Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing Barriers And Benefits To A Food Waste Composting Pilot Program In Oberlin, Ohio, Julia Halm

Honors Papers

Food waste represents significant amounts of money, energy, and natural resources throughout its lifecycle from production to disposal. Diverting the quantity of food waste sent to landfills is necessary to address the growing strain on resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This study was a collaborative effort between the City of Oberlin and Oberlin College designed to identify challenges and benefits to establishing a pilot municipal composting program. Establishing a citywide composting program will help Oberlin achieve its goal of carbon neutrality. We used food audits, stakeholder interviews, and emissions reduction models to better understand the best approach to municipal …

Representation, Narrative, And “Truth”: Literary And Historical Epistemology In 19th-Century France, Samuel A. Schuman

Honors Papers

My thesis examines the fluid boundaries between French historical and literary writing in the 19th century, and the shifts in “historical consciousness” that occurred in both fields as the century progressed. I examine three exemplary French writers—Jules Michelet, a historian, and Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola, both novelists—considering each primarily as a historical thinker, regardless of whether they considered themselves to be one. I argue that as the 19th century progressed, the broad shift in French institutions towards positivist epistemological and explanatory frameworks was reflected in literature, as well as in history. Both disciplines, one increasingly academic and one …

Autoridad Subversiva: La Construcción De Poder Y Conocimiento Intergeneracional Y Transatlántico En Círculos Femeninos Durante La Inquisición Española, Eliza Honor Braverman

Honors Papers

This honors thesis examines archival and fictional representations of women in the early modern Spanish empire who engaged in heterodox practices, considering the purposes and efficacy of their work, the material vestiges of the resistance to regulations imposed by Spanish Inquisitorial bodies, and the ways they mobilized traditional knowledge to construct intimate, diverse, and intergenerational communities. Examining questions of representation, resistance, and persecution in both the Iberian peninsula and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, this project considers the alignment of the period of transition––between the Middle Ages and Renaissance––with the escalation of imperial expansion as integral to the understanding of …

Dancing On The Dead: Death, Entertainment, And Respectability In Victorian London, Noa H. Segal

Honors Papers

As industrializing nineteenth-century London found itself in the position of a prominent world capital, the city faced problems of overcrowding, high poverty, and waves of epidemics, making the dead progressively more visible in public spheres of society. This thesis examines different forms of publicly-spectated death in Victorian London, moving from anatomical dissections to funerals to burials, following the Victorian corpse in these moments of dealing with the dead and the level of media involvement in structuring and marketing each of these spectacles to the public. While the current historiographical debate surrounding spectacles of death in nineteenth-century Europe agrees that death …

Grotesque, Bodily, And Hydrous: The Liminal Landscapes Of The Underworld In Homer, Virgil, And Dante, Sophia Zandi

Honors Papers

This paper traces the liminal hydro-geologies of the Underworld through the works of Homer, Virgil, and Dante with the intention of understanding the Western Underworld as an ecosemiosphere—a mythological place with a close reciprocity to a physical environment. I focus on the entrances and margins of the infernal realm, the places where myth and world merge most intensely. Located in the fluid interspace between the world and the Underworld, this project is fundamentally about permeable boundaries. Particularly because of the boundary-crossing nature of fluids, water guides this journey into the margins of the nether realm. The infernal realm is accessible …

The Worst First Citizen, Sarah Nicole Passannante

Honors Papers

In his telling of the Life of Nero, Suetonius crafted an image of an archetypical tyrant that he then used throughout his other Lives. The princeps was Rome's premier citizen--as such, they needed to perform all aspects of citizenship as well as possible, especially in regards to successfully performing masculinity. Therefore, to be a good emperor was to embody male virtue; to be a bad emperor was to be effeminate and lack virtue. Suetonius crafted a rhetorical trope of the unmanly tyrant using his portrayal of Nero. This is seen most clearly in Nero 29, where Nero was sexually passive …

Retributive Justice: A Review Of The Ethical Considerations Surrounding Capital Punishment And Solitary Confinement As Used In United States Correctional Facilities, Adelaide Marie Laros

Honors Papers

The purpose of this paper is to argue the use of capital punishment and segregated housing throughout United States correctional facilities constitute human rights violations through torture. Regardless of the reason for their application, these penalties are physically and psychologically damaging, inconsistently assigned, costly, and, in their most potent form, fatal. As such, I advocate for the national abolishment of these practices. In their place, I support enacting policies that promote education and reformation over punishment. My aim in making this argument is to encourage a transition away from the popular American judicial ideology grounded in retribution toward a framework …

Intellectual Property Through A Non-Western Lens: Patents In Islamic Law, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

Faculty Scholarship

The intersection of secular, Western intellectual property law and Islamic law is undertheorized in legal scholarship. Yet the nascent and developing non-Western law of one form of intellectual property—patents—in Islamic legal systems is profoundly important for transformational innovation and economic development initiatives of Muslim-majority countries that comprise nearly one-fifth of the world’s population.

