Digital Commons Network^™

Music Education As A Potential Mediator For Social Decline, Gabriel V. Trees

University Honors Theses

Many cultures around the world are experiencing a decline in social wellness. This may be attributed to the decrease in quality and quantity of social connections people have been experiencing in recent times. Among the activities that seem to help humans feel connected and accountable to each other are the community singing, dancing, and drumming that has been part of our human heritage since before the beginning of written history. Active participation in group music making has been shown to promote prosocial attitudes and behaviors. Music education for preschoolers and primary school students may be an effective method of providing …

Tourism And Tradition In Chiang Mai, Jared Makana Kirkey

University Honors Theses

This paper is an attempt to delve deeper into the relationship between tourism and culture in Chiang Mai. The push and pull of these forces is of particular interest. On one side, tourism is beneficial for Chiang Mai's economy, and encourages the preservation of its unique culture. Tourist dollars support local businesses, and any further profits can be reinvested into the local economy. And because many of Chiang Mai's major tourist draws are its cultural attractions, their preservation seems commonsense. But this is not always the case. Oftentimes, tourist dollars are funnelled out of Chiang Mai as packaged tours, luxury …

Nigerien Fertility Choice In The Face Of Desertification, Samson R. Swan

University Honors Theses

While the majority of the world experienced rapid fertility decline in the second half of the twentieth century, Niger’s fertility rate has remained relatively constant. A high fertility rate in itself is not a problem for the population as long as the resulting population can be sustained by the economic activity of the population. This is not the case for Niger, as extreme droughts in the Sahel have cast doubt on the sustainability of the majority-subsistence economy since the mid-1960s. Although not extremely common, there are some demographers and fertility experts who hold the idea that fertility decision-making is driven …

De-Stigmatizing Mental Health Through First Person Narration In Young Adult Literature, Tatum E. Francis

University Honors Theses

This thesis project includes a written short story titled "Quiet Dissonance" that explicitly depicts anxiety and depression within the genre of Young Adult literature. The purpose of this story is to consciously de-stigmatize the mental health issues by depicting these mental disorders as authentically as possible with both research and my own real-life experience of being diagnosed with both anxiety and depression, rather than relying upon stereotypes and the influence of the media. This story is consciously written through the point of view of first person narration, allowing for further exploration into the interiority of the thoughts of the protagonist …

Troublemaker: An Exploration Of Praxis In Leftist Political Theory, Emerson Hamlin

University Honors Theses

This project seeks to make recommendations on praxis, or the actions that embody theory, to present and future leftist organizers. I will do so by completing a literature review: in this case, reading and analyzing works of some of the foundational thinkers in leftism, and by reading the works of the leftist thinkers of today. By doing this review, I seek to find my own, and other activists’ answers to Lenin's eternal question: What is to be done?

Combat Exposure And Mental Health In The Military: The Role Of Collective Identity, Philip G. Bouleh

University Honors Theses

Significant evidence links combat exposure to psychiatric disorders and poor mental health outcomes in service members, creating the need to elucidate the factors associated with promoting psychological health and resilience in the military. Social identity theory postulates that an individual’s identification with a group, such as the military, can be instrumental in the provision of a sense of belongingness that is crucial for social integration, meaning and support during times of difficulty. This study examined how collective military identification interacted with the effects of combat exposure on mental health outcomes, in light of the protective capacity of social belongingness to …

Fallen Objects: Collaborating With Artificial Intelligence In The Field Of Graphic Design, Harrison S. Gerard

University Honors Theses

In this paper, I discuss the creation, execution and reception of my digital art series Fallen Objects, in which I collaborate with a neural net to create pseudo-found objects. I explore how artists might collaborate with Artificial Intelligence obliquely, not by having the AI generate the images themselves, but instead generate input for the artists to make the images. While many artists are focused on training neural nets to replicate their own art inputs, I instead focus on working with an AI trained on external, easily-accessible data and creating images from the prompts it delivers. In this way, the AI …

Fidelity And Rhetorical Strategies: An Introduction To And Translation Of Arunika Senarath’S Diese Eine Nacht (2017) With An Interview With The Author, Malcolm A. Goldman

