Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Reeling In New Antibiotics: Synthesis And Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Of Zinc-Binding Clavanins From Styela Clava (Sea Squirt), Eduardo Badillo-Colberg

Honors Scholar Theses

Clavanins have been a quite rarely studied antimicrobial peptide (AMP) family. Though the data in the few studies published on the matter and in theoretical experimental data presented by the Wang lab in their peptide library creation [14], in that the members of this family could potentially be quite effective novel antimicrobial candidates. Among those that have been targets of studies, Clavanin A has been at the forefront of this endeavor of finding effective novel antimicrobial peptides[14]. In these aforementioned studies, Clavanin A has been shown to be quite effective against many different bacterial strains, which begs the question as …

Climate Change Preparedness In The Insurance Sector, Daniel Fischler

Honors Scholar Theses

Climate change is the inevitable consequence of human activity since the industrial revolution began centuries ago. Assuming humanity survives and adapts to this scenario, there will be significant impacts on the economy and business. Under these circumstances, the insurance sector in particular will face challenges as the frequency and severity of losses increase due to climate change related events. This paper aims to analyze various options for allowing insurance to maintain viability in this changing environment. The general issue for the future is premiums must be commensurate with climate change related risk in affected areas. As a result, certain coastal …

Detecting The Phi Meson With Clas12, Paul Simmerling

Honors Scholar Theses

Analysis and detection of the phi(1020) vector meson from exclusive electroproduction decay into Kaons have been performed. Studying exclusive phi electroproduction is an ideal channel for quantifying the gluonic properties of the nucleon. This detection used the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS12) at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) with a 10.6 GeV longitudinally polarized electron beam and an unpolarized hydrogen target. Using the detected final state particles phase space, x_B, Q^2, W, and by developing specialized exclusivity cuts as well as several additional cuts, events containing the production of a phi(1020) meson were able to be extracted. Additionally, a …

Sobolev Inequalities And Riemannian Manifolds, John Reever

Honors Scholar Theses

Sobolev inequalities, named after Sergei Lvovich Sobolev, relate norms in Sobolev spaces and give insight to how Sobolev spaces are embedded within each other. This thesis begins with an overview of Lebesgue and Sobolev spaces, leading into an introduction to Sobolev inequalities. Soon thereafter, we consider the behavior of Sobolev inequalities on Riemannian manifolds. We discuss how Sobolev inequalities are used to construct isoperimetric inequalities and bound volume growth, and how Sobolev inequalities imply families of other Sobolev inequalities. We then delve into the usefulness of Sobolev inequalities in determining the geometry of a manifold, such as how they can …

Evaluating Urban Parks Accessibility And Equity: A Case Study Of Hartford, Ct And New Haven, Ct, Natalie Roach, Mara Tu

Honors Scholar Theses

Public parks provide cities with environmental benefits, positive health effects, recreational opportunities, community building, educational spaces, and public amenities. However, certain populations have been systematically denied their fair share of these benefits because of unjust practices in the creation and maintenance of urban parks. With a lens of environmental justice, the goal of this research was to assess park quality and accessibility of two Connecticut cities, Hartford and New Haven, by gathering publicly available information as well as using GIS tools.

The Trust for Public Land (TPL) has an existing ParkScore rating system that evaluates the quality of a city’s …

Math And Voting: Voting Methods, Fair Representation, And The Electoral College, Sarah Nelson

Honors Scholar Theses

Voting is in integral part of any functioning democracy, but there exist more than just one way to count votes. Some voting methods use only a voter’s top-choice candidate, while others require a ranking of all candidates, most-preferred to least-preferred, from each voter. We examine some of these ranked-choice voting methods, including the anti-plurality method, Hare’s method, and Coomb’s method.

Because of the variety of voting methods, we introduce criteria, which allow for an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of each method. The criteria give various definitions for what “good” or “bad” voting methods look like, depending on context. …

The Effects Of The Nba Covid Bubble On The Nba Playoffs: A Case Study For Home-Court Advantage, Michael Price

Honors Scholar Theses

The 2020 NBA playoffs were played inside of a bubble in Disney World because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that there were no fans in attendance, games played on neutral courts and no traveling for teams, which in theory removes home-court advantage from the games. This setting has attracted much discussion as analysts and fans debated the possible effects it may have on the outcome of games. Home-court advantage has historically played an influential role in NBA playoff series outcomes. The 2020 playoff provided a unique opportunity to study the effects of the bubble and home-court advantage by comparing …