University Honors

In this capstone project, I analyze the impacts of US immigration laws between the late-1800s and mid-1900s through close readings of the policies and legal exceptions impacting Asian immigrants. These policies include the Page Act, the War Brides Act, Alien Land Laws, and the Immigration and Nationality Acts. Specifically, my capstone focuses on how these federal laws impacted the racialized exotification and sexual objectification of Asian women, who are considered outsiders to the US. Additionally, this capstone explores contemporary cases of violence against Asian women as evidence of this long history. In this project, I argue that this history of immigration policies and legal exceptions is relevant to the present-day because it reflects the deeply rooted perception of Asian women as racialized, hypersexualized, and exotified “others” who are desirable as sexualized objects, yet excluded from proper US citizenry. As a case study, I will discuss the 2021 Atlanta shooting, where six Asian women were killed by a white male shooter, with a secondary focus on the 2023 Boston subway attack. In examining the effects of 19th to 20th century immigration policies and recent events, this project emphasizes that the ingrained– yet unsupported– American belief of Asian women as sexually appealing “aliens” compromises their safety and sense of belonging in the US. Recognizing the posed danger associated with the racial and sexual objectification of Asian women is an important step to addressing and improving the conditions for Asian women living in the States.

With rising levels of anxiety among college students, understanding its effect on cognition and decision-making is crucial. Anxiety, a state of uneasiness often triggered by high-stress situations, may influence major life choices, such as whether students choose to enter the workforce or attend graduate school. This study examines both correlational and causal effects of anxiety on future planning. In the correlational study (n = 204), anxiety was measured using the GAD-7 and BAI scales. In the experimental study (n = 249), anxiety was induced by asking participants in the experimental condition to solve up to 10 Raven’s Progressive Matrices within three minutes, and the task was described as an “intelligence test.” This was designed to elicit anxiety through uncontrollability and negative self-evaluation. The control group completed the same task with unlimited time, and the task was described as a “fun matching exercise.” Participants self-reported emotional and physiological anxiety levels. We assessed decision-making using a hypothetical scenario of a business student choosing between an entry-level job offer versus getting an MBA. We also included standard measures of time preference, risk aversion, and loss aversion. I hypothesized that higher anxiety levels would lead to more risk-averse decisions, a preference for immediate rewards, and an increased likelihood of choosing workforce entry. However, results revealed no significant relationship between anxiety and decision-making in either study. Despite the null results, these findings contribute valuable insights into the complex relationship between anxiety and decision-making, highlighting the need for further exploration. Future research should explore alternative methods of anxiety induction to better understand its role in decision-making among college students.

Human pose estimation tools are designed to automatically detect facial and body key points and can be used to track humans in the environment. Typically, these are applied on adult data, and their application with young humans, such as infants, has not been adequately explored. These tools could be proven very useful in applications and research with infant populations that focus on movement assessment and diagnosis. The goal of this work was to examine the validity of a pose estimation tool, OpenPose, to track infant arm movement during reaching. A dataset involving videos from 36 infants (7 neurodivergent infants) who are less than 12 months old was used. The total number of reaching actions analyzed was 435. The wrist joint of each infant was manually tracked to obtain the 2D coordinates of its position throughout the reaching action. OpenPose was run in the same reaching segments to obtain the coordinates of the same keypoint. The ability of OpenPose to accurately track wrist joint motion was assessed through the direct comparison between the two methods. Certain parameters, such as different camera angles were also considered in the comparison. Bland-Altman and correlation analysis was performed in the coordinates obtained via the two methods and across the different camera angles. Our findings support a satisfactory performance of OpenPose to track infant reaching motion across the different angles, when compared to manual tracking. This work provides valuable insights into the use of OpenPose for motion tracking specifically in infants, an important yet under-represented population in this area of research.

Individuals with disabilities in the Inland Empire face significant barriers to healthcare access, even despite the legal policies in place aimed at promoting equitable medical services. The Inland Empire of Southern California, encompassing Riverside and San Bernardino counties, has a population exceeding 4.6 million. According to recent data from the California Health Interview Survey, as of 2016, approximately 29.2% of adults in Riverside County reported having a disability (UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 2016). This systematic review examines both the experiences of disabled individuals and the structural barriers that impact healthcare access and covers both established health centers and clinics within the Inland Empire to provide a comprehensive analysis of accessibility challenges and patient experiences. A systematic search of the literature and case studies was conducted, and 12 studies published from 2000 onward were selected for the review. Articles were selected based on relevance to key accessibility issues, with data extracted on study population, disability type, methodology, and healthcare barriers. The search yielded a wide variety of articles however they were only included in the review if they fit the predefined inclusion criteria. Key barriers identified include physical inaccessibility inside of healthcare facilities, limited accessible transportation options to get to the facility. Beyond these structural inequities, patients with disabilities frequently report feeling misunderstood or overlooked in clinical settings. Many express frustration with communication barriers. These experiences contribute to feelings of medical mistrust, often leading individuals to avoid seeking necessary care. However, this review also touches on the positive experiences that were found among the studies. Findings highlight the urgent need for targeted interventions, including the enforcement of design standards in healthcare facilities, expansion of paratransit services, and notably: comprehensive disability-focused training for all healthcare staff, including providers and front desk personnel. Addressing both structural and experiential barriers is critical to advancing equitable healthcare access for patients with disabilities in the Inland Empire.

