Digital Commons Network^™

Combatting Bacterial Infections: The Efficacy Of Poly-Gamma-Glutamic Acid On The Prevention Of Nasopharyngeal Infections Among Individuals With Cleft Lip And Palate, Florence Pun

Scripps Senior Theses

Cleft lip and palate (CLP) is a medical condition where children are born with an unfused lip and palate. While surgery is required to fuse the lip and palate, there are other conditions that children with CLP face after surgeries, such as otitis media (OM), speech impediments, and difficulty breathing. Particularly, OM occurs frequently in individuals with CLP because the tensor veli palatini muscles cannot open the Eustachian tube frequently and ventilate the middle ear properly, even after surgery. This thesis is a research proposal to evaluate whether γ-PGA can be used in nasal washes to safely prevent nasopharyngeal infections …

Drama Therapy As An Intervention For Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Potential Benefits For Youth And Adulthood, Ella S. De Castro

Scripps Senior Theses

There are many interventions commonly used for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, one that has not been researched as often is drama therapy. Though there are not many studies on drama therapy and ASD, the ones that do exist seem to indicate positive results. The goal of this proposed study is to assess whether drama therapy could be a good intervention for ASD and if it could potentially be a better option compared to applied behavioral analysis (ABA). The proposed study is broken into two smaller studies. The first study explores the potential benefits of drama therapy for …

Heaven? Is It Worth It?: The Effect Of Belief On Religious Participation And Signaling, Claudia R. Chin

Scripps Senior Theses

Religion has long been a subject that baffles economists because of its seemingly inefficient requirements. It is hard to get one's mind around why an individual would be willing to give up secular commodities for religion, or face the strict entry costs and stigma society associates with the religion. Although many reasons have been suggested, the most widely accepted solution to why we engage in these behaviors is Religious Signaling Theory (RST). RST argues that people engage in these ineffective costs as a way to signal their commitment to the religion, and religions were utilized by society to enforce these …

“Decorate The Dungeon With Flowers And Air-Cushions:” Virginia Woolf And War, Claire Dumont

Scripps Senior Theses

Virginia Woolf was particularly interested throughout her career in writing about war, ranging from the perspective of a depressed World War I veteran and his wife in Mrs. Dalloway, a dinner party held during an air raid in 1917 in The Years, an argument for the connections between patriarchal society and war in Three Guineas, and a pageant of British history held before World War II in Between the Acts. Woolf specifically writes of war as it impacts spheres away from the battlefield, in a way that is inherently gendered to her experience as a woman …

La Floresta; An Appreciation And Reimagination Of My Barrio, Ana Rodríguez

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is a love letter to my barrio, La Floresta in Quito, Ecuador. I have divided it into three different sections: a creative writing piece where I walk readers through my barrio and my life in it, a historical section where I analyze its history and the reasons for its uniqueness and current identity, and finally a project proposal for a community center called "Casa La Floresta".

Effects Of Child Sleep, Maternal Sleep, And Covid-19 Related Stressors On Maternal Stress, Jocelyn Chang

Scripps Senior Theses

Research has shown that poorer sleep quality can lead to increased stress and worse psychological functioning. In the parent-child dyad, sleep disturbances of both the child and parent can significantly affect parental functioning. However, in the context of parent-child relations, the contributions of maternal and child sleep to maternal outcomes are much less understood, especially in the context of a worldwide pandemic and global stressor such as COVID-19. Moreover, relations between stress and biological indicators have not been extensively studied, with most studies using self-reported measures of stress. This study aims to extend the findings of previous research by including …

The Culture Of Resistance Featuring Pleasure, Leisure, And Joy, Gabriella Osifo

Scripps Senior Theses

Black students within predominantly white institutions (PWIs) have a unique experience due to the fact that they reside in higher learning institutions that were never meant to hold Black, queer bodies. Residentially, academically, and structurally PWIs display a quality of lacking which consists of failing to provide appropriate resources, acknowledge structural barriers, and address complaints made by students of queer identities, namely Black students, in meaningful and effective ways. Through examining the history of Black student-led movements within the five Claremont Colleges (5Cs) using a Black Existentialism lens, this paper seeks to understand the positionality of this quality of lacking …

Neo-Whorfian Examination Of Cross-Linguistic Temporal Discounting Behavior, Piper Connelly

Scripps Senior Theses

This study examines differences in temporal discounting tendencies in German and French participants (recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk) through the lens of Neo-Whorfian cognition and the Linguistic Savings Hypothesis (Chen 2013). The LSH proposes that tendencies towards future-oriented economic decisions can be cognitively explained by literal morphosyntactic conventions of one’s native language. Our experiments (sooner-smaller/larger-later choices, endowment-investment task) failed to produce results aligning with the LSH, but uncovered the importance of controlling for risk appetite when specifically investigating intertemporal choice. There are several fruitful improvements to consider for the future, such as stricter sampling, taking richer detail of time preferences, …

