Showing 551 - 600 of 681 Items
Empire of Horror: Race, Animality, and Monstrosity in the Victorian Gothic
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Grace Monaghan
Access: Open access
- This project examines Victorian England through the analysis of three Victorian gothic novels: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903/1912), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). The end of the nineteenth century and the final years of the Victorian era brought with them fears and uncertainties about England’s role in the world and its future, fears that the Victorian gothic sought to grapple with, but inevitably failed to contain. In examining this genre, I draw on “Undisciplining Victorian Studies” (Chatterjee et al, 2020), which calls for the field of Victorian studies to center racial theory. As such, I foreground race and whiteness in these novels, in conjunction with animality, empire, and sexuality, all of which were crucial tools in the imperial gothic’s project of constructing the monstrous Other. The British empire relied on the establishment of a physical and moral boundary between itself and the colonized Other, in order to justify its imperialism and maintain its own perceived superiority. Yet, ultimately, this project demonstrates that the boundaries between the self and the Other, between morality and monstrosity, and between mainland England and its empire, were dangerously porous.
The Lay Judge System: Following a Tradition of Maintaining the Status Quo or Forging a Path Towards More Reformation of the Justice System? Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Alexandra Mathieu
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Surface Soil Stocks: Peat Development and Soil Carbon Storage on South Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada This record is embargoed.
- Embargo End Date: 2028-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Ana Gunther
Access: Embargoed
Songs for Birds: An Exploration of Climate Change and the Changing Soundscape Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Logan Paige Gillis
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Diatom blooms in Harpswell Sound: seasonality, succession, and origin
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Charlie Francis O'Brien
Access: Open access
- Harpswell Sound (HS) is an inlet in northeastern Casco Bay that exerts control on Gulf of Maine ecosystem health, yet its complex phytoplankton community dynamics have not been characterized with sufficiently detailed analyses. In this research, high-resolution automated microscopy and current velocity observations were used to test the seasonality, ecological succession, bloom origin location, and potential toxicity of populations in HS between 2020 and 2022. Winter months could exhibit slow accumulation of diatom biovolume. Cold, salty surface water has net outflow in winter as nutrients from depth are replenished during net upwelling conditions, and populations could be exported from the inlet at the surface. Extreme current velocity variability in spring due to the Kennebec River plume in HS destabilizes spatially uniform populations. Warm, low-salinity surface water with net inflow in summer (net downwelling which retains populations at the head of the sound) corresponds with temporally separate dinoflagellate and diatom blooms. Large, multi-peaked spring and fall diatom blooms are recurrent, contrasting small, short-lived blooms in summer. A successional pattern from diatoms to dinoflagellates is confirmed for summer but refuted for other seasons. The hypothesis that diatom succession during all blooms in HS is characterized by large centric cells preceding small cells or pennate cells was explored but no clear pattern in decreasing cell size was observed. Observed tidal effects on biovolume concentration could mask that blooms develop at coherent times but spatially separated. A diverse community of toxic phytoplankton, including dinoflagellates and Pseudonitzschia, are observed throughout the year.
Eroding the Bedrock: The Future of Public Administration Without Chevron Deference
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Rose Keller
Access: Open access
- When Congress passes a bill, it produces words on a page. Who decides what those words mean? Historically, the onus of a statute’s interpretation has rested with the federal agencies charged with its implementation. The Chevron doctrine, a two-step standard that affords federal agencies significant latitude in interpreting their own enabling legislation, has been the applicable deference regime in statutory interpretation cases since 1984. Contrary to this tradition, recent Supreme Court jurisprudence has reasserted the primacy of the judiciary in statutory interpretation cases, often ignoring Chevron entirely. In 2023, the Court granted certiorari to Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, a case that explicitly asked the Court to consider overruling Chevron vs. NRDC, a foundational case in the field of administrative law. This thesis explores the implications of eroding deference to federal agencies through a case study of the Food and Drug Administration and two of its responsibilities. Ultimately, there are potentially negative consequences to limiting agency jurisdiction via eviscerating judicial deference that counsel a more discerning approach.
