Digital Commons Network^™

The Homecoming Of The Negro Spirit: Black Spiritual Intelligence As A Structural Form Of Intelligence, Quincy Brown

CMC Senior Theses

In Is Spirituality an Intelligence? Motivation, Cognition, and the concern of Psychology of Ultimate Concern, Robert Emmons develops a case for spirituality as a form of intelligence. His thesis claims that spiritual intelligence is a “set of capacities and abilities that enable people to solve problems and attain goals in their everyday lives”: “the capacity for transcendence; the ability to enter into heightened spiritual states of consciousness; the ability to invest everyday activities, events, and relationships with a sense of the sacred; the ability to utilize spiritual resources to solve problems in living; and the capacity to engage …

The Ghost Of Modernity: Normative Power Of Modernity As Propaganda, Seoyoon Choi

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores how domestic factions and authoritarian regimes in Japan and Korea in the period from the 1850s to 1970s appropriated the concept of “modernity” to gain normative superiority over their competitors. The appropriating entity revised the concept of modernity to suit its own worldview. Across the case studies, the propaganda of modernity created a hierarchy that privileged those who are “more modern,” encouraged martial masculinity, and attached itself to existing domestic norms, such as ethno- nationalism. Under authoritarian regimes, modernity helped justify the mobilization of capital, manpower, and other critical resources in the name of nation-building or defense. …

Developing A Model For Effective Community Development Agreements In The Extractive Industries, John Nikolaou

CMC Senior Theses

Natural resource development has tremendous potential to create inclusive economic growth in countries well-endowed with oil, mineral, and agricultural resources. At the same time, natural resource development can cause negative environmental externalities, and, in several cases, extractives companies can engage in labor abuse.

The intersection of the government’s and the corporation’s interest can lie in Corporate Social Responsibility Projects.This thesis will analyze an alternative model of CSR: community development agreements (CDAs). CDAs are voluntary, or sometimes government mandated, agreements between the project developer and the project affected community that define company commitments to issues such as environmental impact mitigation, benefit …

Leveraging Trade Agreements To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions In Accordance With The Paris Agreement, Sam Becker

CMC Senior Theses

Climate change is the most obvious and pressing impairment of the biological, physical, and chemical systems. To help mitigate this unprecedented problem, I present heads of state, policymakers, and members of civil society with a set of new provisions that they can include in their trade agreements to drive emissions reduction from countries inside and outside of their trade agreements, maintain their ability to compete in an increasingly globalized world, and comply with international trading rules. Ultimately, I seek to demonstrate the untapped potential for leveraging trade agreements to reduce emissions in the midst of an international system that lacks …

Snap Scholar: The User Experience Of Engaging With Academic Research Through A Tappable Stories Medium, Ieva Burk

CMC Senior Theses

With the shift to learn and consume information through our mobile devices, most academic research is still only presented in long-form text. The Stanford Scholar Initiative has explored the segment of content creation and consumption of academic research through video. However, there has been another popular shift in presenting information from various social media platforms and media outlets in the past few years. Snapchat and Instagram have introduced the concept of tappable “Stories” that have gained popularity in the realm of content consumption.

To accelerate the growth of the creation of these research talks, I propose an alternative to video: …

Finding Balance Between The Needs For Conformity And Individuality: An Exploration Of Identity, C.C. Schwab

CMC Senior Theses

Just as society has changed a lot within the past 100 years, the concept of identity has also evolved significantly. A big factor in the evolution of identity has been the realization that social and group phenomena influence all conceptualizations of identity. In this review, I explore identity through the lens of Optimal Distinctiveness theory (ODT), which proposes that humans have two opposing social motives (distinctiveness and inclusiveness) that position them amidst an internal battle over identity.

I start by defining identity and the self, including the distinction between the two. Next, I explore identity formation and different types of …

Effects Of The Juvenile Hormone Mimic Nc-184 On The Development Of The Reproductive Organs And Mating Behaviour Of Nymphs Of The Desert Locust, Schistocerca Gregaria (Orthoptera: Acrididae), Satoshi Hiroyoshi, Elizabeth Kokwaro, Sai Mettupalli, Takayuki Mitsunaga, Shigemi Yagi, Gadi V.P. Reddy

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

The insect growth regulator NC-184, a juvenile hormone mimic, prevents moulting to the adult stage in the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria (Forskal) (Orthoptera: Acrididae). Male nymphs treated in the penultimate or fi nal nymphal instar with NC-184 exhibit precocious mating behaviour in the fi nal instar. We examined whether this chemical affects the development of the internal reproductive organs of crowded nymphs. In treated males, both accessory glands and seminal vesicles were underdeveloped, and no sperm was found in the seminal vesicle, whereas these organs in control individuals had greatly increased in size 10 days after treatment, when all the …

