Digital Commons Network^™

Nationalism And Multi-Dimensional Identities: Ba'ath Propaganda During The Iran-Iraq War, Jennie Matuschak

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I examine the content of and mechanisms of disseminating propaganda originating from Saddam Hussein’s regime during the Iran-Iraq War. This research specifically looks at how and why the regime targeted Iraqi Shi’as during the war, and how that contributed to the ways in which the regime engaged with rhetoric. Moreover, this thesis attempts to make sense of the diverse, and sometimes seemingly opposing, amalgam of the rhetoric’s subject matter and methods of circulation. More broadly, it speaks to the difficulty of fostering an environment that can produce patriotism and lead to the construction of a strong national …

The Diversion Of Diversity: Uncovering The Antiblackness Of Diversity Initiatives, M. Jordan Alexander

Honors Theses

In more recent years, Diversity has been a driving force in universities across the country. As underrepresented groups in the United States have gained more traction in the political and legal realms, they have gained the agency and the ability to advocate for their inclusion in institutions and structures that previously denied their access. This gaining of agency within these public realms is what has fueled higher education institutions across the country to really push for diversity, in both their faculty and student populations. The ideology behind this push is multiculturalism or multiracialism; this idea by its premise, the inclusion …

The Effect Of Religion On Trait Priority In Potential Partners In Short And Long Term Relationships, Sara K. Glass

Honors Theses

This study builds upon previous research that demonstrates how various demographic characteristics, as well as relationship type, affects trait preferences for potential mate partners. This study also explores the potential effects of religious affiliation and religiosity on trait preferences, as no previous research explicitly tests how individuals’ religious affiliation or strength of religiosity influences their rank ordering of potential partner traits. Seven hypotheses were proposed, as well as four points of exploration regarding sexuality, relationship status, religious affiliation, and race were proposed. Hypotheses 1, which predicted that women will rank financial stability higher than men and that men will rank …

Positivity Among P-Partition Generating Functions Of Partially Ordered Sets, Nate Lesnevich

Honors Theses

We find necessary and separate sufficient conditions for the difference between two labeled partially ordered set's (poset) partition generating functions to be positive in the fundamental basis. We define the notion of a jump sequence for a poset and show how different conditions on the jump sequences of two posets are necessary for those posets to have an order relation in the fundamental basis. Our sufficient conditions are of two types. First, we show how manipulating a poset's Hasse diagram produces a poset that is greater according to the fundamental basis. Secondly, we also provide tools to explain posets that …

Bridging Act-R And Project Malmo, Developing Models Of Behavior In Complex Environments, David M. Schwartz

Honors Theses

Cognitive architectures such as ACT-R provide a system for simulating the mind and human behavior. On their own they model decision making of an isolated agent. However, applying a cognitive architecture to a complex environment yields more interesting results about how people make decisions in more realistic scenarios. Furthermore, cognitive architectures enable researchers to study human behavior in dangerous tasks which cannot be tested because they would harm participants. Nonetheless, these architectures aren’t commonly applied to such environments as they don’t come with one. It is left to the researcher to develop a task environment for their model. The difficulty …

Els Catalans Són Diferents: Catalan Independence Through A Cultural Lens, Maren Burling

Honors Theses

With a focus on Catalan independence, this thesis looks at how Catalans create and perform their regional identity, and how cultural symbols of Catalan society – food, sports, language, and others – are uniquely situated within the wider Spanish society. Both linguistic anthropology and symbolic/interpretive anthropology inform my writing and support my argument for the importance of language and other cultural symbols to Catalan identity, which are key to understanding Catalan separatism. My research contributes to current conversations in anthropology about the role of cultural identity in creating community. I argue that, in the Catalan case, cultural identity both shapes …

Late Devonian Sedimentary Record Of Appalachian Tectonics And Erosion: Geochronology And Geochemistry Of Detrital Muscovite And Zircon From Central Pennsylvania Strata, Cole T. Gardner

Honors Theses

Foreland basin sediment deposition in North-Central Pennsylvania during Late Devonian time records erosion of hinterland source terranes exhumed during regional plate convergence, including the collisional Acadian orogeny. The Catskill clastic wedge preserves a coarsening-upwards stratigraphic succession from marine to fluvial environments associated with sediment progradation and sea-level regression, yet depositional timescales and quantitative provenance data are largely unconstrained.