Blockholders and Their Effect on Project Value: An Empirical Approach of Understanding Ownership Concentration and Firm Value Using an Event Study Framework
Date: 2017-05-01
Creator: Xuanming Guo
Access: Open access
- This study uses an event study framework to find the relationship between ownership concentration and project value. I find that project value first increases with ownership concentration when block size, the percentage ownership of the largest blockholder, is smaller than 10%, then declines with ownership concentration when block size gets larger, and finally rises again when block size exceeds 30%. However, my research only suggests an ambiguous relationship between ownership concentration and firm value. Additionally, ownership concentration seems to affect both the timing of market responses and the market’s interpretation of large investment projects.
A Neighbor’s Impact: The Influence of Emotional Valence on Visual Word Processing Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2014-05-01
Creator: Marissa C Rosenthal
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
The Power of In-Person Digital Repatriation: Returning Historic Photographs to West Greenland Communities This record is embargoed.
- Embargo End Date: 2029-05-15
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Agnes Macy
Access: Embargoed
Activation of Hydrogen by Sterically Modulated Coinage Metal Catalysts via Mutual Quenching of Hard/Soft Acid/Base Mismatches
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Zach Leibowitz
Access: Open access
- To mitigate the devastating environmental impacts of climate change in the coming decades, it is imperative that we replace the use of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric. As these renewable energy sources are inherently intermittent, there exists a need for sustainable mechanisms to store renewable energy for later use. While the direct use of dihydrogen (H2) as a combustible fuel would allow for energy storage without the harmful release of carbon dioxide (CO2) upon combustion, the practicality of H2 as a synthetic fuel is limited by its low volumetric energy density. Combining sustainable H2 production (e.g. electrolysis using energy from renewable sources) with subsequent carbon fixation (e.g. the hydrogenation of CO2) represents a promising pathway to the sustainable production of high-density synthetic fuels. We hypothesize that such a process could be catalyzed by an IPr**-supported catalyst containing a hard/soft acid/base (HSAB) mismatch, with a polarizable coinage metal acting as a soft acid. As such, the aim of our project is the construction of a catalogue of IPr**-supported copper, silver, and gold catalysts that we anticipate will facilitate the heterolysis of dihydrogen and subsequent hydrogenation of CO2. In the present paper, we report the synthesis and characterization of an IPr**-silver complex which will serve as a precursor to many of our proposed HSAB mismatch catalysts and discuss next steps as we construct our catalogue of catalysts.
Looking Ahead With the World in Their Hands: The Postsecondary Aspirations of East Island Youth
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Abby E Roy
Access: Open access
Modeling Strategic Behavior in the U.S. Senate Using Ideal Points with Social Interactions Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2017-05-01
Creator: Tucker Gordon
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Hunter-Gatherers: The Survival of the Foraging Practice In Modern States Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Tristan C Van Kote
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
*dhéĝhōm,*héshr, and *wek (earth, blood, and speech): an archaeological, genetic, and linguistic exploration of Indo-European origins
Date: 2017-05-01
Creator: Lara Bluhm
Access: Open access
- This project investigates strategies for learning about prehistoric languages that have left no written records. It focuses upon the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family (the world’s largest by total speaking population, today including most of the languages between Iceland and India) and its associated speakers, who likely emerged during the Neolithic from someplace in eastern Europe or western Asia. There are two primary hypotheses regarding the origins of these languages and the so-called Indo-Europeans themselves. In one, it is argued that they arose via the expansion of agriculture out of Anatolia and into Europe, c. 5000 BC. The other, and leading, hypothesis suggests instead that the languages spread through migrations of highly mobile pastoralists outward from the Black Sea steppes at the end of the Neolithic, c. 3000 BC. This project will explore the developing interface between archaeology, genetics, and linguistics in prehistoric resarch. There are three main chapters: (1) some background and historical context about Indo-European studies; (2) an examination of methodological interaction among archaeology, linguistics, and genetics; and (3) a survey of various archaeological, genetic, and linguistic data as they pertain to the Indo-Europeans and the above two hypotheses of their origins.