Association Of Phlebotomus Guggisbergi With Leishmania Major And Leishmania Tropica In A Complex Transmission Setting For Cutaneous Leishmaniasis In Gilgil, Nakuru County, Kenya, Barrack O. Owino, Damaris Matoke-Muhia, Yasser Alraey, Jackline Milkah Mwangi, Johnstone M. Ingonga, Philip M. Ngumbi, Aitor Casas-Sanchez, Alvaro Acosta-Serrano, Daniel K. Masiga

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Background Phlebotomus (Larroussius) guggisbergi is among the confirmed vectors for cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) transmission in Kenya. This scarring and stigmatizing form of leishmaniasis accounts for over one million annual cases worldwide. Most recent CL epidemics in Kenya have been reported in Gilgil, Nakuru County, where the disease has become a public health issue. However, little is known about the factors that drive its transmission. Here, we sought to determine the occurrence, distribution and host blood feeding preference of the vectors, and to identify Leishmania species and infection rates in sandflies using molecular techniques. This information could lead to a better …

Reforming Service Of Process: An Access-To-Justice Framework, Andrew C. Budzinski

University of Colorado Law Review

Over the past few decades, the number of pro se litigants in state civil courts has risen exponentially-between 75 percent and 90 percent of litigants in family law cases, landlordtenant disputes, and small claims actions did not have a lawyer in 2015. Procedural rules governing those proceedings, however, often impose requirements that disproportionately burden unrepresented litigants, fail to optimally protect the due process rights of those parties, and thereby deny them access to justice. Rules governing service of process illustrate this problem by requiring litigants to find a third party to hand-deliver court papers to a defendant directly or to …

The Macguffin And The Net: Taking Internet Listeners Seriously, Derek E. Bambauer

University of Colorado Law Review

To date, listeners and readers play little more than bit parts in First Amendment jurisprudence. The advent of digital networked communication over the Internet supports moving these interests to center stage in free speech doctrine and offers new empirical data to evaluate the regulation of online information. Such a shift will have important and unexpected consequences for other areas, including ones seemingly orthogonal to First Amendment concerns. This Essay explores likely shifts in areas that include intellectual property, tort, and civil procedure, all of which have been able to neglect certain free speech issues because of the lack of listener …

Press Speakers And The First Amendment Rights Of Listeners, Ronnell Anderson Jones

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Expert Directors, Martin Edwards

University of Colorado Law Review

The board of directors occupies the space between the managers, who control the corporation, and the shareholders, who own the residual claims on it. The board's job is to mitigate agency costs arising from this structure and its primary functions are to monitor managers and manage conflicts of interest between managers and the corporation. For this reason, research into director characteristics and board composition tends to focus heavily on the extent to which individual directors are independent from management and on how many independent directors sit on a given board. Boards, however, do more than just monitor and manage conflicts, …

A Purpose-And-Effect Test To Limit The Expansion Of The Government Speech Doctrine, Will Soper

University of Colorado Law Review

The First Amendment of the Constitution prohibits the government from passing any law that limits the freedom of private speech. However, in order to effectively govern, the state must communicate its policies and messages in ways that may not leave room for competing views. Since the early 1990s, the Supreme Court has articulated and developed the doctrine of government speech: when the government speaks, it is exempt from the First Amendment. The doctrine's use and expansion has its detractors. Many are worried that government speech should only be protected when it would be clear to a reasonable listener that the …

Fdr And Economic Rights In The American Tradition, Charles Harris

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the idea of economic rights and their place in American political history. The American constitutional understanding of rights has historically not included positive economic rights and has focused on negative political liberties. Chapter One is a discussion of what economic rights are in a broad sense. Then in Chapter Two I focus on Roosevelt. In his 1944 State of the Union Address, he proposed a “Second Bill of Rights” for America that was a list of economic rights. I use that speech and some of FDR’s other writings to understand economic rights as they were seen at …

Global Consciousness: A Functionalist Neurophilosophical Perspective, Connor C. Bowen

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to explore a thought-provoking consequence of the functionalist theory of mind. Given the current organizational structure of Earth and field theories of consciousness in neuroscience, Earth is probably conscious. The argument is explored through an examination of the current organizational structure of Earth and field theories of consciousness in neuroscience, which leads to the conclusion that Earth is conscious. Various theories of mind have been proposed by neuroscientists and philosophers alike in an attempt to qualify what consciousness is and what provides the basis for consciousness to occur. Support, in the form of data …

A Nuanced Look At Gender Interactions On Informal Employment And Income In Argentina And Uruguay, Teagan Knight

