Theses and Research

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Aidryn Hinderhofer 2024
(2024-12-06) Hinderhofer, Aidryn
“Following the Light” is a picture book that deals with themes of personal resilience, community, and queer identity. The story follows a small insect faerie named Moth. They are a mail courier with one last package to deliver who, upon getting distracted by a grove of glowing plant life, finds that they’ve lost their way in the surrounding forest without a light to guide them. Moth wanders until they find their way to another faerie’s door. They introduce themself as Firefly and offer to show Moth to their final destination in order to finish their delivery. “Following the Light” is a 8x10”, 48 page, self ended picture book dummy intended for an audience of older children from the 4th to 6th grades (9-12 years old). The entire book is brought to the rough sketch stage, toned in black and white. Two important spreads, as well as the cover, are finished entirely. The whole thing is compiled in a dummy ready for publisher consideration.
Albany Case 2025
(2025) Case, Albany
Through creating a pitch bible for an animated feature film including character designs, backgrounds, and supplemental illustrations, I used the characters of anthropomorphized racehorses to explore themes of male relationships, their nuances, the dynamic shift that defines a romantic or platonic relationship, and to make an authentic and accessible narrative of male-male love. Targeted at general audiences, Off the Bit seeks to bring queer stories to a broader demographic and to remove the stigma of queer stories being only for adults. Following the story of the characters Sterling Silver, Lord Desmond, and Little Red, this work’s focus themes are self-acceptance, finding your own peace, found family, and adjusting to major life changes and how those changes affect the relationships a person has.
Ale Uriarte 2024
(2024-11-19) Ale, Uriarte
This is a visual development project, in which I developed a story around three young witches who are all misfits in their own disciplines. In a world in which magic is slowly disappearing, and you can only practice the kind of magic you are born with. An unconventional friendship is born between a healer who would rather break bones instead of fixing them, a necromancer terrified of the dark and everything spooky, and a summoner who is unable to summon in the conventional way who comes from a background of all witches with food related powers. In this project I will show character designs, interactions, prop and background designs and key story moments, which I plan to develop further once I graduate into a visual novel or, if possible, an animated project pitch in the future.
Alishba Rahim, 2024
(2024-11-25) Rahim, Alishba
Digital Girl World is a teaser and trial episode showcasing the viewer’s attempt at survival after being transported into a horrific version of PNCA. Your only ally, a young, hyperfeminine girl named Nami helping you find a way out of this liminal space PNCA. Can you trust this girl? She looks sweet, but something about her feels…off. Through a merging and contrast of hyperfeminine and retro horror game aesthetics, internet-core and analog elements. I will create a narrative that reclaims hyperfeminine women’s sense of autonomy in the horror genre. The genre is a psychological horror, animated as a visual novel. In the plot of the teaser, after the viewer is transported into the liminal space PNCA, they are immediately chased by shadow people. There the viewer meets Naami, who helps you out by solving a puzzle, which unlocks the elevator, allowing both Naami and the viewer to the next floor. Naami then introduces herself and informs you that the school creates puzzles depending on what the shadow people and the environment want. The two process to explore the floor, and stumble upon a Monster door that wants something to eat. Naami guides you along with a puzzle, unlocking a locker that reveals a still-beating heart. Naami fills the heart with blood and feeds it to the Monster Door. After the door is satisfied, the elevator door opens, indicating the puzzle is solved and the two are free to go. The viewer feels relieved that someone as reliable and totally not suspicious as Naami is there by your side. The core of my thesis is merging a retro horror-game aesthetic with hyper-femininity to reclaim women's sense of autonomy in animation by recontextualizing traditional feminine traits. Most media depict the 'girly girl' as vain, unintelligent, and basic. Someone who has not earned their agency. This correlates with how the interests of young girls are seen through similar lenses of lesser value. Instead, misogyny encourages both men and women to invest their me with traditional masculine, interests/fields/appearance, which are more respected and important in society. This is especially relevant in horror movies, where the hyper-femme girl who is neither the ‘succubus’, ‘femme fatale’, or ‘final girl’ is treated to be insignificant and weak—the victim. This is all exemplified through Digital Girl World’s main character Naami. A smiley and sweet feminine girl, with an ‘off-side’. The goal for the future is to create more episodes where Naami’s true nature gets revealed before it is too late for the viewer to do anything about it. Therefore, crowning the girly Naami as undefeated, forever more. In the plot of the teaser, after the viewer. Link to Digital Girl World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnUi2lI2H44
Applications of Environmental History on Bolivia’s Coca Trade
(2010-04-23T17:39:06Z) Baptista, Rafael
Bolivia’s coca trade offers one of the most compelling narratives of the complexity of environmental history in Latin American. This is indeed a case where economic instability, social power struggles, and neoliberal economic policies combined to pose not only a highly visible social and health threat (worldwide increase of drug consumption) but also a threat to long-term sustainability of both the environment and agricultural crops.
