Showing 5651 - 5700 of 5831 Items
Date: 1950-01-01
Access: Open access
- Bowdoin College Bulletin no. 295
Date: 2018-07-01
Creator: Andrew E. Christie, Andy Yu, Micah G. Pascual, Vittoria Roncalli, Matthew C., Cieslak, Amanda N. Warner, Tess J. Lameyer, Meredith E. Stanhope, Patsy S. Dickinson, J. Joe Hull
Access: Open access
- Essentially all organisms exhibit recurring patterns of physiology/behavior that oscillate with a period of ~24-h and are synchronized to the solar day. Crustaceans are no exception, with robust circadian rhythms having been documented in many members of this arthropod subphylum. However, little is known about the molecular underpinnings of their circadian rhythmicity. Moreover, the location of the crustacean central clock has not been firmly established, although both the brain and eyestalk ganglia have been hypothesized as loci. The American lobster, Homarus americanus, is known to exhibit multiple circadian rhythms, and immunodetection data suggest that its central clock is located within the eyestalk ganglia rather than in the brain. Here, brain- and eyestalk ganglia-specific transcriptomes were generated and used to assess the presence/absence of transcripts encoding the commonly recognized protein components of arthropod circadian signaling systems in these two regions of the lobster central nervous system. Transcripts encoding putative homologs of the core clock proteins clock, cryptochrome 2, cycle, period and timeless were found in both the brain and eyestalk ganglia assemblies, as were transcripts encoding similar complements of putative clock-associated, clock input pathway and clock output pathway proteins. The presence and identity of transcripts encoding core clock proteins in both regions were confirmed using PCR. These findings suggest that both the brain and eyestalk ganglia possess all of the molecular components needed for the establishment of a circadian signaling system. Whether the brain and eyestalk clocks are independent of one another or represent a single timekeeping system remains to be determined. Interestingly, while most of the proteins deduced from the identified transcripts are shared by both the brain and eyestalk ganglia, assembly-specific isoforms were also identified, e.g., several period variants, suggesting the possibility of region-specific variation in clock function, especially if the brain and eyestalk clocks represent independent oscillators.

Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Eugen Florin Cotei
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2009-04-15
Creator: Patsy S. Dickinson, Teerawat Wiwatpanit, Emily R. Gabranski, Rachel J. Ackerman, Jake S., Stevens, Christopher R. Cashman, Elizabeth A. Stemmler, Andrew E. Christie
Access: Open access
- The allatostatins comprise three structurally distinct peptide families that regulate juvenile hormone production by the insect corpora allata. A-type family members contain the C-terminal motif -YXFGLamide and have been found in species from numerous arthropod taxa. Members of the B-type family exhibit a -WX6Wamide C-terminus and, like the A-type peptides, appear to be broadly conserved within the Arthropoda. By contrast, members of the C-type family, typified by the unblocked C-terminus -PISCF, a pyroglutamine blocked N-terminus, and a disulfide bridge between two internal Cys residues, have only been found in holometabolous insects, i.e. lepidopterans and dipterans. Here, using transcriptomics, we have identified SYWKQCAFNAVSCFamide (disulfide bridging predicted between the two Cys residues), a known honeybee and water flea C-typelike peptide, from the American lobster Homarus americanus (infraorder Astacidea). Using matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization Fourier transform mass spectrometry (MALDI-FTMS), a mass corresponding to that of SYWKQCAFNAVSCFamide was detected in the H. americanus brain, supporting the existence of this peptide and its theorized structure. Furthermore, SYWKQCAFNAVSCFamide was detected by MALDI-FTMS in neural tissues from five additional astacideans as well as 19 members of four other decapod infraorders (i.e. Achelata, Anomura, Brachyura and Thalassinidea), suggesting that it is a broadly conserved decapod peptide. In H. americanus, SYWKQCAFNAVSCFamide is capable of modulating the output of both the pyloric circuit of the stomatogastric nervous system and the heart. This is the first demonstration of bioactivity for this peptide in any species.
Date: 2018-07-01
Creator: Harrison P. Fisher, Micah G. Pascual, Sylvia I. Jimenez, David A. Michaelson, Colby T., Joncas, Eleanor D. Quenzer, Andrew E. Christie, Hadley W. Horch
Access: Open access
- The auditory system of the cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus, demonstrates an unusual amount of anatomical plasticity in response to injury, even in adults. Unilateral removal of the ear causes deafferented auditory neurons in the prothoracic ganglion to sprout dendrites across the midline, a boundary they typically respect, and become synaptically connected to the auditory afferents of the contralateral ear. The molecular basis of this sprouting and novel synaptogenesis in the adult is not understood. We hypothesize that well-conserved developmental guidance cues may recapitulate their guidance functions in the adult in order to facilitate this compensatory growth. As a first step in testing this hypothesis, we have generated a de novo assembly of a prothoracic ganglion transcriptome derived from control and deafferented adult individuals. We have mined this transcriptome for orthologues of guidance molecules from four well-conserved signaling families: Slit, Netrin, Ephrin, and Semaphorin. Here we report that transcripts encoding putative orthologues of most of the candidate developmental ligands and receptors from these signaling families were present in the assembly, indicating expression in the adult G. bimaculatus prothoracic ganglion.
Date: 2019-08-01
Creator: Samantha K. Barry, Taro Nakamura, Yuji Matsuoka, Christoph Straub, Hadley W., Horch, Cassandra G. Extavour
Access: Open access
- Altering gene function in a developing organism is central to different kinds of experiments. While tremendously powerful genetic tools have been developed in traditional model systems, it is difficult to manipulate genes or messenger RNA (mRNA) in most other organisms. At the same time, evolutionary and comparative approaches rely on an exploration of gene function in many different species, necessitating the development and adaptation of techniques for manipulating expression outside currently genetically tractable species. This protocol describes a method for injecting reagents into cricket eggs to assay the effects of a given manipulation on embryonic or larval development. Instructions for how to collect and inject eggs with beveled needles are described. This relatively straightforward technique is flexible and potentially adaptable to other insects. One can gather and inject dozens of eggs in a single experiment, and survival rates for buffer-only injections improve with practice and can be as high as 80%. This technique will support several types of experimental approaches including injection of pharmacological agents, in vitro capped mRNA to express genes of interest, double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) to achieve RNA interference, use of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) in concert with CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) reagents for genomic modification, and transposable elements to generate transient or stable transgenic lines.

Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Melissa G. Demczak
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Ben Cook
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Stephanie Lane
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Alex Baselga Garriga
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Gillian Raley
Access: Open access
- This paper analyzes the methods of resistance enacted by women-identifying people in Mississippi against the institutions seeking to police how they understand their own sexuality and bodily autonomy. This analysis draws upon a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in the summer of 2020 focused on construction of community, intersectional identity, relationship with the body, and what inputs frame how women in Mississippi understand sex. This project puts these interviews in conversation with literature from a variety of subfields, including resistance studies, the Sociology of the South, and the Sociology of sexuality, all of which help bring the argument behind these data to light. Resistance looks different in different eras, and generally scholars like to analyze resistance as collective action, collective voice, collective struggle. These data instead argue that strategic, individualized resistance is just as vital to marginalized bodies, particularly when explosive action is not possible. Studying strategies of resistance that lurk beneath the surface not only expands what we now see as “radical,” but it also lends insight into where lasting change can begin.
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Chloe B Richards
Access: Open access
- We revisit the system consisting of a neutron star that harbors a small, possibly primordial, black hole at its center, focusing on a nonspinning black hole embedded in a nonrotating neutron star. Extending earlier treatments, we provide an analytical treatment describing the rate of secular accretion of the neutron star matter onto the black hole, adopting the relativistic Bondi accretion formalism for stiff equations of state that we presented elsewhere. We use these accretion rates to sketch the evolution of the system analytically until the neutron star is completely consumed. We also perform numerical simulations in full general relativity for black holes with masses up to nine orders of magnitude smaller than the neutron star mass, including a simulation of the entire evolution through collapse for the largest black hole mass. We construct relativistic initial data for these simulations by generalizing the black hole puncture method to allow for the presence of matter, and evolve these data with a code that is optimally designed to resolve the vastly different length scales present in this problem. We compare our analytic and numerical results, and provide expressions for the lifetime of neutron stars harboring such endoparasitic black holes.

- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-20
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Mishal Kazmi
Access: Embargoed
Date: 2001-01-01
Creator: Patsy S. Dickinson, Jane Hauptman, John Hetling, Anand Mahadevan
Access: Open access
- The neuropeptide red pigment concentrating hormone (RPCH), which we have previously shown to activate the cardiac sac motor pattern and lead to a conjoint gastric mill-cardiac sac pattern in the spiny lobster Panulirus, also activates and modulates the pyloric pattern. Like the activity of gastric mill neurons in RPCH, the pattern of activity in the pyloric neurons is considerably more complex than that seen in control saline. This reflects the influence of the cardiac sac motor pattern, and particularly the upstream inferior ventricular (IV) neurons, on many of the pyloric neurons. RPCH intensifies this interaction by increasing the strength of the synaptic connections between the IV neurons and their targets in the stomatogastric ganglion. At the same time, RPCH enhances postinhibitory rebound in the lateral pyloric (LP) neuron. Taken together, these factors largely explain the complex pyloric pattern recorded in RPCH in Panulirus.
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: David Zhou
Access: Open access
- There are predictions for cosmological gravitational wave backgrounds from reheating based on various models. But, these predictions do not address the question of how an observed spectrum relates back to an unknown model or parameter. Given this problem, we have numerically and analytically investigated a variety of chaotic inflation models and their gravitational wave spectra. In doing so, we found a power law relation between gravitational wave peak frequency and an underlying chaotic inflation parameter. We found a two-class amplitude puzzle related to how strongly a matter producing field is coupled to the inflaton. We estimated the parameter describing how quadrupolar the gravitational wave source's energy density to good agreement with previous estimates.

- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Evan Albers
Access: Embargoed

- Embargo End Date: 2028-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Lia F. Kornmehl
Access: Embargoed
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Micaela Elanor Simeone
Access: Open access
- The human body was a site of discovery and redefinition in early modern Europe. This project traces the gradual arc from the mid-seventeenth century towards Cartesian notions of the body in the later part of the century through two fictions: Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650)’s The Purple Island (1633) and Gabriel Daniel (1649-1728)’s Voyage du Monde de Descartes (1690). This project views these two largely-overlooked texts as important literary works that represent the seventeenth century’s transformative debates about and explorations of the human body. I argue that Fletcher employs a dissective mode that embraces mind-body harmony while framing the human as both fragmented and whole. I then explore how Voyage du Monde de Descartes responds to an altogether different culture in the late seventeenth century, after Cartesian ideas extracted mind from body and no longer saw the body as a significant marker of humanity. I argue that Voyage ultimately reveals—through a captivating satirical fiction—how understanding Cartesian anatomy as the product of anxiety, uncertainty, and novelty helps us better see how we became motivated to transcend our bodies.
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Saul Cuevas-Landeros
Access: Open access
- Throughout this project, I ‘step into the Chinese Room’ presented by philosopher John R. Searle and develop the areas where the Chinese Room Argument succeeds. I have aimed to pick out where Searle has succeeded with the Chinese Room Argument and introduce how it fits in with his school of biological naturalism, as it seems that he already had some conception of it when presenting the Argument. From here, I introduce some of the primary arguments against the Chinese Room Argument because they do not fit with Searle’s overarching theme of biological naturalism. Particularly, Searle’s conception of systems and system features is something he endorses for the biological but immediately labels as silly for the Chinese Room. Following the exposition of systems and system features, I expand on how there is a disconnect between Searle’s use of system features and his view of the Chinese Room Argument. What is so special about Searle’s conception of systems and the systems present in the Chinese Room Argument? Searle should claim that the Chinese Room is simply not the kind of thing that can think. Ultimately, Searle’s philosophy of mind leaves us with either a muddled philosophy or an invalid argument in the Chinese Room, but with much to learn and not forget to consider in the philosophy of mind, such as the important role of subjectivity in our conscious life.
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Sabine Y Berzins
Access: Open access
- Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is a perennial seagrass that provides many vital ecosystem services including stabilizing sediments, maintaining water clarity, and providing complex habitat in the intertidal and shallow subtidal coastline. Historically, Maine supported dense eelgrass beds in shallow waters surrounding islands and along the coastal mainland. However, in 2012, high population densities of European green crabs (Carcinus maenas), which physically disturb and remove eelgrass as they forage, were correlated with widespread eelgrass declines. Over 55% of the area of eelgrass in Casco Bay was lost, mainly between 2012 and 2014. Eelgrass typically grows in low-oxygen sediments that produce a chemically reducing environment. Sulfate-reducing bacteria in these reduced sediments produce hydrogen sulfide, a toxin that can intrude into eelgrass tissues and impair the plants’ ability to photosynthesize. When eelgrass is not present, sulfide can build up in the pore-water. When eelgrass is present, it can oxygenate the sediments through its roots, thereby preventing the intrusion and buildup of toxic hydrogen sulfide. However, if the substrate is de-vegetated, oxygen levels drop as sedimentary organic matter is decomposed, and the accumulation of sulfides to harmful concentrations in the pore-water may make recolonization of eelgrass difficult or perhaps impossible even in the absence of green crabs. In an effort to monitor characteristics of Casco Bay eelgrass beds and determine spatially where eelgrass may be more likely to recover, four Casco Bay sites with varying degrees of vegetation loss were sampled in 2015 for pore-water sulfide concentration, sediment carbon and nitrogen content, and sediment grain size analysis. Measurements of sulfide concentrations showed correlations with the timing of eelgrass loss, such that vegetated sites had low pore-water sulfide concentrations and sites that had been de-vegetated for longer periods of time had high sulfide concentrations. Carbon and nitrogen content in the sediment was higher at de-vegetated sites, likely due to a higher percentage of finer sediments at those locations. Coarser sediments were more highly vegetated than finer sediments, perhaps displaying a preference of green crabs to forage in finer sediments. Catastrophic loss of eelgrass in Casco Bay has likely led to differences in sulfide levels, carbon and nitrogen content in the sediment, and grain size distribution, depending on degree of vegetation. Eelgrass restoration in Casco Bay will likely be limited by high pore-water sulfide concentrations.

