Microaggressions are reoccurring derogatory messages that degrade one’s identity. While invisible and unknown to many, they remain visible and apparent to those impacted by them. The research questions for this project are: (1) What microaggressions do Queer Black men experience within larger society? (2) To contrast with larger society, what microaggressions do Queer Black men experience within Black communities? Using in-depth interviews, I will examine the intersectional microaggressions that Queer Black males experience in their own community and in larger society. After conducting my interviews, I will adopt Derald Wing Sue’s taxonomy of microaggression themes to translate the underlying messages behind delivered microaggressions. The results in this study will aid in addressing a gap within intersectional microaggression literature by documenting how Queer Black males experience these muted, normalized insults and invalidations in society.

One of the most significant problems facing modern agriculture is climate change. Plants thrive best within a fairly narrow range of temperatures. Outside of that range they have significantly reduced crop yield and significantly increased mortality. This imposes limitations on where certain crops may be grown. Due to rapidly growing populations, the industry must be allowed to expand into new regions, but climate change is reducing available regions. One possible solution is amplified heat tolerance due to symbiosis with endophytes. Endophytes are symbiotic microbes which live in the intercellular space within plants, and which may be used to improve plant fitness through stress tolerance, nutrient supply, and many other mechanisms. We chose a poplar tree which likely hosted beneficial microbes to alleviate heat stress due to its harsh environment, and have been working to isolate the relevant endophytes. I am using a plant-based isolation procedure using species such as rice and kale. By exposing the plants to the endophytes and then to heat stress, I assure that the endophytes have a broad host range because they must be able to survive in more than just their host plant, and I allow the plant to choose the most helpful endophytes to alleviate stress. Through multiple repetitions of this isolation procedure, I can increase the presence of heat-tolerance-conferring endophytes within the microbiome. These endophytes may eventually be used to expand growth into regions which are outside of conventional temperature ranges, or to remain in current regions in which temperatures are increasing.

Google Street View operates as a global surveillance system. While it periodically gets updated, GSV constantly remains a tool available for any and all individuals with access to the internet. This means that even though photo quality increases, the scope of the database widens, and its various applications multiply. Over the last decade, various new media artists have explored the possibilities that come with GSV’s all-encompassing database of images. Artist Mishka Henner has “appropriated” stills from GSV. Turning temporary online data into physical art, Henner subverts the notion that surveillance systems only serve as momentary fragments of information. In his series “No Man’s Land”, Henner documents roadside prostitutes captured by the GSV camera in rural Italy. His cropped images engage with the notion that as a public surveillance system, GSV captures bits of everyday life and turns them into data. In framing stills from GSV as aesthetic works of photography, Henner toys with concepts of privacy, detachment, and most importantly, modern surveillance. In this project, I explore the ways in which Henner uses Google Street View as a tool to make a commentary on the database system. Focusing on the globalization of public surveillance, Henner addresses worldwide issues of privacy in the internet age. His photography makes us think about the permanence of online data in an ever expanding information system. He suggests that through GSV we become data coded in 0s and 1s, forever part of the database. 

Sexuality acts as a societal arbiter; the further away one is from the norm, the more marginalized one becomes. As a result, sexuality forces us to ask the question of,  “who deserves love, and who should we extend it to?” These questions become paramount in stories that present love towards nonhuman subjects. Lars and the Real Girl, a movie about a man who falls in love with a sex doll; The Shape of Water, a fantasy romance between a mute woman and an amphibious man; and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, a play that features a man who has an affair with a goat, will be the base texts being analyzed. These stories question the structures we have in place for what we do and don't tolerate as love: what's wrong with loving a goat? To answer this question, I imagine love as a scale, with all the things in between the most normative love - white, heterosexual, and cis - and bestiality examined. Where do we draw the line between good, valid love and bad, invalid love and why? Using queer theory, a framework already populated with these questions, I analyzed these texts. There is a pervasive idea that writing about love has become a cliché and naïve pursuit. However, this thought has stifled the nuances that exist within the concept and erases the populations it has already marginalized. It is a delicate situation, but examining our desire, from the possible to the impossible, may illuminate what we believe is ethical. For without straying into the uncomfortable, we cannot challenge a norm. Rethinking perspectives and coming to a more complete and inclusive concept of love can be the value of these narratives of nonhuman desires.

Diophantine equations are polynomial equations with integer coefficients. In 1970, Matiyasevich proved that an algorithm to decide whether a given Diophantine equation has a solution does not exist. We investigated some such equations including Pell and Thue equations, that have an infinite and finite number of solutions, respectively. Geometrically the solution set of Diophantine equations in 2 variables corresponds to plane curves, e.g. elliptic or hyperelliptic curves, and the number of rational solutions is related to the genus of the corresponding curve. We gathered statistics on the size of the solution sets in an attempt to address an important unsolved problem in arithmetic geometry, known as Uniformity Conjecture of Caporaso, Harris and Mazur. Our project involved an analysis of Python and C code, specifically through the CoCalc development platform, utilizing data from the L-functions and Modular Forms Database (LMFDB). Currently our results agree with the current known data on the sizes of solution sets, and we hope to extend our results to gather data on curves not currently in the LMFDB. This will serve as a testing ground for the Uniformity Conjecture.

Research has examined the association between marijuana use and delay discounting (i.e., relative preference for immediate versus future rewards). However, limited research has compared those who use marijuana and those who do not on future self-consideration. The purpose of this study is to examine the association between marijuana use and consideration of consequences. College students ages 18-24 were recruited for an ongoing study. To be eligible, participants had to report alcohol use two or more days a week and one or more occasions of heavy episodic drinking in the last two weeks. Baseline data were used for the current analyses (N = 292 to date; 52% female, 71% Caucasian, mean age = 20.17 years). Participants were asked to report on current marijuana use, number of hours high from marijuana in a typical week, and number of marijuana-related consequences experienced in the last three months. To assess participants’ consideration of immediate rewards and future consequences, participants answered questions on the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) and the Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) scales, respectively. Independent samples t-tests will compare current marijuana users (57%) to nonusers (43%) on CFC and ZTPI scores. We hypothesize that students who report current marijuana use will report significantly lower scores on the CFC scale (i.e., less consideration of future consequences) and significantly higher scores on the present hedonistic ZTPI subscale (i.e., greater consideration of immediate rewards) compared to those who do not use marijuana. Among marijuana users, regression analyses will examine associations between the CFC and ZTPI with levels of marijuana use and consequences. We hypothesize that people who score lower on the CFC and higher on the ZTPI will report higher marijuana use in a typical week and more marijuana-related consequence. Results will inform how future-self consideration may be addressed in interventions.

Enormous outpourings of energy blasted into space by an accreting supermassive black hole (SMBH) are known as quasars. Previously, it was believed that SMBH’s enter a quiet state, thus extinguishing the quasar, over thousand-year-timescales. Changing-look quasars (CLQs) are a recently discovered, rare type of quasar that have been observed to transition far quicker than was thought possible. These short timescales motivated researchers, including ourselves, to reconsider our understanding of accretion phenomena in quasars to better understand what is driving the unexpectedly rapid changes observed in these CLQs. It is essential to establish a larger, more comprehensive, and less biased catalog of CLQs than currently available to answer such questions; and our work emphasizes creating this catalog. Our research involves both visually comparing spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database to each other and to new Sloan observations in the interest of detecting variations that suggest the quasar has turned on or off between observations. Sierra Dodd has recently identified three extremely probable CLQ candidates, bringing us closer to an improved understanding of which key changes in spectra correspond to CLQs. Further work on our part will aim to discover additional candidates to enlarge the pool of discovered.