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COVID-19 Safety Precautions: Self-Interest and Communal Orientations
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/87755652-dc93-4daa-a346-1908f4bb3f82/thumb/128.jpgPublic health messaging plays an important role in encouraging safety behaviors during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. While existing literature suggests that altruistic motives often drive compliance with protective measures, limited research has tested how motivational framing, specifically communal versus self-interest, affects real-time behavioral decisions. This study sought to examine whether two different framings on a sign could influence college students’ decision to wear a mask when entering a shared indoor space. Reed College students (N = 89) were randomly assigned to encounter one of two door signs that offered optional masks with framing that either emphasized communal responsibility (protecting others) or self-interest (protecting oneself. Results indicated that participants exposed to communal framing were significantly more likely to wear a mask than participants exposed to the self-interest framing, χ²(1) = 7.15, p = .008. These findings suggest that specific framings of external cues can influence immediate health-related behaviors. This has implications for future public health interventions as messaging with communal framing could be a helpful tool in promoting compliance during current or future health emergencies
Effects of Psychological Affect on Tipping
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/2818f80b-5556-4151-a2e8-786947ea3cb2/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis studies the effects of an individual’s positive or negative affect (in other words, their mood) on the amount of money they tip service workers. The results of several linear regressions on tipping in New York City taxi cabs across various points in time indicate an increase in percentage tips in the days following the announcements of Barack Obama's election in 2012, Donald Trump's election in 2016, as well as a decrease following Donald Trump's conviction in 2024. Linear regressions modeling percentage tips across time and voting behavior found that changes in tipping percentages directly after an election were mediated by political alignment in the days following the announcement of Obama's election in 2012 and de Blasio's election as New York City mayor in 2013. These findings contribute to the body of behavioral economics research indicating that tipping is not a rational behavior rooted in utility-maximization. Rather, tipping behavior is subject to irrational and arbitrary motivators such as a person's positive or negative affect. It also has implications for how positive or negative affect influences the behavior of individuals in a broader context
Kratom Kinetics: Investigating the Interaction Between CYP3A4 and Mitragynine.
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/7afe3e42-296b-4bf3-8faf-5959b13d1bc3/thumb/128.jpgKratom, a plant native to Southeast Asia, exhibits dose-dependent effects: at low doses, it produces energetic, caffeine-like stimulation, while at higher doses, it acts as a sedative and painkiller. One of the main psychoactive components of kratom is mitragynine, which accounts for more than half of the plant’s total alkaloid content. Mitragynine interacts with a variety of enzymes in the body, notably being metabolized by the liver enzyme CYP3A4, which transforms it into 7-hydroxymitragynine, a highly potent metabolite. CYP3A4 is very flexible, able to bind many substrates, and susceptible to cooperative interactions. It is also responsible for the metabolism of over 50% of the drugs currently prescribed or available on the market. In recent decades, kratom use has been increasing in the United States, raising important questions about how this plant and its metabolites interact with human metabolic systems and what physiological processes they might alter or disrupt. The first focus of this thesis was the purification of recombinant CYP3A4. To optimize the purification process, I modified existing protocols and used various chromatographic methods, including size-exclusion chromatography and stepwise imidazole elutions. A series of experiments characterizing CYP3A4-mitragynine binding were conducted using a range of spectroscopic and chromatographic techniques, such as UV-VIS spectroscopy, fast protein liquid chromatography, fluorescence size-exclusion chromatography, and mass photometry, to evaluate protein size, purity, and ligand binding. These studies confirmed the presence of a Type I ferric iron spectral shift upon mitragynine binding, suggesting a productive interaction between the enzyme and substrate. Despite improvements to the purification protocol, complete purity was not achieved, and both size-exclusion and mass photometry data indicated the presence of heterogeneous populations. Future studies should focus on resolving these discrepancies in protein size and using stopped-flow techniques to capture the rapid binding events within the first few minutes of interaction, providing more detailed insights into the kinetics of CYP3A4’s binding to mitragynine
The Rhetoric of Victimhood: How the Trans “Panic” Defenses Shape Jurors’ Inferences, Attitudes, and Decision-Making
