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Golden Mountains: Pike's Peak, Western Capitalism, And The Making Of The Colorado State: 1858-1876, Jason T. Dunn

Honors Theses

Explores the nonlinear imposition of capitalist ideologies in Western systems, using the Pike's Peak Gold Rush and development in Colorado from 1858-1876 as a case study.

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Mot-Based Lifetime Measurements Of Potassium-39 5p1/2 And 5p3/2 States, Huan Q. Bui

Honors Theses

This thesis presents measurements of the lifetimes of 5p1/2 and 5p3/2 of K39 via exciting a cloud of K39 atoms in a magneto-optical trap by a linearly-polarized pulse of 405 nm light followed polarization-specific, time-resolved fluorescence detection. We find that $\tau_{5p1/2} = $ 138.8 $\pm$ 1.6 ns, which is consistent with past measurements \cite{triumf}, \cite{berends} and calculations \cite{safranova}. The $\tau_{5p3/2}$ measurement is naturally more involved since quantum beats due to hyperfine and Zeeman effect are present. Our observation of $\tau_{5p3/2} =$ 137.6 $\pm$ 3.1 ns and $\tau_{5p3/2} =$ 136.0 $\pm$ 2.4 ns, obtained from two slightly different approaches, are compared …

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College Application Fee Effects On Applicant Volume, Diversity, And Academic Quality, Benjamin J. Smith

Honors Theses

I use U.S. News data spanning 2002-2019 on 200 U.S. liberal arts colleges to examine the effect of the application fee on four outcome variables: applications, nonwhite undergraduates, mean undergraduate SAT scores, and number of first- years from the top ten percent of their high school class. I find strong evidence that schools enroll more nonwhite students and have lower mean SAT scores in years when they do not charge an application fee, although there is no effect of the fee on first-years from the top ten percent of their high school class. Notably, I find that removing the application …

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Estimating Heading From Optic Flow With Neural Networks, Natalie T. Maus

Honors Theses

Humans have a remarkable ability to estimate their direction of self-motion, or heading, based on visual input stimulus (optic flow). Machines, on the other hand, have a difficult time with this task, especially when flow is introduced that is inconsistent with the motion of the observer. For example, when moving objects enter the field of view, their motion provides inconsistent flow data which often disrupts heading estimates of current heading estimation models. We investigate the ability of neural networks to estimate heading from optic flow data and the limitations of these models when different variations of inconsistent flow are introduced. …

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Beyond Realism: Reading The Ongoing Wounds Of Enslavement In Beloved And Kindred, Stephanie Fawell

Honors Theses

In an introductory chapter, I synthesize a genealogy of African Diasporic thinkers that challenge traditionally conceptualized bounds of realism and modernism both aesthetically and intellectually. In the chapters that follow, I look closely at Morrison’s Beloved and Butler’s Kindred, as well as the scholarly discussions surrounding the elements in these novels that stretch the bounds of conventionally defined realism. In both novels the linearity of time and concreteness of space is challenged: in Beloved, the ghost of Sethe’s child continues to haunt her family after her death and then physically manifests as Beloved, crossing a mysterious bridge between …

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Neo-Colonial Actors?: Analyzing French Ngos In Francophone West Africa, Katharine R. Kilcoyne

Honors Theses

Non-governmental organizations (NGO) have the reputation for being benevolent organizations that help populations in need. Globally, these organizations promote this particular image to the public, but international NGOs also often work in tandem with other neo-colonial structure systems to maintain Western domination over poor and underdeveloped countries in Africa and elsewhere. This thesis looks at this phenomenon through the lens of French neo-colonialism and the Françafrique regime to study the extent to which French NGOs participate in this neo-colonial system in Francophone West Africa. Using interview data and data collected from the European Commission’s ECHO, this thesis looks at the …

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Social Capital Unmasced: The Role Of Social Capital In State-Level Economic Growth, Meredith H. Allen

Honors Theses

While the examination of social capital in social science research has expanded since the 1990s, little is known about its development over time or contributions to economic growth, particularly at the community level. I create a state-level index of social capital from 2008 to 2019 to analyze its evolution across the United States since the Great Recession. After analyzing the different rates of social capital improvement across the country, I then integrate the index in the production function and a growth accounting framework alongside capital and labor. I find that social capital is not only significant as a factor of …

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Visualizing The Range Of Glaciers: Science, Art And Narrative, Claire E. Waichler