Visions of Unity, Memories of Violence: American Civil Religion and the Japanese American Incarceration
Date: 2018-05-01
Creator: Brigitte Helene McFarland
Access: Open access
Benchmarking Ab Initio Computational Methods for the Quantitative Prediction of Sunlight-Driven Pollutant Degradation in Aquatic Environments
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Kasidet Trerayapiwat
Access: Open access
- Understanding the changes in molecular electronic structure following the absorption of light is a fundamental challenge for the goal of predicting photochemical rates and mechanisms. Proposed here is a systematic benchmarking method to evaluate accuracy of a model to quantitatively predict photo-degradation of small organic molecules in aquatic environments. An overview of underlying com- putational theories relevant to understanding sunlight-driven electronic processes in organic pollutants is presented. To evaluate the optimum size of solvent sphere, molecular Dynamics and Time Dependent Density Functional Theory (MD-TD-DFT) calculations of an aniline molecule in di↵erent numbers of water molecules using CAM-B3LYP functional yielded excited state energy and oscillator strength values, which were compared with data from experimental absorption spectra. For the first time, a statistical method of comparing experimental and theoretical data is proposed. Underlying Gaussian functions of absorption spectra were deconvoluted and integrated to calculate experimental oscillator strengths. A Matlab code written by Soren Eustis was utilized to decluster MD-TD-DFT results. The model with 256 water molecules was decided to give the most accurate results with optimized com- putational cost and accuracy. MD-TD-DFT calculations were then performed on aniline, 3-F-aniline, 4-F-aniline, 3-Cl-aniline, 4-MeOacetophenone, and (1,3)-dimethoxybenzophenone with CAM-B3LYP, PBE0, M06-2X, LCBLYP, and BP86 functionals. BP86 functional was determined to be the best functional. Github repository: https://github.com/eustislab/MD_Scripts
Fact vs. Faction: Polarization in the Information Age
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Noah Finberg
Access: Open access
- How can individuals in the contemporary media and political environment form better political beliefs? In chapter one, this thesis considers what it means to say American politics is polarized. It evaluates the extent of polarization in American politics. And it presents original evidence that suggests that just as the public and members of Congress have polarized, so too has American political discourse. Through the lens of political psychology, chapter two investigates how America’s polarized politics has influenced the quality of individuals’ beliefs. Chapter three explores the role that the media plays in encouraging or minimizing the biased information processing practices identified in chapter two. Finally, I conclude by arguing that individuals need to fundamentally rethink how they consume political information; advocate for the creation of a completely new social media platform specifically designed to encourage political deliberation; and outline what such a platform might look like.
Characterization and distribution of allatostatin type-C (AST-C) neuropeptides and receptors in crustaceans Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Tess Lameyer
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Investigating the Effects of Student Debt on Career Outcomes: An Empirical Approach
Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Gideon Moore
Access: Open access
- High student debt has been hypothesized to affect career choice, causing students to desire stable, high paying jobs. To test this hypothesis, I rely on plausibly exogenous variation in debt due to a federal policy shift. In the summer of 2007, the Higher Education Reconciliation Act (or HERA) expanded the cap for federally subsidized student loans. I examine how variation in debt affects career choice and eventual salary of students using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Child and Young Adult Cohort of students who were of college age during the implementation of the policy. I find that student debt has no impact on salary two years after graduation; however, it does seem to shift students’ career choices, leading some to avoid careers in public service industries such as teaching and social work.
Crazy American
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Emma Quan Dewey
Access: Open access
- Crazy American is an evening-length dance solo choreographed and performed by Bowdoin's first Dance honors student, Emma Quan Dewey. This dance is an embodied exploration of her mother's family migration history from South China to the Philippines to the US, and how it places her and her family within structures of US imperialism, racial hierarchies, and Chineseness itself. Based on ethnographic, historical, theoretical, and embodied research, Crazy American examines the intimate ways these structures play out at the level of the body, and seeks to imagine new possibilities for moving through systems and stories of power.
