RSS 1.0UA Graduate and Undergraduate Research
ABOUT THE COLLECTIONS
The graduate and undergraduate research collections share, archive and preserve research from University of Arizona students. Collections include honors theses, master's theses, and dissertations, in addition to capstone and other specialized research and presentation topics.
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INVESTIGATING COAGULATION DYSFUNCTION IN LATE PREGNANCY: A ROTEM, ANTITHROMBIN III, CBC, AND MATERNAL-NEONATAL OUTCOMES ANALYSIS IN THE BEAMS COHORTThe objective of this study was to characterize late pregnancy coagulation profiles in the BEAMS (Binational Early Asthma Microbiome Study) cohort using antithrombin III (ATIII), microclot assessment, and exploratory ROTEM measures in a binational cohort of Mexican and Mexican American pregnant women, and to evaluate their associations with maternal and neonatal outcomes. We analyzed 95 pregnant participants with plasma ATIII (ng/mL), complete blood counts, microclot characterization and prenatal, delivery and birth medical records. Descriptive statistics summarized maternal, delivery, and neonatal characteristics and continuous laboratory measures. Univariable and multivariable linear regression models examined determinants of ATIII, including microclot presence, maternal comorbidities(preeclampsia, diabetes and hypertension) maternal age, BMI, and medication use. Logistic regression, chi square tests, Pearson and Spearman correlations, and Kruskal–Wallis tests were used to assess relationships between ATIII, microclot categories, and maternal (preeclampsia, hemorrhage, chorioamnionitis) and neonatal (NICU admission) outcomes. ATIII concentrations were generally within the normal range of R&D provided values from apparently healthy volunteers using heparin plasma samples, and microclots were common. Most routine clinical and hematologic variables showed weak or no associations with ATIII or microclot status, and there was limited evidence that these markers predicted short term maternal or neonatal complications. In linear regression, hemoglobin was inversely associated with ATIII, and in adjusted models clinical histories of preeclampsia and diabetes were independently related to lower ATIII levels. Maternal age and hemoglobin showed associations with microclot presence indicating that older age and lower hemoglobin were associated with having a microclot, whereas microclot categories were not significantly associated with country, mode of delivery, smoking, or NICU admission. ROTEM data were available for only two participants and were interpreted qualitatively. In this cohort, late pregnancy appeared hypercoagulable, with relatively normal ATIII levels and frequent microclots, yet these measures were only weakly linked to standard laboratory indices and perinatal outcomes. These findings highlight the need for larger, longitudinal studies to clarify the clinical role of ATIII and microclots in pregnancy care.
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Poetic Voice in Cratinus and Plautus: A Transcultural, Trans-Temporal StudyThis thesis consists of a comparative study of two apparently disparate comic playwrights, Plautus and Cratinus. Specifically of interest is the way in which their poetic “voices,” the characterizations they adopt for themselves to claim ownership over their work and compete for audience and sponsorial interest, shape the way in which they engage with superficially similar motifs. In short, I argue that for Cratinus, moral education and Dionysiac poetics feature to demonstrate his work as valuable for the polis, and thereby worthy of continued support, whereas for Plautus, subversive engagement with the same motifs serves to reaffirm his commitment to the pleasure of the audience.The introductory chapter begins by briefly dealing with the theoretical question of defining “poetic voice” before a survey of the social, political, and economic contexts of comedy in fifth-century Athens and second-century Rome. Subsequent sections discuss the lives of the playwrights and previous scholarship on their self-characterizations. Chapter 2 deals with the function of Dionysiac motifs in both poets’ corpora. Therein I argue that the Dionysiac elements in Cratinus serve to reaffirm his position as an “inspired” poet, whereas Plautus’ manipulation of similar ideas instead suggests that he and the audience have power over his work. The final chapter deals with moral didaxis and its destabilization, which I contend Cratinus engages in earnest, and Plautus upends.