Honors Theses

Glaciers are sensitive indicators and data keepers of climatic change. The glaciers of the North Cascades, Washington, also have significant economic and cultural value as they are enmeshed in hydroelectricity generation, terrestrial and aquatic ecology, and human communities. My project approaches the current climate crisis by examining the past, present and future of the glaciers of the North Cascades through the two lenses of art and science. I review and contextualize the last century of glacier research in the North Cascades to identify patterns of glacier change and how this affects ecological and human communities. Overlaid upon my literature review, …

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The Quantitative Assessment Of Pond Scum: An Examination Of The Biogeochemistry Of Phosphorus Cycling In The Belgrade Lakes, Abbey M. Sykes

Honors Theses

The internal recycling phosphorus in freshwater lake bottom sediments represents a significant source of hypolimnetic phosphorus (P) release for many of Maine’s lakes. In summer months, Maine lakes often thermally stratify and the lake hypolimnion develops anoxia, leading to a reduction in redox potential at the sediment-water interface. These reducing conditions facilitate the reductive dissolution of ferric iron, and, since phosphorus is often present in freshwater lake sediments as solid FeOOH-PO₄ complexes, results in release of soluble phosphorus into the water column. Our current study presents field and laboratory data from sediment fractionation extractions designed to quantify concentrations of …

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Ganar Local: La Política Cantera Del Athletic Club Y La Construcción De Lo Vasco, Sam Orenstein

Honors Theses

El Athletic Club de Bilbao es un club único en el fútbol español debido a su política cantera. Esta política declara que para jugar por el Athletic Club, hay que ser vasco. Este concepto, que cuestiona quién es vasco, cómo se expresa, y cómo contamos la identidad nacional, es un pilar central de esta tesis. Esta tesis analiza la cantera en su habilidad de definir qué es ser vasco, lo cual tiene implicaciones más anchas para el fútbol y nacionalismo en España. Sugiero que la cantera es un agente activo en la construcción de una definición de ser vasco que …

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Covid And The Classroom: The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Special Education And Policy Implementation, Danielle Lange

Honors Theses

This research examines how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the learning of special education students and the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in the United States. The importance of this research is reflected in the unprecedented and novel context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Never at any point in IDEA history have all special education students been simultaneously denied the services that are considered essential for their development and advancement. While some previous research has looked into how constraints such as natural disasters have impacted students, never has anything this drastic been studied. In this study, I found …

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Convolutional Audio Source Separation Applied To Drum Signal Separation, Marius Orehovschi

Honors Theses

This study examined the task of drum signal separation from full music mixes via both classical methods (Independent Component Analysis) and a combination of Time-Frequency Binary Masking and Convolutional Neural Networks. The results indicate that classical methods relying on predefined computations do not achieve any meaningful results, while convolutional neural networks can achieve imperfect but musically useful results. Furthermore, neural network performance can be improved by data augmentation via transposition – a technique that can only be applied in the context of drum signal separation.

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Pollen: A Secure, Decentralized Wireless Communication Platform, Max Perrello

Honors Theses

In this article, we detail an encrypted, internet-independent messaging platform, of which we built a prototype. This thesis also describes the challenges faced in the process, as well as potential future enhancements.

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Impact Of The North American Monsoon On Molt Migrant Passerines, Liuqingqing Yang

Honors Theses

Breeding, molt, and migration place considerable yearly demands on migrating passerines in North America. Due to conflicts in energy allocation, many species have evolved migration strategies that prevent temporal overlap in these processes. However, there is recent evidence that some passerines which breed in western North America migrate to intermediate stopover sites to carry out molt, conflating molt and migration. Factors influencing the evolution of such a strategy are believed to include both aridity on breeding grounds and dependable flushes of late-summer productivity in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. This productivity occurs due to the brisk rainfall of …

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Ethnicity And Education: College Attendance Patterns Among Early 20th-Century Maine's Immigrant Community, Jacob M. Nash

Honors Theses

I examine the college attendance patterns of second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants in Maine in the early 20^thcentury relative to other ethnic groups using individual-level Census records. I employ the Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson (ABE) algorithm to track second-generation Jewish, Italian, French Canadian, English Canadian and European immigrants from the 1910 Census to the 1940 Census. My logistic regression analysis indicates that second-generation Jewish immigrants in Maine attended college at significantly higher rates than their peers of similar background in every other ethnic group. While I cannot evaluate them, I also discuss potential explanations for the disparity in college attendance …

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Counting Conjugacy Classes Of Elements Of Finite Order In Compact Exceptional Groups, Qidong He

