Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Political Economy Of Nuclear Energy: Why There Is Not Broad Public Support For Nuclear Policy & Why There Should Be, Willa Grace Mei Lee

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In this paper, I examine how the nuclear incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima impacted public support for nuclear energy in the United States. Particularly, I look at the ways the media has influenced public perception, and thus, nuclear policy. I also consider the economic arguments for and against using nuclear power and highlight the effects of decommissioning nuclear fleets as was seen in the aftermath of the major nuclear incidents. Lastly, I discuss how the public can become better informed on nuclear energy.

Ultimately, the three major nuclear incidents spurred anti-nuclear sentiment, which shut down nuclear plants, …

Characterizing The Behavior Of Mutated Proteins With Emcap: The Energy Minimization Curve Analysis Pipeline, Matthew Lee, Bodi Van Roy, Filip Jagodzinski

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Studies of protein mutants in wet laboratory experiments are expensive and time consuming. Computational experiments that simulate the motions of protein with amino acid substitutions can complement wet lab experiments for studying the effects of mutations. In this work we present a computational pipeline that performs exhaustive single-point amino acid substitutions in silico. We perform energy minimization as part of molecular dynamics (MD) of our generated mutant proteins, and the wild type, and log the energy potentials for each step of the simulations. We motivate several metrics that rely on the energy minimization curves of the wild type and mutant, …

Seasonal Differences In The Optical Properties Of Chromophoric Dissolved Organic Matter At Hoag’S Pond, Wa, Kimberly Wallace

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) plays an important role in carbon cycling in lakes and ponds. DOM sources may vary with elevation due to vegetation differences. To examine this, optical properties of chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) were investigated between a season with heavy rainfall (wet season) and a season without much rainfall (dry season) in Hoag’s Pond, Washington, USA. This is the first study of CDOM optical properties on Hoag’s pond. Data shows that there is an increase of CDOM in Hoag’s Pond during wet season as compared to dry. Three-dimensional fluorescence excitation-emission matrices (EEM’s) showed that Hoag’s Pond contains …

Evaluating Impacts Of Nanopesticides And Microplastics In An Agricultural Rhizosphere, Emma Nordlund, Manuel Montaño

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The goal of this project was to develop a methodology for assessing the behavior and effects of two emerging contaminants in an agricultural environment. A greenhouse experiment was conducted using corn as a model organism with Kocide-3000-O and polyester microfibers as treatments. Additional benchtop experiments were carried out to evaluate the bioavailability and other chemical properties of the microfibers and nanopesticide.

Assessing Impacts Of Rising Pco2 On Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus Mykiss) Swimming Mechanics, Darby Finnegan

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Concern over the impacts of water acidification on fishes is growing due to their value commercially and ecologically. Although research has found that acidification negatively affects fish development, growth, and their ability to take up oxygen, little is known about how these effects translate to biomechanical changes in swimming behavior. We sought to determine whether freshwater acidification altered the performance and biomechanics of Oncorhynchus mykiss (rainbow trout) swimming using a circulating swim tunnel. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to complete our experiment, but we will provide our preliminary results, as well as a description of the experimental …

Cownose Ray Movement And Behavior In The Intertidal Zone, Glenna Dyson-Roberts

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Environmental, temporal and life history factors are known to influence and cause variation in cownose ray Rhinoptera bonasus movements, but their use of the intertidal zone has not been fully studied. Cownose rays eat ribbed mussels, an obligate intertidal species; thus their intertidal visitation may be important. We investigated cownose ray movement, from fixed Dual Frequency Identification Sonar (DIDSON) at the Rutgers Cape Shore Laboratory mudflats, relative to water temperature, diel pattern, diurnal conditions, tidal phase, current speed, and heading. Behavioral Observation Research Interactive Software (BORIS) was used to digitally record cownose ray appearance in 170 randomly selected ten-minute sonar …

Current And Historical Estuary Extent In Major River Deltas Of The Puget Sound: A Comparison Of Estimates, Ashley Arthur

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Puget Sound estuaries and their associated tidal wetlands have experienced extensive loss and degradation since land use conversion and the construction of tidal barriers began in the 1850s with the arrival of Euro-American settlers. Efforts to restore tidal wetlands in the Puget Sound require knowledge of the historical and current extent of tidal wetlands, but tidal wetland loss estimates vary from 53% to slightly over 80%. Thus, this study compared estimates of the current and historical extent of tidal wetlands in the 16 major river deltas of the Puget Sound produced by Brophy et al. (2019), Ramirez (2019b), and Simenstad …