The Role Of Porn Literacy In Comprehensive Sex Education To Reduce Endorsements Of Gendered Sexual Violence And Support Healthy Adolescent Development, Kiana Harnish

Scripps Senior Theses

Due to stigmatization of sex and insufficient sexual education, modern-day adolescents rely on free online pornography as a source of education about sex and relationships. This thesis provides a review of the connections between adolescent porn use and the socialization of sexual violence (SV) and coercion against women, comprehensive sex education (CSE) and healthy adolescent sexual development, and porn literacy (PL) and sexual attitude or behavior changes. Porn literacy aims to equip adolescents with tools to critically analyze sexualied media and messages, to empower them to make informed decisions to engage or disengage with porn and their sexuality in a …

Counties As Catalysts For Change_ Exploring The Economic Costs Of Child Maltreatment Through Its Connection To Incarceration, Kayla Solomon

Scripps Senior Theses

This study posits the question, what is the relationship between child maltreatment and adult incarceration at the county-level, and how can we utilize an understanding of it to inform child welfare strategies? Child maltreatment is a public health crisis and an obstacle to the United States Economy. Inspired by my high school capstone project on the connection between the foster care and criminal justice systems, I entered this project hoping to add to the myriad of literature that influences child welfare policy throughout California and the broader United States. This project serves to culminate my college career and exemplifies my …

Puberty Blockers, Margo Collazo

Scripps Senior Theses

The onset of puberty initiates a period of rapid growth, the development of secondary sex characteristics and the achievement of fertility. For children with gender dysphoria (GD), puberty can be an extremely difficult period where they identify less and less with the sexual development of their body. The most common treatment for GD is puberty blockers, which can be started once puberty begins around 11 years old and have shown to reduce the risk of suicide and increase mental health in transgender and nonbinary youths (TGNB).

Puberty blockers suppress the body’s production of GnRH, delaying puberty until the individual can …

How To Rebuild Home: Lessons From Loss, Amelie Lee

Scripps Senior Theses

“How to Rebuild Home: Lessons from Loss” is a memoir that tells the story of my loss of my mother to cancer the summer before my senior year of college. In the piece, I utilize epistolary and creative nonfiction styles to grapple with what it means to grieve a mother both before and after she’s gone and what a daughter’s duty is to her parents in a Chinese American family. Through letters to my eighteen-year-old self and memoir-style storytelling, I've tried to create a coming-of-age story that dives into an emotional and nuanced relationship with family, love, and grief.

Treasure Island: Gold Dust Or Radioactive Soil?, Ari Daniels

Scripps Senior Theses

Former Naval Station Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay is undergoing an expensive redevelopment process to be turned into a sustainable living community. However, the area has a long history of mishandled radioactive material, irresponsible behavior on behalf of authorities, environmental instability, lawsuits, and administrative complaints. This research project focuses on Treasure Island’s history and redevelopment plan, utilizing San Francisco government documents, local newspapers, literature on environmental justice and racism, and state legislation to draw conclusions on the efficacy of the project from a sustainability standpoint and the responsibilities of the planners and developers. After providing a historical overview …

All The Internet's A Stage: The Performance Of Authenticity By Instagram Wellness Influencers, Katherine Eu

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with seven influencers to examine the techniques they use to promote authenticity in content creation. The analysis identified two main techniques: (1) creating content in batches during designated “content days” and (2) incorporating mental health into their online persona. It is important to note that because sharing vulnerable information is a deliberate part of an influencer's strategy, personal mental health content should not be regarded as more authentic than other content. Additionally, the study briefly explores how a lack of boundaries can lead to ambiguity between personal identity and one’s online persona. Further research …

Fossil Fuels In Disguise: Environmental Issues With Carbon Capture Storage In The Central Valley, Medha Gelli

Scripps Senior Theses

The California Air Resources Board’s 2022 Scoping Plan supports the development of Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) facilities in order to meet California’s climate goals. Most of the proposed fourteen sites will be located in the Central Valley. CCS may help achieve negative emissions but poses several environmental problems. Key among these issues are water depletion and contamination, excessive energy usage, air pollution, and the potential for CCS-induced seismic risk. Due to the Central Valley’s disadvantaged and less-resourced background, this area is more at risk for environmental injustices with CCS implementation. By creating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maps of factors related …

For Solidarity, Not The State: The Erasure [And Power] Of Filipino And Chicano Solidarity Organizing In The 1965 Delano Grape Strike, Abigail Pugh