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/b20189db-1df1-4a04-9219-1343254bdca0/thumb/128.jpgThe trans “panic” defenses are legal strategies that attempt to justify anti- transgender violence by arguing that the violent act was incited by the assaultee, whether through deception about their gender or an alleged attempt at sexual assault. These defenses utilize "victim framing," casting the assailant as the "real" victim of the violent act. I investigated whether and how victim framing in two variants of trans “panic” defenses—provocation and self-defense—shapes prospective jurors’ inferences, attitudes, and decision-making. Participants (total N = 898) read a transcript from a fictionalized assault case that framed either the transgender female assaultee as the victim of violence, the cisgender male assailant as the victim of deception or an unwanted sexual advance by the assaultee, or neither protagonist as a victim. Compared to the other framing conditions, framing the assailant as the victim of harm from the assaultee—the basic trans “panic” defense argument—generally led participants to infer that he was more capable of agency and experience, less likely to reoffend, and more justified in his actions relative to the assaultee. This trans “panic” framing also generally led participants to infer that the assailant’s defense attorney believed the jurors held more negative attitudes toward transgender people and were less familiar with them. Experiment 2 showed that trans “panic” framing in turn yielded more positive attitudes toward the assailant and less severe sentencing recommendations. Several of the inferences identified in Experiment 1 mediated these framing effects. These findings suggest that trans “panic” defenses elicit a host of inferences that guide juror decision-making in cases of anti-transgender violence
Bioeffect Modeling of the Response of Cancer Cells to Targeted Alpha Therapy Using OpenTOPAS
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/39a6b642-0a9d-40d8-8813-c3fc64068001/thumb/128.jpgTargeted alpha therapy is a novel radiation therapy treatment currently in clinical trials for cancer patients who have exhausted all other treatment options. Targeted alpha therapy consists of an alpha-emitting radionuclide bound to a targeting agent to direct radiation therapy treatment to specific cells. Alpha radiation holds promise for cancer treatment due to the fact that it induces double-strand DNA breaks at greater frequencies as compared to conventional radiotherapy methods, these double- stranded DNA breaks result in a higher likelihood of the cancer cells dying. In this thesis, simulations in OpenTOPAS were run for 211At, 212Pb, 212Bi, 225Ac, and 227Th to model the amount of dose they would deposit to a cancer cell population. From this dose data, bioeffect modeling methods were employed for two different types of breast cancer cells, HER2+ and MDA-MB-231, to estimate the surviving fraction of the 600-cell population throughout treatment. The effectiveness of alpha radiation therapy in comparison to conventional radiation therapy methods and the equivalent amount of dose from the conventional radiation therapy methods required to achieve the same surviving fraction as the alpha radiation was determined. Each radionuclide studied was found to be more effective than the conventional radiotherapy method at a surviving fraction of 10−4. However, each would have its own benefits and draw- backs in terms of cancer treatment. Although 225Ac and 227Th were most efficient in killing the cells, they deposited more dose than necessary to kill the cancer cells, thus increasing the risk of damage to surrounding tissue. 212Bi was most conservative in the amount of dose administered, but was not as efficient in terms of time required to reach a surviving fraction of 10−4. Therefore, when developing clinical plans to treat cancer with targeted alpha therapy, these factors must be taken into consideration in order to optimize treatment and minimize the damage to the healthy surrounding tissues to the greatest extent possible. The methods used in this thesis could be used for other cancer cell lines and for other radionuclides, as well as a basis for more complex simulations
Death and Divine Order: Religion and Prosocial Responsibility in Presbyterian Communities
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/ad174c58-2d68-4d11-9384-e016c3dac000/thumb/128.jpgTerror Management Theory (TMT) posits that many societal and psychological structures, religion in particular, give people frameworks through which they can mitigate their fear of death. Work done using TMT has shown that mortality salience (MS), or awareness of death, increases prosocial responsibility and behavior. Terror Management Theory posits that there are two essential components of managing terror – worldview and self-esteem – which are both reinforced through religious beliefs and practices. Prior psychological research indicates that religiosity can mitigate the negative effects of mortality salience and that mortality salience can enhance religiosity, even among non-religious individuals or those who identify as strict atheists. This thesis explores the relationship between religiosity and prosocial responsibility in two Presbyterian congregations in Portland, Oregon, and Banchory, Scotland, and the potential impact priming mortality salience has on self-reported prosocial responsibility. Results from both populations showed no significance of condition (mortality salience prime or control), but did reveal a significant positive relationship between higher religiosity and higher self-reported prosocial responsibility. While past evidence that displays a positive relationship between religiosity and prosocial responsibility, this project works to expand how psychological researchers discuss religion and, similarly, deepen the knowledge of how religion impacts many facets of the faithful’s lives and minds
Rascality on the Mississippi: The Henderson Gang & Criminalizing Black Mobility in the Antebellum South