CMC Senior Theses

There are many existing studies characterizing the informal sector in Latin America, but the literature fails to fully examine the interactions between gender and disadvantaging factors on the probability of informal employment and its returns to wage. This analysis uses survey data from Argentina (2001) and Uruguay (2006) to examine the heterogeneous effects of number of children under 5, education, minority status, and migrant status on male and female informal employment and income. Being female interacts with number of children under 5 to create no effect on probability of informal employment, in contrast to a significant negative effect for men. …

Believing Fictions: A Philosophical Analysis Of Fictional Engagement, Jack Rhein Gleiberman

CMC Senior Theses

Works of fiction do things to us, and we do things because of works of fiction. When reading Hamlet, I mentally represent certain propositions about its characters and events, I want the story and its characters to go a certain way, and I emotionally respond to its goings-on. I might deem Hamlet a coward, I might wish that Hamlet stabbed Claudius when he had the chance, and I might feel sorrow at Ophelia’s senseless suicide. These fiction-directed mental states seem to resemble the propositional attitudes of belief, desire, and emotion, respectively — the everyday attitudes that represent and orient us …

Studying Geometric Optical Illusions Through The Lens Of A Convolutional Neural Network, Nick Laberge

CMC Senior Theses

Geometrical optical illusions such as the Muller Lyer illusion and the Ponzo illusion have been widely researched over the past 100+ years, yet researchers have not reached a consensus on why human perception is deceived by these illusions or which illusions are the results of the same effects. In this paper, I study these illusions through the lens of a convolutional neural network. First, I successfully train the network to correctly classify how a human would perceive a particular class of illusion (such as the Muller Lyer illusion), then I test the network’s ability to generalize to illusions that it …

Civilly Disobedient: Justifying Juror Misconduct, Grace K. Wilson

CMC Senior Theses

A fair, unbiased jury that follows the courts instructions is a crucial aspect of the American criminal justice system, mandated by both the California and United States Constitution. When jurors violate judicial instructions, it can jeopardize the impartiality of a case. Despite this, little research has been completed on what individual differences are indicative of greater willingness to commit jury misconduct. Misconduct can occur when jurors fail to follow judicial instructions in circumstances that a reasonable person may be tempted to disobey. This study explores potential individual differences that correlate with a greater likelihood of excusing and even committing juror …

Asserting Indigenous Identity To Substantiate Customary Forest Claims: A Case Study Of The Dayaks Of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, Charlotte Reinnoldt

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines Dayak identity constructions and how they have been and are currently being used to assert customary land rights in forested areas of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Indonesian state has required that customary land claims include proof that communities have maintained their indigenous institutions. Drawing from government and NGO reports, academic research, and Indonesian law, a few questions thus are explored: What aspects of identity must be maintained in order to be sufficient to claim customary land rights under Indonesian law? How has recent Dayak mobilization fed into a resurgence in Dayak identity and pride, and vice versa? …

The God Collection, Namaste Rosas

CMC Senior Theses

I’m all strung out on Klonopins in the drug store trying to pay for Advil but my card keeps getting rejected.

The 2016 Election Earthquake: Pacific County And The Future Of The Democratic Party In Rural Areas, Matthew Dayton

CMC Senior Theses

Pacific County was one of 206 counties nationwide to vote for President Trump in 2016 after voting for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. These counties were pivotal for Trump’s victory in 2016, and will continue to be crucial in the 2020 election and beyond. This paper uses an ethnographic method to understand why Pacific County flipped to vote for a Republican after voting for Democratic presidential candidates every cycle since 1952.

My findings suggest that the shift began with the long decline of the natural resource industry in the area. As industry diminished, unions became weaker, and they could …

Giardia Lamblia Growth In Viscoelastic Fluids, Kelly Watanabe

CMC Senior Theses

Giardia lamblia is a single-celled protozoan parasite that when ingested, causes diarrheal disease and infects 33% of people in developing countries. Previous studies observe Giardia in water-like fluids, but Giardia's infectious environment consists of viscoelastic mucus in the small intestine. Therefore, Giardia was cultured in viscoelastic fluids, and its population growth was observed in vitro. To create shear-thinning viscoelastic fluids, 0.2% and 0.4% long-chain polyacrylamide (LCPAM) was added to cell culture media. Giardia was cultured in control media, 0.2% LCPAM, and 0.4% LCPAM, and population growth was quantitatively determined over time. Increasing LCPAM concentration resulted in a solution with …

