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A Comparative Analysis of Website Affordances on Political Discourse
Get PDFThis thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach to explore how types of rhetoric are shaped by social media systems. We define two key terms: website architecture and website affordances. Website Architecture refers to the literal composition of digital formats. Website affordances refer to the social meanings of digital tools within those structures. Previous literature finds that user behavior varies between different Website Architectures, and that attention-based algorithms shape online identity construction and, in macrocosm, online communities. Studies also find that moral-emotional rhetoric is highly effective across social media websites and indicates or incentivizes real-world violence. I posit that online rhetoric serves as a means to delineate ideological boundaries, particularly when certain user behaviors are impeded by Website affordances. I adapt Jennifer Forestal’s model of digital democracy to qualitatively assess a user’s website affordances on Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter). I further categorize a series of posts across five political controversies between December 2024 and January 2025 (n = 493) based on an adaptation of Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach. I find that there are significant differences in the presence or absence of particular rhetorical strategies between social media websites, and that the effectiveness of these rhetorical strategies varies between platforms and does not correlate with incentives for online engagement. Websites with architecture to create well-defined and bounded communities exhibit rhetoric and attention on par with mainstream news outlets. Websites that rely on refreshing content feeds, less bounded community moderation, or have inflexible posting affordances exhibit higher rates of Intensifying and Argumentative rhetoric.Bachelor of Art
Investigating Potential Mechanisms Underlying the Anticancer Benefit of Tirzepatide-Induced Weight Loss
Get PDFObesity is a well-established risk and prognostic factor for many different types of cancer. Therefore, weight loss may be a promising way to indirectly reduce cancer progression. We have previously shown that the weight-loss drug tirzepatide, a dual glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 and gastric inhibitory polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonist, induces adipose tissue reduction and improved metabolic outcomes that significantly slowed tumor growth, but the mechanism(s) driving this anticancer benefit remains unclear. Here, we assessed whether tirzepatide normalized adipose morphology and function.in association with an anti-tumoral immune response. To address our aims, tissue samples were collected from tumors and tumor-adjacent subcutaneous adipose tissue in lean mice, diet-induced obese mice, and formerly diet-induced obese mice treated with tirzepatide. RNA was extracted from the tumors, reverse transcribed, and then the expression of specific genes related to immune lineage and function was quantified using qPCR. To measure changes in adipose morphometry, we applied a novel automated segmentation method to formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded adipose tissue samples stained with hematoxylin and eosin. We found no evidence of tirzepatide impacting the intertumoral expression of genes related to immune lineage and function. However, tirzepatide treatment significantly reduced adipocyte area while increasing adipocyte density relative to untreated obese mice, though adipocytes remained larger in tirzepatide-treated mice than in lean mice. The reduction in adipocyte hypertrophy is correlated with reduced tumor growth and therefore may be one anticancer benefit of tirzepatide treatment. These findings underscore the potential of tirzepatide as a therapeutic strategy to mitigate obesity-associated cancer risk and progression.Bachelor of Scienc
Bayesian Fraction Fitting in Nuclear Spectroscopy: Methods and Application to 60Co and 14N(p,γ)15O
Get PDFNuclear capture reactions, which play a crucial role in nuclear physics, are characterized by two fundamental quantities: the branching ratios of primary γ-ray transitions and the total number of reactions that occurred. Accurately determining these quantities for complex γ-ray cascade spectra is challenging and often leads to significant uncertainties. To address this, we present a Bayesian-based fraction fitting numerical method for improved data extraction from complex experimental spectra. We outline the method, describe its implementation in a user-friendly GUI, and evaluate its efficiency in analyzing 60Co decay and 14N(p,γ)15O resonance data. The results identify areas for improvement in the LENA detector setup and demonstrate consistency with the most precise previous measurements, in some cases reducing uncertainties relative to previous literature values.Bachelor of Scienc
Neural mechanisms underlying irritability in children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their associations with impairment
Get PDFAttention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a developmental disorder characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, and it has been linked to increased emotion dysregulation and irritability. However, research examining the relationships between irritability, brain network organization, and impairment in children with ADHD and typically developing (TD) children is lacking. To examine these relationships using t-tests, analyses of covariance, and hierarchical regressions, the parents of 72 children (50 children with ADHD and 22 TD children) completed surveys targeting irritability levels and global impairment. Children completed an fMRI scan in order to examine graph metrics—within-module degree (WD) and participation coefficient (PC)—of a previously constructed irritability network. Children with ADHD demonstrated significantly higher parent-reported irritability (p = .001) and impairment (p < .001) than their TD peers. No significant differences were observed in the WD or PC of the irritability network between groups, and graph metrics failed to predict impairment levels. We did find that ADHD was a significant predictor of behaviorally reported impairment (p < .001) and that irritability predicted this impairment above and beyond ADHD (p < .001). Our results suggest that understanding irritability may be critical for improving daily functioning in youth. Bachelor of Art
