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My Body Is a Question Mark Lit from Within
Get PDFIn her MFA thesis “My Body Is a Question Mark Lit from Within,” Lisa Marie Schrad explores through poetry the body and its different appetites—hunger for justice, for healing, for God, for home, for wonder. Along the way, the poems also make clear that the path toward fullness and satisfaction must inevitably pass through a deep, brave commitment to knowing the full truth about ourselves. When a light shines out from inside the body, what shortcomings are exposed? What goodness is revealed? And how do we live in the world responsibly, kindly, from the space in-between our questions and their answers? In addition to these themes, Schrad offers an introduction on her understanding of poetics and reflects on what drew her to poetry even as a child
A Moody Memory: The Impact of Affective State on Source Memory and Reality Monitoring
Get PDFMany researchers have studied the impact of mood on various cognitive processes, but few have analyzed how it affects source memory and internal-external reality monitoring processes. Numerous findings indicate that sad moods are likely to yield more accurate memory than happy moods due to different information processing techniques, suggesting that sad mood could improve source memory and reality monitoring as well. After being induced into either a happy or sad mood, participants were presented with a list of 30 noun-verb-noun phrases in which the second noun was either generated for them by the computer or they were asked to fill it in themselves. They were then given the first noun from each phrase and asked to fill in the correct second noun it was previously paired with before making a source judgement about whether it was originally self-generated or computer-generated. Results indicated a main effect of mood where happy mood yielded slightly better memory than the negative mood and a main effect of memory type where reality monitoring scores exceeded those of item memory. Some research on how happy mood enhances cognitive processes can explain these findings and self-generation effects help explain why reality monitoring scores were higher than item memory scores. Overall, happy mood was found to moderately enhance memory accuracy, but further research is still necessary to determine how it affects internal-external reality monitoring
What We Need: A Poetic Study in Struggle and Self-Healing
Get PDFIn many ways, this thesis examines the eternal, repetitive inevitabilities of life. In a collection of poems, these inevitabilities are examined through the eyes of an observant and omniscient narrator: a girl, long in love with a boy, facing the struggles and rewards of learning to be alone in various ways after the 2020 pandemic. Because this thesis provides an examination of struggles and self-healing alongside its creative centerpiece of the collection, the poems are accompanied by a compilation of memoiristic reflections. This thesis contributes to conversations of mental health, love, growth, and finding legitimacy and value in creative work, and it communicates universal emotions and struggles through a unique perspective
Using NASA\u27s TESS Mission to Search for Extremely Low Mass White Dwarf Stars
Get PDFExtremely low-mass white dwarf stars (ELM) are white dwarf stars with a mass lower than 0.45 solar masses that could not have evolved through normal processes within the lifetime of our universe. Therefore, these objects can only be created through a common envelope phase or a stable Roche lobe overflow while in a binary. These objects have periods between a few minutes to a few hours, so they are very short lived which makes them very rare. My goal for this project was to find these ELM stars by using NASA\u27s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) data. I analyzed this data and did follow-up research using ZTF, SDSS, and my own observations. Through my research, I was able to find 2 ELMs, 5 WD+dM binaries, and 4 cataclysmic variables. These ELMs are sources of persistent gravitational waves that will be detectable by future space-based missions
Effects of Intermittent Alcohol and Nicotine Cc-consumption in C57BL/6J Mice
Get PDFTwo of the world’s leading causes of preventable deaths include the use of alcohol and tobacco. While independently these substances have negative consequences, they are often used in combination. For instance, those who are dependent on nicotine are more likely to engage in hazardous drinking and/or have a dependence on alcohol and vice versa. As different methods of consuming nicotine become more normalized, there is a concern of associated harmful alcohol consumption being that both substances are widely available and rewarding. The goal of the current study was to understand the relationship between nicotine and alcohol and the behavioral effects of co-dependence in an animal drinking model. In the current study, C57BL/6J mice underwent intermittent access to a two-bottle drinking paradigm to investigate physical dependence on alcohol, nicotine, or a combination of both. The concentration of alcohol was increased weekly while the concentration of nicotine remained constant. After the consumption period, mice were then subjected to an open field test (OFT) 24 hours after removal of the test bottles to examine the anxiety-like behavior exhibited during withdrawal from these substances. In all concentrations examined, there was a high preference and increased consumption for alcohol compared to the nicotine-only group. The OFT failed to illustrate significant group differences to demonstrate withdrawal. The current data underscores the complicated nature of alcohol and nicotine co-consumption and withdrawal