Beth Starkey 2024
(2024-11-19) Starkey, Beth
Monsters of Aslamere is a 36-page concept art book, detailing an early civilization fantasy world, with the intention of using it to pitch a video game. The first part of the book details the cast of characters. Part two shows several of the original monster designs created to fill Aslamere’s world. Part three is several finished illustrations used as key art for the feeling of the game. Aslamere is filled with fantastical monsters that still control most of its territories. The people struggle to survive each day, hunting monsters that are just as likely to turn around and return the favor by hunting them. All of this starts to change when a young hunter and aspiring researcher named Kai sets out from their village, along with their small winged familiar, Vanati, determined to create this world’s first monster book. Kai grew up fascinated by monsters rather than fearing them, and so explores every corner of Aslamere to hunt down every monster, gathering information about each of them in different ways. With some luck, food, and a gentle hand, Kai is even able to tame some monsters to bring back to their village. Doing so helps their people expand and open up greater possibilities for farming, crafting, hunting, and traveling for Aslamere, setting the trail for animal domestication in this world.
Biology Undergraduate Research Symposium Schedule, Spring 2012
(2012) Biology Department
This is the 2012 program for the Biology Department's Senior Symposium. The annual Biology Senior Symposium takes place each spring. The program lists the biology student's name, time of the presentation, title of their thesis, their adviser/mentor, and their abstract.
Brady Wolchansky 2024
(2024-06-24) Wolchansky, Brady
MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL SYNDROME, A Micro-Cinematic Experience features the premier of an experimental short film I wrote, co-directed, and starred in called, Manic Pixie Dream Girl Syndrome, an adaptation from a comedic monologue of the same name I performed at an all-female group art show in 2023. This tangential monologue begins with, “you guys ever hear of the expression ‘all beautiful women are crazy’?” The 5-minute short screens at looped intervals in a makeshift microcinema constructed alongside a pop-up museum of “artifacts”; a behind-the-scenes look of the filmmaking process, including but not limited to props, costumes and images from the film’s set. The complete installation revolves around my investigations of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” (MPDG) character archetype, as seen in popular romantic films such as, Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and 500 Days of Summer with Zooey Deschanel. In cinema, the MPDG is portrayed as an artsy independent woman who often rejects societal expectations of classic womanhood and domesticity. While the MPDG is presumed to be free-spirited and independent, she is still defined by the expectations of a predominantly male protagonist and is mostly restricted within the confines of said male protagonist’s own personal goals and growth, and rarely displays any self-actualization or true personhood. This exhibition aims to recreate my own version of the MPDG, examined from a modern, feminist lens. Through the aesthetics of filmmaking, stand-up comedy and intermedia installation my hope is to show empathy with those who can relate and rouse awareness of the MPDG trope’s negative effects in others.
