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The Political Economy of India's Right to Work: Explaining Geographical Variance in the Intensity of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/49f1b770-a561-482b-82b8-0b981d7a296f/thumb/128.jpgSince NREGA's birth in 2005, every rural Indian has had the legal right to work. This thesis studies the political economy of that right. It offers analysis of the context in which NREGA was born, the way in which it works, and of the results it has had. It considers different political regimes' relationships with NREGA. Results from a random effects model run on district-level panel data study the effects of poverty, demographics, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule on the largest jobs program in human history
Performing the Lover: One Solution to Two Crises of Masculinity in the 1st and 12th Centuries
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/39d4dbdd-055f-4092-9fe6-7cc19fa737eb/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis compares how Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Andreas Capellanus’s De Amore respond to the crisis of masculine identity that occurs during the respective era that each text was written. I argue that both texts call upon recognizable tropes from popular poetic traditions contemporaneous to each text in order to craft models that the male reader should utilize for his own purpose. The narrator of each text encourages his reader to perform falsified emotion based on these tropes, and the performance relies on the reader’s ability to distinguish between real and fictionalized emotion. If he should fail to sustain the boundary between real and imagined emotion, the reader risks further emasculation. The purpose of pursuing this dangerous performance is to recover his masculine identity by asserting himself as a dominant male figure. The Roman reader is motivated to take on this mission of performance after his political power is stripped away from him in the early years of the Empire, and the medieval reader pursues this mission after his previously guaranteed elite socioeconomic position is suddenly no longer secure with the institution of primogeniture
Any Color You Like: An Exploration of Ball Python (Python regius) Pigmentation and Patterning Genetics
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/b02af371-fc7c-44d1-9147-b6d2dba63eb1/thumb/128.jpgThe ball python (Python regius) is a popular pet that has gone on to spark a booming industry dedicated to the breeding of different ‘morphs’, colorful variations of pigment and patterning. This has led to a veritable cornucopia of phenotypic diversity within the species. Ball python breeders almost exclusively rely on selective breeding and assumed Mendelian inheritance patterns to keep track of and strive towards novel phenotypes. It has only been within the past few years that studies have been conducted linking specific genetic mutations to a handful of ball python phenotypes, with hundreds of morphs remaining unknown as to their driving genetic cause. This study investigated eight different genes known to cause pigmentation and patterning anomalies in various vertebrate species, including snakes (KIT, EDN3, SOX10, EDNRB2, PAX3, MITF, MC1R, BNC2). PCR and gel electrophoresis were performed using 11 community-sourced snake skins containing a diverse array of morphs. No conclusive results were found at this time but future study of color and pattern genetics in the ball python remains a promising field with strong industry support and academic intrigue
Leveraging Comparative Graph Theory to Model Gene Co-expression Data
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/b8e111cf-a71d-45f0-9a0e-062be75936c5/thumb/128.jpgGraphs are a popular tool for modeling biological systems. Gene co-expression networks (GCNs) are aa particular instance of graphs that are useful for modeling data where where genes are vertices and edges are similarity of expression. GCNs are often used to model the activity within cells, but they are often noisy and exclude meaningful relationships that only exist in certain subgroups of cells. In this thesis, I explore different ways to construct multiple GCNs from a single dataset with multiple conditions. While GCNs are useful, they sometimes obscure information about the genetic activity of subsets of cells. I formalize some of these problems and present ways to identify conserved and varied patterns across experimental conditions or cell types
The Impact of Oxycodone Self-Administration on Negative Affective Behaviors in Rats
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/273fbb73-5af7-4d54-a60f-367171f498d7/thumb/128.jpgWith the rise of opioids being prescribed, opioid use disorder – a form of substance abuse disorder – has simultaneously increased given the euphoric feelings that they induce. Opioids come in many different forms including morphine, fentanyl, hydrocodone, and oxycodone. Opioid use disorder has been a rising concern due to the debilitating emotional and physical effects of opioid use. Research of humans following protracted abstinence of opioid use has found indications of negative affective states such as increased anxiety, depression, and anhedonia. Different types of rodent models have been used to study opioid use disorder using non-contingent models. The present study used a contingent model to explore underlying synaptic plasticity and incubation of drug craving following abstinence as these neuronal changes have been linked to relapse of opioid/substance use disorder. Oxycodone self-administration in rats was used to examine anxiety-like behaviors via elevated plus maze (EPM) and open field (OF) tests, as well as a sucrose preference test (SPT) to explore anhedonia. It is important to note that rats are social animals and prefer to be housed in pairs or groups, though drug self-administration requires rats to be singly house. As a result, a preliminary behavioral experiment exploring the effects of single housing rats was done to control for confounding variables. Singly housed rats showed a preference for sucrose during the SPT. This result was similar to the effect of oxycodone self-administration on sucrose consumption observed in singly housed rats. Interestingly, no significant effect of oxycodone self-administration on anxiety-like behaviors. Together, these results suggest that the anhedonia-like behaviors observed arose from single housing rather than a main effect of drug. Though our results showed no behavioral impacts of drug, the study did successfully reflect incubation of oxycodone craving as well as synaptic plasticity during drug cue-induced seeking tests
