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You Only Die Once: A Re-inspection of the \u27Dying and Rising\u27 Category
No full textThe category of the ‘dying and rising god’ as established by James Frazer in The Golden Bough, has been deemed ineffective due to various issues, such as overgeneralization. This has led to its dismissal over the years, particularly in the works of Jonathan Z. Smith. This study aims to revisit this category by re-examining four deities (Osiris, Persephone, Dionysus and Inanna) that are typically considered ‘dying and rising gods’ and placing them in their original cultural contexts. This contextual exploration seeks to enhance the efficacy of the category originally proposed by Frazer
The White Woman Imagination: Defining and Apprehending the Dissociative Impulses of White Womanhood in Young Adult Literature
No full textApplications and Understandings of Grief: A Philosophical Lens
No full textLife and death are in an undeniable relationship, and in understanding the partnership between the two, it is important to understand the ways in which living beings react to the tension between the permanence of loss and the continuity of life. In this Independent Study, I will unpack what it means for living beings to be grieving. Donald Gustafson, a philosopher who analyzes rationality, says that grief is “irremediably less than fully rational” (Gustafson 465). In my thesis, I instead argue that grieving, at it’s best, can be a rational and reflective tool to make a fulfilling life for an active agent. To do so, I analyze different understandings of the afterlife across cultures, religions, and philosophies. This is what I argue for: grieving can be a reflective process to make sense of loss for mortal beings, and in turn, can be a rational one
Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue: The Populist Songs Of Modern America Through Presidential Campaign Music
No full textThis Independent Study analyzes the way that music has been used in United States presidential campaigns in the twenty-first century. Within my research – which is encapsulated by a written portion, data analysis, and website – I aim to unpack three key election years and understand how each of the party-endorsed candidates use music in their campaigns for office, while also creating a new database for presidential campaign music. I apply close-reading concepts while analyzing candidates under a populist lens. The data analysis portion of this Independent Study comprised of watching and logging over 2,000 videos on C-SPAN of the 2000, 2008, and 2016 Elections and logging instances of music. With this data, I created three maps in ArcGIS that reflected each presidential campaign year and noted genre differences. These maps and the written portion of the Independent Study were then synthesized into a website, which can be viewed at this link: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/43a97bdadf6a4b7bb310a66cfa188621. A written supplemental on the development of my website is available in chapter 4. In my conclusion, I argue that emerging technologies will only further shape how we interact with music and use it to leverage positions of power
The Superstar Effect in Rank-Order Tournaments: Evidence from Scottie Scheffler’s 2024 PGA Tour Season
No full textThis study seeks to answer the question: how does the presence of a superstar impact the performance of competitors in a rank-order tournament where a monetary prize is at stake? The phenomenon of the “superstar effect is growing within literature, and it is the idea that a superstar’s presence causes their competitors to perform worse. This potential drawback of a rank-order tournament is crucial to understand, as it is a common competition structure in sports and, more importantly, a widely used incentive scheme in businesses aimed at increasing employee productivity. If this potential caveat shows some significance, it could diminish the use of rank-order tournaments in business, and the use of piece-rate incentives could increase as it may be perceived as a more effective strategy for increasing productivity. To test this research question, data was collected on the 2024 PGA Tour season, and the average round scores of when Scottie Scheffler, the superstar, was present were compared to when he was not. I hypothesized that Scottie Scheffler’s presence would result in average higher round scores, meaning worse performances. Using a fixed effect model, the final results showed that when Scottie Scheffler was present, round scores were nearly three shots higher on average compared to when he was not. These results provide preliminary evidence of a “superstar effect” on the PGA Tour in 2024
Antler Beam Analysis of Species in the Alceini Tribe
No full textMoose today, known as Alces alces, exists as four subspecies within North America in the taxonomic tribe Alceini. While much is known about these amazing species, their ancestry remains unsolved due to lack of fossilized remains belonging to possible ancestors. Unlike species such as Cervalces scotti, which lived alongside Alces alces and have full skeletal remains, larger species such as Cervalces latifrons and Cervalces latifrons postremus exist only as remains in teeth, long bones, partial skulls, and antlers.
While fossils of possible ancestors to moose, such as Cervalces latifrons and Cervalces latifrons postremus, are extremely limited, antler beams of all four species discussed are plenty within their remains. In order to gain a better understanding of these species and their relations to one other, t-tests were performed in order to determine significance between species measurements.
T-test results showed that the antler beam diameters of Cervalces scotti and Cervalces latifrons postremus were the most similar relative to all other tests between other species. While these two species existed in different habitats and possibly at different times, we can hypothesize that Cervalces latifrons postremus may have faced displacement in forests and may have been forced to become smaller over time due to lack of resources in an unfit environment. This shrinkage in size may have resulted in fossils that measure to the sizes of Cervalces scotti
The Relationship Between Adult Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Insecure Attachment Styles
No full textPrevious research has presented possible correlations between Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and insecure attachment styles. The present study investigated the protentional relationship between adult ADHD and anxious and avoidant attachment styles. Two hundred ninety-one participants with and without a diagnosis of ADHD were asked to complete a series of questionnaires regarding their ADHD symptoms and attachment representations. As hypothesized, ADHD symptoms were significantly associated with higher rates of anxious and avoidant attachment styles
Molecular Marvels on the Grill: Investigating Unnatural Amino Acids in Reducing 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine Synthesis During the Maillard Reaction
No full textWooScholar App: Harnessing Text Embeddings and LLM for Finding Independent Study Theses
No full textThis paper explores the integration of advanced NLP techniques—text embeddings, neural networks, and transformer-based LLMs—in the WooScholar App, a tool for natural language search of Independent Study theses. We discuss key methods for word vectorization (e.g., one-hot encoding, Word2Vec, GloVe) and similarity measures (such as cosine distance), and outline neural network architectures and training processes. The study also highlights transformer models that use self-attention for coherent text generation. These concepts are applied in the WooScholar App, built with FastAPI, PostgreSQL, and Next.js, and enhanced by Google’s Gemini API, demonstrating the effective combination of theoretical NLP advancements with practical application development