Reed Digital Collections (Reed College)
Not a member yet
8045 research outputs found
Sort by
m6A RNA Methylation of Endopolyploid Soybean (Glycine max) Root Nodule Cells
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/aa5a1edf-9ee9-4dec-96bd-99e9a81d315f/thumb/128.jpgEndoreduplication is a common phenomenon in flowering plants in which multiple rounds of DNA replication occur without mitosis, leading to a cell with more than two copies of genomic DNA. The occurrence of endoreduplication in plants influences cell differentiation, growth, morphology, and metabolic activity, and is specifically required for the nitrogen-fixing root nodules of soybean (Glycine max) to achieve proper growth and function. The development and endoreduplication of root nodule cells is also associated with vast transcriptomic changes, however, how these changes occur is not well understood. As epigenetics have been implicated in functional genetics of polyploid plants and other endopolyploid models, I sought to examine the effect of the most abundant modification to eukaryotic mRNA, N6-Methyladenosine (m6A), in endopolyploid root nodule cells. With the advent of third-generation sequencing, epigenetic modifications to RNA can be detected without prior enrichment or labeling. I performed long-read direct RNA sequencing (DRS) on soybean root nodule nuclei sorted by ploidy level, and performed differential methylation and differential gene expression analysis on diploid (2C) and endopolyploid (8C+) samples. I discovered 626 genes with differentially methylated transcripts and 184 differentially expressed genes, and found extensive overlap between hypomethylated and transcriptionally upregulated genes in 8C+ cells, implying that a reduction of m6A levels may contribute to the function of endopolyploid nitrogen-fixing root nodule cells
A Not-So-Brief Interview with David Foster Wallace’s Hideous Men
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/b9681d95-1797-4470-a73b-d5150ec68ea7/thumb/128.jpgMy thesis assesses the quality of self-conceptualisation and self- representation in David Foster Wallace’s anthology ‘Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.’ My first chapter articulates the struggle to represent the self, where I talk about the postmodern fragmentation of thought and language, alongside silencing as a motif in Wallace’s text. My second chapter then locates a subsequent, compromised self-representation that emerges from the struggle. This self-representation is “negotiated” within complex artistic, familial or relational spheres, and is ultimately characterised by shame, anger and lovelessness. Gender (as an oppressive force) is considered. My third chapter ultimately locates an alternative outcome in Wallace’s other characters, where their struggle to represent themselves results instead in an idealistic, constantly revising paralysis. Here, I focus on stylistic choices like repetition or a dialogic internal voice. Consistently, I am concerned with genre and how the gestural, episodic nature of the short story lends itself to disembodied, alienated depictions of the self. I conclude with reflections on masculinity and authorial reception
Whatever You Say, Say Nothing: A Discourse Analysis of Plural Voting in Northern Ireland
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/ed091000-f2ed-4605-b6ca-10d5a023bee6/thumb/128.jpgNorthern Ireland has a long, complicated history of religious divide and conflict. One of the catalysts for The Troubles, a thirty-year conflict between British forces and Irish republican paramilitary groups, was a practice known as plural voting. Despite how deeply imbedded it is in the history of the Northern Ireland conflict, plural voting and its history in Northern Ireland is highly understudied in academic literature. Particularly understudied is the disparity between voting law in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the United Kingdom: Northern Ireland did not abolish plural voting until twenty years after the rest of the UK had done so. In this thesis, I aim to inductively address the question of how this discrepancy occurred. I use discourse analysis, and more specifically discourse coalition theory as developed by Maarten Hajer, to construct a picture of the language around plural voting in Northern Ireland at the time. I find five discourses, which can be broadly sorted into two discourse coalitions: an anti-plural voting coalition and a pro-plural voting coalition. I then trace the dissemination of storylines from the emergence of the two discourse coalitions to the 1968 Electoral Law Act and the 1969 Representation of the People Act, the two pieces of legislation that finally made plural voting illegal in Northern Ireland. I find that the language used by the anti-plural voting coalition became more and more popular in the latter half of the 1960s. Politicians belonging to either major party all begin using the storylines that the anti-plural voting coalition created. Essentially, I argue that the cementation of anti-plural voting language, as disseminated by an anti-plural voting discourse coalition, into the media sphere and then the political realm, is one of the factors that opened up space for plural voting law to change in Northern Ireland
Land-Legs: An Exploration of the (Re)Familiar
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/4f8ae4ec-e40f-403e-bc11-d4db6e3dcd4e/thumb/128.jp
Hot /tʉ/ /go͡ʉ/: Queer Women's Participation in Back Vowel Fronting
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/0125e0d1-31d0-452d-a915-278f1d622009/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis investigates the role of queer women in an ongoing language change, that is, back vowel fronting. I conducted sociolinguistic interviews with nine queer women in Portland, OR and asked them to rate themselves on scales of 1-10 for masculinity, femininity, and queerness. Then, I analyzed their speech with regard to the frontness of the back vowels GOOSE and GOAT. I found that phonetic environment (coronal vs. non-coronal onset), femininity ratings, and Asian identity had statistically significant effects on the fronting of GOOSE and GOAT. A coronal onset predicts a fronter vowel for both GOOSE and GOAT. In contrast, Asian identity predicts a backer vowel for both GOOSE and GOAT, and higher femininity predicts a backer vowel for GOOSE alone. I use theories of indexicality and performativity to explore these results and draw connections between resistance of back vowel fronting and resistance of normativity
When I journeyed home