Recent scholarship highlights the tensions of intellectual property in Islamic law because religious considerations in an Islamic society do not fully align with Western notions of patents. As Islamic legal systems have begun to embrace patents in recent decades, theories of patents have presented conceptual and theological …

Rad Modulation Of The L-Type Calcium Channel Confers Systolic Advantage In The Heart, Brooke Mildred Ahern

Theses and Dissertations--Physiology

Heart failure is a major public health problem and a leading cause of mortality. This clinical condition affects populations of all ages, and is the result of various cardiomyopathies. Almost half of these patients suffer specifically from heart failure with reduced ejection fraction; these hearts have decreased performance due to a failure of the heart to contract with sufficient force to meet demand. While there are therapies available to increase contractility, none of these enhance contraction without also further promoting pathological signaling and remodeling.

Under normal physiological conditions, the body elevates cardiac output through the fight-or-flight response. This response activates …

Myelin, Cpla2, And Azithromycin: Modulation Of Macrophage Activation In Spinal Cord Injury Inflammation, Timothy J. Kopper

Theses and Dissertations--Physiology

Spinal cord injury (SCI) produces a chronic inflammatory state primarily mediated by macrophages consisting of resident microglia and infiltrating monocytes. These chronically activated SCI macrophages adopt a pro-inflammatory, pathological state that continues to cause additional damage after the initial injury and inhibits recovery. While the roles of macrophages in SCI pathophysiology are well documented, the factors contributing to this maladaptive response are poorly understood. Here, we identify the detrimental effects of myelin debris on macrophage physiology and demonstrate a novel, activation state-dependent role for cytosolic phospholipase-A2 (cPLA₂) in myelin- mediated potentiation of pro-inflammatory macrophage activation. Macrophage- mediated inflammatory …

Dexamethasone Serum Concentrations After Intravenous Administration In Horses During Race Training, S. Mcclure, C. K. Fenger, K. Kersh, Bradley Brown, G. Maylin, W. Duer, L. Dirikolu, K. Brewer, Jacob Machin, Thomas Tobin

Veterinary Science Faculty Publications

Dexamethasone (DXM) sodium phosphate is a widely used corticosteroid for inflammatory conditions in horses, regulated in racing jurisdictions in the USA by a 0.005 ng/ml serum/plasma threshold. This study seeks to describe serum concentrations of DXM at 48 and 72 h after intravenous administration of 20 mg DXM sodium phosphate over 1 to 5 days, and to identify a possible source of DXM overages. 74 horses (39 Thoroughbreds, 13 Standardbreds, 22 Quarter Horses) in active race training received 20 mg DXM sodium phosphate. Serum was collected before injection, at 48 and 72 h post last injection, and analysed by LC/MS-MS …

Uncovering Object Categories In Infant Views, Naiti S. Bhatt

Scripps Senior Theses

While adults recognize objects in a near-instant, infants must learn how to categorize the objects in their visual environments. Recent work has shown that egocentric head-mounted camera videos contain rich data that illuminate the infant experience (Clerkin et al., 2017; Franchak et al., 2011; Yoshida & Smith, 2008). While past work has focused on the social information in view, in this work, we aim to characterize the objects in infants’ at-home visual environments by modifying modern computer vision models for the infant view. To do so, we collected manual annotations of objects that infants seemed to be interacting within a …

Pore Space Property, Joseph A. Schremmer

Faculty Scholarship

Through modern technology we can use the void pore space of underground rock formations for a growing number of socially beneficial purposes. These run the gamut from unconventional oil and gas production to climate change mitigation. The common law of property and tort, however, has struggled to keep up with advancing technology in this area. Significant questions remain about the nature of property rights in pore space. Of particular interest are the limits, if any, on an owner’s right to use pore space for beneficial purposes when it extends beneath the land of another. For example, may A hydraulically fracture …