The Right(s) Strategy: How and Why Mexico Shaped the Inter-American Human Rights Regime 1917-1969
Get PDFFrom the Mexican Revolution to the early Cold War, the Mexican government shaped and advanced global human rights theory. After the Mexican Revolution, the framers of the 1917 Mexican Constitution codified social and economic rights, creating the first constitution in the world to contain specific labor and cultural protections. In 1945, Mexico proposed that the countries of North and South America create a human rights declaration. The resulting document, the Bogotá Declaration, predated the more famous Universal Declaration of Human Rights by months. Yet the Mexican government’s domestic behavior did not seem to follow its international proclamations. In 1968, the Mexican government committed severe human rights violations in the student massacre and its ensuing dirty war against dissidents. A year later, Mexico appeared to retreat from its past international commitments when it refused to ratify the 1969 Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. This thesis seeks to explain Mexico’s decision in 1969. Rather than a reversal, this thesis argues that Mexico’s human rights violations and late-60s isolationism were part of a cohesive foreign policy based on Mexican commitment to noninterventionism, state power, and social rights.Bachelor of Art
BEVERAGE INTAKE AMONG JAMAICAN SCHOOL CHILDREN: AN ANALYSIS ACROSS CHILD AND SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT LEVELS
Get PDFSugar-sweetened beverages, a subset of ultra-processed foods, are consumed frequently by children in Jamaica. Given the abundance of time children spend in school and the evidence for school-related determinants of dietary intake, school food environments can be key influencers of children’s beverage consumption and drive their dietary behaviors and preferences. 907 primary school students (ages 7-11) in Jamaica were surveyed on their demographic information, nutrition-related preferences, knowledge, and consumptions patterns in 2018. School environment audits, documenting internal and external factors from the 22 schools which children attended, were completed at the same time. A two-part model was applied that considered children’s probability of consuming each beverage type and the amount they consumed. Models accounted for both child-level characteristics and school food environment measures. Descriptive statistics revealed a large proportion of non-consumers of water (20.9%) and unsweetened beverages (19.8%). 15.3% of schools audited had indoor water sources, and nearly all students in the study were able to drink water while in their classroom (97%). Exploratory analysis indicated that, among water drinkers, girls in the study consumed 1.25 times the volume of boys. Furthermore, having parents of college/university level education was found to be associated with a significant increase of 134 mL water intake each school day and students’ inability to consume water in the classroom perfectly predicted their consumption of sweetened beverages. Collectively, child-level factors contributed to the modeling of all beverage types and external school environment measures were highly significant to the sweetened beverage model fit. External school measures were collectively associated with sweetened beverage consumption volume while unsweetened beverage intake is more likely impacted by classroom rules, school wide policies, and the internal school environment. Results support the inclusion of beverage regulations, both the promotion of unsweetened and the de-incentivization of sweetened drinks, in Jamaica’s evolving national school nutrition policy. To be most effective in promoting students’ health, this policy should be backed by a suite of coherent legislation that supports healthy environments and nutritious food and beverage choices for Jamaican children in and around schools.Bachelor of Science in Public Healt
Mapping Non-Crossover Repair Events in CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated DNA Double Strand Breaks in Drosophila melanogaster
Get PDFHomologous recombination (HR) is an essential DNA repair mechanism that helps restore damaged DNA. Although crossover (CO) HR events are rare in mitotic cells, non-crossover (NCO) HR events are more common and typically occur through mechanisms like synthesis-dependent strand annealing (SDSA). By avoiding the exchange of large segments of homologous chromosomes that result from COs, NCO pathways play a crucial role in minimizing loss of heterozygosity (LOH), which can lead to deleterious consequences for the organism. Research in this field has primarily focused on CO repair products; we sought to investigate the mechanisms of NCO repair in Drosophila melanogaster to further understand this conservative process. Using CRISPR/Cas9 to create targeted double strand breaks (DSBs) in the rosy gene, we studied repair products via single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) tracking and used mismatch repair gene knockout to preserve heteroduplex DNA for analysis. Results showed predominant NCO repair (58.2%) over CO (6.2%), indicating a cellular preference for conservative repair mechanisms like SDSA. Theta-mediated end joining (TMEJ), a backup repair pathway, was also found to have a significant role in repairing DSBs, particularly in situations where canonical pathways failed. We found an unforeseen 119 bp insertion of a foreign fly transcript in one of the sequences, suggesting unexpected genetic exchanges during repair. These findings provide critical insights into the framework of repair pathways in maintaining genomic stability and inform the refinement of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technologies.Bachelor of Scienc
