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The emergence of antibiotic-resistant diseases and increases in plant disease outbreaks, that threaten global food security, present major growing public health crises. Since most antibiotics originate from soil microorganisms, soil microbial communities offer promising reservoirs for discovering new compounds. This study explores antibiotic-producing rhizobacteria in Sage Hill's soil, a recently restored environment at UCLA. Biochemical and functional assays were used to characterize soil microbial communities from rhizosphere samples taken from Sage Hill. Using these methods, we identified antibiotic-producing bacteria, and likely Pseudomonas and Bacillus. These results underscore the importance of investigating soil microbial communities for novel antibiotic discovery and agricultural sustainability.

Religion, a shared social system that connects people with a supernatural power, exists in human populations worldwide. Scientists have long debated whether religion is a cultural or evolutionary phenomenon; that is, whether religion is a learned set of values, beliefs, and behaviors, or instead the result of gene variants that have increased in frequency over time. In this paper, I argue that natural selection, the process by which the frequency of certain genes increases over generations due to their reproductive benefit, has played a role in the persistence of religion. I begin by providing background on the definitions of religion, biological evolution, and adaptation, which are necessary to clarify before analyzing the role of biological evolution and adaptivity in religion. I then explain and provide evidence for how religion meets the three conditions of natural selection. Finally, I present multiple adaptive hypotheses to explain how religion might increase fitness. This work clarifies scientific understanding of how natural selection impacts religion and expands on existing adaptive hypotheses that explain how religion might increase biological fitness.

This thesis is an exploration of how the literary public sphere generates sexual discourse and an effort to understand the link between sexology and imaginative literatures of the nineteenth century. Using Louisa May Alcott’s work as a case study, I consider the ramifications of authorial deception, arguing that deception was necessary in order to create sexual discourse in the periodical sphere. I also consider an American origin of sexology, rather than the typically invoked European medical origins, and with that intervention argue that imaginative literature and the queer possibilities it creates should be given more importance in the study of sexology and the history of sexuality more broadly.

William Leybourn (1626 – 1716) was a printer, author, teacher, surveyor, and mathematician. The occupation of “printer” is often associated with passivity: a simple artisan whose sole focus is to bring books to sale and therefore a stranger to the knowledge contained within the books. This paper seeks to revisit this view, showing that William Leybourn was the exact opposite of a passive printer. He introduced to the English public the works of crucial protagonists of the European scientific community (including the works of Galileo Galilei), promoted debates among scholars and natural philosophers, and presented complex topics previously reserved for academic disputations in a manner accessible to a more general audience. Employing both traditional historical research and tools in Digital Humanities, the paper discusses Leybourn’s works as an example of a conceptually and methodologically novel approach to the study of intellectual networks. This bottom-up approach recenters traditionally peripheral figures, such as Leybourn, and reveals crucial social, economic, and political aspects of early modern European cultural and intellectual debates.

"Little Bronze Tokyo": Housing and Employment for Black & Japanese Americans in Los Angeles during World War II, (1940-1950) investigates mid-20th century urban development and socioeconomic dynamics in Los Angeles, focusing on the housing crisis, Japanese relocation, and emergence of the Black enclave, "Bronzeville." Utilizing urban scholars David Harvey and Michel De Certeau, the study reveals how marginalized groups shape their urban environment amidst discrimination and forced migration. Drawing from primary sources like interviews and letters, and secondary sources including government reports, it uncovers government-driven racial discrimination's impact on downtown Los Angeles. The establishment of Bronzeville and Japanese incarceration altered city demographics and cultural boundaries. Beyond historical documentation, the research sheds light on enduring challenges for Black and Japanese communities, such as housing discrimination and economic disparity. It contributes to understanding how historical borders influence contemporary socio-cultural and economic landscapes, highlighting marginalized communities' resilience in challenging these boundaries.

This paper was written for Cluster 73 as a multidisciplinary research assignment about how social factors may impact mental illness in a specific population. It explores how societal expectations of women’s beauty and the culture of figure skating may influence the development, presentation, and treatment of anorexia nervosa in American women’s figure skaters. Ideas of socially desirable body image are amplified for figure skaters, who must maintain their figure to be athletically competitive and appear aesthetically pleasing on the ice. Coaches also play an important role in influencing skaters’ body image, and a reform in coaching practice is vital to changing outcomes for skaters at risk of developing anorexia.

Lynd Ward’s wood engravings for the 1934 illustrated edition of Frankenstein push the boundaries of what it means to “read” an illustrated edition of a novel in conversation with its cultural afterlives, its material dimensions, and its queer undertones. Using French literary theorist Gérard Genette’s definition of hypertextuality, this paper explores the radical ways in which nontraditional texts like Ward’s wood engravings and Shelley Jackson’s 1995 hypertext novel Patchwork Girl speak to the reading experience through their use of framing devices—a tool borrowed from Shelley herself. This essay reads Ward’s work through the lens of Patchwork Girl’s critical apparatus, concentrating on how the emphasis on the creature’s body speaks back to the voyeuristic desires and expectations of the reader.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has grappled with persistent conflict throughout its history, with recent outbreaks highlighting the need for a solution. This paper investigates the greed hypothesis, which holds that armed non-state actors are motivated by the profitability of natural resources to launch uprisings against the state. Utilizing regression analysis, we investigate the correlation between the prices of various rare metals, in relation to deaths due to armed conflict. Our findings reveal a statistically significant positive correlation between the price of gold and armed conflict-related deaths, particularly in the Kivu provinces and post-2003. Conversely, we observe a decline in conflict-related deaths outside of the Kivu provinces in response to increases in copper prices prior to 1997. The implications of this result are aligned with the greed theory, suggesting that non-state actors are, at least in part, motivated by the profitability of natural resources. The findings have significant implications for policy interventions, highlighting the need for more specialized and informed approaches.

Instituted in 1749, the British Lying-In Hospital served as a charity hospital for married pregnant women. Existing analysis of lying-in hospitals in Britain emphasizes the history of midwifery. This project approaches the subject from a different angle, centering the patients instead of the medical staff. The project focuses on an account book from the UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library that lists the hospital’s income and expenses from 1767 to 1782. Analysis of this archival source reveals the hospital’s regulatory power over the poor. This regulation enforced the distinction between deserving and undeserving poor inside and outside the hospital walls.

Situated within intersecting discourses of nostalgia, nationalism (Anderson 1983), and popular music, my community’s musical practices go beyond performances of trauma. Through music, Little Saigon preserves the counter-memory of pre-1975 Vietnam, as post-War generations build avenues for intergenerational understandings and healing.