Detailed facies analysis of eight outcrops spanning >2 km of stratigraphy in Lycoming Co., Pennsylvania documents distinct upsection changes, interpreted to reflect changes in depositional environments consistent with previous sedimentology of the Catskill clastic wedge. Stratigraphy displays a transition from nearshore marine …

Tmi : An Examination Of Excess Returns Surrounding Phase Iii Fda Approvals, Luke Chiotelis

Honors Theses

Over the past three decades, the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical industry has had the largest growth rate of any sector in the U.S. economy. Currently, the largest 10 companies have a market cap of over 700 billion dollars. In the past 20 years, Biotech has outperformed the Standard and Poor’s 500 index earning superior returns for those willing to invest in this risky, high growth industry (Bloomberg L.P.). This upward trend is expected to continue as both institutional and private investment in biotech continues to soar.

A better understanding of the FDA approval process and the way a company’s stock price …

The Effect Of Health Literacy On Chronic Kidney Disease Patient Health Outcomes, Mia Castagnero

Honors Theses

The current study seeks to enhance knowledge of health literacy among patients diagnosed with CKD. Identifying gaps in kidney-specific health literacy may help direct specific interventions to improve patient education and support. The goal of the current study is to investigate the associations between health literacy (general health literacy and kidney-specific health literacy) and patient health outcomes, such as medication adherence and barriers in access to care.

Marketing Disability : Navigating The Ethics Of Nonprofit Development And Marketing, Peyton F. Carter

Honors Theses

In this paper, I explore how nonprofit organizations arrived at their current model, which often include a heavy emphasis on the need for private donations, and the resulting need of organizations to assert their value and be competitive in the marketplace.By attending to the specific marketing practices of one disability services nonprofit, I show how the complexities of power relations and issues of representation manifest themselves in the non profit sector.

Rationality, Revisions, And Real-Time Data, Jason Hall

Honors Theses

Revisions to macroeconomic variables are a significant part of the process by which researchers, the general public, and the government get information about the state of the United States' economy. They are also substantial: this can have large implications for forecasting, macroeconomic research, business decisions, and monetary and fiscal policy. In this paper, I examine the cyclicality of various aggregate variables in U.S.data, and determine that of the major NIPA variables analyzed, only consumption andreal imports revisions display a large degree of cyclicality. I also examine the rationalityof the same set of variables under different definitions of the final value, …

Gender And Sport Inequities : Perceiving Injustices And Galvanizing Change, Ashey E. Gross

Honors Theses

We examined the effect of procedural and distributive justice on activism intent and donation. We did not find a direct effect from the justice messages on either activism intent or donation, however we also looked at moderators such as belief in a just world. We found that belief in a just world moderated activism intent, that is, people who scored low on the BJW scale had higher activism intent after reading the messages, and the messages had an inverse effect on those who scored high on the BJW scale. We did not find any effect on donation from either message.

Waveband Luminosity Correlations In Flux-Limited Multiwavelength Data And The Schwinger Effect In Minkowski & De Sitter Space-Times, Syed Jibran Haider

Honors Theses

The first part of the thesis explores key findings determined from plotting multiple waveband luminosity and redshift correlations in quasar data binned in redshift. The second part of the thesis concerns itself with applying Picard-Lefschetz theory to pair particle production in de Sitter space-time (with or without a constant electric field).

It's Written All Over Your Face : Examining The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status And Empathic Accuracy, Megan Roherbeck Wirtz

Honors Theses

What, exactly, is the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and emotional intelligence? Is it possible that emotional intelligence can explain the well-established positive relationship between SES and wellbeing? The purpose of this study was to investigate a) a potential mediational pathwaybetween SES, emotional intelligence, and wellbeing and b) conflicting research in the relationship between SES and emotional intelligence. This study was conducted using avariety of measures of socioeconomic status and wellbeing, as well as a performance-based measure of empathic accuracy.