Generation, Identification And Characterization Of Novel Monoclonal Antibodies Against Ctla-4, Pd-1 And Btla For The Treatment Of Cancer, Rosabril Acuna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Members of the CD28 co-inhibitory receptor family, Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte- associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4), Program death-1 (PD-1) and B- and T-lymphocyte attenuator (BTLA) are type I transmembrane proteins expressed on a variety of immune cells. Co- inhibitory receptors deliver "off" signals that play an important role in down regulating immune cell activation. Manipulation of inhibitory signals have shown to be a powerful strategy in the treatment of autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases and various forms of cancer. In fact, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has approved the use of monoclonal antibodies against CTLA-4 (Ipilimumab) for the treatment of metastatic melanoma, against …

Movement Ecology Of A Cryptic Ambush Predator: Integrating Radio Telemetry And Tri-Axial Accelerometry To Evaluate Spatial Strategies And Activity Patterns By Western Diamond-Backed Rattlesnakes (Crotalus Atrox), Dominic L. Desantis

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

An animal's decision to move from one location to another within its environment is determined by a complex blend of internal and external factors. Teasing apart the relative roles of specific variables in this web of interacting mechanisms has been a long-standing challenge in animal movement ecology. Historically, this problem was viewed as a sort of black box for which a myriad of methodological limitations precluded rigorous study. Recently, a diversity of animal-borne transmitters and dataloggers (i.e., bio-loggers) have circumvented many of these traditional limitations and transformed field studies of animal movement, behavior, and physiology - in some cases, allowing …

Assessment Of Point Of Use (Pou) Systems For Reducing Health Risks Associated With Drinking Water Along The U.S.-Mexico Colonias In The Paso Del Norte Region, Varinia Viridiana Felix Parra

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the Paso del Norte Region along the U.S. Mexico Border, there are more than 5,000 families living in impoverished communities known as colonias that lack access to basic infrastructure services such as a public water system. These depend on hauling trucks that deliver water into their storage tanks. Water storage practices by colonia residents on both sides of the border pose an enormous risk for waterborne disease outbreaks and heavy metal contamination because the water quality can decrease rapidly due to volatilization of the residual chlorine, intrusion of rainfall and air-laden dust. Since connection to centralized water treatment and …

Examination Of Sex Differences And The Role Of Ovarian Hormones In Modulating Nicotine Withdrawal In Rats, Rodolfo Jesus Flores Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Introduction: Aim 1 characterized sex differences and the role of ovarian hormones in physical signs and negative affective states produced by nicotine withdrawal in female, ovariectomized female (OVX), and male rats. We also compared nicotine withdrawal and corticosterone levels with estradiol (E2) and progesterone across the 4-day estrous cycle. Aim 2 validated the role of ovarian hormones in withdrawal in OVX females that received vehicle, E2, or E2+progesterone. Methods: Female rats received a sham surgery or an ovariectomy procedure. Fifteen days later, all rats were implanted with a pump that delivered nicotine for 14 days. On the test day, separate …

Study Of Blinking Statistics In Silver Coated Cobalt Ferrite Single Nanoprticle Using Two-Photon Fluorescence Microscopy, Rajen Kumar Goutam

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Two-photon fluorescence microscopy is a powerful tool to study the molecular and cellular interactions. This technology is a non-invasive approach with the advantage of three-dimensional imaging up to submicron resolution. Two-photon excitation process is the result of simultaneous absorption of two photons that has special features of reduced photodamaged and elongated penetration depth on samples. In this work, blinking statistics of silver-coated Cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) single nanocrystal is studied using two-photon fluorescence microscopy. By defining the intensity threshold, the observed fluorescence is divided into two distinct stages: OFF and ON states. Both of these states followed the inverse power law. …

Ibuprofen As A Probe Of Lipid Metabolism, Jose Antonio Rosales

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The hypothesis that deracemization of racemic ibuprofen (IBU) occurs via the enolization of a Candida rugosa lipase (CRL)-ibuprofen ester (Scheme 1.6.2) was disproven by reacting racemic IBU under the conditions that were used to deracemize ibuprofen methyl ester (IME), namely pH 7.6. At pH 7.6, IME through IBU butyl esters were not formed in-situ and racemic IBU was not deracemized by reacting the corresponding primary alcohol with racemic IBU in the presence of CRL.

At pH 7.6, hexyl through dodecyl IBU esters were formed in-situ by reacting the corresponding primary alcohol with racemic IBU in the presence of CRL. The …

Preclinical Models Of Metastatic Disease, Paloma Alejandra Valenzuela

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Breast cancer is a disease that continues to take the life of approximately 40,000 men and women in the United States each year [1]. Tumor drug resistance represents a major problem for the treatment of many breast cancer patients. The mechanisms underlying such resistance remain to be elucidated, and one approach to study this issue involves the development of tumor drug-resistant breast cancer models in mice. HER-2 positive breast cancer is considered to be one of the most aggressive subtypes of breast cancer and has become a major target for treatment. HER-2 status is a routinely checked marker for breast …