Jason Budge
My research project seeks to compare worker experiences from cooperatives and conventional businesses to discover whether a cooperative workplace is a more effective way to organize labor in regards to happiness and fulfillment. My research will utilize interviews and surveys of workers in comparable cooperative and conventional workplaces in Berkeley and Oakland in order to better understand how workplace structures influence and shape worker happiness and fulfillment. Theoretically, I am drawing from Marx’s arguments on alienation to examine these experiences. My hope is that my research will spur debate on […]
Hoa Francisco Ngo
Wherever religion is, its Siamese twin secularism follows closely behind it. The border between the two concepts is not so clear, though, particularly among practicing Catholics who hold to orthodox Church views in modern democratic nations. These borders are not inherent to either religion or secularism; instead, they are drawn by the modern state in order to regulate religious groups for political ends. My project explores the boundaries of religion and secularism in modern in Japan in the context of the Catholic institution of Opus Dei. The Opus Dei center […]
Diwen Shen
In 2010, Beijing, Chinas capital and second largest city, topped the Worlds Worst Traffic list by Foreign Policy. Back in 2007, Beijing cut transit fares up to 80% to increase transit ridership and reduce traffic congestion ahead of the Olympics. The purpose of reducing car use was not achieved, but large shifts occurred between usage of non-car travel modes bicycles, subways and buses. How have urban residents in Beijing, China shifted their primary travel modes since the 2007 Public Transit Fare Reform? Low fare prices have been insufficient for attracting […]
Amy Clark
A native English speaker will not, generally, be surprised to hear that the color pink is associated with love, or green with envy; we are naturally attuned to the color symbolism embedded within our own language. One challenge of working with the literary tradition of a reconstructed language like Old English, however, is that many such tacit symbolic resonances have been lost to us. This summer, I will analyze the contexts in which the Old English color words sweart, rad, and fealo appear in existing Old English literature, systematically tracking […]
Rodrigo Ochigame
Given the vast amount of information on the internet, filtering is inevitable. No one can see, hear, or read everything. However, information filtering algorithms generally lead to anti-democratic outcomes in the distribution of political speech. Algorithms that rank by popularity or average rating tend to disproportionately suppress minority viewpoints, causing a ‘tyranny of the majority’ situation in which people see only the least controversial information. Meanwhile, algorithms that involve personalization tend to suppress information that diverges from readers’ own viewpoints, creating polarized ‘echo chambers’ where like-minded people speak only with […]
Carson Quinn
The way that brain cells wire together to form circuits underlies almost every facet of mental function, whether that be memory, thinking, or sensation. In my project, I seek to better understand what happens on a molecular level that allows for these specific circuits to form. Specifically, I want to elucidate the role that the maturation of synapsesthe connections between neuronshas on the shape, structure, and connectivity of the neurons making up these circuits, and how experience drives these changes. I will do this using the zebrafish visual processing system, […]
Edgar Cook
The debate over gun control has become an increasingly divisive political issue among Americans, so much so that both liberals and conservatives appear to be talking past each other. According to Moral Foundations Theory, such political schisms arise because liberals and conservatives hold different moral intuitions and respond to different forms of moral rhetoric. While the intuitive and discursive asymmetries between liberals and conservatives may seem insurmountable, recent research suggests that moral framing can actually persuade partisans to change their attitudes by appealing to their moral intuitions. Expanding on this […]
Kelley O’Dell
Conversations about sexuality abound among the youth of Amman, Jordan, where same-sex sexual activity is permissible by government law, yet the general public is still very hostile towards the queer community. In such a stigmatized environment, queer identities are legal, but hardly publicly permissible. Nevertheless, clubs, cafes, and bars known for their toleration have emerged as hotspots for members of the local queer community. Through my research in Amman, I hope to experience the citys underground and public queer spaces, and explore how people interact both within and across them. […]
Jeni Hagan
Learning a motor skill takes a use of error-based learning to devise new strategies towards mastering that skill. Motor skills are perfected through attempting new solutions based on previous movement errors. The presence of motor noise, which is variability between repetitions of the same motor movement, can interfere with error learning as the previous movement error could be from incorrect planning or baseline motor noise. Past research on motor learning has found that while under certain conditions high motor noise is beneficial in learning during a motor task, it is […]
Ron Cook
Nearly all life on Earth depends on oxygenic photosynthesis, the process by which light energy is used to create sugars and oxygen from water and carbon dioxide. In plants and algae, it is carried out in organelles called chloroplasts, which are cousins of photosynthetic bacteria known as cyanobacteria. Both chloroplasts and cyanobacteria contain membrane-enclosed sacs called thylakoids, and the light-dependent reactions of photosynthesis take place in the thylakoid membrane. Here, light hits the protein complex Photosystem II (PSII), and this energy is used to split water into oxygen, protons, and […]