Modeling Oyster Growth Dynamics in FLUPSY Systems to Develop a Decision Support Tool for Seed Management
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Gretchen Clauss
Access: Open access
- As the Gulf of Maine warms and lobsters move north to colder waters, Maine’s working water front has begun to diversify. There is a thriving new ecosystem of aquaculturists looking to keep Maine’s waterfront traditions alive in a lasting, sustainable way. One of the most popular aquaculture industries is oyster farming. With an increasing number of oyster farms developing in Midcoast Maine each year, we seek to develop a decision support tool to aid farmers in seed management. Oyster farmers can choose weather or not to use an upweller on their farm, and our goal is to provide guidance on this choice, as well as on upweller management. We begin by culminating and synthesizing data from previous literature and oyster farmers. We then use this data to first build a basic analytical model of a cohort of oysters based on an exponential growth model. We expand this model to include biological differences among oysters as well as management practices. Finally, we walk through a case study, illustrating how our tool could be used to make seed management decisions on an individual farm scale.
Exploring Solution-Based Co-Crystal Growth of Curcumin as an Approach for Alzheimer’s Therapeutics Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Nadia E. Puente
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Dynamic Multi-Objective Optimization With Applications to AI for Social Good Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Sajel Surati
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Settling down to a long winter's nap: Seasonality and temperature on evergreen entrance into winter dormancy Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Roger M. Wilder
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Using Fluorogenic Monosaccharides to Detect and Identify Glycan-Degrading Enzymes Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Esteban Tarazona Guzman
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
The Collision of Oil and Anticolonial Nationalism in the Persian Gulf
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Vaughn Vial
Access: Open access
- In the 1950s and 1960s, Arab nationalism swept across the Arabian Peninsula from Egypt and the Levant, carried by migrants, refugees, and in magazines and newspapers that circulated across national borders. In the Gulf countries this wave of Arab nationalism collided with a flow more material in nature: the movement of enormous amounts of carbon energy in the form of oil. In Arab nationalism, oil workers at Aramco in Saudi Arabia and Bapco in Bahrain found not only a direction for political change but a means of overcoming religious and national divides with their fellow workers. Strikes and labor actions soon ensued at a scale that was unprecedented in these countries. This project explores how the confluence of oil flows and anticolonial nationalism both imbued this moment with the potential to effect egalitarian political change and, simultaneously, limited that potential.
The Sublethal Impacts of Epizootic Shell Disease, Molting and Damage on Energy Storage and Immune Function in the American Lobster (Homarus americanus) Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Annika Ruth Bell
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Latent Landscapes: Deep Learning Techniques for Measuring Poverty and Vulnerability Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Brian Liu
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
New Creatures in Old Gazes: Investigating Shifts Away from Anthropocentrism in Contemporary Animal Fiction
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Catherine Mose
Access: Open access
- This paper examines three works of animal-based fiction published within the last decade that all center on hypothetical forms of animals with a focus on decentering anthropocentric narratives of how much agency an animal is allowed to have in a human-centric narrative without engaging in anthropmorphism. By comparing the books with theory from the academic field of animal studies, older works of animal-based fiction, and historical debates surrounding the depiction of real-world animals in writing, I aim to interrogate the methods these authors use to decouple their animals' agency from anthropomorphism, and the ways in which this shift allows anthropocentrism to take new forms rather than be eradicated.
Exploring the functional role of theta oscillations in top-down control of episodic memory retrieval Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Emma F.B. Gibbens
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Suite For a Changing Climate
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Hayden Byrne
Access: Open access
- Suite for a Changing Climate is a set of compositions inspired by the changing rhythms of the New England seasons and the evolving ways in which we experience them in the shadow of climate change. Each piece captures a distinct facet of the seasonal year, whether rooted in sensory experience or in cultural memory, while reflecting on how these once-familiar patterns are being reshaped by environmental instability.
