Digital Commons Network^™

Weight The Week, Dan Campis

Honors Capstone Projects - All

“Weight the Week”, is a feature-film endeavor, which became a short film, produced over my senior year at Syracuse University. The film is shot on Super 16mm film stock using an Aaton XTR-Prod professional film system. The film itself began as an introspective and interpersonal examination of an unnamed character’s weeklong journey while waiting for the results of an HIV blood test. The script was developed over the summer of 2007 and was of short feature length, approximately 55-65 pages, and starred an ensemble cast of ten. The production was slated to run for five weeks from October to November. …

Press Pass Exploring The Depths Of Sports Photography, Rachel Fus

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The problem was funding. I wanted it but was denied it. And so my Honors Capstone Project Part III took the form of a senior show on sports photography. I endeavored to recreate the standard photography show by encorporating various media into one collaborative project.

Sports photography is usually to be the bottom of the food chain when it comes to field. It is just like sports in general are considered to be lower class, lower culture than theater and opera and ballet. Even most photographers think getting a shot is just luck and keeping their finger on the motor …

Immortal, Eddie Beeby

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Abstract not Inlcuded

200 Days Of Innocence: An Original, Feature-Length Screenplay, Sarah Rois

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Abstract not Included

Fallschirm, Elizabeth M. Stuff

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The final year in the life of a fashion design major atSyracuseUniversityis a test of everything they have learned in their time here. Each member of the program knows this challenge lies ahead, and prepares for it. But in 2007-2008, the program made a large change that threw a curveball at the senior class. The seniors were presented with three different assignments to complete.

Having been given multiple sets of criteria to stimulate our thought processes, coming up with something concrete that I was going to be able to work with seemed an easy task. Indeed the first two projects …

Jane Austen Film Adaptations, Fan Fiction, And Contemporary Anglo-American Culture, Rebecka Schaber

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The rise of “Austenmania” in the form of films and heritage tours has been well marked in the past twenty years. Films based on Austen texts have attained a mass market popularity and tours based on Austen texts (and even Austen film adaptations) have likewise become popular within the heterosexual, romance-consuming female demographic. With the advent of the heritage film, Austen’s original texts became prime fodder for the heritage industry and the conservative depiction of Britain’s past Margaret Thatcher’s administration wished to portray. It is no mistake, in short, that “Austenmania” in effect began in the 1980s. The contemporary Anglo-American …

Union: Interviews With Employees From The Holiday Inn Of Liverpool, Ny, Mary Gallagher

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Although working class issues are not invisible in academia, it seems less common to hear them from the members of the working class themselves. There are many scholars who speak for them, but not exactly with them. This project allows five blue collar employees of the Holiday Inn located inLiverpool,NY to speak for themselves about the work they do and the union in which they participate. Liverpool’s Holiday Inn is the only union hotel in theSyracuse area, so this project also explores what it means to have unions in the hotel industry. This project presents the stories of five employees …

Determining Authorship Of The Virgin Of The Rocks: A Botanical Study, Christina J. Tripi

Honors Capstone Projects - All

On April 25, 1483 Leonardo da Vinci and Evangelista and Ambrogio de’ Predis, signed a contract with the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in Milan. The artists were commissioned to complete a painting for the Confraternity’s chapel in the Church of San Francesco Grande. While there are two existing paintings associated with this contract--one version in the Louvre and one in the National Gallery--it remains a mystery which painting results from the commission.

Art historians generally agree that the Louvre version is entirely by the hand of Leonardo. Unfortunately, nothing is known of its history before the year 1625 when …

Characterizing The Interaction Between Subunit C Of V-Atpase And Actin Of The Cytoskeleton In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Amanda Blackley

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Little is understood about the major functions subunit C of vacuolar proton-translocating ATPase (V-ATPase), a membrane-bound enzyme found in many eukaryotic cells that is responsible for pumping protons across its membrane in order to acidify either organelles or extracellular compartments. Subunit C is a known stator subunit and is required for assembly of the functional holoenzyme. In addition, it has been shown that subunit C interacts with actin of the cytoskeleton in the plasma membrane V-ATPases of Manduca sexta. However, the universality of this interaction—specifically its presence in organelle membrane V-ATPases—has yet to be determined. Consequently, the interaction between …

