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Using Software Defined Radio to Detect Human Life
No full textThe goal of this project is to develop a device that uses software-defined radio to detect human biological activity through walls by detecting changes in the received signals depending on if a human is present or not. Such a device will help local survivors locate victims from being stuck under collapsed buildings and debris, as opposed to having to wait for search and rescue teams. By making a relatively low cost and easy to use device, a more practical application of human detection was developed. Results showed that while the device requires user interpretation to determine the presence of a human at a more limited range, evidence shows that it is capable of detecting human respiration rate through walls at a distance of 1.1-1.2 meters while costing less than 400 USD, pointing towards the benefit of further investment into improving the device
“Seeing someone like me succeed made me believe I could too!”: Evaluating the Big-Sib & Little-Sib Mentorship Program at Swarthmore College
No full textThis thesis evaluates the Bio Big Sib & Little Sib Mentorship Program in Swarthmore College’s Biology Department, a student-led initiative supporting racial/ethnic minority and first-generation, low-income (FLI) students. Launched in 2021, the program pairs upperclassmen with underclassmen to offer guidance, build community, and affirm student identity within a predominantly white, elite academic environment. Using a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative interviews and survey data, this study examines the program’s effectiveness and long-term impact on student belonging, academic navigation, and identity development. Findings reveal that the program has become a vital support structure, helping participants access the “hidden curriculum” and fostering emotional and cultural validation.
Mentorship was described as critical for developing confidence, navigating departmental expectations, and feeling a sense of belonging in STEM. Many mentees later became mentors, contributing to a sustaining cycle of support. However, the evaluation also identified challenges, including inconsistent engagement, the need for more inclusive programming, and limited institutional support. While student leadership has improved the program’s structure over time, participants emphasized that mentorship alone cannot replace the need for increased faculty diversity and broader systemic equity efforts. Positioned within the broader political landscape, including the 2023 Supreme Court ban on affirmative action, this thesis argues that peer mentorship programs can function as both practical interventions and acts of quiet resistance. The Bio Big Sib & Little Sib Program offers a replicable model for how student-led, culturally responsive mentorship can meaningfully transform departmental climate and promote equity in STEM education
“It’s Just What You Do in a Relationship”: A Linguistic Analysis of Sexual Consent Discourse
No full textEthical Implications Of Being A Holobiont
No full textDevelopmental plasticity and holobiont theory have undermined the normative concepts of biological individuality. However, such traditional ideas of biological individuality have helped define and support Western ethical views into the 21st century. Guided by some of the ethical formulae of Simone Weil, Hans Jonas, and Alastair MacIntyre, this essay attempts to outline some possible trajectories for an ethics that is bounded by these new biological paradigms of environmental agency. Specifically, the ecological developmental biology concepts of plasticity and holobiont theory permit the “ethics of attention” to focus on the partnerships of living beings. Highlighting environmentally integrated life cycles and their sympoietic comings-into being provides new perspectives on life and on the roles of science in larger cultural contexts
Structured Data From Dictionary Text: Applying LLMs For Low-Resource Cross-Lingual Information Extraction
No full textThe development of machine-readable lexical resources for low-resource languages, such as Kyrgyz, faces significant challenges due to limited NLP tools and poorly structured linguistic data. In this paper, we introduce an innovative method for extracting structured lexical information from Yudakhin’s Russian-Kyrgyz dictionary, a bilingual resource with inconsistent entry formatting. Our approach utilizes GPT-4o to bootstrap a dataset and explores both few-shot learning and fine-tuning techniques to convert dictionary entries into a structured JSON schema. We assess the impact of varying few-shot example sizes on model performance and compare the effectiveness of few-shot learning against fine-tuning across several models, including an open-source option. Our results demonstrate notable success, with the highest-performing model achieving 92.70% accuracy, 95.60% precision, 91.64% recall, and a 93.56% F1 score. This study highlights the potential of large language models in cross-lingual information extraction for low-resource languages and offers a scalable, cost-effective solution for digitizing complex bilingual dictionaries
Labor and Beet Sugar, a Modern Commodity in the United States Between 1890 and 1920