Scripps Senior Theses

In 1965, Delano County, CA, agricultural workers celebrated their five-year strike and boycott campaign with new union contracts guaranteeing better working conditions and wages. The now infamous agricultural strikes led by the United Farm Workers in the 1960’s were initially based out of coalitional organizing between both Chicano and Filipino union leadership–and yet, rarely do we learn this history of solidarity in mainstream narratives of social movements in the United States. While celebrating the history and the collective power of the Delano Strike, I investigate how the erasure of histories of interracial solidarity in public education sites speaks to state …

Guidebook On Making A House A Home, Alana Stallings

Scripps Senior Theses

This is a collection of poems by Alana Stallings that translates emotional trauma into fictional landscape and character. Both of these operate within the energetic structure of a home, at once pushing against and obeying this enforced confinement. Within that tension, Stallings explores questions of family, selfhood, belonging, displacement, and cycles.

"Witness For Her": The Vanderbilt Variant Of "Further In Summer Than The Birds" And The Stakes Of Transcribing Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts For Publication, Isabel Evans

Scripps Senior Theses

For more than eighty years, scholars believed that the earliest version of Emily Dickinson’s “Further in Summer than the Birds,” a major mid-career poem often regarded as “one of Dickinson’s finest” (McSweeney 155) and “best-known poems,” had been lost (Franklin, “The Manuscripts” 552). Yet, against all odds, the manuscript survived, resurfacing miraculously at Ella Strong Denison Library, the special collections library at Scripps College in Claremont, California, in 1986, exactly a century after Dickinson’s death. Known as the Vanderbilt Variant of “Further in Summer than the Birds,” this poem continues to be misprinted, overlooked, and under analyzed by Dickinson scholars …

Biogeography Of Special Metabolites Produced By Ant-Associated Bacteria, Katherine Hansen

Scripps Senior Theses

There is an urgent and growing need for novel antibiotics with the growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Ecologically-guided discovery is a strategy that focuses on how and where specially evolved metabolites such as antibiotics are used in nature. This strategy reveals unique active molecules with potential for human use. An unexplored niche with great potential for antibiotic discovery exists with Southwestern fungus-farming Trachymyrmex ants and their Actinobacteria symbionts. In exchange for nutrients from the ant, the ants’ bacterial symbiont produces antifungal molecules that protect the ants’ fungal cultivar from invasion by pathogenic microorganisms. They also produce antibacterial molecules to protect …

Nitrogen Isotopes In Deep Sea Corals; A Potential Tracer Of Paleoceanographic Conditions, Sylvia Bergerud

Scripps Senior Theses

Abstract

In the face of anthropogenic climate change, increasing pressure is being mounted on contextualizing current climate altercations compared to those of the past. One key tracer of climate variation is the isotopic ratio of 15N compared to 14N, which tracks biological and chemical reactions throughout the N cycle. However, it is difficult to find accurate palaeoceanographic records of N isotope fractionation, as most sedimentary and organic samples are subject to extensive diagenesis, degradation, and erosive processes. Scleractinian corals present a potential solution to this lack of accurate data. Multiple studies indicate that, due to their protective aragonite skeletons and …

Computational Investigation Of The Ionization Potential Of Lead Sulfide Quantum Dots, Jessica Beyer

Scripps Senior Theses

The purpose of this work was to determine the impact of quantum dot size on ionization potential and to determine how the presence of carbonyl-based ligands affect the ionization potential of lead sulfide quantum dot systems. Ionization potential (IP) is defined as the energy required to remove an electron from an atom, molecule, or material. IP helps scientists determine how reactive the material of interest is, which is crucial information when manufacturing nanomaterials. Accurate quantum chemical calculations of ionization potential are challenging due to the computational cost associated with the numerical solution of the Dyson equation. In this work, the …

Ableism In Education: Professor Perpetuation Of Disability Discrimination Through Accommodation Non-Compliance, Kasey Bumgardner

Scripps Senior Theses

This proposed study aims to explore factors that may decrease professor compliance with their disabled students’ documented academic accommodations, including pre-existing ableist beliefs held by professors, race of the disabled student, and visibility of the student’s disability. Participants will consist of undergraduate professors from colleges and universities across the United States, varying in size and geographical location. Participants will complete scales to assess their ableist beliefs, and will be asked to report their likelihood of complying with, or fully meeting, various disabled students’ documented accommodations. It is expected that results will reveal that professors who hold more ableist beliefs tend …

Music Therapy: Structural Music Modulation On Reducing Symptoms Of Generalized Anxiety Disorder., Isha Kaur Singh