Can Virtue Make Us Happy? The Art of Living and Morality
(2010-05-12T18:56:17Z) Burns, Kathryn
Is happiness found through an external focus on accomplishing goals in the material world? Or is happiness fashioned through an internal focus on performing one’s duty according to the moral standards of one’s community (religious or secular)? Might happiness (eudaimonia) consist in taking personal responsibility for one’s creative capacity to accomplish things that nature cannot accomplish on its own? Might viewing virtue in terms of the origins of one’s creativity rather than the external consequences of one’s actions lead to an understanding of virtue that allows us to be human and happy?
Can Virtue Make Us Happy? The Art of Living and Morality: Otfried Höffe
(2010-05-11T18:47:31Z) Murphy, Eryn
Höffe’s first question is how to determine and define “the good.” He cites three habits, three interests, and three meanings that, together, form a recipe for an understanding of goodness. “Good” can apply to any one of the three meanings of ethos: Ethos 1, the habits associated with the relationship between an organism and its location; Ethos 2, moral habits that correspond to societal conventions; and/or Ethos 3, habits that form a personal course, independent of society’s influence. Habits can be evaluated through the lens of three interests. They can be examined empirically, through description of cultural moral habits and through explanations of origin and function. They can be examined with concern for the normative task, either in an effort to evaluate the validity and morality of the habit or to prescribe “should” imperatives that apply to both eudaimonistic and deontological views. Finally, they can be examined through attention to moral philosophy, seeking a meta-ethical standard for standards.
Changes in Anaerobic Work Output Following a Carbohydrate Loading Protocol
(2010-04-21T21:29:42Z) Schultz, Leslie; Cebron, James; Soma, Erica
Carbohydrate loading is a common pre competition method that aims to improve athletic performance. It has most commonly been used in endurance activities, however there is some evidence that it may also improve anaerobic performance. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of carbohydrate loading on anaerobic work, measured by an anaerobic treadmill test. Participants were college varsity athletes who performed two anaerobic treadmill tests, one with carbohydrate loading the evening prior to the test and the other after a normal diet. Anaerobic work was calculated and results were analyzed with a one tailed student’s t-test. Subjects generated an average of 22.90 ± 9.55 kJ of work under the loading condition, and only an average of 20.716 ± 8.39 kJ of work under the non-loading condition. The statistical analysis revealed a p value of .011. Given these results, the hypothesis that carbohydrate loading would cause a significant increase in anaerobic performance was accepted.
Comparative Phylogeography of a Coevolved Community: Concerted Population Expansions in Joshua Trees and Four Yucca Moths
(PLOS, 2011-10-18) Smith, Christopher Irwin; Tank, Shantel; Godsoe, William; Levenick, Jim; Strand, Eva; Esque, Todd; Pellmyr, Olle
Consistently large cosmic flows on scales of 100 h−1 Mpc: a challenge for the standard ΛCDM cosmology
(Oxford Academic, 2009-12-23) Watkins, Richard; Feldman, Hume A.; Hudson, Michael J.
The bulk flow, i.e. the dipole moment of the peculiar velocity field, is a sensitive probe of matter density fluctuations on very large scales. However, the peculiar velocity surveys for which the bulk flow has been calculated have non-uniform spatial distributions of tracers, so that the bulk flow estimated does not correspond to that of a simple volume such as a sphere. Thus bulk flow estimates are generally not strictly comparable between surveys, even those whose effective depths are similar. In addition, the sparseness of typical surveys can lead to aliasing of small-scale power into what is meant to be a probe of the largest scales. Here we introduce a new method of calculating bulk flow moments where velocities are weighted to give an optimal estimate of the bulk flow of an idealized survey, with the variance of the difference between the estimate and the actual flow being minimized. These ‘minimum variance’ estimates can be designed to estimate the bulk flow on a particular scale with minimal sensitivity to small-scale power, and are comparable between surveys. We compile all major peculiar velocity surveys and apply this new method to them. We find that most surveys we studied are highly consistent with each other. Taken together the data suggest that the bulk flow within a Gaussian window of radius 50 h−1 Mpc is 407 ± 81 km s−1 toward l= 287°± 9°, b= 8°± 6°. The large-scale bulk motion is consistent with predictions from the local density field. This indicates that there are significant density fluctuations on very large scales. A flow of this amplitude on such a large scale is not expected in the WMAP5 (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) normalized Λ cold dark matter cosmology, for which the predicted one-dimensional rms velocity is ∼110 km s−1. The large amplitude of the observed bulk flow favours the upper values of the WMAP5 Ωmh2–σ8 error-ellipse, but even the point at the top of the WMAP595 per cent confidence ellipse predicts a bulk flow which is too low compared to that observed at >98 per cent confidence level.