Spectral Variability Of Weathered Basalts And Sandstones, Isabella Seppi

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Spectroscopy can be used to uncover the composition, and therefore the geological history, of rock surfaces and is a major tool for understanding the geologic history of rocks on Mars. The spectra taken from the rovers and orbital spacecraft and at Mars are taken at many different angles and these angles can affect the spectral readings taken from weathered rock surfaces. I will be researching how Mars analog rocks reflect light at different angles. Profs. Melissa Rice, Mike Kraft and Sean Mulcahy have received a grant from NASA to build a hemispheric goniometer which will measure spectra taken form weathered …

Nimbleknow User Documentation, Camille Estee Ottaway

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

NimbleKnow User Documentation is an Honors Project by Camille Ottaway

NimbleKnow is a simple web application that teachers can use to pose questions which students can then answer using their basic smartphones or tablets. In order to accommodate ESL learners our application includes translation features. Having a user-friendly classroom technology can promote more engagement and collaboration between students and faculty alike in a classroom environment.

Original Environmental Education Lessons And Curriculum, Waverly Shreffler

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project is a culmination of my learning through Huxley and the Honors Program designed with the intent of exercising creativity, reflection, and resourcefulness to better myself as a future educator. I have designed a curriculum with five unique units and several coinciding lesson plans with ninth and tenth grade learners in mind. This work reflects my educational philosophy of bringing traditional curricular disciplines into relation through interdisciplinary teaching and multimodal learning. As an Environmental Education student, it has become my duty to acknowledge Place, Indigenous Knowledge, and social justice as integral to the future of education. I try to …

Call Of The Chorus Frog: An Undergraduate Experience In Field Research In The Elwha River Basin, Nicole Vandeputte

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In scientific disciplines, students are not often taught to write in a way that is easily understood by people outside of their field. It is my goal to learn to communicate scientific research to a broad audience in a way that is both understandable and interesting. In spring of 2019, I participated in Huxley’s environmental science field camp. We traveled to the Elwha River basin in Olympic National Park and conducted wildlife research projects of our own design. My group’s research assessed amphibian habitat in two areas of the park, one of which was recently exposed after the removal of …

Sorting Out Sortases: Designing A Better Enzyme And Synthesizing Trapping Peptides Towards Capturing A Bound-State Structure, Katherine Johnston

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Sortase A is a powerful protein engineering tool that cleaves proteins and attaches them to an acyl acceptor of choice. However, the most active wild type variants of sortase A only show high activity at a limited number of cleavage motifs, and so work is underway to create a variant of sortase A that shows high activity at a greater variety of cleavage sites. Additionally, current studies attempting to optimize the enzyme require a way to stabilize an unstructured loop for the crystallization, in order to collect X-ray diffraction structural data. Here, preliminary results from the design of an “loop-swapped” …

Knitting Math: Geometric Shapes, Cynthia Wright

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

When knitting 3-D objects such as hats or socks, the knitter is using geometry and mathematics to make the 2-dimensional string into 3-dimensional shapes. In this project, I will be creating mathematically accurate, geometric shapes, to directly show the relationship between the mathematical formulas, knitting patterns, and the knitted objects. There is more than one way to understand and perceive math, one of which is knitting. Past mathematical knitters have shown the relationship between algebra and complex shapes (such as a Klein bottle or Möbius strip) and knitting. In an effort to explore how more accessible mathematical shapes and concepts …

European Green Crab Mitigation In Whatcom County, Patty Barry, Melissa Browning, Alexis Bryson,, Harrison Fuchs, Etilet Maipi

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This report presents a background on the invasive European green crab ( Carcinus maenas ), describes a variety of techniques to monitor and manage their presence in the region, and puts forth several comprehensive strategies for mitigating a potential invasion of C. maenas in the Salish Sea. C. maenas was likely initially introduced to the Pacific coast of the United States as larvae carried in ballast water, though they are also spread as larval by currents and as hitchhikers in seafood transport. C. maenas tolerates a wide range of salinities, temperatures, and habitats, they prey on virtually any available species, …

An Investigation Into Morocco's Water Crisis, Elliese Wright

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

For my honors senior project, I will attempt to answer the following questions: 1) What are some of the primary causes of water shortages in rural Morocco (primarily focusing on the south eastern area of Morocco). 2)What are the ways governments and NGO’s are trying to fix the problem? 3) How are rural communities affected by water shortages?

To answer this question, I am going to use a combination of field work, such as visiting, observing, and talking to people in the rural villages when possible, contacting people who are currently working on NGO projects or people who have already …

Conformal Geometry Of Polygons, Michael Albert

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Conformal maps are functions from subsets of the complex plane to the complex plane that locally preserve angles. Our goal is to understand conformal maps that pass to and from polygonal domains. In order to do so, we derive some of the basic theory of harmonic functions on simply connected domains. In particular, our goal with the first few sections is to prove the Schwarz Reflection principle. Using this, as well as other tools from complex analysis, we give an in-depth explanation of Tao’s proof of the Schwarz-Christoffel formula. This is a differential equation that allows one to compute a …