“I belong as much as I want to”: Changing Perceptions of Belonging through COVID and After among Elite Undergraduates Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Fiona Bor
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Exploring Eelgrass Restoration: Understanding Zostera marina seed development and germination in Casco Bay, ME Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Lucille Jean de Ferranti Dutton
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Que vivan los estudiantes: Cycles of Contention and the Chilean Student Movement (1906-present)
Date: 2018-01-01
Creator: Jonah Watt
Access: Open access
- [No abstract]
The Role of Competition and Patient Travel in Hospital Profits: Why Health Insurers Should Subsidize Patient Travel
Date: 2013-05-01
Creator: Joseph S Durgin
Access: Open access
- This paper explores the effects of patient travel distance on hospital profit margins, with consideration to the effects of travel subsidies on hospital pricing. We develop a model in which hospital agglomeration leads to a negative relationship between profit margins and patient travel distance, challenging the standard IO theory that profit margins are higher for firms with greater distances of customer travel. Using data on patient visits and hospital finances from the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), we test our theory and confirm that a hospital tends to have less pricing power if it draws patients from beyond its local cluster. We then consider how our results might justify the subsidizing of patient travel by insurers and government payers. Lastly, we present an argument for why the ubiquitous Hirschman-Herfindahl index of market concentration can be robust to owner and system-level hospital cooperation.
Superhero Ecologies: An Environmental Reading of Contemporary Superhero Cinema
Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Andrew McGowan
Access: Open access
Identifying a distinct developmental module in the zebrafish dentition
Date: 2018-01-01
Creator: Caleb Matthew Gordon
Access: Open access
- In the zebrafish pharynx, the first three teeth to form, 3V1, 4V1, and 5V1, have distinct adult and embryonic morphologies, suggesting that these teeth may form using different developmental pathways. Previous studies of gene expression profiles and mutant phenotypes in 3V1, 4V1, and 5V1 have identified four genes that might be involved in dissociating these tooth modules: pitx2b, eve1, pbx1a, and pbx1b. To determine how the developmental roles of these four genes differ across 3V1, 4V1, and 5V1, and obtain a better understanding of how these three teeth develop, I performed CRISPR/Cas9– mediated knockouts in each of these genes, or analyzed embryos from a stable transgenic mutant line where available, and observed the resulting tooth germs and mineralized tooth structures via fluorescence and confocal microscopy. Preliminary results implicate pitx2 as being required for tooth mineralization, offer a possible role for pbx1a, pbx1b, and eve1 in distinguishing the developmental pathway of 3V1, and suggest that 3V1 constitutes a distinct developmental module within the early ventral dentition.
“I’m Going to Help You Become a Better You”: Teacher-Student Dynamics in Special Education
Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Sophie Sadovnikoff
Access: Open access
- This study explores teachers’ roles in special education in terms of how they interact with students with disabilities. In the struggle against oppression and disempowerment, teachers can play a crucial role in employing education as the great equalizer, or else not. The question this research seeks to answer is: how do special education teachers interact with their students with disabilities, and how does this teacher role fit within a society that seeks to marginalize these students? I argue that special education teachers reproduce ableism by disciplining, normalizing, and controlling their students, but teachers express a deep sense of caring for and about their students, and understand their work as being their best effort at helping their students. The ableist actions that they perform are, ironically, an effort to help their students create fulfilling lives within an ableist society.
Ecotourism Reconsidered: Chinese and Western Participation in the Thai Elephant Industry
Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Miao (Jasmine) Long
Access: Open access
A "Peculiarly American" Enthusiasm: George Bellows, Traditional Masculinity, and The Big Dory
Date: 2014-01-01
Creator: James W. Denison, IV
Access: Open access
- A “Peculiarly American” Enthusiasm: George Bellows, Traditional Masculinity, and The Big Dory investigates the portrayal of masculinity in the oeuvre of the much-lauded yet enigmatic American painter George Bellows (1882-1925). Rather than relying on Bellows’ urban works for source material, a significant portion of this investigation is conducted via a case study of Bellows’ 1913 panel The Big Dory, a scene of fishermen pushing a boat into the North Atlantic off Monhegan Island, Maine that the artist painted during a sojourn on the island in the months after his involvement in the landmark Armory Show in New York. The paper situates The Big Dory within the greater context of the history of the depiction of Maine through the lens of the heroic fisherman. Bellows achieved a heroic effect by forcing the viewer to focus on the labor of the fishermen via their positioning in the near middleground and by echoing the hues and forms of the men elsewhere in the painting, giving the work a sense of visual unity. I argue that these strategies highlight Bellows’ interest in tradition rather than modernism. Armed with this knowledge, Bellows’ other works come more sharply into focus. I reveal that the traditional heterosexual mode of white male identity Bellows represented in The Big Dory was not simply echoed in Bellows’ personal comportment, but in fact pervaded his oeuvre; such masculinity was a reaction by patriarchal American society against the perceived growth of other influences in the early twentieth century. The portrayal of such masculinity is then established as the key underlying feature of the sense of “Americanism” which has traditionally dominated reception of Bellows’ art.
