Seema Desai
My research focuses on peripheral nerve injury and treatment. Peripheral nerve injury requires medical attention when the severed ends of the nerve are further than a few millimeters apart. If the distance is small, the two nerve ends can regenerate and heal, but if the distance is greater (approximately a couple centimeters), then the two ends must be bridged by a nerve autograft or tubular conduit. My research specifically focuses on potential biomaterial fillers for tubular conduits, which can be modified to create an environment supportive of nerve regeneration. The […]
Dayoung Park
Degradation reactions of alkyl radicals are of interest in combustion chemistry, planetary atmospheres, and the interstellar medium. However, the nature of their reaction pathways is not easily understood as the intermediates are highly reactive. My project will investigate the dissociation dynamics of a simple primary alkyl radical, 1-propyl, upon excitation at 248 nm using a detection scheme known as photofragment translational spectroscopy. Four distinctive product channels are assessed at this wavelength. A preliminary experimental work seems to indicate that the C-C bond cleavage is energetically the most favorable product channel. […]
Robert Schaffer
How effective are the endangered species laws in the US compared with those of other countries? Throughout the social science literature, scholars have noted that US courts have much broader powers of review over agency decisions than judges in other English-speaking nations, encouraging American interest groups to challenge agency rulings through the legal system. As such, in my project, I extend this comparative observation to pose a specific question: does the court-centric approach to policymaking in the United States provide for a more effective system of endangered species protection than […]
Meriel Melendrez
Coast Redwoods can grow over three hundred and fifty feet tall—well overtopping Sather Tower’s three hundred and seven. An individual Redwood might live in multiple above-ground micro-climates that can be especially noticeable on a sunny day: from low, perhaps shady to dry, hot, dizzyingly high-up. Macro-morphological features of their leaves (e.g. surface area and connection to the stem) have been demonstrated to correlate with such great height, suggesting that variable leaf structures work together with towering stature. What the stomata, pores, are up to meanwhile has yet to be as […]
Justine Parkin
I am researching Gandhi’s nonviolent movement in India, particularly the importance that Gandhi subscribed to language and his belief that language too can be violent. If language does not merely describe the world as it is but is an active part of creating that very world and thus the possibilities for action, then how we choose and use our words is not trivial in the least but significantly influences the success of any political action. Moreover, as an extension upon language in general, I am exploring the narrative function in […]
Kristopher Gibson
In his diary after the initial 1848 gold strike, the Scottish artist and writer J.D. Borthwick described the terribly violent bull & bear fights drawing crowds of as many as six thousand. Soon after, those fights would be banned, paving the way for new ventures like the Empire Casino in San Francisco. Finally, Jackson Lears describes the abolition of the casinos, only to be replaced by more ‘civilized’ and contemporary speculative ventures. My research question asks what factors fostered the emergence of such a seeming anomalous California gambling culture between […]
Geoffrey Iwata
Laser light has been proven to be an effective and elegant method of probing sensitive physical systems, providing many seminal, precision methods in experimental physics. These experiments must prove free of systematic errors and be minimally perturbative to the phenomena to be examined. Along these lines, I am researching the properties of zero-birefringent acrylic polymers in a range of temperatures from room temperature down to a couple Kelvin. In exhibiting this unique property of zero-birefringence, these materials do not affect the polarization of light passing through them, even when under […]
Mark Phuong
Species Distribution Models (SDMs) provide one of the only methods for projecting the future distribution of species and are increasingly used to prioritize conservation efforts. SDMs correlate species’ occurrence points with climatic variables (e.g., temperature and precipitation) to produce a distributional map of the climatic limits of a species. Genetic studies of geographic variation within species, or phylogeography, often uncover cryptic lineages that have remained evolutionarily isolated for thousands to millions of years. My research assesses how identifying cryptic diversity within species affects the predictions of SDMs. Faced with climate […]
Rose Guthrie
Through the course of my summer research, I will be looking at an assemblage of archaeological materials from pre-European contact commoner household sites in the southeastern region of the island of Maui, Hawaii. This assemblage includes materials such as lithics (stone tools), charred plant remains, and faunal remains. These materials will hopefully illuminate the oft-untold story of the commoner in ancient Hawaiian society, who was largely responsible for the surplus agricultural production that fed the development of an elaborate and extravagant statehood up until the moment of Cooks arrival in […]
Benjamin Karin
I am studying song variation and population subdivision in two named subspecies of Sage Sparrow (Amphispiza belli) in California. California Coast Range populations (A. b. belli) are physically much darker in color and have more contrasting patterns than Central Valley and Mojave Desert populations (A. b. canescens). Though all the A. b. canescens populations look exactly the same, previous genetic studies have shown Central Valley A. b. canescens populations to be closer genetically to Coast Range A. b. belli than to the Mojave Desert population of A. b. canescens (Cicero […]