Cosmic flows in the nearby universe from Type Ia supernovae
(Oxford Academic, 2012-01-23) Turnbull, Stephen J.; Hudson, Michael J.; Feldman, Hume A.; Hicken, Malcolm; Kirshner, Robert P.; Watkins, Richard
Peculiar velocities are one of the only probes of very large scale mass density fluctuations in the nearby Universe. We present new ‘minimal variance’ bulk flow measurements based upon the ‘First Amendment’ compilation of 245 Type Ia supernovae (SNe) peculiar velocities and find a bulk flow of 249 ± 76 km s−1 in the direction l= 319°± 18°, b= 7°± 14°. The SNe bulk flow is consistent with the expectations of Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM). However, it is also marginally consistent with the bulk flow of a larger compilation of non-SNe peculiar velocities. By comparing the SNe peculiar velocities to predictions of the IRAS Point Source Catalogue Redshift Survey (PSCz) galaxy density field, we find Ω0.55mσ8,lin= 0.40 ± 0.07, which is in agreement with ΛCDM. However, we also show that the PSCz density field fails to account for 150 ± 43 km s−1 of the SNe bulk motion.
Cosmic flows on 100 h−1 Mpc scales: standardized minimum variance bulk flow, shear and octupole moments
(Oxford Academic, 2010-07-22) Feldman, Hume A.; Watkins, Richard; Hudson, Michael J.
The low-order moments, such as the bulk flow and shear, of the large-scale peculiar velocity field are sensitive probes of the matter density fluctuations on very large scales. In practice, however, peculiar velocity surveys are usually sparse and noisy, which can lead to the aliasing of small-scale power into what is meant to be a probe of the largest scales. Previously, we developed an optimal ‘minimum variance’ (MV) weighting scheme, designed to overcome this problem by minimizing the difference between the measured bulk flow (BF) and that which would be measured by an ideal survey. Here we extend this MV analysis to include the shear and octupole moments, which are designed to have almost no correlations between them so that they are virtually orthogonal. We apply this MV analysis to a compilation of all major peculiar velocity surveys, consisting of 4536 measurements. Our estimate of the BF on scales of ∼100 h−1 Mpc has a magnitude of |v| = 416 ± 78 km s −1 towards Galactic l= 282°± 11° and b= 6°± 6°. This result is in disagreement with Λ cold dark matter with Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 5 (WMAP5) cosmological parameters at a high confidence level, but is in good agreement with our previous MV result without an orthogonality constraint, showing that the shear and octupole moments did not contaminate the previous BF measurement. The shear and octupole moments are consistent with WMAP5 power spectrum, although the measurement noise is larger for these moments than for the BF. The relatively low shear moments suggest that the sources responsible for the BF are at large distances.
Daisey Pastrana 2024
(2024-11-16) Pastrana, Daisey
Pitch for a 2D animated show in Spanish of 5-7 minute episodes and a teaser of Las Aventuras de Puff y Fluff. As Puff and Fluff are learning the young audience is also learning math, science, and school of life. This shows target audience is children of 4-10 years old. Puff and Fluff are anthropomorphic rabbits whose world takes place in Oaxaca, Mixteco, Mexico. They live in La Loma de Conejo, a small town in the forest near a rancho They have a large family consisting of Mom, Dad, two sisters, and an older brother. With the help of their family, they are learning to navigate the world around them and the importance of community, friends, culture, traditions, and habitat. With their curiosity about the world around them, they are constantly learning about their ecosystem and their place in the world.
