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It's Getting Hot in Here, so Buffer the Effects with a Thermal Refuge: effects of heatwaves and thermal stratification on A. braunii growth and mortality
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/dbac816f-759a-429a-a5fc-8a0a56e3d5fb/thumb/128.jpgAs climate change progresses and heatwaves become more frequent, mapping the potential effects of increased heat on communities and ecosystems remains an important goal for ecology. One potential buffer to the detrimental impacts of extreme heat is thermal refuges: areas in an ecosystem buffered from external environmental temperature fluctuations. This study investigates the effects of three different heatwave intensities on the phytoplankton Ankistrodesmus braunii under three thermal refuge qualities. Experimental tests measured growth rates and mortality in the nine thermal regimes across five-day trials. Concurrently, a thermal performance curve was created and used to model two potential growth outcomes during the nine thermal regimes. Both models and experimental results showed that high thermal refuge quality was able to buffer the effects of severe heat on phytoplankton growth. However, in mild and no heat trials, high thermal refuge quality decreased overall growth, suggesting potential environmental costs that are not currently represented in the literature. Mortality was affected by both heat and thermal refuge quality, but no clear relationship was existed across different heatwave and thermal refuge treatments. While future research should further examine the relationships between heat and cell lysis in phytoplankton, these findings indicate that meaningful ecological costs can accompany the benefits to high quality thermal refuges
Extracting Cosmological Parameters from Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature Map Data
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/846fb326-33cf-4dc4-9759-a3266df37744/thumb/128.jpgRemnants of the Big Bang, the initial expansion of the universe, are accesible as leftover radiation from as early as 380,000 years into the history of the universe. This leftover radiation is called the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and is remarkably isotropic in accordance with Eintstein’s cosmological principal. Nevertheless, the CMB contains slight anisotropies in temperature variation around the sky (on the order of ∆T = 10^−5K), which is one of the primary pieces of evidence we have for cosmic inflation in the first fractions of a second of the universe. From these anisotropies, parameters necessary to describe the evolution of our universe in the ΛCDM model can be measured, and extracted using an angular power spectrum. For this thesis, I will explore the methods through which the following parameters are calculated: Ωb, Ωc, mν, H0, Ωk and τ . Further, I will present our results from Planck satellite CMB measurements, showing what parameter values are consistent with our methods
The Sky Has No End: A Discourse Analysis of Russian and Kazakhstani Technopolitics Surrounding the Baikonur Cosmodrome from 2014 to 2024
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/2f9d6aed-a095-48c6-872a-79b1c054c5b9/thumb/128.jpgIn Western, English-speaking literature, the former Soviet Union and especially Central Asia has often been understudied. Moreover, since the dissolution of the USSR, Soviet infrastructure left in newly independent nations has often been overlooked. This thesis attempts to bridge a gap in the literature in the relationship between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan over the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Northern Kazakhstan. Through the lens of the politics of memory, I use discourse analysis to examine how Russian and Kazakhstani elites conceptualized and spoke about the site. Utilizing an analysis of 146 articles from the Russian state news site TASS in the Russian language, I identified 146 pieces of discourse surrounding the Baikonur Cosmodrome from 2014-2024. In these discourses, four separate streams of discourse and two emerging discourses were found. Discourse One represented Kazakhstani nationalism, Discourse Two represented recycled Soviet narratives surrounding Baikonur from a Kazakhstani perspective, Discourse Three represented recycled Soviet narratives from a Russian perspective, and Discourse Four represented Russian nationalism. The emerging Discourse Five emphasized the need for more capital for Russian space exploration, and an emerging Discourse Six represented Russian emphasis on domestic cosmodromes. While Discourse Two and Three remained the most prominent discourses throughout the time period studied, Kazakhstani nationalist discourse has increased as well as Russian nationalist discourse in the context of building new cosmodromes. This suggests that while preexisting conditions will bind these two countries together for the foreseeable future, there appears to be at least some ruptures in the relationship surrounding the most visible piece of cooperation: Baikonur
Theologizing Queerness: The Formations and Impacts of Roman Catholic Ontological Fields