Summer Treatment Programs: Counselors And Care Practices, Christina X. You

Scripps Senior Theses

Employing a mixed psychosocial and pharmacological approach, STPs offer six to nine weeks of intensive treatment for children deemed to have social and behavioral difficulties. One major asset STPs claim is their natural, fun setting—a true summer camp space for activities and open peer interaction—in which children learn positive behaviors that they can generalize into external social settings. Yet STPs are also highly structured. Staff, who are often undergraduate and graduate students, are trained in operant learning strategies to promote “positive” and suppress “maladaptive” behaviors, strict activity guidelines, and evaluations for procedural adherence. The program was developed based on the …

The Deborah Jones Merritt Center For The Advancement Of Justice, Claudia Angelos, Mary Lu Bilek, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

When invited to write an essay on clinical legal education honoring our friend, we were struck by the importance of a focus on clinical legal education in any collection of work paying tribute to Professor Deborah Jones Merritt. Legal education has benefited from a fifty-year movement for clinical education. This movement necessarily interrogates and seeks to overcome the anachronistic, inherited Langdellian paradigm that dominates and continues to define the curricula and policies of our law schools. But the movement for clinical education has been exponentially confounded by contemporary legal education’s shape as a pyramid of statuses and privileges accumulated over …

Examining Anthorpogenic Pressures On Madgascar Carnivorans, Erin M. Wampole

Open Access Master's Theses

Biodiversity is increasingly threatened by anthropogenic disturbance globally. Information on the status of species and their response to changing environments is required to determine mitigation strategies before range contractions, population declines, or extinctions occur. Madagascar is a renowned biodiversity hotspot, comprising some of the highest levels of floral and faunal endemism in the world. Madagascar is also home to the most understudied family of carnivorans in the world, Eupleridae. Eupleridae is comprised of eight unique species that we currently lack fundamental knowledge about yet are of high conservation concern. Madagascar has experienced intense landscape changes from human expansion and resource …

The Reintroduction Of A Sustainable And Nutritious Food Source: The American Chestnut, Eva Scott

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

No abstract provided.

Investigating The Role Of Hmx3a In Danio Rerio Dl2 Spinal Interneuron Specification And Ear Development, Yasmine Chahine

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

No abstract provided.

Engineering Viral Proteins For Use As Immune Response Suppressors, Katherine Winebrake

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

No abstract provided.

Hybridization Between A Native Lizard (Anolis Carolinensis) And A Cryptic Invader (A. Porcatus) Across An Urban Landscape, Tyler B. Devos

Open Access Master's Theses

Invasive species impact native biota through competition, predation, and habitat alteration but can also transform native populations through hybridization. Outcomes of such hybridization events are variable and may result in the formation of a stable hybrid tension zone, extinction of one parental species via genetic swamping, hybrid speciation, or adaptive introgression. Hybrid population dynamics are further complicated by anthropogenic habitat disturbance, which has been shown to influence patterns of admixture and introgression between native and invasive species. Hybridization between the native lizard Anolis carolinensis and a morphologically similar invader (A. porcatus) in South Miami, Florida provides an ideal …

Development Of A Road Mortality Hotspot Model For Amphibians And Reptiles In Rhode Island, Noah Hallisey

Open Access Master's Theses

Road mortality poses a serious threat to amphibians and reptiles and can lead to population declines and localized extirpation. Given road mortality tends to aggregate spatially at locations commonly referred to as road mortality hotspots, identifying the most appropriate locations for mitigation measures, such as road tunnels and culverts, is an important first step in reducing road mortality. However, the influence of imperfect detection (e.g., false absences) during road mortality surveys can lead to poor spatial patterns of road mortality hotspots and suboptimal implementation of mitigation measures intended to reduce road mortality. In this study, occupancy modeling was used to …

Post-Emergence Movements And Habitat Use By Hatchling Diamondback Terrapins (Malaclemys Terrapin), Carolyn Decker

Open Access Master's Theses

Diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin) require estuarine habitats for most aspects of their life cycles. However, adult female terrapins nest in coastal uplands, and hatchling terrapins use upland habitats following nest emergence. In these upland areas, hatchlings are particularly vulnerable to mortality risks from coastal land management activities such as mowing and tilling. From 2019 to 2021, we used small tracking devices to monitor hatchling movements and habitat use at a wildlife refuge in Rhode Island. When hatchlings emerged from nests in late summer and early fall, we attached a radio transmitter and passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag (n=46) or only …

Simulation Based Evaluation Of Pallet Management Strategies In The Context Of Sustainability, Niklas Thiele

Open Access Master's Theses

Due to the continuous pursuit of increasing the efficiency of logistical operations as well as increasing the sustainability of supply chains, choosing the correct pallet management strategy is essential. With increasing cost pressure as well as growing environmental awareness, it is necessary to utilize all potentials within a supply chain including the operation of pallets. In order to estimate the ecological and economic impacts caused by different pallet management strategies, the use of simulation methods has been utilized in this research.