Translation In Context: Cultural Globalization And Santiago Roncagliolo, Megan K. Moore

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This is a translation from Spanish to English of the short story “Una influencia criminal” [A Criminal Influence] by Santiago Roncagliolo, part of a collection of short stories titled Crecer es un oficio triste [Growing Up is Sad Business], also by Roncagliolo. A description and analysis of concurrent literary movements and themes accompanies the translation, placing “Una influencia criminal” into a literary context with the multinational movements known as McOndo and Generation X. Globalization can be considered to affect the movement and sharing of culture as an expansion of the economic dispersion of goods across the world, and so modern …

Between The Sheets An Exploration Of Video Art As A Medium For Intimacy And Private Reflection, Tina Tesno

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Between the Sheets: An Exploration of Video Art as a Medium for Intimacy and Private Reflection is a multi-projection installation that uses video art to create an environment for peaceful thought and mediation. The design consists of a corridor leading to an area encircled by a large curved wall. Viewers enter the corridor alone and are greeted by a young woman projected on the wall of the corridor. She guides the viewer through the passage to the curved area where a life-sized projection of a forest awaits. Here, the viewer is invited to stay to enjoy the freedom from distraction …

Four Short Stories About A Four Letter Word, Michelle Tan-Torres

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This thesis falls under the creative category of the Honors Capstone Project and is a compilation of four short stories all written within the past year and a half. It draws from the author’s educational background of English Textual Studies and the screenwriting track within the Television/Radio/Film major. It combines the learned technical aspects of the English language from the former and the creative, story-telling techniques from the latter.

Though the author has always been an avid writer, both academically and leisurely, it wasn’t until the summer of 2007 after sophomore year of college that she became interested in short …

Goldin Ceramics: Website As Primary Advertising Vehicle For Small Business, Alfiya Mukhutdinova

Honors Capstone Projects - All

I wanted my Honors Capstone Project to capitalize on the combination of advertising, design, and website-building skills I have gained both inside and outside of the classroom during my time atSyracuseUniversity. I wanted the chance to apply my conceptual knowledge as well as my knowledge of advanced design and website software to an actual client with measurable results. I decided to tackle the challenge of creating a new website for my aunt’s small business, Goldin Ceramics. Since Olga’s only method of advertising is in-person at craft shows that she attends roughly once a month, her website plays a crucial role …

Catch A Fire Catch Afire: An Understanding Of Distance And Its Meaning, Luciana Amodeo

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This project is a collection of my poetry written and edited during three years of study and living while at Syracuse University. It is the attempt of a young woman to widen a specific avenue of self-discovery while working on my talents and skills as a writer and poet. Catch a Fire Catch Afire: An Understanding of Distance and Its Meaning is my pursuit of deconstructing how I become aware of: distance from myself, distance from my loved ones, distance from God, distance from places and distances from where I am at any given point in my life. The process …

The Third Incident Of Jp Mercer A Collection Of Short Fiction, Lauren Picard

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The main goal of this Capstone Project is to create a collection of short stories whose amalgamation is more poignant than the sum of its part. One purpose of writing is to leave the reader with an emotional punch, to give them a catharsis for new or even familiar sensations. Each story should be able to stand on its own as a pleasurable, or at least captivating, experience. Each piece should manipulate the reader to feel certain ways, whether hopeful, anxious, uncomfortable, or just moved. I do hope, however, that the experience of reading the entire collection is more powerful …

Interviews In Monsterland "What Are You Afraid Of?", Sarah Rebar

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Through my thesis, I sought to make a stop-motion animation and do the pre-animation processes of character designing and storyboarding. Inspired by Nick Park’s Creature Comforts, I interviewed a series of people on their childhood fears and used the interviews as basis for my project. My animation is less than one minute long, and, in addition to the short, I have compiled a book of the art, sketches, storyboards and other preliminary work. Along with this, I have also included footage of my work at the K-6 private New School, where I taught children the same process.