Honors Theses

Given a compact exceptional group $G$ and $m,s\in\mathbb{N}$, let $N(G,m)$ be the number of conjugacy classes of elements of order $m$ in $G$, and $N(G,m,s)$ the number of such classes whose elements have $s$ distinct eigenvalues. In string theory, the problem of enumerating certain classes of vacua in the string landscape can be rephrased in terms of the study of these quantities. We develop unified combinatorial algorithms based on Burnside's Lemma that can be used to compute both quantities for each of the five compact exceptional groups. Thus, we provide a combinatorial, alternative method to that of Djoković and extend …

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Use Of Small Molecule Fanconi Anemia Pathway Inhibitors As Sensitizing Agents To Laromustine., Sam W. Marchant

Honors Theses

Laromustine is an experimental chemotherapeutic sulfonyl hydrazine prodrug shown in clinical trials to be effective against acute myeloid leukemia. The mechanism of action of laromustine involves interstrand crosslinking, via chloroethylation, and enzyme inhibition, caused by carbamoylation. The work described herein aims to investigate whether inhibition of the replication-dependent interstrand crosslink repair Fanconi Anemia pathway further sensitizes cells to laromustine. By measuring metabolic activity immediately after drug exposure, we find laromustine to be equally as cytotoxic towards Fanconi Anemia deficient and wild type cells. However, through clonogenic assays we show Fanconi Anemia mutations sensitize cells to laromustine’s anti-proliferative effect. Furthermore, we …

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The Museum As A Mirror: Reinterpreting And Delinking American Landscape Art From Colonial Narratives, Blythe C. Romano

Honors Theses

Art museums have recently been looking at their existing collections with heightened scrutiny, revisiting their decision to display colonial works uncritically in their gallery spaces, and reconsidering the idea that there is such a thing as a unified art historical canon. These conversations regarding reinterpretation are necessary for all museums that choose to display art with problematic histories, as this information is owed to visitors -- especially within the settler colonial context. The Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine is one site where such collection and gallery “reinterpretation” has begun to be implemented and discussed. For example, in …

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Comunidad Y Contagio: La Narrativa Del Brote De Covid-19 En España, Samantha Lee

Honors Theses

La pandemia global de COVID-19 inició inesperadamente el enero del año 2020. Mientras que el nuevo coronavirus impactó a personas de todo el mundo, hay una narrativa particular del brote que se ha ocurrido en España. Las consecuencias corpóreas del virus han tenido mayores impactos en el tejido social, económico, político y cultural de España. Por resultado, hay una narrativa del brote que es específica a los valores, experiencias, suposiciones y creencias de personas en España. Esta historia de la pandémica se ha escrito a través de las redes sociales, así como los funcionarios de salud pública, profesionales medicales, autoridades …

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Artificial Reefs: A History, A Science, A Technology, Mairead D. Farrell

Honors Theses

Over the past 60 years, artificial reefs have expanded beyond the definition of a technology, and in turn have developed into a unique branch of marine science. To better emphasize this growth and separation, a brief history of artificial reef development and usage in chapter two shows some of the key shifts over time in this technology’s purpose and the materials used to achieve that goal. Likewise, to indicate the scientific development of artificial reefs as a branch of marine science, their usage for discovery and research is recorded in chapter three, along with the exponential increase in published scientific …

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Protecting Privacy In Covid-19 Digital Contact Tracing, Nicolas M. Turner

Honors Theses

Digital contact tracing applications are a necessary and potentially dangerous tool used to combat the spread of COVID-19. Due to the potentially sensitive nature of personal information gathered by contact tracing applications, there is high potential for privacy issues to arise. This thesis explores the dangers of digital contact tracing or contact tracing via a mobile application. Focusing on the United States, this paper studies how contact tracing works and how a contact tracing application might collect different types of data. The paper then studies the effects of giving up location data and health data and what potential ramifications that …

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‘The Robinhood Effect’ - Digital Technology In Global Financial Markets And Its Effects On Investor Decision Making, Ben Steib

Honors Theses

We are currently experiencing a revolution that is larger, arguably, than the industrial revolution, it’s the Internet, also known as the World Wide Web. The Internet has transformed how we live — how we talk, how we work, how we go about our daily business, and how we manage our finances on a global and individual level. In the late 1990s, an investor would search the World Wide Web and, within seconds, find 3,372 websites with the term "investment,” today, the same search for “investment” yields 1,860,000,000 results. Today, as proven with GameStop and other popular ‘meme stocks,’ social media, …

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Microbiome Community And Parasitic Infections In Wild Bees, Mark G. Young