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Predicting Regulators of Differentiation in Merkel Cell Carcinoma Using Probabilistic Boolean NetworksMerkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a poorly differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma with limited treatment options, including immunotherapy, to which only ~50% of patients respond. Lineage plasticity drives the poorly differentiated phenotype promoting tumor aggressiveness and treatment resistance. Targeting the mechanisms underlying lineage plasticity could induce terminal differentiation or resensitize the tumor to existing therapies, yet such strategies are underdeveloped in MCC. Here, we used a workflow using scRNA-seq and ATAC-seq to generate Boolean networks, simulate their dynamics, and predict a key regulator of differentiation, which we validated in vitro. Using CytoTRACE2 across two independent datasets, we revealed the existence of tumor subpopulations with distinct developmental potency states. We then constructed and refined transcription factor regulatory networks using BooleaBayes and expanded them with ATAC-seq inferred regulatory interactions. Across multiple network constructions, simulations of single-gene perturbations consistently identified the Notch effector RBPJ as the key regulator predicted to shift MCC cells toward a more differentiated state. Experimental knockdown of RBPJ in MCC cell lines altered differentiation associated gene expression, reduced expression of MCC markers, and drastically reduced cell growth. These findings identify RBPJ as a regulator of MCC lineage plasticity and candidate for targeted treatment, while highlighting the utility of probabilistic network modeling for prioritizing therapeutic targets in translational cancer research.
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Deciding Termination?: A Busy Beaver Abstract GameThe Busy Beaver function $S(n)$, first described in 1962, takes a number $n$ and finds the Turing machine with $n$ states which computes for the most number of steps before halting. Finding new Busy Beaver numbers has been the goal of many people, and $S(5)$ was recently discovered and formally verified. This formal verification made use of a novel abstract interpretation framework, called Closed Tape Language, to find non terminating machines. In this work, we utilize the theory of abstract interpretation to give a first attempt at a formal definition of the Closed Tape Language abstraction. We also explore the incompleteness of this abstraction, and the factors contributing to this incompleteness.
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Universal Design for Learning in the Latin Classroom: A Process for Reflective TeachingThis thesis presents a reflective teaching tool in the form of a rubric to aid in improving student accessibility through the principles of Universal Design for Learning. The rubric breaks down activities into thirteen factors to increase opportunities to engage the three different learning styles—recognition, strategic, and affective—by identifying areas for improvement and suggesting scoring benchmarks. This thesis also demonstrates the use of this rubric through analysing four sample activities and their compliance with UDL principles. The sample activities are a poster session, translation assignment, small group reading assignment, and a personal dialogue assignment that could reasonably be found in a Latin classroom in order to demonstrate the use of the rubric in good faith.
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The Paris Note as an Intercultural Bridge: Russian Émigré Poets Between Two WorldsThis thesis examines the émigré literary movement known as the Paris Note as an intercultural phenomenon that emerged within the Russian diaspora in interwar France. Focusing on the poetry of Lidiia Chervinskaia, it argues that the Paris Note is best understood not as a formal literary school but as a liminal space situated between Russian and French literary traditions. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity and Roland Barthes’s theory of écriture, the study conceptualizes this movement as a site of cultural “in-betweenness,” where identity, language, and poetic form are shaped through displacement and fragmentation. The first chapter situates the Paris Note within the historical and cultural context of the 1920s–1930s, examining Russian emigration, the formation of émigré cultural institutions in Paris, and parallels with contemporaneous transnational phenomena such as the Lost Generation. The second chapter offers a comparative analysis of Chervinskaia’s poetry in relation to interwar French poetics, particularly the La Sagesse movement, as well as the Acmeist tradition. Special attention is given to diary-like aesthetics, defined by syntactic fragmentation, parcellation, and an intimate, speech-like tone. The study demonstrates that while the Paris Note preserves key Acmeist principles—clarity, restraint, and attention to sound—it transforms them under the conditions of exile into a more introspective and formally flexible poetic mode. By examining both structural and semiotic dimensions of poetic language, this thesis positions the Paris Note as a dynamic literary formation that mediates between cultural memory and modernist experimentation, contributing to a broader understanding of Russian émigré literature in a transnational context.