Journey is Destination: The Functionality of Religious Thematic in Xiyou Ji
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/aa19c494-a859-4061-a9af-3efc3da7664d/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis will explore the different utilizations and interpretations of religious allusion present throughout the 16th century Chinese novel, Xiyou Ji, or Journey to the West. Not only does the influence of both Buddhism and Daoism play a pivotal role in the narrative structure of this novel, but it has helped form and shape interpretations and receptions up to this day. This thesis will analyze different theories regarding the relationship between text and reader and how religion functions through this text in that relationship. This novel contains movement through journeying by way of plot, reception, and the historical background this novel was loosely based off of. The utilization of religious thematic in this novel affects the ways in which we as readers move through this text, the characters journey through the plot, and the narrative itself temporally journeys through its reception
Say it with flowers: the semiotics of a not so secret language
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/d795a357-4a46-4e38-ae36-758936a949c2/thumb/128.jpgThe Victorian flower language is mythologized as a widely known communicatory practice involving flowers with symbolic meanings and creative bouquet-making in order to convey personal and emotional messages. This is not entirely accurate: floriography was a theoretical floral code based on the Turkish practice of selam, which the British and French upper class reinterpreted and edited to create their own version. This thesis examines how floral communication functions semiotically, both as a mythologized language and as it was and is actually used, and traces the lineage of floral semiotics and greeting cards from Victorian Britain to contemporary America. I argue that ambiguity is an essential element of floral communication, and that fluency in floral communication is more reliant on the ability to interpret interpersonal ambiguity than on exact knowledge of any specific floral code. I analyze floral semiotics from the perspective of Victorian floriography, illustrations in nineteenth century and present-day greeting cards, and through the current practice of exchanging physical bouquets. My analysis utilizes semantico-referentialism, Piercian notions of indexicality, Austinian performative uttterances, Jakobsonian poetics, notions of interiority, and affect theory as analytic frameworks
A Continued Inquiry into Granularity-Change Cache Simulation
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/d31e03ac-cc5b-4b6f-a85a-6baca7f75330/thumb/128.jpgThe 2021 paper “Spatial Locality and Granularity Change in Caching” presented the Granularity-Change (GC) Caching Problem, the study of a new cache architecture in which the shift in data granularity between the cache and main memory is utilized to load additional spatially local data for minimal additional cost. The paper provided a theoretical analysis of the GC caching problem and described the replacement policy Item-Block Layered Partitioning (IBLP) to implement a simple granularity-change cache [3]. To study the performance of granularity-change caching in practice, the 2022 Reed thesis “Simulating the Granularity-Change Caching Problem” used the open-source systems simulator Gem5 to provide the first simulated implementation and analysis of an IBLP cache, and suggested areas for continued research toward a more realistic and versatile simulation [4]. My research continues to build on the prior work in granularity-change cache simulation by introducing a new strategy to implement GC caching in Gem5 and by evaluating the limitations of the three available approaches to this strategy. I find that this method of implementing a granularity-change cache in Gem5 is not possible without expanding the features of the Gem5 simulator as a whole, and provide a cursory look at what such modifications would involve
Drag Faces Hypernatural and Supernatural Makeup
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/40142975-d13d-4e93-a7b7-272ed3834bb5/thumb/128.jpgMy analysis begins by defining pre-existing expectations for makeup as natural makeup and grooming. This section demonstrates the historical construction of these makeup motifs from the 1900s in North America and Europe, emphasizing their role in constructing hierarchies of gender and race. In chapter 1, I analyze images of four hypernatural drag faces, which queer existing motifs from natural makeup. Along with motifs that signal gender and race, these performers also reference age, class, and status with their makeup to create a specific set of relations with their audience. In chapter two, I focus on monstrous supernatural drag faces that create complicated relations with their audience and demonstrate the expansive potential of drag makeup
Effects of the Garment Industry on Women in Cambodia and Bangladesh
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/8f83d675-c791-4dd4-972f-5e0988666ca9/thumb/128.jpgCambodia and Bangladesh are two of the main supplier locations where garments are created and shipped out to consumers worldwide. The geography of South and Southeast Asia allows for these countries to easily access textile sources such as China and the EU. The lower minimum wage in Cambodia and Bangladesh incentivizes companies to locate in these respective regions and invites investors to financially support the construction of factories. However, further research has revealed that a lower minimum wage, though economically beneficial, it is not the most efficient path to improve the wellbeing of garment industry workers. This paper examines the various effects of history and current government garment industry policies in Bangladesh and Cambodia on female workers. From this examination, this paper draws upon existing research in the field to make policy recommendations to improve the well-being of women in the garment industry