Deux Versions de I'esthetique Romantique Rossini vu par Stendhal et Berlioz
(2004) Lawson, Shelley
Â«Depuis la mort de Napoleon, il s'est trouve un autre homme duquel on parle tous jours [sic] ... La gloire de cet homme ne connait d'autres bornes que celles de la civilisationÂ» (Stendhal, La vie de Rossini, vol. L 1). Par ces mots elogieux, Stendhal (1783-1842)-un ecrivain celebre et un des chefs du mouvement romantique franyaisouvre sa biographie du compositeur d'opera italien, Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868). La Vie de Rossini (1823). Mais la verite est que la gloire meme de Rossini. telle qu'elle est imaginee par Stendhal, avait ses limites dans les cenacles romantiques. Pendant les annees 1820. la musique de Rossini divisait les Parisiens de I' epoque en deux factions: les Â« Rossinistes Â» et les detracteurs de ce compositeur. 1 Parmi ces derniers se trouvait un jeune compositeur franyais, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), qui detestait la musique italienne. et dont la colere etait tellement extreme qu'il desirait meme bruler Ie Theatreltalien (Berl ioz, Memoires, vol. 1, 70-71). Dans ses Atemoires (1865), ecrites quelques annees avant sa mort, Berlioz attaque la biographie de Stendhal (decede depuis plus de vingt ans) avec les mots suivants : Â« M. Beyle, [... ] a ecrit une Vie de Rossini sous Ie pseudonyme de Stendhal et les plus irritantes stupidites sur la musique. dont il croyait avoir Ie sentimentÂ» (Berlioz, vol. L 215)?
Dictyostelium Myosin Bipolar Thick Filament Formation: Importance of Charge and Specific Domains of the Myosin Rod
(Public Library of Science, 2004-11) Altman, David; Hostetter, Daniel; Rice, Sarah; Dean, Sara; McMahon, Peggy M.; Sutton, Shirley; Tripathy, Ashutosh; Spudich, James A.
Myosin-II thick filament formation in Dictyostelium is an excellent system for investigating the phenomenon of self-assembly, as the myosin molecule itself contains all the information required to form a structure of defined size. Phosphorylation of only three threonine residues can dramatically change the assembly state of myosin-II. We show here that the C-terminal 68 kDa of the myosin-II tail (termed AD-Cterm) assembles in a regulated manner similar to full-length myosin-II and forms bipolar thick filament (BTF) structures when a green fluorescent protein (GFP) "head" is added to the N terminus. The localization of this GFP-AD-Cterm to the cleavage furrow of dividing Dictyostelium cells depends on assembly state, similar to full-length myosin-II. This tail fragment therefore represents a good model system for the regulated formation and localization of BTFs. By reducing regulated BTF assembly to a more manageable model system, we were able to explore determinants of myosin-II self-assembly. Our data support a model in which a globular head limits the size of a BTF, and the large-scale charge character of the AD-Cterm region is important for BTF formation. Truncation analysis of AD-Cterm tail fragments shows that assembly is delicately balanced, resulting in assembled myosin-II molecules that are poised to disassemble due to the phosphorylation of only three threonines.
Differences in Couple Representation Between Men’s and Women’s Magazines
(2010-07-13T17:24:31Z) Stewart, Shannon; Geck, Amanda
This study was a content analysis on ten mainstream men’s and ten mainstream women’s magazines. Researchers looked for depictions of a couple within articles, advertisements, and in any images within the magazine. Every item was coded for what kind of couple was shown, the tone towards being a couple, and what the genders of the individuals within the couple were. A tally of how many articles and images mentioned couples, and how many articles or advertisements featured birth control was made in addition to the coded items. It was hypothesized that couples would be mentioned more in women’s magazines and would be portrayed more positively compared to the men’s magazines. Results supported this hypothesis through chi-square analysis. Furthermore, the hypothesis that most couples represented would be heterosexual couples was also supported. All of our results were statistically significant.

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