University Honors Theses

Arunika Senarath’s 2017 novel Diese eine Nacht [That One Night] addresses political themes ranging from right-wing extremism to racism to sexual assault, which are combined with the day-to-day life of the main character, a young woman attending university in Dresden. This combination is aimed to increase political engagement in young people by making difficult or complicated topics accessible, while also exposing them to a more diverse range of perspectives. The novel is situated in contemporary Dresden, examining the prominence of right-wing populist movements such as PEGIDA in former East Germany (GDR) and their impact on people of color. …

Oregonian Holocaust Memory: Creating A Portal To The Past For Oregonians, Max Blust

University Honors Theses

Since the end of the Second World War, Holocaust Memorials have spread beyond Europe and become established in the United States. The genocide of European Jews and other ethnic minorities was an international event, spreading from Western Europe all the way into the Soviet Union. The international coalition which invaded Germany and ended the Second World War, resulted in Holocaust survivors resettling all across the globe. In the United States, where thousands of survivors joined existing Jewish communities, there arose interest for memorializing the victims of genocide and the trauma endured. The Oregon Holocaust Memorial (OHM) is a product of …

Toward A Definition Of Adult Sibling Resilience, Cheyenne R. Drover

University Honors Theses

The sibling relationship is considered one of the longest lasting connections an individual will have to another person. Despite this, it is a consistently understudied population in family research and, when studied, siblings are primarily examined during adolescence and often only in the context of conflict and rivalry. Additionally, much of this research does not examine the effects of sibling relationships on the larger family system. This thesis seeks to address this gap in the literature by understanding how the adult sibling literature presents and defines dimensions of sibling relationships. In doing so, it also seeks to examine whether these …

Developing A Conceptual Framework For Research On Social Media And Political Polarization, Audrey C. Sanders

University Honors Theses

Americans in 2020 live in a time of unprecedented political polarization. Scholars often study this trend of increased polarization in conjunction with the use of social media platforms, or social networking sites (SNSs). Despite a nearly twenty-year existence, however, the discourse community surrounding the relationship between SNS use and political polarization has yet to develop past a scattered and largely theoretical body of literature. What follows is a description of the current state of the literature followed by a description of a conceptual framework scholars can use when approaching the field and designing their own research in order to make …

Workplace Motivation: Addressing Telework As A Mechanism For Maintaining Employee Productivity, Kaitlyn Fujii

University Honors Theses

This research seeks to identify social and psychological factors that affect satisfaction levels of employees. The thesis suggests teleworking as a renewed tool for communicating and executing work in organizations; and moreover, demonstrating how telework systems can motivate millennial and gen-z workers to be productive. The main factors identified for said analysis have been determined through the study of business and academic literature about workplace culture and how it is changing. Such research investigated the differences between baby boomers, millennials and gen-zs, and furthermore how providing employees with the option to participate in telework may enhance their output. To make …

Urban Hostility: Cpted, Hostile Architecture, And The Erasure Of Democratic Public Space, Matthew M. Carr

University Honors Theses

Free and open public space is essential to the health of urban living. In theory, it is purely neutral, acting as a social equalizer providing those of all backgrounds space to co-exist within the confines of the built environment. However, truly democratic public space has consistently been threatened and reduced in cities, affecting none more heavily than marginalized and impoverished populations. The creation of the Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design agenda gave birth to hostile architecture, a detrimental form of urban exclusionism. By using hostile design typologies, cities can render public spaces unusable to undesirable citizens, and subsequently erase images …

A Methodological Review Of Resilience Approaches For Coral In The Face Of Climate Change, Gabriella L. Martinez

University Honors Theses

A literature review of research on Resilience Based Management Theory, Aquaculture, and Assisted Gene Flow and Evolution being explored as possible methods to help the coral bleaching crisis.

The Resilience Of Military-Dominated Rule In Contemporary Egypt, Fiona R. Spring

University Honors Theses

What factors account for the largely unmatched resilience of military control over Egyptian politics? This thesis examines the literature on civil-military relations, post-authoritarian civilianization and corporate grievance theory to explain how the Egyptian military has maintained political dominance despite repeated challenges to its authority and global trends toward political civilianization. I argue that the unique durability of military-dominated rule in Egypt is a product of a combination of country-specific factors. Firstly, the Egyptian armed forces wield a substantial amount of both hard and soft power within the country, enjoying a high degree of popularity that contributes to the depth of …

Psychoterratic States: Designing The New Language Of Climate Change, Savannah C. Quarum

