Daniel F. '65 & Ann H. Sullivan Endowment for Student/Faculty Research

My research this summer studied a portion of the morphine molecule using the Wagner-Jauregg reaction. The final goal of this research is to use the Wagner-Jauregg reaction to synthesize a morphine-like molecule, that could have reduced addictive properties and allow people to use morphine without the risk of addiction. The Wagner-Jauregg reaction involves a double Diels-Alder reaction between a diene and dienophile. This reaction allows us to use cheaper and readily available molecules to synthesize more complex molecules, such as morphine.

Using China’s national and regional data (i.e. Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangdong), this project studied how Covid-19 affects China’s housing market. Main findings included:

I propose that the practice of chemistry often reduces its subject matter into a vacuous form of itself; that we erroneously equate truth values assigned to states of matter with forms so mitigated or changed that they are no longer ontologically dependent on—nor can they feasibly describe—the original substance in question. During this fellowship, I examined objects in general and how their identities and demands on existence affect the types of ontological commitments we can justifiably devote ourselves to.

In Kenya, only 6% of rural women have access to land titles, even though they make up approximately 96% of the agricultural labor force. This gap is critical because, in Kenya, the land is an indicator of social status. Moreover, agriculture in Kenya contributes to almost a quarter of the national GDP. This research aimed to understand the significant impacts of the gender gap in land ownership and control on Kenyan rural women’s economic and personal empowerment.

I analyzed the theme of psychological repression in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Zadie Smith’s NW, exploring how, despite the apparent progress in British society during the nearly 90 years between their publications, the same problem still surfaces.

During the duration of her fellowship, Sam read and analyzed six of Shakespeare’s Roman and Greek plays. She also researched a variety of methodologies including, feminism, new historicism, and marxism. Her research into various methodologies showed her a variety of critical methods from which to approach writing her article, so that she could combine them to create her own unique methodology.

How does the politicization of ethnicity impact government minority development efforts in East and Southeast Asia? 

For my Fellowship this summer I produced and published a collection of four short fiction stories that explored the experience of a Romanian family as they immigrate to the U.S, assimilate, and grow apart as time passes. These stories were inspired by a piece I created for my advanced fiction class in the fall 2021 semester, as well as my own personal experience with my Romanian-American family.

Robber flies (Order: Diptera, Family: Asilidae) are a widely distributed family of predacious flies. They are considered to be top-level predators crucial to suppressing various insect populations, however the ecology and behavior of the species Lasiopogon currani has received minimal attention. We conducted a study of L. currani underneath a disturbed powerlines area in Pierrepont, St. Lawrence County to determine insect diversity, potential prey, and behavioral patterns. We found that the insect diversity of the powerlines study site included representatives of eight orders.

Robber flies (Order: Diptera, Family: Asilidae) are members of a widespread family of predacious flies. Lasiopogon currani are a small species within this family, active in late spring to early summer and commonly found perching on exposed sticks or rocks. We conducted daily surveys at Glen Meal State Forest, combined with a mark-resight technique to measure their phenology as well as collect observational data. The first L. currani were surveyed on May 2nd, with the population peaking in abundance on May 9th and plateauing for 9 days before decreasing, with no L.

This project is a study of still life painting which combined Dutch still life painting style with traditional Chinese fine brushwork paintings. Due to the Coronavirus, I did research and composition design from late May, but started to actually paint until Early August. Since I believe quality is much more important than the quantity, I created only one but highly detailed painting at last. For the subject and composition, I specially focused on the bottle flowers (the western-style floral compositions) with traditional Chinese wooden window frame.

This project intended to proposing a well-founded and viable total synthesis of a recently isolated natural product molecule. This molecule is structural challenging and interesting, and it has been tested to be potentially antibacterial. Thus, it is important for us to discover a synthetic route of this molecule. During the eight weeks of this summer (2020), we analyzed the structure of this molecule theoretically, and proposed a well-founded synthetic route of this molecule.

The reviewed mechanism, kinetics, and thermodynamics of proton-coupled electron transfer reactions work as the basis for electrochemical degradation of azo-dye. Cyclic voltammetry is applied for the electrochemical studies of this project. A review of metal-organic frameworks and their synthetic routes helps to design better catalysts work for degradation reaction.