Honors Theses

The microbiome is increasingly recognized for its complex relationship with host fitness. Akin to primates and other social animals, bumblebees harbor a specific microbiome derived from social contact. The bumblebee microbiome is characteristically species poor, with just a few “core” phylotypes accounting for the majority of total abundance. Genomic analyses reveal phylogenetic congruence and adaptation of the core endosymbionts to the bumblebee gut, indicating a shared evolutionary history. Prior investigations reveal that the relative abundance of core microbes is negatively associated with infection by a trypanosome, Crithidia bombi, and that the microbiome has a mechanistic role in immunity. As …

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Morphological Variance In Mouthparts And Foraging Behavior In Bumblebees, Ye Jin Lee

Honors Theses

Bumblebees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Bombus) show an incredible degree of size variation within and between species. Individuals from the same hive may vary up to 10-fold in mass. This variation allows individuals to specialize in foraging on different flowers suited to their morphology. However, as different species have different foraging behaviors, their variation in mouthparts and scaling of mouthparts to body size may have been under different kinds of stabilizing selection as they adapted to collect nectar from flowering plants over evolutionary time. Here, we examined the scaling relationships between body size and mouthpart structures, and the variation in mouthpart shape …

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Us And Them: Populism In The United States, Julia E. Pfau

Honors Theses

The term “populism” has been thrown around recently—heedless of any cohesive meaning—to describe a wide variety of politics. But can we define populism with sufficient clarity and precision as to make it a useful term with which to analyze political rhetoric? This thesis weaves together the fragmented literature on populism to invent a unique definition: populism in the United States is a mode of political persuasion characterized by an effort to promote the interests of “the people,” understood to be a monolithic and moral group of ordinary Americans, against a “corrupt” elite or establishment which obstructs these interests. Using this …

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"Nice, Quiet Hand": The Creation And Navigation Of Feeling Rules In A Second Grade Classroom, Avery Munns

Honors Theses

Emotions are largely viewed as individual and internal, but in reality, emotions are socially situated. This project aims to use a sociology of emotions framework in order to explore how emotional expectations are created, maintained, and navigated within a classroom environment. Through a series of observations over the course of a month, I set out to answer questions surrounding which emotions were encouraged, which emotions were discouraged, and how both teachers and students created and navigated these feeling rules. Overall, I found that emotions were largely discouraged, especially through the overarching feeling rules of “be quiet” and “control your body.” …

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Sailors’ Perceptions Of Offshore Wind Energy In The Northeastern United States, Henry Harris

Honors Theses

Offshore wind is an expanding form of renewable energy in the United States that will continue to grow through state and federal mandates. Offshore wind has often been met with criticism from a variety of ocean user groups and the academic literature has attempted to include the opinions of all user groups in order to improve policy making decisions. One of the biggest ocean user groups has been left out of the research, sailors. We investigated sailors’ perceptions of offshore wind in the Northeastern United States through a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews to provide context, hoping to answer the …

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Contrasting Patterns Of Nutrient Limitation In The Littoral And Pelagic Zones Of Mesotrophic Maine Lakes, Grace C. Neumiller

Honors Theses

Intense nutrient loading of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) causes sudden regime shifts in freshwater ecosystems from clearwater to turbid conditions with frequent cyanobacterial blooms. Characterization of nutrient limitation patterns of primary productivity in these ecosystems is necessary for effective management of algal blooms. However, much of this research has focused on pelagic habitats. The influence of lake habitat (i.e. benthic littoral versus pelagic zones) on nutrient limitation of primary production in mesotrophic lakes is largely unknown, particularly in contrast to research on pelagic nutrient limitation in eutrophic systems. Using paired nutrient diffusing substrata and mesocosm experiments, we measured chlorophyll- …

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Investigating The Agn-Merger Connection Using Close Galaxy Pairs In The Candels Fields, Sean L. Dougherty

Honors Theses

Galaxy mergers are catastrophic events in that they greatly change the properties of the galaxies involved. Observations of the nearby universe suggest that they may also be able to trigger active galactic nuclei (AGN) even prior to the final coalescence, though there is much controversy surrounding this belief, particularly at high redshifts. In order to address this question, we have assembled a large sample of photometric galaxy pairs within the GDS and EGS fields of the CANDELS survey. We use photometric redshift probability distribution functions and the combined redshift probability function to assign probabilities for each projected pair. We incorporate …

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Una Deconstrucción Espacial: Movimiento Maricas Bolivia Y La Resistencia Indígena Cuir, Cooper J. Bussberg