University Honors Theses

In this project, I want to explore psychoterratic states and how they affect us in our daily lives. Psychoterratic states are emotions that people feel in relationship to the earth. The term was created by Professor Glenn Albrecht of Murdoch University, who observed the need for a new vocabulary to describe the emotions we feel as we witness the historical degradation of the planet on a global scale. The term literally translates to earth psyche with “Psycho” meaning psyche, and “terratic” meaning earth. This will be the focus of my thesis project, looking at the emotional states we experience in …

The Role Of A Nurse In The End-Of-Life Experience Of People Who Don't Have Family, Laurynn E. Leonard

University Honors Theses

Childlessness is becoming more common and this has important implications for those at the end of life. Literature on hospice and care of people at the end of life is heavily focused on family. A major emphasis of end-of-life care is how to support family members, the family role in providing support, and the influence the family has on the patient. Little research, however, has been conducted to determine the difference in how hospice and palliative care can best be provided to those without a spouse, adult children, or siblings compared to those with family support. This research aims to …

Effect Of Parasitic Orobanche Uniflora On Sedum Plants And The Potential Implications For Urban Green Roofs, Jessica Bigger

University Honors Theses

An increasing presence of the parasitic plant Orobanche uniflora has been observed on green roofs in urban areas such as Portland, Oregon. Although little is known about these plants, they are believed to be detrimental to host plants such as sedums that grow on green roofs. Orobanche uniflora takes over the host plant’s cellular structure and uses this to take in nutrients. This poses a problem for green roof succulents because if the host plants are killed by the parasite then the green roofs will not be able to function as effectively. Green roofs may also be contributing to an …

The Effects Of Instagram Influencers And Appearance Comparisons On Body Appreciation, Internalization Of Beauty Ideals And Self Esteem In Women, Juliane K. Bauer

University Honors Theses

The current study investigated how exposure to thin bodies on different (social) media platforms affect body appreciation, internalization of beauty ideals, and self-esteem in female and non-binary participants. The participants (N=116) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: exposure to content from a) Instagram influencers, b) models in magazines, or c) peers. Participants completed an online survey, answering questions about their feelings towards the women depicted in the media content as well as appearance comparison tendencies, body appreciation, self-esteem, internalization of body ideals, and BMI. Overall, significant differences between groups were found for the internalization of body …

On Dc And Local Dc Functions, Liam Jemison

University Honors Theses

In this project we investigate the class of functions which can be represented by a difference of convex functions, hereafter referred to simply as 'DC' functions. DC functions are of interest in optimization because they allow the use of convex optimization techniques in certain non-convex problems. We present known results about DC and locally DC functions, including detailed proofs of important theorems by Hartman and Vesely.

We also investigate the DCA algorithm for optimizing DC functions and implement it to solve the support vector machine problem.

Palisadia: A Novel Byte, Gretchen Amanda Adams

University Honors Theses

A creative writing thesis which uses the lens of fiction to explore femininity, sexual violence, and the nature of artificial consciousness.

A Survey Of Native Bees And Their Floral Use In Portland's Urban Orchards, Diandra L. Diamond

University Honors Theses

Native bees are all around us, yet very few surveys have been performed on which bees reside in Portland, Oregon. For this honors thesis, native bees collected from two urban orchards and one botanical garden located in eastern Portland in 2018 and 2019 were identified to genus or to species, and their floral use recorded. This data will become part of the ongoing native bee survey being performed by Susan Masta's laboratory and the Museum of Natural History at Portland State University. The bees that were most commonly collected included Ceratina spp. (n = 42), Andrena spp. (n = 34), …

Weaving Urban Webs: Representations Of Urban Space In The First Four Issues Of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Cordelia Albertson

University Honors Theses

As the anthology Comics and the City explores, cities have been central to comics since the beginning of the modern medium. Yet, scholars have remarked little on the relationship between superhero identities and urban space. Peter M. Coogan's article, "The Hero Defines the Genre, The Genre Defines the Hero," in the anthology What is a Superhero?, cites an urban setting as a secondary identifier of the superhero genre and the superhero identity, but he makes no other remark on this facet in the article or his other work. Much of the works existing on the subject of urbanism and …

The Potential Of Solidarity In Existential Feminist Discursive Methods, Bella Brown