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/7eec4bf7-11fc-409a-a015-b674263bbe74/thumb/128.jpgCatholicism has historically been at the forefront of the backlash towards progressive social movements relating to gender and sexuality. This too has been the case in recent decades when it comes to Queerness. However, the majority of work regarding religious resistance to Queerness has been mediated by an etic understanding of their motives. Therefore, this work seeks to take Catholic ontological claims on the body and sexuality seriously. What does a Catholic outlook on the body entail? What does it have to say about sexuality? And why? This thesis uses anthropological methods of inquiry to assess developments in Catholic ontology on Queerness. In the first chapter, I parse out a history of the development of Magisterial doctrine on the sexual and gendered body. I place particular focus on the developments of the post-Vatican II to the papacy of Pope Francis. While there have been recent shifts towards a friendlier approach towards Queerness, the magisterial doctrine maintains a firm rejection of the moral acceptability of homosexual practices and transness. The second chapter focuses on the impact Catholic ontologies have on the secular world. What does it mean when Catholic organizations and institutions have a say in secular political processes? Catholic organizations are therefore involved in political discussions of how the state defines and regulates sexuality and gender via public social services. Similarly, the Catholic Church can impact the secular via its social services. The last chapter seeks to locate how a Catholic ontology maps onto Queer Catholic experience. Using autoethnographic methods I reflect on and locate the impacts Catholic ontology has had throughout my life
An Invitation to Tate's Thesis
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/0864d263-ac52-4980-9027-3ef7ee758de1/thumb/128.jpgErich Hecke attempted to find a further generalization of Dirichlet -series and the Dedekind zeta function. By defining the Größencharakter (or Hecke character), which is classical an ideal-class character of a number field and the Hecke -series, he established their continuation and functional equation. In 1950, John Tate, encouraged by his advisor Emil Artin, and building off of the work of Artin, Margaret Matchett, and Kenkichi Iwasawa, offered a more elegant proof of continuation and functional equation of the Hecke -series by performing Fourier analysis on the adeles and recasting the Hecke character as an idele-class character. This document approaches some of the ideas in this paramount piece of mathematical work, ultimately outlining some of the local and global theory for the proofs of the continuations and functional equations of local and global zeta functions, respectively
Pollination Mechanisms and Pollen Vectors of the Dioecious Species Oemleria Cerasiformis
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/292b0fc1-b285-4d23-8833-5755c5d1744e/thumb/128.jpgOemleria cerasiformis, Indian Plum, is a deciduous species of shrub native to the North American west coast and can be found in abundance in the Reed College canyon. Indian Plum exhibits a number of interesting traits from a pollination biology perspective, including an early blooming period and that it is a dioecious species. Dioecy is of particular note, as dioecious species are estimated to comprise less than 7% of flowering plant species. This makes O. cerasiformis a valuable species for studies investigating plant phenomena which are affected by sex. Despite this fact, relatively little research has been conducted which focuses specifically on Indian Plums, and of those existing studies none have studied its potential pollinators. In order to elucidate O. cerasiformis’ methods of pollination, a visitor exclusion test was performed allowing visitors only at certain times of day in order to observe pollen deposition. The resulting data was used to asses that most common time of pollen deposition in O. cerasiformis. Pollen deposition was found to occur both diurnally and nocturnally, though diurnal pollination was more frequent. A pollen supplementation trial was also performed in order to test for pollen limitation in O. cerasiformis. Female flowers were manually pollinated and compared to control flowers in order to determine the effect of manual pollination on fruit set. Manual pollination was found to slightly increase the fruit set of female plants which had access to resources
No-Report Rivalry: The ERP Correlates of Probe-Mediated Perceptual Reversals
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/8d52f00c-5c25-47b8-8ce8-3f5cedd5f035/thumb/128.jpg"Binocular rivalry (BR) is a type of perceptual bistability commonly used to investigate the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) as it allows for a high level of control in laboratory studies. When viewing BR, one’s conscious vision regularly alternates between two differing perceptions, despite the physical stimuli remaining unchanged. Previous studies have relied on participants reporting of their perception during BR to sort the data for neural comparisons, however, this approach potentially confounds data interpretation as the neural processes behind perceptual reversals are difficult to isolate from those related to the attentional, decisional, and motor processes of reporting. In the present study, electroencephalography (EEG) data were recorded during a “no-report” BR study in which probes were used to trigger perceptual reversals and moving stimuli were used such that eye-tracking could serve as an indirect measure of perception in a no-report condition. Event related potentials (ERPs) were time- locked to probe onset and separated into stable (when probes were delivered to the currently dominant image) and reversal (when probes were delivered to the suppressed image) trials. Three ERP components were analyzed: N1, reversal negativity (RN), and the P3b. The results suggested that N1 amplitude is related to whether the probe is presented to the dominant or suppressed eye (reduced N1 amplitudes were found for suppressed eye probes). The present study was also the first to demonstrate an RN in the absence of report, providing further evidence that it is a neural signal closely linked with perceptual reversals. Finally, the results suggested that the P3b, once commonly thought to be a potential correlate of conscious perception, was present and robust in the report condition but strongly attenuated in the absence of report – suggesting that it is most likely linked with downstream cognitive and motor processes required to report one’s conscious perception.