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From Marine Snow to Sediment: Holocene Export Productivity Changes in the Gulf of Mexico Estimated from Planktic ForaminiferaRecent studies using plankton tows and culturing approaches demonstrate that planktic foraminifera of the subsurface-dwelling genus Globorotalia preferentially calcify within marine snow and exhibit elevated Ba/Ca ratios. These observations are consistent with calcification in high particulate organic carbon (POC) microhabitats, lending support for the use of Globorotalids as an indicator of export productivity. In the oligotrophic Gulf of Mexico (GoM), Globorotalia truncatulinoides occurs almost exclusively during boreal winter (DJF): the season of peak POC flux. We investigate the relationship between G. truncatulinoides abundances from 25 GoM core tops and POC ocean color data from NASA’s MODIS-Aqua satellite. We find a strong, significant correlation (r2 = 0.78; p<0.01) between DJF POC values and G. truncatulinoides abundances in the GoM. We apply this relationship downcore to a Holocene (11.7 ka to modern) assemblage record from Garrison Basin and three additional GoM sites, finding increasing relative abundance of G. truncatulinoides and other POC-dwelling species towards the present. The trend of increasing G. truncatulinoides is coeval with increasing seawater ?18O in the Garrison Basin, suggesting a link between surface-ocean salinity and export productivity. Using individual foraminiferal stable isotope analyses of five planktic species, we compare water-column structure from the modern to the freshest interval of the Holocene (~7.6 ka) and find that the early Holocene was likely stratified. Collating proximal hydroclimate records, we contend that stratification and reduced export productivity are linked to large-scale ocean-atmospheric and freshwater dynamics over the Holocene. Our results suggest that G. truncatulinoides is a sensitive and quantifiable proxy for winter export production in oligotrophic settings, offering a powerful tool for reconstructing carbon cycling dynamics.
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The Eyes Have It: Surveillance in Three Works of Lev TolstoyThis thesis examines Leo Tolstoy’s Family Happiness, Anna Karenina, and The Kreutzer Sonata to argue that marriage in his fiction operates as an inverted panopticon within a broader panoptic system. Through an inverted panoptic system, discipline is produced through social surveillance, internalized guilt, and self-regulation rather than direct coercion. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of panopticism, Oleg Kharkhordin’s concept of the inverted panopticon, feminist philosophy, and nineteenth-century Russian legal and social contexts, the study shows that Tolstoy represents marriage as a gendered structure of power. Within this farmwork, women internalize the social gaze and become responsible for maintaining moral order, while male authority functions through institutional and cultural dominance. In imperial Russia, marriage prioritized social stability over individual fulfillment. Historians such as Barbara Alpern Engel show that submission, and sexual restraint constituted central virtues of womanhood, reinforced through familial authority, religious instruction, and domestic discipline. Legal and religious norms granted husbands control over women’s bodies, labor, and sexuality, while female desire was often constructed as dangerous. Across Tolstoy’s works, these norms are shown as internalized through constant social judgment, showcasing a inherently internal panoptic system.
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Understanding AI Patent Search: Discrete Action Space Exploration for Boolean Query GenerationPatents play a vital role in protecting innovation and shaping economic growth. Inventors and patent examiners rely on effectively searching existing patents to determine whether proposed patents are novel, or already covered by prior art. AI-based patent search methods can offer utility in this process, but operate as black-boxes and lack the transparency and explainability required in a legal setting. We present an approach to dynamically refine explainable boolean queries which recreate the results of the AI-based search. To reduce the complexity of optimization on such a large search space of possible candidate terms we use ranking and filtering to narrow the broad search space into a discrete action space of candidate terms. We apply three optimization techniques to the resulting action space: Reinforcement Learning (with PPO), greedy search, and Monte-Carlo Tree Search. We find that greedy search was the most effective in our context.
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Epidemic Change Detection via Shifted Maximum SubarraysThe epidemic change-point problem arises in applications where a sequence exhibits a temporary deviation in its mean over an unknown interval. Classical approaches are based on the scan statistic, which requires maximizing a normalized sample mean over all possible segments. As a result, exact computation of the scan statistic involves $O(n^2)$ operations for a sequence of length $n$, which greatly limits its applicability to large datasets.In this work, we introduce a new computational framework based on the shifted maximum subarray (SMS) problem. We establish that the scan statistic can be derived from the SMS solution path, thereby transforming a quadratic-time optimization into an empirically near-linear-time procedure. This result provides an exact and scalable algorithm for computing scan statistics without approximation. We further develop permutation-based and hybrid inference methods that enable efficient and reliable significance calibration. The proposed approach achieves accurate type I error control and competitive power, as demonstrated through simulations and real data analyses.
