Scarlet Cummings

How do issues of authorship and originality function within fine art and cinema? What are the similarities between painting and film? What are the fundamental differences, especially those relating to the meaning and worth of emulation within the two mediums? My research will attempt to answer these questions using two case studies: Orson Welles’ 1973 film F for Fake, and the paintings of the infamous Elmyr de Hory, Hungarian art forger extraordinaire who imitated the style of countless painters (Degas, Derain, Dufy, Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso, and Vlaminck to name a […]

Alexander Flores

During the middle ages the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus was wildly popular throughout Europe, and was translated into nearly every vernacular language. This non-canonical religious text contained a piece of theology that has fallen into obscurity, Christs harrowing, or descent, into Hell. In Middle English the Harrowing of Hell occurs as a narrative poem in three manuscripts, spanning the late 13th century to the early 14th century. A striking aspect of these poems is that they appear to straddle the line between what we consider poetry and drama. The poems […]

Dipin Kaur

While it is the largest democracy in the world, Indias human rights record with respect to conflict zones has been unsteady at best. In many areas of the country with past and ongoing conflicts, the commission of human rights violations of the government has been continuous and widespread. The failure of the Indian state to investigate these human rights abuses committed by its own departments has created a structure where, in these areas of conflict, basic human rights have been suspended and faith in the democratic system, the police and […]

Cory Gerrity

In Compton telescopes with crossstrip germanium detectors, interactions on the detector strip borders where charge is split between strips result in significant signal loss that degrades spectral resolution. Thus, modeling this charge loss mechanism is essential for making corrections and maximizing the resolving power of the instrument. Yet despite this, the mechanism is not entirely understood. My project seeks to model charge collection and transport in the detectors of the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), a balloonborne gamma ray telescope operated out of the Space Sciences Laboratory. The research hopes […]

Ruiyao Gong

The Dazu Rock Carving is the only Buddhist cave site in China representing the development of Buddhist teachings during the Song dynasty (960- 1279). My research mainly investigates the Buddhist statues of Dazu site, with a special focus on Mahamayuri Vidyaraja, or the Great Peacock King at Baodingshan, Dazu. The Great Peacock King, a deity who can cure all evils in Esoteric Buddhism and who always rides on a peacock, is rarely depicted in other Buddhist caves. Dazu has three statues of him, however, at Baodingshan, Northern Mountain and Shimen […]

Ching-Hsiu Hsu

A basic question in neurobiology research is how neural circuits are wired up to perform computations. A classic example of neural computation is that which underlies the visual systems ability to detect the direction of moving object. Input to the retina is encoded by photoreceptors, which are point detectors of light and by themselves cannot determine the direction an object moves. However at the output of the retina, there is a class of neurons that signal robustly when object moves in one direction over any other. These direction-selective cells have […]

Mallika Lal

Antibiotic resistance in the Enterobacteriaceae family, which includes Gram-negative bacteria E. coli and Klebsiella, has become a serious public health problem. Many bacteria of this family produce extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs), which are enzymes that can degrade most beta-lactam antibiotics. Therefore, carbapenems, a type of beta-lactam drug, are increasingly the drugs of last resort for ESBL-producing bacteria. However, an enzyme called Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) threatens to render carbapenems completely ineffective, leaving few choices for treatment in patients with infections caused by KPC-producing species. In fact, the CDC has designated carbapenem-resistant […]

Joy Hsu

Several lines of evidence support a role for Natural Killer (NK) cells in the immune response to tumors. We recently found that PD-1, a receptor capable of powerfully suppressing the functions of T cells, is expressed by NK cells. However, the cellular networks responsible for PD-1 expression on NK cells are not known. Here, we propose to study the contribution of Regulatory T cells (Tregs) in inducing PD-1 expression on NK cells, by using both an ex vivo and in vivo approach. The proposed research plan will provide important knowledge […]

Bradley Hughes

Implicit bias refers to a prejudiced attitude or stereotype activated outside of conscious awareness. While there has been a great deal of research examining factors that affect implicit attitudes, there is a dearth of research on the effects of emotional statesparticularly positive emotionson implicit bias. I seek to address this gap by examining the influence of awe on implicit bias. Awe is an emotional response to vast stimuli that transcend current frames of reference and stimulate a need for the formation of a new cognitive framework to accommodate the experience. […]

Queenie Kwan Yee Lo

People revere food as if it were Heaven. This Chinese idiom highlights the essential role that food has always played in Chinese culture and history. It is commonplace to see cuisine and wine appear in Chinese classical and modern literature. When food appears in literature, we experience it with all our senses and gain a deeper understanding of its significance. In consideration of the lack of studies on Hong Kong food literature, I will investigate the interaction between literature and food in colonial and postcolonial Hong Kong by carrying out […]