University Honors Theses

The following paper will be dissecting the ways in which Simone de Beauvoir’s examination of the intertwined nature of selfhood and freedom regarding the body offer a facet of liberation around the construction of womanhood. I will consider the extent to which Beauvoir’s concept of the politicized essentialless body in contemporary feminist scholarship (existentialist, phenomenologist, and post-structuralist) is incomplete in that there are many contemporary scholars who expand her idea of essentialless properties and their effects on identity. The importance of the individual and their freedom in discourse is to work towards solidarity through difference with others in order to …

The Role Of Marketing Education In Reactions To Advocacy Advertising, Tobin Carlberg

University Honors Theses

The present research aims to explore whether marketing education creates a positive or negative reaction towards advocacy advertising in general. To test this, consumers with varying levels of marketing education were either interviewed or surveyed to gauge their level of persuasion knowledge, advertising appreciation, and overall reactions to advocacy advertising. Thus, a combination of qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (survey) methods were employed. Interview results suggested that those with greater marketing education held more favorable attitudes toward advocacy advertising, and survey results illustrated a strong correlation between those with more marketing education and one’s appreciation for advocacy advertising, which influenced positive …

Emergence In The Strengths And Love Of My People To Counter Invisibility For Liberation In The White Academy, Emily D. Carrillo-Casares

University Honors Theses

Through a literature review and personal reflection, my thesis will focus on the strengths and love of my people to counter invisibility for liberation in the white academy. More importantly, my aim in this paper is to illustrate the strengths, courage, and will-power I came across to dismantle the concealed barriers in a system that misperceived my values. I will speak from the first person to express my feelings and experiences. When I use the words, my people, I mean people who identify themselves as Hispanic/Latino or non-white. The goal of this paper is to explicate how I remained strong …

Autistic Representation In Television, Sarah E. Audley

University Honors Theses

Little research has been done on how these characters affect perception and understanding of individuals on the autism spectrum and whether these characters are accurate portrayals of autism. The purpose of this study is to examine the connection between an individual’s relationship with the autistic community and their knowledge of autism, and how that relationship might influence their perception of authentic autistic representation in television. This survey was aimed at individuals on the autism spectrum (e.g., autistic, Asperger, neurodivergent), professionals and students who work with the autism community, family and friends of the individuals in the autism community, and individuals …

Screening For Candidate Genes Involved In Opioid Addiction In Reduced Complexity Cross Between B6j And B6nj, Jeya Aishwarya Anandakumar

University Honors Theses

Drug overdose epidemic has worsened dramatically in the past 10 years. Opioid use disorder (OUD) is one of the biggest contributors to this rise. OUD has been a national public health and socioeconomic crisis. In 2017, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 47,600 opioid overdose deaths in the US alone. This amounts to 68% of all deaths due to drug overdose. Currently, 2.1 million Americans are suffering from OUD. The economic burden due to opioid misuse treatment was 171.7 billion US dollars in the year 2009 in the U.S. The projected cost in 2020 will be 280.5 billion …

Pregnancy And The Apocalypse: The Enlistment Of Reproductive Futurism In Aid Of Nationalism, Emily E. Horger

University Honors Theses

While America has long held a fascination for the end of the world, the apocalypse has enjoyed a surge in popularity over the past twenty years, rising the ranks from cult classic to mainstream media - many examples of which include representations of pregnancy. Reproductive futurism is exemplified in such varied recent sources as A Quiet Place, Bird Box, Train to Busan, The Walking Dead, and more through their representations of pregnant women in apocalyptic settings. The prevalence of this trope, in addition to specific messages found within the contexts of each example, coincide with recent …

The Role Of Redox Chemistry Of Disulfide Bonds In Cysteine Residues Of Membrane Proteins By Cuprous And Cupric Ions In Cell Death Of E. Coli, Morgan R. Stewart

University Honors Theses

The antimicrobial properties of copper have been thoroughly researched, but is still unclear what the actual mechanism of cell death is. This study explores the theory that copper ions and other copper sources act as an antibiotic for E. coli by cleaving the disulfide bonds of membrane proteins through redox chemistry, disrupting the cell membrane and causing cell death. The focus of this study is Cu(I) and Cu(II) interactions with the thiol containing amino acid, cysteine, and how these interactions may be responsible for copper’s toxicity. Cuprous ions have been found to be more toxic to E.coli than cupric …