Browsing Graduate and Undergraduate Student Research by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-20 of 211
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Fondren Library Data Repository for Data Science Education and Experiential Learning
(2023-06-15)This project piloted a process for creating a repository of interesting, real-world government datasets that are easy to access, beginner-friendly, and suitable for educational use, particularly in data science. The project resulted in three sub-projects, each of which uses one or more open government datasets to demonstrate the data science pipeline. ... -
Changes in Atlantic Tropical Cyclones and the Bermuda High: Clues from the Last Millennium to Inform the Future
(2023)Current anthropogenic climate change is expected to increase hurricane intensity, with stronger winds, higher rainfall, and increased flooding, all of which pose a major threat to coastal communities. However, climate models vary in their predictions of how climate change will impact hurricane frequency and tracks, and 20th century data sources are ... -
Differences between modern and ancient Martian grain size distributions may reveal different paleoatmospheric conditions and provenance
(2023)Grain size distributions in eolian (wind-blown) deposits encode information about the atmospheric conditions that enabled their transport and deposition, and grain shape encodes information about provenance and postdepositional processes. Gale crater is a ~3.7 Ga impact crater with a vast diversity of exposed sedimentary strata indicative of a varied ... -
The Effect of Nitrate Availability on Oxygen Isotope Fractionation During Cyanobacterial Photosynthesis
(2023)Marine primary productivity supports food webs and ecosystem health, driving large-scale animal distribution patterns in the ocean. Primary productivity is also a fundamental process in the biological pump, which sequesters inorganic carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and transports it to the ocean interior where it can be stored for ... -
Understanding Phosphorus Mobility in Arclogites
(2023)Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient for life. Throughout geologic time, availability of this element has limited primary productivity. Therefore, understanding how the phosphorus moves through Earth system has important implications for understanding life history. While surface fluxes of phosphorus are well studied, less attention has been given ... -
How Government Fiscal Relief Affects Employment During 2020 Recession - Case Study of United States
(2023)The objective of this research is to investigate the impact of government fiscal relief measures on employment during 2020 economic downturns in the United States. Utilizing a panel dataset comprising 50 states and the District of Columbia from 2020 to 2021, the study employs a 2-stage least squares regression model to estimate the influence of ... -
Promoting Academic Success: The Influence of Demographics, Family, and County Diversity on Educational Outcomes in 12th Graders
(2023)This study tracks the impact of key environmental and demographic circumstances on student performance and educational outcomes in order to identify and weigh their relative influence. -
Data Analytics Approach to Addressing Children's Mental Health in the Pandemic Era
(2023)This is a presentation of the project "Data Analytics Approach to Addressing Children's Mental Health in the Pandemic Era" which was presented by its author at the 2023 Shapiro Showcase event at Rice University. The project employed a code-based "data pipeline" to process bulk healthcare data and to yield usable statistical results. In this case, the ... -
Phases in Ultracold Interacting Rydberg Atom Systems With The Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Model Engineered On A Synthetic Dimension
(2023)Synthetic dimensions encoded into atomic states have emerged as a powerful tool for engineering new phases of matter. These synthetic dimensions are helpful in accessing confgurations that are difcult or impossible to simulate using real space alone. Using Rydberg states to encode these synthetic dimensions allows a high level of control over system ... -
An Analysis of the Evolution of White House Bioscience and Health Policy Through PCAST Reports
(2023)The researcher aimed to determine the role of independent scientific advisors in informing federal policy related to health and biosciences across presidential administrations from 1992-2020. Each president appoints a group of preeminent scientists, engineers, and industry leaders to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology ... -
Morphological diversity of extracellular vesicles revealed by cryo-electron microscopy
(2022-10-01)Introduction: Exosomes are extracellular vesicles 80-150 nm in diameter, containing proteins, mRNAs, microRNAs, and lipids reflecting the parent cell. While there has been an extensive characterization of the cargo incorporated in exosomes, a detailed morphological analysis of exosomes purified by various isolation techniques has not been performed. ... -
Morphological diversity of extracellular vesicles revealed by cryo-electron microscopy
(2022-10-01)Introduction: Exosomes are extracellular vesicles 80-150 nm in diameter, containing proteins, mRNAs, microRNAs, and lipids reflecting the parent cell. While there has been an extensive characterization of the cargo incorporated in exosomes, a detailed morphological analysis of exosomes purified by various isolation techniques has not been performed. ... -
Resilience-informed infrastructure network dismantling
(2022-09-13)Large-scale networked infrastructure systems contribute significantly to modern society. Highly intra- and interconnnected systems enable communities to be more productive, at the expense of becoming more vulnerable to extreme events, cascading failures, and operational demands, including random failures and even targeted attacks. The resilience of ... -
Silences on the Strand: Contesting Public Memories of Slavery and Freedom in Galveston’s Civic Historical Landscape (1871-2021)
(2022-05)On June 19, 2021, a mural was unveiled in Galveston, TX titled Absolute Equality. It depicts several scenes representative of enslavement and freedom and it is located at the former site of the Union Army Headquarters and where U.S. Gen. Granger read the orders that abolished America’s last vestige of slavery. The mural was unveiled with effervescent ... -
Negotiating Mexican Foreign Policy on Cuba: Between Domestic Interests and the United States: 1959-1964
(2022-05)This thesis analyzes Mexico's foreign policy regarding Cold War era developments in Cuba and the United States' response to said policy. It finds that while Mexico oftentimes defied the anticommunist agenda the United States pushed on to Latin America during this period, it did so not as an immediate affront to the United States, but rather to keep ... -
Freedom’s Archive: Slavery, Emancipation, & Reconstruction in Fort Bend County
(2022-05)This thesis tells the story of the Wheat family from their enslavement in Fort Bend County by Frederick Allen Rice through their experiences during emancipation, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. It studies questions of change and continuity and grapples with the inadequacies of traditional sources to try and tell a rich, colorful story of one Black ... -
Environmental Control in Appalachia: Politics of the Red River Gorge Dam Controversy, 1962-1975
(2022-03-30)In 1962, Congress approved the building of a dam on the Red River in Eastern Kentucky because of recurring floods affecting Powell County, Kentucky. This dam threatened a beautiful and ecologically unique part of the Red River, and, in response, in 1967 a group of environmental activists gathered together to challenge the building of this dam. After ... -
Machine Learning Detection of P-Waves in Laboratory Acoustic Emission Events to Understand Deep-Focus Earthquakes
(2022)The mechanisms of deep-focus earthquakes (DFEQs)—those between 350 and 700 km depth—remain poorly understood due to our inability to directly measure their fault properties in situ. One potential explanation for DFEQ nucleation is the transformational faulting hypothesis, which theorizes mineral transformations initiate the faults. To analyze these ... -
Affection: Essays on Affect, Empathy, and the Politics of Feeling
(2021-05)Often, we view feelings as squishy—personal and subjective, therefore private and apolitical. Even within ourselves, our feelings can often seem reflexive and out of our own control. This thesis represents my attempt to hold these squishy feelings and look at them up close, from different angles. In doing so, I hope to see how our affects may not ...