Receptors and Neuropeptides in the Cardiac Ganglion of the American Lobster, Homarus americanus: A Bioinformatics and Mass Spectrometric Investigation
Date: 2019-01-01
Creator: Louis Mendez
Access: Open access
- Central pattern generators (CPGs) are neural networks that generate rhythmic motor patterns to allow organisms to perform stereotypical tasks, such as breathing, scratching, flying, and walking. The American lobster, Homarus americanus, is a simple model system whose CPGs are functionally analogous to those in vertebrate models and model complex rhythmic behaviors. CPGs in many Crustacea, including the American lobster, have been studied because of their ability to maintain biological function after isolation in physiologically relevant conditions. The cardiac ganglion (CG) is a CPG consisting of five larger motor neurons and four smaller pacemaker neurons that innervate the cardiac neuromuscular system and generate electrical bursts that drive patterned behaviors. Neuromodulators, such as neuropeptides, are known to modulate neural output in the CPGs of the American lobster. Currently, neuromodulators affecting the cardiac ganglia are thought to be mainly expressed and secreted outside of the cardiac ganglia, acting as extrinsic neuromodulators. However, there is current evidence to support the idea that neuromodulators can be intrinsically expressed within the cardiac ganglion of the American lobster. Preliminary studies using transcriptomic techniques on genomic and transcriptomic information indicate that neuropeptides are likely expressed within the cardiac ganglion. However, little research has been done to determine whether these neuropeptides are expressed in the cardiac ganglion of the American lobster. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to combine bioinformatics and mass spectrometric techniques to determine whether select neuropeptides are present in the cardiac ganglion within the cardiac neuromuscular system of the American lobster, Homarus americanus. Our data mining techniques using protein query sequences obtained from previously annotated brain and eyestalk transcriptomes resulted in the identification of 22 putative neuropeptides preprohormones from 17 neuropeptide families and 20 putative neuropeptide receptors from 17 neuropeptide receptor families in the CG transcriptome. Additionally, 9 putative neuropeptide receptors from 7 neuropeptide receptor families were detected in the cardiac muscle transcriptome. Of the 17 neuropeptide families detected, receptors for 9 of these neuropeptide families were detected in the CG transcriptome. Receptors for 6 of the neuropeptide families were also present in the cardiac muscle transcriptome. Interestingly, receptors for 6 of neuropeptide families detected were not found in either the CG or cardiac muscle transcriptomes, and receptors for 4 neuropeptide families that weren’t detected in the CG transcriptome were found in the cardiac muscle transcriptome. Therefore, our research suggests that neuropeptides are able to modulate CPG activity extrinsically, either though hormonal or local delivery, or intrinsically. Additionally, neuropeptides were extracted from the stomatogastric ganglion and the commissural ganglion using a scaled-down neuropeptide extraction protocol to estimate the number of tissues required to obtain sufficiently strong mass spectrometry signals. Pooled samples with two commissural ganglia and single samples of a commissural ganglion and a stomatogastric ganglion displayed little signal and an increase in larger peptides and impurities relative to single-tissue samples. Therefore, further optimization of the scaled-down neuropeptide extraction protocol must be done prior to analysis of a cardiac ganglion in the American lobster.
