Trisha Remetir
After September 11, American author Don Delillo announced: “Many things are over. The narrative ends in the rubble, and it is left to us to create the counter-narrative.” Although a multitude of literary, psychoanalytic and political discourse has speculated on how, years after the fact, we now tell the “story” of 9/11, a cohesive picture of this counter-narrative remains unclear. By using Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (a novel whose fragmented speakers struggle to reconcile their pre- and post-9/11 traumatic experiences) as a springboard for my research, […]
Justin Hauver
Friedrich Nietzsche spent much of his philosophy denying Being and replacing our conception of it with a notion of becoming. In sharp contrast Martin Heidegger produced a work titled Being and Time and saw the illumination of Being as the central task of philosophy. This tension is reproduced in the way each philosopher deals with the creation of art, yet there is a peculiar way in which the aesthetic philosophies of Nietzsche and Heidegger interact and seem to complement each other. My research is concerned with the connection between these […]
Io Kleiser
Several newly discovered supernovae, or stellar explosions, are unusually faint and fast-evolving and defy our usual classification schemes. Their light curves (brightness over time) in particular show how quickly they rise to maximum brightness and then decline. They are also unlike any previously known supernovaeand unlike each otherin their electromagnetic spectra. Several attempts have been made to identify the properties of these supernovae and their progenitor stars based on their spectra and light curves, such as the energy of the explosion, the amount of mass ejected, and the elemental composition; […]
Jared Rosen
The H, K ATPase is a P-type ATPase proton pump that is highly expressed in the gastric parietal cell. This enzymatic proton pump is responsible for creating the highly acidic environment in the lumen of the stomach. The protein is comprised of a larger catalytic “alpha” subunit that creates the high proton gradient and a smaller “beta” subunit. The goal of my research project is to gain a deeper insight into how it is that the H,K ATPase protects itself from digestion by the very acid that it produces to […]
Ariel Hsian-Au Hsiung
My project is a study of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China. I have chosen the Sichuan crisis to examine because the Chinese state’s fast and transparent reaction to the earthquake was both surprising and contrary to traditional expectations. My research seeks to answer this fundamental question: has participating in the Sichuan relief efforts changed state-society and society-citizen interactions in China? The wider implication of my project is whether a higher level of participant culture post-Sichuan is an indicator for an emerging civil society in China. I shall approach my […]
Marisa Lim
Comparison of DNA sequences between different populations often reveals genetic lineages that warrant further study to assess the validity of current species delineations. Recent genetic work on the California ground squirrel uncovered three morphologically cryptic lineages. The Northern and Central lineages come into contact near Lake Almanor. The Central and Southern lineages meet near Mono Lake. Preliminary work found genetic differences distinguishing the Northern and Central lineages, despite the apparent absence of a geographic barrier to gene flow. In contrast, the Central and Southern lineages are genetically mixed (based on […]
Timothy Roth
The current energy crisis in the US has demanded the production of alternative, renewable fuels to replace our current petroleum-based fuels. However, the limitations of the current biofuel standard, ethanol, require the development of second-generation fuels that can be used with existing engines and infrastructure. One such fuel is n-butanol, which the M. Chang group has successfully produced at good yield using a synthetic metabolic pathway engineered into E. coli. The Dueber Lab has demonstrated that synthetic protein scaffolds can be used to colocalize enzymes in metabolic pathways in varying […]