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A Study of Super-Dwarf Pea for Bioregenerative Life Support at The Space Analog for the Moon and MarsA major requirement to achieve self-sustaining Moon and Mars habitation is the development of bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS). One of its pillars is air revitalization through the removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) and production of oxygen (O2). As CO2 is the essential substrate of photosynthesis, plants and algae are the primary candidates to fulfill this role. The diffusion rate of gasses into and out from plants depends on the size of the stomata aperture, which is directly affected by the vapor pressure deficit (VPD). We hypothesize that a mild increase of VPD (0.5kPa) will moderately enhance transpiration without reaching stomata closure, thereby increasing CO2 uptake, oxygen generation, and plant growth. As an integrated part of the Space Analog for the Moon and Mars, a research center at the University of Arizona, the original Test Module of the Biosphere 2 was transformed into a mixed-use agricultural production facility, resembling a robust potential Mars habitat. This experiment engaged super-dwarf Earligreen pea cultivars under three VPD treatments: one Low (1.09 kPa) and two High (1.55 kPa) each with different air temperature and relative humidity regimes. CO2 uptake was measured indirectly by computer-controlled gas injections to maintain 800 ppm within the hermetically sealed module. Plant growth was evaluated by measuring plant standard phenotypical parameters. The data was analyzed using the Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) procedure employing a GAM (generalized additive model) with Tukey’s Honest Significant Difference (HSD) for determining the significance of the difference of the means. VPD was found to have a significant impact on the daily and cumulative injected CO2 across treatments: the higher VPDs producing the higher levels of CO2 uptake. Treatment High_VPD_A had 61.3% more cumulative injected CO2 over 26 days compared to Low_VPD. This correlates with crops under treatment High_VPD_A having statistically significantly higher Edible Biomass, Count of Fruit, and Weight of Fruit, with the lowest Non-Edible Biomass. Plants, and food cultivars in particular, have the potential to fulfill the self-sufficiency goals for long duration space exploration. Nevertheless, they are still the asset with the greatest uncertainties. Some of these unknowns lie in what crops we will take with us and how we will grow them. This body of work aims to take a step closer to answering these questions.
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Examining Features of Written Narratives in Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) in Relation to Cognitive-Linguistic AbilitiesImpairments in sentence-level writing, often referred to as text agraphia, are among the most debilitating symptoms in the logopenic and nonfluent variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Despite the significant impact of these impairments on daily communication, the underlying cognitive-linguistic factors that contribute to writing difficulties in PPA remain poorly understood. This exploratory study examined how different language and cognitive abilities influence written narrative performance in individuals with PPA.Neurolinguistic assessments were administered in 16 individuals with primary progressive aphasia. Three of the participants were diagnosed with nfvPPA and thirteen were diagnosed with lvPPA. Twenty-one age and education matched controls were also assessed. Written narratives were elicited using the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) picnic scene description task. These samples were transcribed and coded to analyze variables of interest using Systematic Analysis of Transcripts (SALT) convention. Between groups comparisons were conducted using nonparametric statistics. We also ran correlation and multiple regression analyses to investigate how key cognitive-linguistic domains—including semantics (word meaning), phonology (sound structure), transcoding (converting sounds to written form), allographic skills, and working memory—relate to writing performance in PPA. Our findings revealed that multiple cognitive-linguistic processes contribute to sentence-level writing abilities. Specifically, semantics, phonological manipulation and transcoding abilities, and allographic skills, were significant predictors of the ability to produce grammatically well-formed sentences. In contrast, semantics, phonological transcoding and allographic skills were the strongest predictors of word-level features of written narratives such as punctuation, spelling, and appropriate word choice. These results highlight that writing impairments in PPA are not driven by a single deficit but instead reflect disruptions across multiple cognitive-linguistic systems. Importantly, the findings support the inclusion of written narrative tasks in clinical assessment and diagnosis, as they provide valuable insight into the specific underlying impairments affecting written communication. A better understanding of these relationships may ultimately inform more targeted and effective intervention approaches for individuals with PPA.