To predict close-to reality results, it is necessary to create generic models, which offer high adaptability for real world …

Rethinking Habitat And How We Study Human-Wildlife Relationships, Kimberly Rivera

Open Access Master's Theses

Current methods to model species habitat use through space and diel time are limited. Development of such models is critical when considering rapidly changing habitats where species are forced to adapt to anthropogenic change, often by shifting their diel activity across space. The first chapter of this manuscript focuses on redeveloping occupancy models to incorporate hypotheses on species diel habitat use. This alternative occupancy framework, called the multi-state diel occupancy model (MSDOM), can evaluate species diel activity against continuous response variables which may impact diel activity within and across seasons or years. We used two case studies on fosa, a …

New Distributional Records For Ectoparasites (Acari: Laelapidae, Myocoptidae) Of The Woodland Vole, Microtus Pinetorum (Rodentia: Cricetidae) From Polk County, Arkansas, Chris T. Mcallister, Lance A, Durden

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

The woodland vole, Microtus pinetorum is a common Arkansas rodent found statewide. To our knowledge, it has been surveyed only once in the state for ectoparasites. Here, a single specimen was examined and found to be infested with 3 species of mites, including Androlaelaps fahrenholzi, Laelaps alaskensis, and Myocoptes japonensis. This is the first time L. alaskensis and M. japonensis have been reported from Arkansas.

Distal Excurrent Ducts And Penile Morphology Of The Urogenital System In The Mississippi Mud Turtle, Kinosternon Subrubrum Hippocrepis (Chelonia:Kinosternidae), Stanley E. Trauth, Michael V. Plummer

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

We examined the distal excurrent ductal morphology and penile anatomy of the urogenital system in the Mississippi Mud Turtle, Kinosternon subrubrum hippocrepis, from a small sample of individuals collected in Arkansas in order to provide additional information regarding turtle urogenital anatomy. Specifically, we focused on the basic anatomy and histology of distal excurrent ducts (ductus deferens and ureter), associated structures (urogenital papillae), and penile histology in this kinosternid turtle. In addition, we provide an overview of the gross urogenital anatomy in this turtle, given that little detailed information exists on this topic in the chelonian literature.

Please Consult Your Lawyer Before Taking Sorrell: How The Fda Should Approach Social Media For Prescription Drug Advertising, Steven Valentino

Upper Level Writing Requirement Research Papers

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Morphology, Substrate And Wind On The Clinging Ability Of Anolis Lizards During Hurricane-Force Winds, Emma Dipaolo

Open Access Master's Theses

Extreme weather events have been identified as drivers of natural selection and evolutionary change across populations and species. A recent study showed that the high wind speeds generated by hurricanes caused selection favoring particular phenotypes for island lizards. Anolis lizards (or anoles) commonly live on islands and in coastal areas frequently disturbed by hurricanes. A hallmark of the Anolis radiation is the evolution of morphological variation among species as illustrated by the evolution of different ecomorphs, which have evolved varying limb and toe morphologies to occupy different parts of arboreal habitats. Differences in limb length and toepad size lead to …

Contribution Of Maternal Mrna Provisioning To Embryonic Stress Response In A Reef-Building Coral, Erin Elizabeth Chille

Open Access Master's Theses

Prior to fertilization, mothers provision their oocytes with mRNA that regulates the early stages of development and may additionally include transcripts for proteins that support embryonic stress response early on. At some point during embryogenesis, however, these maternal transcripts are degraded as zygotic transcription activates and intensifies during a phenomenon known as the maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT). Some evidence suggests that as the MZT progresses, and the effects of maternal transcripts are waning while the zygotic expression is being established, offspring of marine broadcast spawners become more vulnerable to environmental perturbations. In light of escalating threats to marine broadcast spawners, it …

Design Of A Platform For Interaction With Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Virtual Reality Technology, Janis Kinzinger

Open Access Master's Theses

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more and more integrated into our lives as they are able to fulfill new tasks and become more affordable. Human-UAV Interaction (HUI) therefore is an important topic researcher are working on. As a type of UAVs, quadcopters are characterized with uncertainties in their flying behavior and considered dangerous for humans because of their spinning propellers. Interaction through touch is therefore rarely used as interaction method. Hence, in this work Virtual Reality (VR) is used to simulate a quadcopter to create a platform for virtual HUI. In the development process, Unity was chosen to handle …