Honors Theses

El legado (neo)colonial ha intentado borrar las experiencias Indígenas cuir en Abiayala. Sin embargo, existen cambios a esta historia. Grupos activistas se están adaptando a retos distintos por medios diferentes. Movimiento Maricas Bolivia es una organización activista de La Paz, Bolivia que ejerce activismo en su canal de YouTube donde publican varios videos informativos alrededor del tema Indígena cuir. En este proyecto, yo aplico una perspectiva teórica trans- Indígena hemisférica para aproximar a un entendimiento mejor de la resistencia Indígena cuir de Movimiento Maricas Bolivia. Utilizo varios críticos de los estudios Indígenas de varios sitios de Abiayala para promover la …

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Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Golden Mountains: Pike's Peak, Western Capitalism, And The Making Of The Colorado State: 1858-1876, Jason T. Dunn

Honors Theses

Mot-Based Lifetime Measurements Of Potassium-39 5p1/2 And 5p3/2 States, Huan Q. Bui

Honors Theses

College Application Fee Effects On Applicant Volume, Diversity, And Academic Quality, Benjamin J. Smith

Honors Theses

Estimating Heading From Optic Flow With Neural Networks, Natalie T. Maus

Honors Theses

Beyond Realism: Reading The Ongoing Wounds Of Enslavement In Beloved And Kindred, Stephanie Fawell

Honors Theses

Neo-Colonial Actors?: Analyzing French Ngos In Francophone West Africa, Katharine R. Kilcoyne

Honors Theses

Social Capital Unmasced: The Role Of Social Capital In State-Level Economic Growth, Meredith H. Allen

Honors Theses

Visualizing The Range Of Glaciers: Science, Art And Narrative, Claire E. Waichler

Honors Theses

The Quantitative Assessment Of Pond Scum: An Examination Of The Biogeochemistry Of Phosphorus Cycling In The Belgrade Lakes, Abbey M. Sykes

Honors Theses

Ganar Local: La Política Cantera Del Athletic Club Y La Construcción De Lo Vasco, Sam Orenstein

Honors Theses

Covid And The Classroom: The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Special Education And Policy Implementation, Danielle Lange

Honors Theses

Convolutional Audio Source Separation Applied To Drum Signal Separation, Marius Orehovschi

Honors Theses

Pollen: A Secure, Decentralized Wireless Communication Platform, Max Perrello

Honors Theses

Impact Of The North American Monsoon On Molt Migrant Passerines, Liuqingqing Yang

Honors Theses

Ethnicity And Education: College Attendance Patterns Among Early 20th-Century Maine's Immigrant Community, Jacob M. Nash

Honors Theses

Counting Conjugacy Classes Of Elements Of Finite Order In Compact Exceptional Groups, Qidong He

Honors Theses

Use Of Small Molecule Fanconi Anemia Pathway Inhibitors As Sensitizing Agents To Laromustine., Sam W. Marchant

Honors Theses

The Museum As A Mirror: Reinterpreting And Delinking American Landscape Art From Colonial Narratives, Blythe C. Romano

Honors Theses

Comunidad Y Contagio: La Narrativa Del Brote De Covid-19 En España, Samantha Lee

Honors Theses

Artificial Reefs: A History, A Science, A Technology, Mairead D. Farrell

Honors Theses

Protecting Privacy In Covid-19 Digital Contact Tracing, Nicolas M. Turner

Honors Theses

‘The Robinhood Effect’ - Digital Technology In Global Financial Markets And Its Effects On Investor Decision Making, Ben Steib

Honors Theses

Microbiome Community And Parasitic Infections In Wild Bees, Mark G. Young

Honors Theses

Morphological Variance In Mouthparts And Foraging Behavior In Bumblebees, Ye Jin Lee

Honors Theses

Us And Them: Populism In The United States, Julia E. Pfau

Honors Theses

"Nice, Quiet Hand": The Creation And Navigation Of Feeling Rules In A Second Grade Classroom, Avery Munns

Honors Theses

Sailors’ Perceptions Of Offshore Wind Energy In The Northeastern United States, Henry Harris

Honors Theses

Contrasting Patterns Of Nutrient Limitation In The Littoral And Pelagic Zones Of Mesotrophic Maine Lakes, Grace C. Neumiller

Honors Theses

Investigating The Agn-Merger Connection Using Close Galaxy Pairs In The Candels Fields, Sean L. Dougherty

Honors Theses

Una Deconstrucción Espacial: Movimiento Maricas Bolivia Y La Resistencia Indígena Cuir, Cooper J. Bussberg

Honors Theses