- Restriction End Date: 2027-06-01
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Yi Peng Wang
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Jaida Hodge-Adams
Access: Open access
- The alt-right is a hyper-extreme, decentralized network of far-right pundits and their doggish supporters that exists almost entirely online. Consumed by conspiracy and identity, the myths of bigoted ideologies like racism, antisemitism, and transphobia are taken for granted, and their ideology calls for violent ends by violent means. In the physical world, members of the alt-right often keep their rhetoric to themselves; Online, however, they find solace in a vast, international network of websites and forums that together form one giant echo chamber into which they can dump their darkest thoughts. Though any individual member of the alt-right may operate uniquely within the context of their home country, together they form a collective, international voice whose strongest claims often transcend borders and resist state-level analysis. Unspeakable acts of violence like mass shootings, senseless killings, and acts of terrorism are unpredictable but become significantly more likely when the rhetorical atmosphere breeds hostility. By demonizing minority groups and spreading ideologies of hate, the alt-right makes these acts of violence more likely. On massive platforms like Twitter, the alt-right’s rhetoric can seep into mainstream conversations; their framing of concepts like race, gender, sexuality, and national identity are forced into relevance. Their rhetoric is euphemistic, but their message is clear, and their hate poses a real threat to people’s lives. This honors project explores the ideological and geographic features of the alt-right and their international implications, concluding that the alt-right is a globally interconnected group of actors whose conspiracies motivate lone-wolf terrorists worldwide.

- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Deva K Holliman
Access: Embargoed
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Camille E. Wasinger
Access: Open access
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Benjamin Ross
Access: Open access
- Remote sensing of solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is a valuable tool in understanding the global carbon cycle. While SIF is highly correlated with photosynthesis at the ecosystem scale, the role that remote sensing of SIF can play at smaller scales is still unclear. The goal of my research was to investigate the ability of SIF to detect changes in pigmentation, photosynthesis, and energy partitioning at the grass canopy and leaf level in response to water stress and abscisic acid (ABA) hormone treatments. Both treatments immediately inhibited photosynthesis by limiting gas exchange through stomatal closure, but SIF declined gradually. Recovery of photosynthesis after alleviation of water stress was not reflected in remote measurements of SIF. I found that senescence in the tips of grasses had been driving changes in remote measurements, which affected remote measurements even when measured leaf-level gas exchange in the lower living tissue recovered. This heterogeneous senescence pattern contextualizes the disconnect between SIF and photosynthesis in stressed turfgrass.