"This is N.Y.C. Not Little Rock": The Battle to Integrate New York City's Public Schools
Date: 2019-01-01
Creator: Anne Fraser Gregory
Access: Open access
- The landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954, and its subsequent implementation, offer an essential question: Are segregated schools inherently evil, and is integration the only solution to unequal education? The statistics that illustrate the effects of segregated schooling are indeed staggering. According to a 2016 Government Accountability Office study, the number of schools segregated along racial and economic lines doubled between 2000 and 2013. In New York City, the achievement gap between Black and white students has continued to grow. In 2018, the National Assessment of Achievement Progress reported that 48 percent of white fourth-graders were proficient in math, while only 16 percent of black students met the standard. With a gap of 32 percentage points—growing 5 points since 2015—Black children in New York are consistently behind their white peers in academics. Sixty years ago, New York's Black and Latino parents parents grappled with this same issue as they fought to desegregate the city’s schools. This Honors Project will discuss segregated schooling in New York City during the 1950s and 60s, and the actors who fought to disrupt the system. Throughout this work, I will attempt to illustrate the power of community in New York City, for both good and evil, for equality and bigotry. Parents—Black, white, and Puerto Rican—function as key players in this story, as they continually fought local and state Boards to access the education they believed to be rightfully theirs and their children’s. I will also assert the notion that segregation was not solely a Southern issue: the similarities between the fight for school integration in both North and South are striking, and highlight the far reaches of prejudice in the nation both then and now. Most importantly, I argue that unequal education may not be solved by integration alone, and that believing in integration as the only viable option perpetuates the incorrect notion that children of color require proximity to white students in order to be academically successful.
The Future Regained: Toward a Modernist Ethics of Time
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Jack Rodgers
Access: Open access
- This project explores the convergence of futurity and ethics through an examination of key figures in modernist literature. It studies works by Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and James Joyce in order to conceptualize an encounter with the future which goes beyond a traditionally linear and teleological model of time, setting out to reimagine the role of both temporality and ethics in novels including Orlando, Mrs. Dalloway, In Search of Lost Time, and Ulysses. Key facets of this exploration, which is metaphorized and guided by the image of a window, include temporal otherness, transgression and fracturing of the self (primarily understood through the paradoxical experience of dying), and the arrival of the future into the present. Major theoretical influences include queer theory, poststructuralism, and anti-dialectics. Ultimately, the project makes the case that it is possible to construct a modernist ethics which embraces the messianic potential of absences, blanks, and blind spots, a proposition made possible by our encounter with an incomprehensible yet imminent fragment of the future out of place in the present. At the close, it suggests an ethical imperative towards “affirmative negation”—a messianic, annunciatory, affirmation of that which is missing or omitted.
Differential gene expression during compensatory plasticity in the prothoracic ganglion of the cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Felicia F. Wang
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Interaction of stretch feedback and beat regularity in response to AMGSEFLamide in the heart of Homarus americanus
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: William Allen
Access: Open access
- Central pattern generators (CPGs) are neural circuits whose component neurons possess intrinsic properties and synaptic connections that allow them to generate rhythmic motor outputs in the absence of descending inputs. The cardiac ganglion (CG) is a nine-cell CPG located in the American lobster, Homarus americanus. Stretch of the myocardium feeds back to the CG through mechano-sensitive dendrites and is thought to play a role in maintaining regularity in the beating pattern of the heart. The novel peptide AMGSEFLamide has been observed to induce irregular beating patterns when applied at high concentrations. This study investigated the interaction between stretch-related feedback and AMGSEFLamide modulation in generating irregular beating patterns in the whole heart of Homarus americanus. It was hypothesized that greater longitudinal stretch of the heart would result in greater regularity in the instantaneous beat frequency, based on previous findings that stretch-sensitive dendrites play a role in the regulation of the heartbeat. Furthermore, it was predicted that the elimination of stretch feedback via deafferentation of the heart would augment the irregularity induced by AMGSEFLamide. Data showed significantly increased irregularity in beating in response to 10-6 M AMGSEFLamide application. Longitudinal stretch did not reliably alter baseline variability in frequency, nor did it influence the modulatory effect of AMGSEFLamide. Deafferentation did not significantly alter baseline irregularity. Deafferented preparations did exhibit a trend of responding to AMGSEFLamide with a greater percent increase in irregularity compared to when afferents were intact, suggesting a potential role of stretch-stabilization in response to modulatory perturbations in the Homarus heart.