When Does The Positivity Effect Emerge? : Age-Related Emotional Biases At Encoding And Retrieval, Hannah Wolfe

Honors Theses

The Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) posits that as their future time perspective shrinks, older adults tend to be more motivated by emotionally meaningful goals and therefore experience what is called the “positivity effect” with age (Carstensen, 2006). The positivity effect had been studied in both attention biases (Isaacowitz et al., 2006a) and memory biases (Kensinger, 2008), with older adults dwelling longer on and better remembering the positive stimuli over the negative. Yet, few studies have measured emotional biases at both the encoding and retrieval phases, which is why this study uses eye-tracking to determine whether any biases in gaze patterns …

What Lies Beneath? : Removal Sampling To Test For Biases In Surface Activity Of The Eastern Red-Backed Salamander (Plethodon Cinereus), Amelia Tedesco

Honors Theses

In light of the current global amphibian extinction crisis from threats such as climate change and disease, reliable and repeatable sampling methods carry heavy importance for assessing North American salamander species.

Self-Interest Versus Social-Interest Policy Framing : The Case Of School Choice, Benedict Roemer

Honors Theses

This study examines the role of self-interest and social-interest framing in determining support for school choice policies. I make a new contribution to the field of political psychology and policy framing by comparing the effects of self-interest and social-interest. My research focuses on the domain of education policy and school choice in an original experimental study and a case study of newspaper editorials. I find evidence that the self-interest frame garners significantly mores upport for school choice policies among certain population, but policy advocates most commonly use social-interest framing when arguing for school choice policies.

Driving Anxiety In Young People With Autism Spectrum Disorder : A Driving Simulator Pilot Study, Rebecca Pasch

Honors Theses

The goal of this project was to investigate how driving anxiety changes overtime in young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when using a driving simulator technology. Additional exploratory measures were collected on duration of participation,. stopping distance, and reaction time.

“Il Est Bon, Aujourd'hui, Le Boudin” : La Nourriture Esthétique Et Le Goût Dans Le Roman Naturaliste Zolien, Elena Palazzolo

Honors Theses

La lecture de n’importe quel texte dans les Rougon-Macquart rend clair que leur romancier, Emile Zola, était intéressé sinon obsédé par le symbolisme et les motifs alimentaires. La série, écrite entre 1871 et 1893, couvre la vie d’une famille sous le Second Empire et représente les grands problèmes sociaux du jour notamment les inégalités entre la bourgeoisie et la classe ouvrière en illustrant le chômage, l’alcoolisme, la faim chronique et les lieux de travail dangereux. D’un côté, la discussion de la nourriture à l’intérieur de ce discours semble évidemment pratique ou idéologique. Dans les mots de Albert Sonnenfeld, « Zola …

Draw Some Awesome : The Effect Of Art And Awe On Grief And Giving, Jamie Katz

Honors Theses

Prior research has shown that awe can have positive psychological effects on people who experience it. We conducted two experimental trials to test whether awe can be evoked by art and whether this art induced awe can increase people's charitable donations and decrease their grief in the face of losing an important relationship. We concluded that spectacular videos of art production were significant evokers of awe compared to their mundane control counterparts. We also found that the awe videos increased charitable donations through a mediating variable of feeling the "presence of something greater than oneself." Lastly, we found that there …

Re-Imagining Student Achievement : The Egalitarian Failure Of The Carrot-Stick Model In K-12 Public Education, Michael Johnson

Honors Theses

Achievementgaps between low-income and minority students and their counterparts are among the most pressing education policy issues today. Cash incentivization to students has gained momentum as a potential remedy to reduce disparities in studentachievementoutcomes. Grading incentive schemes function identically as objections to cash-incentives positioning both within the broader carrot-stick motivation model. Rather than eliminate the widely used grading scheme, however, I conclude that efforts should be redirected towards reducing the saliency of standardized evaluative benchmarks to which incentives are aimed as opposed to reforming the incentives themselves which I refer to as the Revisionary Proposal.

Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals: A Comparative Analysis Of Access To Education And Healthcare For Immigrants Before Daca, Under Daca, And Under The Dream Act, Levi C. Bevis

Honors Theses

The United States has long been considered a nation of immigrants, welcoming individuals and families of every background to build a better future for themselves and the country. Throughout various periods of its history, however, the U.S. has fluctuated between welcoming and exceptionally restrictive immigration policies, with changes are often generating passionate debate from all ideological standpoints. A significant development in the modern U.S. immigration system is the implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program under the Obama Administration. This program allowed certain young undocumented immigrants who met established criteria to qualify for deportation protections. With approximately …

Exploration Of Financial Accounting: A Compilation Of Individual Case Studies, Allison Gaerke