From the …

Ethanol Exposure In Rats And Its Effect On Genetic Markers, Ceena Philipose

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Alcoholism is believed to affect an estimated 18 million people each year. The number of people abusing alcohol is three times the number of people abusing all other substances combined. (Institute for Health Policy, 2001) An estimated $276 billion per year(Institute for Health Policy, 2001)is spent to combat the influence of alcoholism in this country alone; more than cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, combined.

A full understanding of the effects of alcohol on the developing nervous system and other organ systems, and knowing when and where that central or internal organ damage has occurred after a certain period of abuse …

Painting Our Portraits, Caitlin Wilson

Honors Capstone Projects - All

My Honors Capstone Project, Painting Our Portraits, is concerned with the history and process of portrait painting. I was interested in the difference in artistic approach between a portrait of the artist and a portrait of someone else. I created a series of paintings and drawings that dealt with this issue and explored the important relationship between the subject and the artist. In some instances the desires of the subject differed from the desires of the artist. In my case, this created interesting dilemmas. I had to answer for myself how important the sitter’s expectations were if they differed …

Drive Magazine, Shannon Sweeney

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Abstract Not Included

Tradition And Innovation: The Lives And Music Of Women Composers, Shannon K. Kane

Honors Capstone Projects - All

My Capstone Project, entitled “Tradition and Innovation: The Lives and Music of Women Composers,” is a combination of a creative project and written thesis that explores the struggles that women faced as members of society and composers throughout history. The written portion details the expectations set for women by society and how these expectations had a role in their personal lives and their music. I explore stereotypes and societal values that women lived regularly, including the expectation of women to never perform for a public audience, to obey their fathers and husbands and therefore only receive training with their permission, …

Patchwork Memories: A Mother-Daughter Memoir, Maggie Gordon

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Patchwork Memories is a relational memoir that illustrates the experiences of a mother and daughter. It was written over the course of six months, from September, 2007 to March, 2008.

I began writing the memoir exactly two weeks after my mother passed away from a four-and-a-half year battle with lung cancer. Originally, the story was to become a “straight” memoir, but after a couple weeks, I found myself creeping into the stories just as often as my mother appeared. I decided it would be inappropriate to write a memoir about a woman who could not offer her own insights about …

Influence Of Carbonate On The Binding Of Carboplatin To Dna, Robert S. Sorokanich

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The reaction of aged carboplatin (reaction of carboplatin in 24 mM NaHCO₃ for 45 h, 37^o C, pH 8.6) with pBR322 DNA for 0 ≤ r ≤ 2.8, where r = [drug]/[DNA-bp], in 24 mM HEPES buffer, pH 7.4, for 24 h followed by agarose gel electrophoresis showed DNA mobility changes consistent with unwinding closed circular DNA. However, identical experiments conducted in a two buffer system, 24mM HEPES plus 24mM carbonate, showed no DNA mobility changes, indicating that carbonate blocks formation of the 1,2-intrastrand crosslink on DNA. Studies with aged carboplatin and with cisplatin carried out with 2.0 …

Expressing A Mammalian Signaling Protein In E. Coli, Soyika A. Richardson

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Much of what is currently known about GPCR structure was based on X-ray crystallographic measurements of rhodopsin. Furthermore, due to its inexpensiveness and the availability of simple methods to purify it in large quantities from cow eyes, bovine rhodopsin has been successfully used in obtaining diffraction-quality three-dimensional crystals. In our experiment, the bovine rhodopsin protein was cloned into the commercially available E. coli expression plasmid, pBAD TOPO^®, using forward and reverse PCR primers designed in our lab. Plasmid DNA from these cells was purified in order to analyze the direction of the inserted gene. The purified plasmid DNA …

The Ligand Effects In The Rhodium Catalyzed 1,4-Addition Reaction Of Terminal Alkynes To -Unsaturated Ketones, Jocellie Marquez

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Ligand effects play an important role in reactivity and selectivity in many transition metal catalyzed processes. The role of the phosphine ligand is critical to the product ratio in rhodium-catalyzed reaction of methyl vinyl ketone and terminal alkynes. For a ligand with a hemilabile oxygen on the phosphine, smaller ligands shift the product ratio in favor of the 1,4-addition product while with bulky oxygen ligands a dimerization/addition product manifold is dominant. Ligand screen results show that tri-o-tolylphosphine (TOTP) provided the best yields and highest selectivity for dimer-addition product.