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/7d37510a-65a2-496a-b606-92285b1206fe/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis examines the Mississippi River as a site of overlapping economic ambition and racial contestation in the antebellum United States. Far from being a neutral geographic feature or an inherently liberating force, the river functioned as a volatile corridor. Steamboat travel simultaneously enabled the expansion of the slave economy and provided opportunities for resistance by the very people it sought to subjugate. Yet the infrastructure that sustained this commerce also created gaps in authority, zones of ambiguity, and opportunities for subversion. Figures like the Henderson Gang and William Wells Brown both took advantage of the river’s spatial fluidity to carve out fleeting zones of autonomy, communication, and at times escape. At the heart of this thesis are the confessions of Madison Henderson and his accomplices, Black river workers who were executed in 1841 for a sensational robbery and double murder in St. Louis. Their confessions, shaped by both coercion and individual agency, reveal a philosophy of “rascality,” a defiant embrace of trickery, mobility, and material ambition that unnerved the moral and racial boundaries of the slaveholding south. Their actions contributed to widespread white panic, leading to new laws designed to restrict Black mobility and reinforce the boundaries of slavery. Drawing a plethora of confessions, slave narratives, and rich secondary sources, this thesis argues that the Mississippi River functioned as a site of friction between competing sovereignties and diverging Black and white aspirations. To that end, the thesis foregrounds the centrality of Black mobility in shaping the social order of the antebellum South. The Mississippi was not inherently inclined toward freedom; it was shaped by those who moved upon it
Revisiting NAFTA—Liberalization under Imperfect Market and Profits
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/8cde706f-231f-4fb2-b9da-ec39cef6884e/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis develops a multi-country, multi-sector Ricardian trade model that embeds Bertrand and Cournot oligopolistic competition into the general equilibrium framework of Caliendo and Parro (2015) to reassess the economic impact of NAFTA’s tariff reductions. While the assumption of constant markups preserves the structure of relative price and trade equations—yielding similar allocation patterns to the perfect-competition benchmark—the introduction of firm profits creates an additional source of income that fuels expenditure and amplifies welfare gains. Through a series of counterfactual simulations, I find that NAFTA’s effects on trade volumes and real income are consistently larger under oligopoly, with profit income redistributing benefits across countries and sectors. The model also suggests that NAFTA’s gains, particularly for Mexico, are more vulnerable to erosion when considered within the context of broader global liberalization. These results highlight the importance of accounting for market power in quantitative trade analysis: even with constant markups, incorporating firm profits alters the magnitude and distribution of gains from trade agreements, offering new insights into the interaction between globalization and industrial concentration
Genome duplication and cellular symbiosis: cloning a fluorescent reporter of CCS52A
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/5f757dd6-eb95-4bb4-b209-83fc0251584a/thumb/128.jpgIn order to access nitrogen from the air, soybeans (Glycine max) form symbiotic relationships with nitrogen fixing bacteria, called rhizobia, which they host within root nodules. Thousands of rhizobia are held within enlarged endopolyploid cells that have undergone multiple rounds of endoreduplication. Growing evidence suggests that, prior to rhizobial infection, nodule cells contain at least 4C genome content and have exited the cell cycle. In order to understand whether the initiation of endoreduplication could determine competency for cellular infection, I set out to determine whether commitment to endoreduplication occurs before or after infection by observing the activity of a fluorescent reporter for each event. Observation of fluorescently tagged rhizobia will show when rhizobia enter the cell, and observation of a fluorescent transcriptional reporter for CCS52A will show endoreduplication. Creation of the CCS52A reporter by GreenGate molecular cloning was ultimately unsuccessful due to problems with the entry vector holding the promoter sequence. However significant progress was made in the development of diagnostic and troubleshooting procedures for the cloning process, including whole plasmid sequencing data analysis, digestion and electrophoresis, and colony PCR, laying the groundwork for future investigation
Through the Looking Tectum: Studying Glia-Neuron Interaction in Optic Tectum
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/c71d8d30-8a16-4a1d-8996-895585eaf206/thumb/128.jpgDevelopment of the central nervous system is complex, involving many coordinated chemical signaling and cell-cell interactions. While the development of the visual system has been well-studied, there are many remaining questions including how glial and neuronal networks develop together, and one critical gap in knowledge lies in the mechanism by which neuronal development influence local glial development, particularly that of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs). In this thesis, I investigated whether migration and differentiation of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) in the visual system is linked to neuron differentiation in zebrafish model. By labeling OPCs with nkx2.2a:mEGFP and RGCs with atoh7:RFP and immunostaining, I tracked spatial and temporal patterns of OPC distribution from 2 to 4 days post-fertilization (dpf). My data suggest that OPCs may rely on RGCs to expand throughout the dorsal midbrain. Notably, in lakritz mutants lacking RGC innervation, OPC distribution remained largely similar to wildtype, though volumetric analysis hinted at a possible reduction in OPC density in the neuropil. By performing cell-transplant analyses on nkx2.2a-positive chimeras in an atoh7:RFP background, my preliminary data show promising potential for future in vivo study investigating individual OPC response in midbrain