Scripps Senior Theses

The present study examines whether modulating musical structural elements in therapeutic treatment reduces the severity of symptoms among individuals diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. Music therapy has recently become a more utilized non-traditional treatment modality for anxiety. However, the specific elements of music that trigger relaxation responses alongside prevent rumination spirals has not received significant attention in literature thus far. This study aims to assess what type of music allows for the most effective treatment in reducing anxiety. Using a 2 (tempo: adagio, allegro) x 2 (timbre: string instrumental, vocal) x 2 (key: C major, D minor) between participants experimental …

Cultural Perceptions Of Janissaries In The Ottoman Empire And Beyond, Meghana Garcia

Scripps Senior Theses

The Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire were a group of Christian slave soldiers. They had political and social control in the imperial court and were also formidable soldiers who were successful in battle due to their highly organized structure. They were subjects of many travel journals, memoirs, accounts, and works of art that originated both inside and outside the Ottoman Empire. This thesis argues that in accounts originating from both inside and outside the Ottoman Empire, Janissaries are described as ruthless and powerful. Further examinations reveal that these accounts, despite their frequent negative connotations, are rooted in admiration and envy …

La Sagrada Medicina De La Madre Tierra: Traditional Ancestral Preservation In Pomona, Ca Community Gardens, Lizbeth Valdivia-Jauregui

Scripps Senior Theses

For thousands of years before colonization, Indigenous ancestral knowledge has preserved, honored, and nurtured the sacredness of Mother Earth through kin-based institutions knitted together in a cosmic web of lineages and tribes (Henrich, 2020). The purpose of this grounded theory community-centered study was to examine how traditional ancestral knowledge is transmitted within community gardens in the city of Pomona, CA. Participants (N = 16) were interviewed using open-ended qualitative interviews that followed Charmaz’s (2014) constructivist grounded theory framework, in order to explore participants’ perspectives and personal experiences in possibly viewing community gardens as spaces of cultural transmission (Charmaz, 2014). …

How To Build A World: Stereoscopes, Tourism, And Land In Zion National Park, Emma Duggleby

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis fundamentally questions how representations of the environment and land impact how we relate to and live in it. By examining a set of 1925 stereoscope images of Zion National Park, it considers how use-based perceptions of place – structured by the entertainment of tourism and mass media – become part of the mundane practices of consumption. By revealing how these capitalist-colonial relationships to the land have been built through time, an analysis of these stereoscope slides reveals that these stories are anything but natural in hopes of making room for other stories to be built instead. The second …

(E)S(S): An Exploration Of Sound And Self, Natalie Antonia Rezek

Scripps Senior Theses

This text consists of free verse poetry interspersed amongst a narrative-oriented collection of Spenserian stanzas, Petrarchan sonnets, and Shakespearean sonnets. It aims to explore the importance of independence and personal identity through a sonic landscape and personified portrayal of the letter S.

Translating "La Parola Ebreo": Rosetta Loy And A Child's-Eye View Of Italian Fascism, Amelia Muniz

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is a translation of an excerpt from the 1997 memoir of Italian author Rosetta Loy, La Parola Ebreo, and an accompanying paper which explains my translation process, gives historical context and provides an argument for the continued relevance of the text. La Parola Ebreo recounts Loy’s memories of growing up in Rome, Italy, under Benito Mussolini’s Fascist rule. This translation is not meant to be an official English version of the memoir, as it is only a short excerpt, and was not done in collaboration with Loy’s estate or publishers. Instead, it is intended to bring attention to …

Topographies And Counter-Topographies Of Social Reproduction At People’S Park, Sarah Weaver

Scripps Senior Theses

Created at a key moment in New Left political rebellion and organizing in 1969, the mythic People’s Park still stands today between Dwight and Haste St. in Berkeley as open multi-use green space made of and for community development on lawful University of California Regent property. Despite repeated attempts by UC to take back the land, the insurgent space continues to pull defense from various parts of the local community, students and not, have accessed forms of self-determined social reproduction and created material critiques of UC as a vehicle for capital. For 54 years, the park was maintained significance as …

Uncovering The Effects Of The Freedman's Bank Failure On Personal Property: An Analysis Of Newly Obtained Data From Kentucky And Georgia, Hannah Fowler

Scripps Senior Theses

The Freedman's Savings and Trust Company (the Freedman’s Bank), collapsed in 1874, resulting in the loss of savings for many African American depositors. This study uses a difference-in-difference analysis to investigate the impact of the closure of the Freedman's Bank on the economic well-being of African American taxpayers in Georgia and Kentucky during the Reconstruction era. The analysis did not identify a statistically significant treatment effect; however, it highlights the potential of previously unused archival data sources for future research. The study also draws attention to the need for more comprehensive and rigorous research in this area, in order to …