Acceptance, Empowerment, and Change: The Experiences of LGBTQ Jewish Women at Camp Ramah and Beyond
Get PDFThe overlap between being Jewish, LGBTQ, and a woman has not been well studied, and the nuances of these intersecting identities have often been overlooked. Focusing on these intersections, my research examines a group of LGBTQ Jewish women linked by their experiences with one Jewish summer camping network, Camp Ramah, focusing on how they experienced inclusion or exclusion and empowerment or disempowerment. Those I interviewed all had communities they felt fully accepted in, and all felt that Judaism was compatible with their sexuality or gender identity; however, participants did face discrimination at Ramah and in the wider Jewish community. At Ramah, they experienced some discomfort from their peers about their sexuality, and in the wider Jewish community, their sexuality was not acknowledged. Particularly in Orthodox spaces, they also faced discrimination because of their gender. Despite these experiences of discrimination, the participants in my study felt generally accepted in Jewish communities, empowered to change tradition, and able to shape Jewish communities to become even more accepting and inclusive. My research demonstrates how the Conservative movement and the Ramah Camping Movement have become more accepting of LGBTQ Jews and Jewish women, while also showing how those shaped by Conservative movement institutions are now seeking to create more welcoming and diverse communities
Stripping Down Sexual Scripts: A Sexual Analysis of Female-Authored Novels from Time\u27s 100 Must-Read Books of 2019
Get PDFMost research on sexual content in the media has focused on visual media such as television and film, often overlooking novels. Likewise, research studies on sexual content have not studied the role of authorship. The pattern of accepted sexual scripts in novels, particularly those written by male authors, and the impact that these scripts have on the reader’s understanding of sexuality and sexual behaviors merits further research. This study analyzed sexual content in eight female-authored literary fiction novels from Time’s “100 Must-Read Novels of 2019.” Results found that fiction novels depict a plethora of sexual behaviors. Across the eight books, there were 642 instances of sexual behaviors, including sexual intercourse (15%), sexual affection (28%), verbal references (46%), and sexual ideation (11%). Of the 99 instances of sexual intercourse, 44% of initiation of intercourse was unknown, 15% was mutually initiated, 23% male-initiated, and 18% female-initiated
Desire, Disgust, and the Perils of Strange Queenship in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene
No full textIn Edmund Spenser’s courtly romance, The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), the anxiety around queenship and power becomes a crucial site where racialization is produced through affect. While white womanhood secures the future of the Reformed realm, a foreign queen emblematizes the threat of infection, which can permeate the commonwealth religiously, culturally, or physiologically. At the point of contact, the strange woman’s embodied difference evokes feelings of wonder and desire that inform early modern racialization. In this essay, I argue that The Faerie Queene’s affective constructions of racial identities provide a productive lens through which a foreign queen’s racial otherness, namely her moral degeneration, sexual transgression, and religious idolatry, is made legible. This legibility is most vivid through the operative and disavowed component of disgust. By tracing how affective capacities shape the ideology of racial purity, I posit that boundaries of feeling operate as a coercive epistemological category in this sprawling allegory of hierarchy, difference, and power
Synthesis of Cyclopropyl Fluorescein Esters for Biochemical Assay
Get PDFFluorescent molecules have recently been used to observe and quantify biochemical processes. Within the last ten years, these molecules have been used to study serine hydrolases to learn more about how each one functions and what type of chemical groups they prefer. The data from the research on the BS2 serine hydrolase has revealed that there is a need to look further into the fluorogenic ester substrates that contain a cyclopropyl ring after data showed a strong preference to these substrates. This research project focused on the synthesis of fluorogenic cyclopropyl esters in preparation for biochemical assays. The synthesis was performed utilizing an original method developed by Dr. Luke Lavis. This original method needed to be altered for certain carboxylic acids, which revealed that extra steps to prevent hydrolysis of these unstable esters can lead to a larger yield, and success where past methods had failed. In total, thirteen syntheses were successfully completed, expanding the library of fluorescent molecules, and thus allowing further testing of the serine hydrolase preferences related to these substituted cyclopropyl ester derivatives. In the future, the modified methods used here could allow for further expansion of the library to include more unstable esters that have thus far been unattainable