Showing 391 - 400 of 583 Items

Digital Market Concentration: An Institutional and Social Cost Analysis

Date: 2022-01-01

Creator: Jack Shane

Access: Open access

In this thesis, I develop an analysis of the industry concentration seen in digital markets today. I begin with a description and argument for the use of institutional economics. This framework allows for the integration of an interdisciplinary approach to economics. My analysis details the socioeconomic and political impacts, as well as the underlying market dynamics that have pushed digital markets towards concentration. I offer novel explanations for the lack of firm behavior that should theoretically increase profit, the existence of barriers to competition, and consumer behavior that focus on the role of social institutions. I also detail many of the social costs of these concentrated markets, such as their impact on democracy, power to influence social institutions, and the impact they have on concentration in other markets. This is done to show that the fears surrounding monopolies do not end with prices. Even in digital markets, where many times prices are very low, if not zero, there are reasons that monopoly is economically inefficient and socially sub-optimal. However, due to the path-dependent nature of the extreme benefits associated with digital markets, policymakers cannot reasonably propose breaking up these companies. Instead, they must use the power of the government to counteract the conglomerations of social power seen in these private companies in search of an optimal outcome.


The Independent State Legislature Theory and Partisan Gerrymandering: How Moore v. Harper May Reshape Congressional Elections

Date: 2023-01-01

Creator: Luke Porter

Access: Open access

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering is not a justiciable question for federal courts. Four years later, the Court is reviewing a new case, Moore v. Harper. In Moore, the question presented is whether state courts can review partisan gerrymandering. The central question in Moore is the validity of the Independent State Legislature Theory. Proponents of the ISLT believe that state legislatures derive their authority to draw Congressional districts from the Federal Constitution and are therefore not subject to state-level checks and balances such as gubernatorial vetoes and state courts when redistricting. Critics argue that neither precedent nor the intent of the Framers grants state legislatures exclusive authority over redistricting. This paper analyzes the history of the Independent State Legislature Theory and outlines potential standards that the Court may adopt based off past-precedent. It then applies these standards to the redistricting process, arguing that nearly any form of the Independent State Legislature Theory would harm American democracy by making it easier for state legislatures to draw Congressional districts for partisan advantage. This paper concludes with strategies for mitigating the harm that would be caused if the Court legitimizes the Independent State Legislature Theory.


James Joyce’s Prose Pedagogy: Language in Freirean Dialogue

Date: 2023-01-01

Creator: Jack McDermott Wellschlager

Access: Open access

My project concerns the pedagogical nature of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Across the various styles and forms of Ulysses’ chapters, or “episodes,” I theorize the pedagogy of James Joyce’s prose by tracking the ways that the text demands readers participate in a Freirean dialogue. I will also discuss how Ulysses understands language as a practice of resistance: the novel’s characters have personal linguistic practices that help them open up the worlds that occupy them. I will appreciate the control these characters take of their world as I argue, through Paulo Freire’s work, that no true change occurs without the presence of a cooperative worldbuilding effort.


Effects of Picrotoxin Application on the Cardiac Ganglion of the American Lobster, Homarus americanus

Date: 2023-01-01

Creator: John T Woolley

Access: Open access

Picrotoxin (PTX) has been employed extensively as a tool within the crustacean stomatogastric nervous system (STNS) for its efficacy in blocking K+ and Cl+ currents gated by both GABA and glutamate. Through blocking some currents in the STNS, PTX allows for examination of other components without their presence. However, effects of PTX are relatively unknown within the lobster’s cardiac ganglion (CG). As an incredibly small nervous system of only nine neurons, the lobster CG presents an excellent model system for studying neural circuits. Given that the chemical synapses in the CG are mediated by glutamate, the present study aimed to investigate the action of PTX in the lobster CG with the intent of better understanding its pharmacological impacts as a potential tool for studying the system. Therefore, this study aimed to establish the effects of PTX on CG responses to the application of exogenous GABA or glutamate. When data from both modulators were pooled, PTX applied at a concentration of 10-5M had significant effects on burst duration but not duty cycle or burst frequency of the CG. PTX did suppress GABA (5x10-5M) mediated inhibition of burst duration and duty cycle. PTX did not have any significant effects on burst duration, duty cycle, or frequency compared to exogenous glutamate application. These results indicate that glutamatergic inhibitory synapses are not present in the CG and PTX partially suppresses only GABAergic responses in this system.


