypothesis that state intervention in agrarian economies causes peasant movements to engage in broad-based contention, on regional and national levels. The study traces the connections between government land and agricultural institutions and the characteristics of rural movements that make claims on them. Case studies of regions of Tanzania, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ethiopia show the ways in which rural movements are constructed in response to the political and social environments in which they arise. That is, the comparisons demonstrate that the character of political authority and social organization are important determinants of the form taken by peasant movements.

Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Matthew Maguire
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2019-01-01
Creator: Caroline Rice
Access: Open access
- Previous studies show that active exploration of an environment contributes to spatial learning more than passive visual exposure (Chrastil & Warren, 2013; Chrastil & Warren, 2015). Active navigation and cognitive decision-making in a novel environment leads to increased spatial knowledge and memory of location compared to a passive exploration that removes the decision-making component. There is evidence of theta oscillations present in electroencephalography (EEG) recordings from the hippocampus and pre-frontal cortex (PFC). These low-frequency waves could reflect spatial navigation and memory performance, suggested by their involvement in communication between the formerly named brain regions. Through communication with the hippocampus, theta oscillations could be involved in the integration of new spatial information into memory. While undergoing EEG, subjects in this study either actively or passively explored a virtual maze, identified as the “Free” or “Guided” groups, respectively. After exploring, subjects’ spatial memory of the maze was tested through a task that required navigation from a starting object to a target object. Behavioral data show increased spatial memory for the Free group, indicated by significantly greater navigation to the correct target object in the memory task. EEG results indicate significantly greater theta oscillations in frontal regions for the Free group during the exploration phase. These results support those found in previous studies and could indicate a correlation between frontal theta oscillations during learning of novel environments and spatial memory.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Joseph Campbell Hilleary
Access: Open access
- This thesis explores changes in and challenges to Moroccan political authority in the region of the Sous during the late nineteenth century. It attempts to show how the phenomenon of British informal empire created a crisis over Moroccan sovereignty that caused the sultan to both materially and discursively change the way he wielded power in southern Morocco. It further connects these changes and the narrative contestation that accompanied them to the construction of the Bilad al-Siba/Bilad al-Makhzan dichotomy found in Western academic literature on Morocco starting in the colonial period. It begins with an examination of letters between Sultan Hassan I and local leaders in the Sous that show a shift toward a more bureaucratic form of governance in response to repeated openings of black-market ports by British trading companies. It then investigates the textual debate over the framing of Hassan I’s military expeditions to southern Morocco in the 1880s and 90s by drawing on a collection of European travel accounts, American consular reports, and a royal Moroccan history. Finally, it ties the illegal trade in the Sous to the broader theory of informal empire through a close examination of the Tourmaline Incident of 1897, using documents from the British Foreign Office as well as published accounts by crew members aboard the Tourmaline, itself.

- Embargo End Date: 2025-05-19
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Jeremy A. Hoyne Grosvenor
Access: Embargoed

Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Kieran Enzian
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Evan Albers
Access: Open access
- Effective Altruism has led a recent renaissance for utilitarian theory. However, it seems that despite its surge in popularity, Effective Altruism is still vulnerable to many of the critiques that plague utilitarianism. The most significant amongst these is the utility monster. I use Longtermsim, a mode of thinking that has evolved from Effective Altruism and prioritizes the far-future over the present in decision-making processes, as an example of how the unborn millions of the future might constitute a utility monster as a corporate mass. I investigate three main avenues of resolving the utility monster objection to Effective Altruism: reconsidering the use of expected value, adopting temporal discounting, and adopting average utilitarianism. I demonstrate that at best there are significant problems with these responses, and at worst, they completely fail to resolve the utility monster objection. I then conclude that if situations do exist in which the costs to the present do not intuitively justify the benefits to the far future, we must reject utilitarianism altogether.

Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Shane Anthony Smolenski
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

- Restriction End Date: 2025-06-01
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Abigail Raymond
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Daniel Little
Access: Open access
- In the recent past, extensive experimental works have been performed to predict joint voting outcomes in Congress based on a game-theoretic model of voting behavior known as Linear Influence Games. In this thesis, we improve the model selection and evaluation procedure of these past experiments. First, we implement two methods, Nested Cross-Validation with Tuning (Nested CVT) and Bootstrap Bias Corrected Cross-Validation (BBC-CV), to perform model selection and evaluation with less bias than previous methods. While Nested CVT is a commonly used method, it requires learning a large number of models; BBC-CV is a more recent method boasting less computational cost. Using Nested CVT and BBC-CV we perform not only model selection but also model evaluation, whereas the past work was focused on model selection alone. Second, previously models were hand picked based on performance measures gathered from CVT, but both Nested CVT and BBC-CV necessitate an automated model selection procedure. We implement such a procedure and compare its selections to what we otherwise would have hand picked. Additionally, we use sponsorship and cosponsorship data to improve the method for estimating unknown polarity values of bills. Previously, only subject code data was used. This estimation must be done when making voting outcome predictions for a new bill as well as measuring validation or testing errors. We compare and contrast several new methods for estimating unknown bill polarities.
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Bethany J. Thach
Access: Open access
- The eya gene is essential to development of the Drosophila visual system and eye-specific loss of function mutations in the gene commonly result in the missing eye phenotype. The eya2m35g mutation carries a deletion of exon 1B and adjacent regulatory sequences. Flies carrying the eya2m35g allele exhibit a photoreceptor axon phenotype that has not previously been associated with the eya gene. To determine a potential role for eya in photoreceptor axon targeting, I characterized various phenotypes of eya2m35g mutants and generated additional eya alleles consisting of smaller deletions within the eya2m35g mutation to locate the genetic source of axonal disruption. Using immunofluorescence staining to visualize Eya protein, I found a loss of eya expression in the optic lobe region of eya2m35g stage 9 embryos and third instar larvae. I also observed a loss of retinal basal glial (RBG) cells in the larval eye disc. Finally, I demonstrated that the disconnected axon phenotype is generated when a region of the intron immediately downstream of exon 1B is deleted. These findings suggest that a possible regulatory element for eya that is essential for photoreceptor axon targeting exists in this intronic region.
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Courtney Michelle Payne
Access: Open access
- With warming global temperatures and changes to large-scale ocean circulation patterns, warm water intrusion into Arctic fjords is increasingly affecting fragile polar ecosystems. This study investigated how warm Atlantic water intrusion and the tidewater glacial melting it causes impacted water mass formation and primary productivity in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard. Data were collected over a 2-week period during the height of the melt season in August near the Kronebreen/Kongsvegen glacier complex, the most rapidly retreating glacier in Spitsbergen. Since 1998, intruding waters have warmed between 4 and 5.5˚C, which has prevented sea ice formation and changed the characteristics of fjord bottom waters. Increased glacial melting in the last decade has changed the characteristics of surface waters in the fjord. Modeled light fields suggest that suspended sediment in this glacial meltwater has reduced the euphotic zone close to the ice face, preventing high primary production in both the consistent and intermittent sediment-laden meltwater plumes. However, measurements collected close to terrestrially terminating glaciers indicate that extremely high primary production can occur in conditions of low turbidity. The results of this study support a three-part model of the effects of warm-water intrusion on water mass formation and primary production, where changes in sea ice coverage and tidewater glacial dynamics affect the optical light field. This model allows for spatial predictions for the most likely impacts of warm water intrusion on primary production in Spitsbergen, and could be extrapolated out to explore potential phytoplankton response in other regions susceptible to warm-water intrusion.

Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Mollie Claire Eisner
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Marcus Helble
Access: Open access
- Throughout the 20th century, Argentine leaders and social actors attempted to shape distinct national identities and a sense of nationalism that corresponded to their respective political ideologies. Beginning in the first couple decades of the 20th century, the formation of a Jewish “other” would be central to the construction of both Argentine national identity and nationalism. This thesis argues that the military dictatorship that led the country from 1976 to 1983 built on this othering of the Jewish community as military leaders sought to forge a national identity linked to Catholicism. It focuses first on three separate periods of the early and mid-20th centuries and how governments in that period built, maintained, and altered the view of the Jewish community as a not fully Argentine “other” living in the country. Using several editions of a far-right antisemitic periodical, declassified State Department documents, and testimonies of Jewish political prisoners and soldiers, the thesis transitions to focus on the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. It examines two separate periods of the dictatorship, highlighting first the role antisemitic beliefs, and opposing such views, had in an internal power struggle within the military government. In the second period of the dictatorship, during the Malvinas (Falklands) War, the thesis examines how antisemitism became a central part of the military’s efforts to consolidate a sense of national unity during the conflict, even as Jews participated largely for the first time within Argentine nationalism and the military.

- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-20
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Nicole Danielle Tjin A Djie
Access: Embargoed
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Katharine Herman
Access: Open access
- This project compares the interaction between the government and the population in both Peru and Sri Lanka through the 20th century, focusing on the provision of care (services, benefits, and recognition as provided by the governing apparatus) as a locus for their most meaningful interaction. The provision of care can be seen as a form of communication established in certain practices, symbols, and discourses. Moreover, the provision of care works to reorient the subject population into a more beneficial relationship with the state–notably one of increased dependence and trust. Through the elaboration of what care is and how it functions, a care ideology is established creating a terrain through which the politics of the governed and the governing alike can be legitimized. Care ideology can then be considered a further articulation of the state idea, creating a dialogue about how governance can or should be affected within a certain context. These case studies then illustrate the terrain over which both of these governing bodies work. In Sri Lanka, the governing apparatus provides a means for citizens to live a symbolically meaningful life through paddy farming. In Peru, the governing apparatus provides access to the state through civil infrastructure like roads and education. Through care, material goods become invested with meaning and the state idea becomes materialized. Care is a then substantial project undertaken by the state to ensure its own reproduction and further widen the possibilities for the state project to be effected through its own citizens.
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Sophia Christina Schnauck
Access: Open access
- A recent re-examination of Bondi accretion (see Richards, Baumgarte and Shapiro (2021)) revealed that, for stiff equations of state (EOSs), steady-state accretion can only occur for accretion rates exceeding a certain minimum. To date, this result has been explored only for gamma-law equations of state. Instead, we consider accretion onto a small black hole residing at the center of a neutron star governed by a more realistic nuclear EOS. We generalize the relativistic Bondi solution for such EOSs, approximated by piecewise polytropes, and thereby obtain analytical expressions for the accretion rates which were reflected in our numerical simulations. After taking several different piecewise EOSs at different neutron star densities into account, the accretion rates of the different EOSs were only slightly larger than the previously observed minimum. In other words there appears to be evidence for a nearly universal accretion rate that depends only on the black hole mass. However, we also observed that for certain densities the fluid profiles of several EOSs exhibited superluminal sound speeds outside the horizon of the black hole, suggesting that the EOSs are not appropriate at these densities.
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Matthew L. Thomas
Access: Open access
- This study investigates the potential benefits of using a broad, multi-ecosystem analysis in the licensing and relicensing of hydropower facilities. Specifically, it considers the impact of river herring restoration on coastal food webs and cod and other groundfish populations in the Gulf of Maine. The past two decades of research on fisheries management, ecosystem connectivity, and the connection between river herring and groundfish in the Gulf of Maine have resulted in a better understanding of the ways in which human activities, such as dam building, influence ecological processes. The paper analyzes two case studies of six Maine dams currently engaged in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) hydroelectric dam relicensing process. The analysis illustrates the shortcomings of the Federal Power Act’s provisions that address the balancing of ecological and power generation concerns. Following the case studies, a series of policy recommendations are presented to encourage a more transparent and predictable relicensing process that adequately values both ecological and power generation goals. Changes are suggested for both the FERC process itself and the process by which state and federal resource agencies may provide comments regarding how a proposed dam licensing or relicensing affects natural resources under their jurisdiction. The proposed policy recommendations will increase the resilience of natural systems as they adapt to climate impacts.