High-potential molecules derived from biomass sources may suitably replace or supplement traditional nonrenewable hydrocarbon fuels to reduce pollution and fuel processing costs. Due to expensive and time-consuming property testing, models that predict key properties from optical data would initially vet potential additives before investment and bench-scale testing. Attenuated Total Reflection...
At This Point, an undergraduate-focused science podcast, works to expand the accessibility of science by exploring topics that, at this point, may seem too complex to understand. This thesis project describes the process of creating At This Point and demonstrates how the podcast fulfills the criteria of effective science communication....
Consider a polygon lying in the Euclidean plane with labeled edge lengths. The moduli space of polygons is the space of all polygons with the same labeled edge lengths, modulo orientation preserving isometries. It is well known that this space is generically a smooth manifold. For certain combinations of edge...
Bruno Latour’s Facing Gaia provokes us to embrace our Earthboundedness to approach the problematic political ecologies of the Anthropocene. Latour’s call for the Earthbound is to re-trace networks of society, institutions, and meaning and to challenge, as enemy, those that would continue to behave as if we lived on more...
Understanding the impact of mitochondrial dysfunction on genome evolution has the potential not only to provide new insights on the basic evolutionary processes influencing mitochondrial and nuclear genomes, but may also reveal novel avenues for evolutionary adaptive recovery from harmful mutations. Aberrant mitochondrial activity is fundamental to the pathology of...
Although only a minority of introduced species become established and have noticeable consequences in their new communities, some can displace native species, alter food webs, and cause local extinctions. Studying these invasive species can provide new insights into basic ecological questions as well as inform management strategies. Pacific lionfish (Pterois...
The Mariana Swiftlet (Aerodramus bartschi) (Aves: Apodidae) is endemic to the Mariana Islands, where it currently occurs on Saipan, Aguiguan, and Guam. An introduced population of Mariana Swiftlets is also present on O'ahu in the Hawaiian Islands. Sparing interference with the endangered population in the Marianas, the introduced, surrogate population...
As a metafictional work of science fiction literature, A Novel Elysium explores the timelessness of
both the human mind and its literary surroundings, comparing the self-awareness of its characters to
the sometimes tragic or empowering metaphysical realizations of human beings. Within this
framework, any concrete place or time is unimportant;...
Because many coral-reef fishes are observable in situ, are amenable to transplantation, have small home ranges and short generation times, they provide a excellent system to investigate many topics within general ecology, fisheries biology, and conservation biology. The primary goal of this dissertation was to use the coral-reef fishes system...