Exploring The Accuracy Of Several Grid Clustering Schemes For Computing Forces, Rebecca Rought

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Forces acting on an airfoil are often found using computational fluid dynamics, and the accuracy of the solution is highly dependent on the type and resolution of the grid used to capture the flow. The simplest way to increase the resolution of a grid is to globally increase the number of grid points. This method results in significantly higher accuracy at the expense of computing time, and therefore is not generally the best solution. Alternatively, the error can be reduced without significantly increasing the computation time if the grid points are moved such that the points cluster around areas of …

The Role Of Fibroblast Growth Factor 20a In The Craniofacial Development Of Zebrafish, Julie Adams

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Fibroblast growth factors are a family of intercellular signaling molecules that participate in the normal growth of the craniofacial skeleton. Advances in molecular genetics have revealed that fibroblast growth factors are involved in the regulation of bone growth by maintaining a balance between the differentiation of osteoblasts and the proliferation of mesenchyme (Morriss-Kay and Wilkie, 2005). The focus of my research is fibroblast growth factor 20a because it seems to play a significant role in the normal development of the skull. At birth, the skull is made up of bony elements, that meet at fibrous membranes called sutures. Throughout development, …

A Behavioral Assay To Quantify Retinal Degeneration In X. Laevis, Jacob Fleming

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Currently, 3.5 million Americans over the age of 40 are blind or visually impaired. Cases of visual impairment can be attributed to a number of causes. Retinitis pigmentosa, glaucoma, and macular degeneration all involve some form of damage to the retina. While medical advances continue to aid those with vision loss, there is currently no cure for visual impairment due to cell death. In the age of stem cells however, there is hope for those with retinal damage.

Seven eye field transcription factors play specific roles in eye development. When injected into developing Xenopus laevis, these transcription factors induce …

The Effects Of Anthropogenic Ambient Noise And Habitat Vegetation On Common Yellowthroat Song, Edith Dooley

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Urbanization not only decreases habitat availability for natural populations, but has also been shown to affect the behavior of animals. This study focuses on how anthropogenic, urban noise and habitat vegetation can affect the structure of common yellowthroat warbler (Geothlypis trichas) song. Ambient noise is concentrated in the low frequencies of noise and can mask the low song frequencies rendering them inaudible to the receiver. I predicted that yellowthroats will change the pitch and overall structure of their songs to avoid overlap with urban ambient noise. To test this possibility, I recorded yellowthroats songs and corresponding ambient noise, …

Optimization Of Production, Maintenance, Design And Reliability For Multipurpose Process Plants: An Analysis And Revision Of Models, Christopher L. Mcgann

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The successful design of multipurpose process plants, which are characterized by their flexibility, is accomplished by maximizing the availability of process units and therefore, the profitability of the process. Maximum availability is achieved through the optimization of the design and production scheduling of a process under constraints relating to equipment maintenance and failure. Mathematical models that incorporate the production scheduling, maintenance scheduling, process design and initial reliability aspects of a process can be optimized in order to maximize availability. These mathematical models are solved through the use of computers. Mathematical process models, presented in the literature and containing the aforementioned …

Asymmetric Jaw Morphology In An Herbivorous Cichlid From Lake Malawi, Bianca Williams

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Cichlid fish exhibit a high frequency of variation across species. This study focused on a particular asymmetry in the jaws of fish in the genus Tropheops. An asymmetry towards the left side was observed and then tested. Each side of the jaw was measured in a number of individuals from different Tropheops species. These measurements were then analyzed to see if the left side was indeed longer than the right. Statistical analysis was utilized to test the significance of sided differences. It was found that Tropheops species exhibit a left sided bias, some species having a significant bias, and others …