Regulation of eyes absent gene expression in Drosophila melanogaster by Polycomb Group Response Elements Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
- Restriction End Date: 2025-06-01
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Boris S. Dimitrov
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Mémoire et souvenir dans l'imaginaire antillais - Maryse Condé et Fabienne Kanor: Identité et existence noire aux Antilles et en France
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Elijah B Koblan-Huberson
Access: Open access
- L’histoire d’un peuple est en grande partie liée à sa mémoire, aux souvenirs et commémorations des évènements passés et des ancêtres.En raison de la colonisation et ses conséquences, les habitants des îles de la Guadeloupe et de la Martinique vivent un malaise vis-à-vis de la mémoire en tant que peuple antillais.Par conséquent, il est important de se demander comment, après la déshumanisation effectuée par l’extermination des premiers habitants, les Caraïbes et les Arawaks, l’esclavagisation des Africains, et la colonisation des territoires antillais, une nouvelle conceptualisation de la mémoire peut mener à une nouvelle conceptualisation de l’existence et de l’identité pour l’être humain antillais qui provient de ceux qui ont été esclavagisés. Pour répondre à la question nous examinerons les romans de Maryse Condé et de Fabienne Kanor.
Enemy Combatants and Unitary Executives: Presidential Power in Theory and Practice During the War on Terror
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Rohini Kurup
Access: Open access
- In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration decided that suspected terrorists and those determined to have aided terrorists would be detained and classified as “enemy combatants.” This was a largely new category of prisoners who were neither prisoners of war protected under international law nor civilians. They included noncitizens and citizens—those captured on foreign battlefields and on American soil. They would be detained by the United States, held indefinitely without charge or access to a lawyer, and subject to trial by military commission. The administration’s enemy combatant policies were based on a theory of inherent executive power—that the Constitution gave the president vast and exclusive powers, which allowed him to act unilaterally without Congressional interference or judicial review. This thesis charts the development of and challenges to the enemy combatant policies to understand how they were conceived and what their implications are to the American political system. I argue that by appealing to a theory of inherent executive power to create the policies, the administration subverted traditional checks on presidential power and undermined the rule of law. Ultimately, the dismantling of some of the enemy combatant policies, largely a result of court rulings that challenged the administration’s premise of power, signified a reining in of executive authority. Yet, many aspects of the administration’s counterterrorism apparatus remained past Bush’s years in the White House, leaving a legacy of expanded presidential power for future presidents.
Isolation of Cell Adhesion Mutations in Arabidopsis thaliana Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Frances DeCamp Hobart Zorensky
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
The role of behavioral diversity in determining the extent to which central pattern generators are modulated
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Jacob Salman Kazmi
Access: Open access
- Neuromodulation may be a substrate for the evolution of behavioral diversity. The extent to which a central pattern generator is modulated could serve as a mechanism that enables variability in motor output dependent on an organism’s need for behavioral flexibility. The pyloric circuit, a central pattern generator in the crustacean stomatogastric nervous system (STNS), stimulates contractions of foregut muscles in digestion. Since neuromodulation enables variation in the movements of pyloric muscles, more diverse feeding patterns should be correlated with a higher degree of STNS neuromodulation. Previous data have shown that Cancer borealis, an opportunistic feeder, is sensitive to a wider array of neuromodulators than Pugettia producta, a specialist feeder. The observed difference in modulatory capacity may be coincidental since these species are separated by phylogeny. We predict that the difference in modulatory capacity is a product of a differential need for variety in foregut muscle movements. This study examined two members of the same superfamily as P. producta, the opportunistically feeding snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) and portly spider crab (Libinia emarginata). Using extracellular recording methods, the responses of isolated STNS preparations to various neuromodulators were measured. Initial qualitative results indicate that the STNS of C. opilio is sensitive to all of these neuromodulators. Additionally, previous data on the neuromodulatory capacity of L. emarginata was supported through similar electrophysiological analysis of the isolated STNS. As a first step in determining the mechanism of differential sensitivity between species, tissue-specific transcriptomes were generated and mined for neuromodulators.