Get PDFThe turn of the twentieth century saw a booming American beet sugar industry. For the first time beet sugar rivaled cane sugar in feeding growing domestic demand. Examined here are numerous factors considered significant in the sudden explosion of an industry which had previously failed to establish itself on the continent, including trade policy, monopolization, and advancements in industrial technology. However, in returning to contemporaneous primary literature on the subject, including grower’s manuals, histories of the plant, and economic analysis, I locate labor as a significant and often overlooked base of growth in the industry. Thus it was through innovations in mobilizing large, itinerant labor forces that the industry surged in the United States and accounted for increasingly large proportions of total sugar production
Review Of An Instrumentalist Theory Of Political Legitimacy By M. Brinkmann
No full textThis superb book presents a clear, robust, densely argued, and innovative defense of an instrumentalist approach to the justification of political legitimacy. Namely, political power is justified (i.e., morally permissible) to the extent that it promotes justice effectively. Stressing moral permissibility thus excludes purely descriptive accounts; for example, while governments throughout the world recognize the Xi Jinping government as legitimate, Brinkmann (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany) would not. Some implications he draws are that there can be political legitimacy without authority, without a duty to obey, and without any deep foundational (i.e., non-instrumentalist) principles. Consent, democracy, and procedural concerns are valuable insofar as they promote effective justice, but they are not stand-alone justifications. Brinkmann carefully and thoughtfully elucidates many of these terms, but he provides no definitive account of justice other than that it would be broadly liberal—a lacuna he acknowledges. Brinkmann pays close attention to possible criticisms, which is another merit of his book. It deserves to be studied—not just read—by all serious students of political philosophy and political theory. It belongs in graduate libraries that cater to philosophers, political scientists, and sociologists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals
Sites Of Planet Formation In Binary Systems. II. Double The Disks In DF Tau
No full textThis article presents the latest results of our Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) program to study circumstellar disk characteristics as a function of orbital and stellar properties in a sample of young binary star systems known to host at least one disk. Optical and infrared observations of the eccentric, ∼48 yr period binary DF Tau indicated the presence of only one disk around the brighter component. However, our 1.3 mm ALMA thermal continuum maps show two nearly equal-brightness components in this system. We present these observations within the context of updated stellar and orbital properties, which indicate that the inner disk of the secondary is absent. Because the two stars likely formed together, with the same composition, in the same environment, and at the same time, we expect their disks to be co-eval. However the absence of an inner disk around the secondary suggests uneven dissipation. We consider several processes that have the potential to accelerate inner disk evolution. Rapid inner disk dissipation has important implications for planet formation, particularly in the terrestrial-planet-forming region
Implications Of The Cosmic Calibration Tension Beyond ��₀ And The Synergy Between Early- And Late-Time New Physics
No full textThe cosmic calibration tension is a \u3e5�� discrepancy between the cosmological distance ladder built from baryonic acoustic oscillations calibrated by the Planck/Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) sound horizon (����) and type Ia supernovae calibrated instead with the SH0ES absolute magnitude, assuming the distance-duality relationship holds. In this work, we emphasize the consequences of this tension beyond the value of the Hubble constant ��₀ and the implications for physics beyond ΛCDM. Of utmost importance, it implies a larger physical matter density ��ₘ≡Ωₘℎ², as both the fractional matter density Ωₘ and ℎ ≡��₀/100 km/s/Mpc are well constrained from late-time data. New physics in the prerecombination era must thus be able to decrease ���� while either reducing the value of Ωₘ or increasing the value of ��ₘ. Assuming a ΛCDM-like primordial power spectrum, this necessarily results in an increase in the clustering amplitude ��₈. Deviations from ΛCDM in the late-time expansion history cannot resolve the calibrator tension but can help relax the required shifts to the matter density and ��₈: it is in that sense that a combination of early- and late-time new physics may help alleviate the tension. More precisely, models that modify the prerecombination expansion history can accommodate the increase in ��m without the need for additional modifications. It is those models which only affect recombination that require additional deviations at late times to be successful. Hence, the cosmic calibration tension points either to a targeted modification of the prerecombination expansion history or to a broader change affecting multiple cosmic epochs