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/3e3dabac-aa18-46de-be55-23e162ceded8/thumb/128.jpgMoving from Madagascar to the United States carves a transcontinental experience of change. For many people of the African diaspora, the choice to leave is not often voluntary, but needed. Living conditions of the Global South necessitate the need to move to other parts of the world in order to cultivate a life in which many basic needs can be met. One wonders if the peoples of this diaspora have any agency about moving worlds. I did not know why I had to leave Madagascar, why my peers and I were convinced to move to the Western and Global North, why we could not miss home as much as we wanted to. Why we could not grieve our leaving as much as we needed to. In social art, I found a way to re-explore myself and what it means to belong. Struggling to keep up with school and navigating moving continents, art became a medium from which I could explore healing and belonging, in the midst of feeling lost and uprooted. Along the way, I have learned about becoming, about my ancestral and cultural heritage, about relationship to land and to all beings, and finding the glimmer of light to choose life again, in moments when giving up would have been much easier. Across political, socio- economic, cultural and ecological realities, I learned about the world and why I did end up from Antananarivo, Madagascar to Portland, Oregon. From there, I could name and tell my story, and discovered the liberating ways from which I could stretch out and find home again and again and again
Ancestral Contact and Modern Loans: Nawat-Influenced ʃ Production of Modern Loanwords In Salvadoran Spanish
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/1c0530ab-20f6-4c9d-9c34-6e09e13d7b85/thumb/128.jpgThe impact of learning a second language on a speaker's phonology has been well researched, including for bilingual speakers. Many studies posit the existence of a shared phonological space, the basis for phonological models of how speakers assimilate non-native sounds into their phonology (Best, McRoberts, & Sithole, 1988; Best & Tyler, 2007; Flege, 1995; Flege, Schirru, & MacKay, 2003). However, it is not only bilinguals that have a shared phonological space in which multiple linguistic systems are integrated. Even monolinguals can be influenced by other languages (Otheguy, García, & Reid, 2015; MacSwan, 2017) via language contact, whether through linguistic features brought by speakers shifting to a language historically or through loanwords from other languages. This thesis explores the integrated phonological space via an analysis of the status of the /ʃ/ “sh" sound in Salvadoran Spanish. A history of language contact between Nawat, the critically endangered indigenous language spoken in El Salvador prior to Spanish colonization, and Spanish seemed a promising beginning to investigate why Salvadoran Spanish speakers sometimes changed the /ʃ/ sound to a /tʃ/ “ch" sound and other times did not when loaning words that had the “sh" sound (Quintanilla-Aguilar, 2013). Thus, an empirical fieldwork study was conducted with both Spanish and Nawat speakers in El Salvador. This study consisted of speaking and listening tasks in order to determine how this sound was organized in the sound system of both sample groups. The results showed that, Salvadoran Spanish speakers had partially assimilated the Nawat /ʃ/ sound into their phonology, such that it is the best option for fixing non-native sounds in loanwords if replacing it with /tʃ/ is not allowed by Spanish grammar. The changes made in their grammars to allow this, which were evaluated with an Optimality Theory analysis (Prince & Smolenski, 1993), resulted in a more Nawat-like grammar. This suggests that it was through Nawat influence that Salvadoran speakers have gained access to this sound. Additionally, the speakers' contrasting manners of perceiving and producing /ʃ/, as well as their partial integration of Nawat grammar, suggest that we must adapt our existing models of non-native sound assimilation, as well as our theories of how several linguistic systems fit together in an individual speaker, to better address speakers who deviate from assumed blanket universals
Towards reCYPlable PE plastic: Isolation and Characterization of a putative PE-degrading enzyme from B.thuringiensis
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/2a017498-b6ea-4d85-baa9-009bd866a77f/thumb/128.jpgPlastic pollution is one of the most monumental problems facing earth’s ecosystems today. Current recycling methodologies are not suitable to manage the magnitude of plastic production and global use. One such plastic, low density polyethylene (LDPE) only had 4.3% of total U.S manufactured plastic recycled in 2018. Research has recently identified a surprising new potential solution to manage plastic waste: bacteria. Bacterial populations are of particular interest because they are relatively low-cost to maintain and easy to engineer to improve degradation rates or extract valuable byproducts. A previously discovered PET degrading bacterial consortium of three Pseudomonas and two Bacillus species has been implicated to have the ability to potentially also degrade LDPE, but little is known about the mechanisms of bacterial degradation of LDPE. Preliminary data has implicated that CYP102A5, NADPH-P450 reductase from B. thuringiensis has increased expression during bacterial degradation of LDPE. But is CYP102A5 actually involved in LDPE degradation? To investigate this question, this protein was first expressed in E.coli, purified, and isolated. Preliminary attempts of structural characterization of CYP102A5 resulted in the discovery that CYP exists in two oligomeric states: between the predominant dimer form and a monomer form. Functional studies implicate CYP102A5 activity in the presence of powdered LDPE plastic. This work paves the way to identification of one component of the highly complex LDPE degradation mechanism, getting one step closer to developing marketable solutions to mitigating LDPE plastic pollution globally
I Can Feel The Echoes Reaching
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/120230b2-8c75-45a7-ad04-34ca9a054d6f/thumb/128.jp
The Detachable Pocket
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/872968c9-a9d5-4032-889b-4252724aa032/thumb/128.jpgThis paper and the accompanying works were inspired by my love of pockets and belt bags. The text goes into the history of the modern pocket, and how and why I arrived at my belt pocket project. It is accompanied by my own experiments in designing belt pockets and accompanying accessories