Armed with the Knowledge of the Place We’ve Been: Empowerment of Gang Members Through Memoirs
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/8bc378c9-664c-4de3-b8c6-0d500d5ae734/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis is centered around the study of four gang memoirs that were written by four men of color: two Black men, one Chinese-American man, and one Puerto Rican man. In it I argue that the memoirs function as a medium of empowerment for the memoirists and combat racialized stereotypes of the criminal gangster. Specifically, through their conversion narratives, the memoirs dispel the stereotype that gang members are irredeemable criminals. Gang memoirists seek to craft a third perspective of gang life as they are publishing in response to two perspectives of gang life: the vilification of gang life in the media and the glorification of it in hip-hop culture. Though the setting of most of these books is in the late 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, they were actually written in the 1990s and early 2000s when “gangsta culture” really took off in popular culture, particularly through hip-hop culture. These authors wrote their memoirs as a critique of the glorification of gang culture that was rising in hip-hop popular culture as each memoir in its own way denounces gang life and the things that gang culture forced them to experience. Gang memoirists were aware of these social trends produced by the War on Drugs and hip-hop culture and were writing to claim space within the context of hyper-criminalization and movements to resist the stigma it produced by embracing their criminal past and writing about their redemption narratives. These authors are forging their own new path to understanding gang life and how people should view it. Though the glorification of gang activity in hip-hop rose as a response to the heavy media vilification of gang members the memoirists chose to reject both perspectives as being inadequate to describe their own experiences
Olympia Indie Pop: Creating an Independent Music Scene Through Style, Ideology and Genre
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/ed695af3-71ae-4ccf-a279-71b83e765448/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis explores the history of an independent music scene in Olympia, Washington, with a focus on its development in the 1980’s and the 1990’s. Analyzing the scene through frameworks of subculture and style, I argue that it became a prominent site by the careful delineation of an aesthetic articulated through the musical genre of indie pop, and by the adherence and cultivation of indie ideology. I discuss indie pop’s musical style as a radical approach that encouraged musicmaking in the scene and enabled Olympia to produce and host much more musical activity than may be expected for a small town. Through historical, cultural and musical analysis, I utilize Olympia as a case study to explain how a local music scene is developed, sustained, and continued
MntR: The Mastermind of Manganese Ion Homeostasis
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/5f99fc8c-3e9a-4a67-9137-02e1ca347c16/thumb/128.jpgManganese ion homeostasis is the process via which cells maintain internal manganese concentrations despite changing environmental supplies and metabolic demands. MntR is a 16.7 kDa metalloregulatory protein that maintains homeostasis by activating transcription of manganese exporters and represses transcription of manganese importers. A recent cryoEM structure of four MntR dimers bound to the mneP promoter sequence has shed light on the residue-level interactions between both MntR and DNA and between the dimers themselves, however the mechanism of transcription activation is still unknown. Solving the cryoEM structure of the full complex of DNA-bound MntR interacting with RNA polymerase to activate transcription will help answer questions about how MntR can both act as an activator and repressor of transcription in different parts of the genome. Significant barriers to successful complex formation have been overcome, including DNA contamination and heterogeneity in the purification of RNA polymerase, and unusual behavior of DNA•protein complexes on size exclusion chromatography (SEC) columns. SEC experiments appear to show complex formation despite unconventional peak shifting behavior, and grids were prepared for cryoEM to solve the structure of the complex