- Restriction End Date: 2027-06-01
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Michael Christopher Dean
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Emma A. Bomfim
Access: Embargoed

- Restriction End Date: 2026-06-01
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Zubin Jay Kenkare
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Rory Mayne Devlin
Access: Open access
- Democratic theory suggests that voters reward or punish incumbent political parties in elections by evaluating parties’ ability to provide services. But do voters reward incumbent parties for service provision in practice? This project explores the relationship between municipal-level service provision and voting in the South African context. I test whether the local provision of services, such as electricity, piped water, internet, trash collection, and flush toilets, impact the performance of South Africa’s two major political parties, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) in municipal and national elections between 2009 and 2021. I observe this relationship in ANC- and DA-controlled municipalities using municipal-level data on public service provision, election results, and nighttime brightness levels. The municipal-level results show that DA-controlled municipalities with higher levels of service provision in 2016 offered more support for the DA in the 2021 and 2019 elections. However, ANC-controlled municipalities with higher levels of 2016 service provision did not support the ANC at higher rates. Additionally, ANC-controlled municipalities that improved service provision between 2011 and 2016 supported the ANC at higher rates in the 2021 and 2019 elections than they did in previous elections. DA vote share did not increase in DA-controlled municipalities where services improved over time.

- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Ari Geisler
Access: Embargoed

- Embargo End Date: 2027-05-19
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Justin K. Yang
Access: Embargoed
Date: 1954-01-01
Access: Open access
- Bowdoin College Bulletin no. 311
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Sophia Walton
Access: Open access
- The blue mussel Mytilus edulis alters its phenotype in species-specific ways in response to either green crab (Carcinus maenus) or sea star (Asterias sp.) predation. Previous studies have shown that only sea stars induce changes in abductor muscle morphology, while green crabs generally alter the shape and thickness of shells. In the Western Gulf of Maine, Blue mussels collected from wave protected sites with abundant green crab predators were shown to have significantly thicker shells and larger adductor muscles than mussels collected from wave exposed sites with few green crab predators. The phenotypes of mussels originating from wave-protected and high green crab abundance sites increased the handling time by A. forbesi compared to sites with low wave exposure and high green crab abundance. These results contradict the paradigm that shell thickness trades off with abductor morphology, and I propose that a likely candidate for increased energy allocation to these traits is a decrease in reproductive allocation. My results further suggest that the escalating “arms race” between invasive green crabs and blue mussels in the Western Gulf of Maine is leading to changes in the phenotypic response of mussel populations in ways that are likely impacting sea star foraging dynamics.
Date: 1953-01-01
Access: Open access
- Bowdoin College Bulletin no. 307

Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Marie Marjorie Bergsund
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 1942-01-01
Access: Open access
- Bowdoin College Bulletin no. 262
Date: 2024-01-25
Creator: Heather Bruce, Hadley Wilson Horch
Access: Open access
- Visualizing the expression of genes is a fundamental tool in molecular biology. Traditional colorimetric in situ hybridization using long RNA probes has been a staple for visualizing gene expression but has many drawbacks. In situ HCR v3.0, developed by Choi et. al. 2018, offers improvements over traditional in situs in nearly every aspect: probes can simply be ordered rather than painstakingly cloned and transcribed, which also makes them cost-effective; an HCR takes just three days to complete rather than five or more days; HCR is robust and works well for first-time users; and HCR probes can be multiplexed, allowing four to eight genes to be visualized in a single sample. HCR has been used successfully in many arthropods, including insects (Drosophila, Tribolium), crustaceans (Parhyale, Daphnia, Artemia), and chelicerates (Limulus horseshoe crab, Acanthoscurria tarantula). In this demo, you will learn how to design and order HCR probes as well as best practices for experimental design.