Honors Theses

This thesis contains twelve accounting-related case studies completed in Accounting 420: Independent Studies, a two-semester thesis course taught by Dr. Victoria Dickinson. For most cases, students were given access to case materials that provided brief descriptions of real companies along with the companies’ financial statements and related footnotes. The cases also provided conceptual, procedural, and analytical questions for students to answer; completing a case study entailed answering the questions selected by Dr. Dickinson and writing a brief introduction to the case. Students were given time in class to work in small groups to start answering the case questions. Students used …

Analysis Of Dunc-13 And Its Role In The Formation Of Ethanol Tolerance In Drosophila Melanogaster, Charles Cook

Honors Theses

Alcoholism is a costly disease that is responsible for a significant portion of the global disease burden, yet there is much is left to know about how this disease develops. Tolerance plays a critical role in predisposing an individual to alcohol abuse. Recently, the active zone of presynaptic neurons has been implicated as an ethanol effector. In this study, we examined the role that a presynaptic active zone protein, Dunc13, plays in the formation of tolerance to alcohol. Dunc13 is an ortholog of mammalian Unc13-1, and through the use of Drosophila as a model system, we show that genetic reduction …

Cannabinoid Conundrum: A Study Of Anti-Epileptic Efficacy And Drug Policy, Kennedy Dickson

Honors Theses

Cannabis is the most commonly used, cultivated, and trafficked drug worldwide. The use and acceptance of marijuana is evolving rapidly, as indicated by the volume of new State cannabis legislation across the U.S. Many of the changes in state laws have occurred without significant input from medical or scientific communities. Additionally, marijuana policy in the US is convoluted with significant inconsistencies between state and federal law. The status of marijuana as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substance Act creates numerous restrictions and issues that impact the industry as a whole. The most promising development has been the 2018 …

Classically Biased: A Quantitative Analysis Of Gender & Writing Styles In Classical Literature, Madeleine Rose Delcambre

Honors Theses

This thesis is a first attempt in assessing patterns related to gender in classical literature prior to the 21st century, specifically looking at the way writing styles and language di↵er among female and male authors; e.g., sentence structuring, lexical diversity, and dictionary similarities. Further topics of analysis included gender distribution and sentiment within the novels themselves. Seventy-eight open-source novels were used in the analysis, with thirty-one books by female authors and forty-seven by male authors. Data from the novels was acquired using Python, natural language processing, and the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK). Graphs and visuals were then created to summarize …

The End Times, Gunnar Ohberg

Honors Theses

The End Times is a collection of apocalyptic short stories set within the same universe. The stories employ elements of magical realism and grit lit. It is the author's hope that each story deal with at least one external societal issue (such as digital discourse and sexual aggression) and one internal psychological issue (such as depression, obsession/compulsion, and survivor's guilt). Each story is told in the first-person in an effort to best demonstrate the various psychologies of its protagonist. In these stories, God has decided to punish humanity for their transgressions. The devices of this God are fantastic: limbs disappear, …

Prowler: Stories, Conor Hultman

Honors Theses

These are a collection of five short stories. Their common feature is the use of the first-person perspective. The intent of these prose experiments was to find the limitations of the first-person narrative, to see how it could be disfigured and reborn. In preparation, I read several books with my advisor that are known for their strong first-person voices. These included: If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home by Tim O’Brien, Always Happy Hour by Mary Miller, The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, Birds of America by Lorrie Moore, and The Collected Stories of …

What We Could Do: Stories, Jacob D. Ferguson

Honors Theses

A collection of fiction and creative non-fiction—short stories and personal letters—exploring the lives, fears, anxieties, and joys of characters who grew up gay in southern, religious families. (Under the direction of Beth Spencer)

Comprehensive Analysis Of Financial Reporting Through Case Studies, Griffin Anderson Clark

Honors Theses

This thesis covers both fundamental and nuanced issues relating to accounting and, more specifically, financial reporting. These issues range from cash flow analysis to bank auditing opinions. The thesis is a compilation of twelve case studies assigned by Dr. Victoria Dickinson in the Professional Research and Development Program. From a broader perspective, the insight gained through this thesis is primarily concerned with how the three fundamental financial statements, the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows interact with one another within a given fact set. Transactions, estimates, and adjustments can influence all three financial statements, changing how financial …