The Syntactic View, the Semantic View, and the Pragmatic View, three historically prevailing approaches to the structure of scientific theory, each had crucial successes and failures. This paper outlines each of those views, addresses those successes and failures, and suggests a way to synthesize the useful formal rigor of semantic approaches with the practical concerns of pragmatic approaches. This is done through a recharacterization of the notion of surplus structure in the Semantic View. The end result is a scheme for formalizing important pragmatic structures of theory.

The Greencafe website would allow the Greencafe staff to create events and would allow customers to reserve seats. This website would also allow customers to access the menus. Most importantly it allows the staff to manage all the reservations accordingly. They are also able to send invitations and reminders to their customers.

This project is to create computer generated music and to make comparisons between the two deep learning models. One is the LSTM (long short term memory) model and the other is the MuseGAN (generative adversarial network) model. MIDI and npz are two forms that are used in each model for datasets. MIDI is a form which people use to process music with programming because it can be easily read by computers. Npz files are able to group numbers into arrays, then save them in the files. It is a form made by numpy package in Python.

This is a less conventional alternative to a traditional research paper. It follows a family who has a son suffering from a rare, non-life-threatening genetic disorder during the time that widespread genetic testing was entering the mainstream. Along with explaining and attempting to teach the reader about this complex FOXP2-plus mutation, this paper tells the story of a young man, R, and his life from early childhood to young adulthood.

The purpose of this study is to further examine the relationship between academically-focused character strengths (positively valued personality traits) and positive academic outcomes among college students. Over 320 SLU students took an online survey. Results demonstrated (1) a new grouping of character strengths, (2) links between character strengths and academic outcomes for all students, and (3) important differences between groups of students on these relationships.

Research has found that risk preferences differ between men and women, with women tending to be more risk averse. For many individual’s, participation in athletics plays an important role in their social development, thus we might expect athletics participation to impact social outcomes including for example risk preferences. I evaluated the possibility that athletics participation correlates with risk preferences and consider how this impact may differ by gender.

This summer, I worked on a project titled “Exploring mathematical models of the transmission of COVID-19 and the efficacy of different management strategies” with my mentor, professor Rebecca Terry. My goal is to understand how coronavirus spreads within a population and explore how different factors affect transmission. Based on this exploration, I aim to consider how different management strategies may affect the spread of coronavirus through the population and compare the efficacy of different management strategies, such as quarantine and mask wearing.

In Senegal, as elsewhere, hip hop has been a key avenue of popular criticism and political action. While the genre has often been dominated by male voices, female performers have also been active participants in the Senegalese hip hop scene. Female hip hop artists are also gaining recognition as beat makers, rappers, and graffiti artists. Women are utilizing hip hop to make a space for female artists while also advocating for women’s rights and other social and political concerns.

For centuries, slave narratives and black history, specifically those of African Americans, have been researched and taught at all academic levels. The stories of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass stand out as markers of American Liberation and black agency. Although the movements sparked by these revolutionaries are exemplary, they are a double-edged sword. Douglass and Tubman are luminaries of the black experience. However, they are considered anomalies in the larger mainstream narrative, two of the few slaves who dared to fight for their freedom.

The education system in the US is quite flawed. It can work against students, teachers, and even parents, rather than working with them to create more opportunities, greater equality, and broaden knowledge. Many of these flaws are instilled into the system through the norms of education and the norms of teaching. Given the power of norms, we feel powerless to change a system that is not working for too many students. But this system must change.

This paper is about how primarily focusing on wilderness categorization may be a bad thing for environmentalism. Essentially, the paper links the history of capitalism, to the history of wilderness and explores how arguments for wilderness preservation seem to actually contradict many environmentalist goals. If you choose to read the document provided realize that it is a working draft. I'm using this paper as the basis of a grad school writing sample and it will go through major revisions in the coming months. Still, I hope you find it interesting.

The 2017 ranch invasions in Laikipia County, Kenya, are linked to a colonial legacy of land alienation that emphasizes land use for elite purposes, which plays out today on a national and international sphere. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight an early colonial history of Laikipia County, as seen with primary source research. In doing so, one may understand that the idea of "land conflict" is not new to the Maasai pastoralists who call Laikipia home, and create questions I seek to explore in my Honors Thesis.