Bodies, Memories, Ghosts, and Objects or Telling a Memory

Date: 2023-01-01

Creator: Natsumi Lynne Meyer

Access: Open access

I think it started in December 2017, when my Mama sent me to Japan to take care of my grandparents, Baba and Jiji, alone. I had been to Japan almost every year since I was eleven years old, and several times before that too, but this was my first time without Mama. When Mama was there, Japan was filtered through her. I could poke bits of myself through her editing and approval. I could read street signs because of the way she read them, and I could understand my grandparents’ sighs from the timbre of her translation. That December, though, I had to see and hear alone. The tiny shakes in Baba’s legs and the indentation in Jiji’s forehead from when he fell down the stairs crystallized in my memory, and I had to write about it. This project includes a series of creative nonfiction and fiction pieces centered around telling my family stories. Writing from interviews, observations, and generational memories, I weave together these story fragments to discuss Asian American identity and immigration, WWII trauma, aging, and inheritance.


Miniature of Pragmatics and Accessibility in Referential Communication
Pragmatics and Accessibility in Referential Communication
This record is embargoed.
    • Embargo End Date: 2028-05-18

    Date: 2023-01-01

    Creator: Thomas Mazzuchi

    Access: Embargoed



      "Cooperate with Others for Common Ends?": Students as Gatekeepers of Culture and Tradition on College Campuses

      Date: 2017-05-01

      Creator: Pamela Zabala

      Access: Open access

      As colleges and universities have increased efforts to make their campuses more racially and ethnically inclusive, students of color still perceive their campuses as hostile spaces to racial and ethnic minorities. On the other hand, white students often feel as though their institutions do too much, leaving administrators to balance the interests of both groups. This thesis draws on archival, ethnographic, and interview data collected at Bowdoin College to examine the relationship between students and between students and administrators given the role of students as major agents of change on college campuses. I have found that when students feel threatened by institutional change, they go into crisis and create spaces of resistance on campus. Institutions are incapable or unwilling to find solutions that meet the needs of the various constituencies within the student body. Therefore, students and administration become locked in a power struggle that produces only surface-level institutional change rather than meaningful reform in the face of rising racial tensions.


      Miniature of Relations between four-point amplitudes in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and N=8 supergravity at one, two, and three loops
      Relations between four-point amplitudes in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and N=8 supergravity at one, two, and three loops
      Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.

          Date: 2022-01-01

          Creator: Theodore Wolcott Wecker

          Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community



            Miniature of Characterization of Spaetzle Protein in the Mediterranean field cricket (<i>Gryllus bimaculatus</i>) and its role in central nervous system plasticity
            Characterization of Spaetzle Protein in the Mediterranean field cricket (Gryllus bimaculatus) and its role in central nervous system plasticity
            This record is embargoed.
              • Embargo End Date: 2025-05-19

              Date: 2022-01-01

              Creator: Anthea L. Bell

              Access: Embargoed



                Miniature of Effects of the plasticizer tributyl phosphate (TBP) on the intrinsic properties of mammalian lumbar motor neurons
                Effects of the plasticizer tributyl phosphate (TBP) on the intrinsic properties of mammalian lumbar motor neurons
                This record is embargoed.
                  • Embargo End Date: 2027-05-16

                  Date: 2024-01-01

                  Creator: Connor Joseph Latona

                  Access: Embargoed