A Meta-Analysis of Social Norms Interventions: Effects on Health Behavior Change
Get PDFObjective: Social norms interventions have been widely used to influence health behaviors, but their effectiveness varies across different behavioral domains. This meta-analysis was conducted to (a) evaluate the effectiveness of social norms interventions in changing actual behaviors, (b) assess the moderating role of descriptive versus injunctive norms interventions, (c) examine whether intervention effectiveness differs across health behavior categories, and (d) analyze the impact of social norms interventions on perceived norms. Methods: A total of 140 effect sizes from 112 studies were included in this analysis. Cohen’s d was used as the effect size measure, and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were computed around each mean. Meta-regression and subgroup analyses were performed to examine the role of moderators. Results: Social norms interventions yielded a small to moderate effect on behavior change (d = 0.104, 95% CI [0.068, 0.141]). Diet-related behaviors showed the strongest effect (d = 0.219), while alcohol consumption interventions had the weakest (d = 0.104). The effectiveness of vaccination and exercise interventions was more variable. Meta-regression revealed that descriptive and injunctive norms interventions functioned as significant moderators, though their effects varied by health behavior. Perceived norms changed pre- to post-intervention, but further research is needed to establish whether these changes directly mediate behavior. Conclusion: This meta-analysis provides evidence that social norms interventions can influence health behaviors, though their impact is modest and varies by behavioral domain. Future research should explore the sustainability of these interventions and the mechanisms by which changes in perceived norms translate into behavioral change.Bachelor of Art
THE MATERNAL NETWORK: FEMALE FAMILY MEMBERS AS PILLARS OF INFANT CARE AND FEEDING PRACTICES
Get PDFUniversally, female family members play a crucial role in shaping infant care and feeding practices, yet their influence is often overlooked in maternal and child health research. The objective of this research is to analyze and understand the specific contributions of female family members in supporting women living with HIV (WLWH) and their infants in Lusaka, Zambia. This research is a secondary analysis of a qualitative study that was conducted to investigate the acceptability and feasibility of engaging family members as home supporters to support infant feeding and development and antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence. The mothers and their chosen home supporters were interviewed about current care practices, provided with tailored counseling about care and feeding, and given 1-3 weeks to practice the recommendations, after which follow-up interviews were conducted. The interview transcripts were coded using Atlas.ti, and a thematic analysis was performed to identify key patterns in participant responses. Twenty-three mothers completed all three interviews, and 15 male partners, along with 8 female family members (mothers, aunts, sisters, or cousins) were chosen to be home supporters. The results showed that female family members supported WLWH and infants by providing informational, tangible, and emotional support. WLWH frequently sought and were provided with breastfeeding and childcare advice from female relatives. Female relatives assisted mothers with ART adherence, breastfeeding support, household chores, and provided childcare in the mother’s absence. Female family members also offered encouragement and reassurance to help WLWH navigate motherhood and their HIV status. This study highlights the diverse contributions of female family members in supporting WLWH and their infants in Lusaka, Zambia. These findings emphasize the importance of incorporating the involvement of female family members in future maternal and child health interventions.Bachelor of Science in Public Healt
From Silence to Broader Connection: Exploring Social Media’s Impact on Social- Emotional Learning for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Youth
Get PDFThis project explores how social media and digital platforms can support the social-emotional learning of deaf and hearing-impaired adolescents by promoting self-expression, emotional support, and social connections. The inspiration for this project came from a documentary shot using visual ethnography methods at a special education school in Guilin, China. There, DHH students demonstrated rich emotional expressions among their peers through dance, gestures, and social media. This project further explored the potential of social media platforms in breaking down communication barriers, promoting inclusiveness, and enhancing Social Emotional Learning.
In addition to the literature review, this project has also developed an interactive website, including documentaries, sign language learning resources, visual art exhibitions, multi-sensory modules and reflection sections. This platform combines Chinese Sign Language (CSL) and American Sign Language (ASL), featuring bright visual effects and gesture animations, aiming to reduce operational barriers and enhance cross-cultural accessibility. In addition to creative achievements, this project also reflects the challenges of inclusive digital design and emphasizes the importance of a user-centered approach. The future development directions include developing questionnaires based on vision and sign language, and conducting real-world user tests to further optimize the experience of DHH youth.Bachelor of Art