Ritual is a universal feature of human studies and acts as a “window” into the cultural dynamics through which people “make and remake their worlds.” It is a “patterned, repetitive, and symbolic enactment of a cultural belief or value” with its primary purpose as transformation. The disciplined practices for developing individual dispositions in meditation have led many people to compare meditation to ritual, however distinct from the explicit world of ritual itself. Meditation is ritualized through rites and practices that focus on individual spirituality: repetitive, communal chanting and periodic reading of religious texts. In Buddhist tradition, meditation rituals, specifically that of chanting and reading religious texts, are an embodied and socially constructed technique of self-cultivation. My Capstone project undertook ethnographic fieldwork on these rituals of meditation in the Sōka Gakkai International (SGI) center in Riverside, California. I conducted the research through participant observation and participation in public-facing events within the organization. My study examines the use of contemplative, text-based practice within the community, and sheds light on how contemplative reading can serve as an approach to liberation. Close attention to their specific meditation practice and its ritual production also illuminates evolving ideas about sacred space within the SGI community and allows reflection on how this challenges the normative conceptualizations of Buddhism in the traditional sense of practice (silent prayer) and immigration in anthropological literature.

One thoroughly researched yet unexplained phenomenon is that women live longer than men on average. However, a 2023 study by Shawn Bauldry defined years lived free of serious physical or mental disability as “disability-free years.” While Bauldry’s research focused on comparisons between race and ethnic groups, his results also highlighted that women live longer than men despite experiencing more years with a disability. Curiously, Bauldry’s paper did not explore the potential factors explaining why women are more likely to develop a disability earlier in life than men. Therefore, this paper will conduct an integrative review on the factors contributing to this health disparity. By identifying and synthesizing current literature, this review aims to better understand how debilitating conditions are shaped by biological structures and gender inequities. Existing literature was collected on the biological and psychosocial factors of the three most common disabilities in women: low back pain, headaches, and depression. These three conditions were analyzed due to their prevalence in womens’ global health issues and their unexplored complex interplay of factors. The findings reveal a positive correlation between depression and stressful life events, such as emotional abuse and poverty. Additionally, biological factors such as fluctuating hormone levels during the menstrual cycle and pregnancy, increase the risk of chronic headaches, low back pain, and depression. Furthermore, medical professionals’ reliance on the biomedical approach rather than the biopsychosocial approach, creates a barrier for chronic pain intervention. Overall, these factors elucidate the psychosocial and biological complexities between disability-free years and gender. This paper concludes with solutions, such as intersectional health research and programs broadening the implementation of the biopsychosocial model in healthcare.

The Latinx Health Paradox, an epidemiological finding, states that Latinx people despite having lower income, education and power, live longer than their non-Latino counterparts. With this in mind it is essential to ask how the paradox shapes the lives of the Latinx community through its influence on various stakeholders such as policymakers. The Latinx Health Paradox as traditionally defined prioritizes quantity of years lived over quality of years lived. The paradox creates the illusion that the Latinx community is thriving in terms of their health, but it is important to acknowledge the difference between life expectancy and quality of life. I will challenge this interpretation of the Latinx Health Paradox through a survey experiment and review of scholarly work on the paradox. Through this methodology I will test my hypothesis that the current view of the Latinx Health Paradox negatively influences policymaking and perceptions of the Latinx community’s overall health. Furthermore, I will craft a new presentation of the paradox and its impact, specifically on policymakers. Currently, policy results in Latinos being less likely to receive preventative care or have health insurance. The policies to rectify these disparities are not being made due to the pre-tense created by the Latinx Health Paradox that protective health policy for Latinos is not necessary because they are living for a long time as the paradox states. The Latinx Health Paradox is a dangerous veil over the Latinx community, creating a facade of wellness, detrimental to the health outcomes of Latinos as they age.

The California Central Valley aquifer system relies heavily on water supply from the Sierra Nevada mountain range, including surface water inflows and groundwater recharge. This study seeks to understand the dynamics of surface water and groundwater resources in the Kaweah River and Tule watersheds, located in the southern Sierra Nevada and Central Valley, and how they respond to climate variations and human water use. We propose that large hydraulic connectivity exists between the mountain and valley aquifer systems. We performed exploratory data analysis in MATLAB to understand trends and variability in streamflow, groundwater level, precipitation, and temperature observations in the mountainous and valley regions. We fit a series of linear regression models to the time series data from publicly available monitoring stations in the two regions to assess trends and variability in groundwater and surface water resources. The Mann-Kendall Test was used to determine if there was a significant increasing or decreasing trend in groundwater levels over time. Anomaly plots were generated to visualize annual deviations from the long-term mean for the precipitation, temperature, and streamflow time series. Results indicate a significant decreasing trend in groundwater levels for seven out of the ten wells over time. This decrease worsens over periods of extended drought. Groundwater recovery post-drought is small, largely due to deeper groundwater levels and large pumping rates in the region. Streamflow experienced a strong decline over the drought period, but recovered quickly post-drought due to higher precipitation. This research has important implications for groundwater management in the region, as current groundwater decline is reaching unsustainable levels without intervention.

Battered repeatedly by the most profound ethical scandals in the institution’s history, the public became increasingly aware and troubled by the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has never had a binding and enforceable code of ethical conduct. In response to these accusations of bribery and Unethical behavior by the Supreme Court Justices, the United States Supreme Court released a statement of the court on November 13th, 2023, as to the ethical norms to which justices should aspire. This statement unleashed a new controversy over whether it constituted a code of conduct and what, if anything, more was needed to buttress the Court’s fraying legitimacy. This is important because, since the birth of this nation, the Supreme Court has not had an enforceable code of conduct, and thus, the Supreme Court has essentially been unrestricted when it comes to ethical guidelines, unlike every other judge in the country, justifying an in-depth analysis. The Supreme Court of the United States, in order to address several urgent questions, is an enforceable code of conduct viable? Is the code of conduct released by the Supreme Court a meaningful constraint on the justices’ conduct? Has anything changed due to its release? Is there a need for systemic change in the oversight and self-governance of the Court as an institution, and is such a change consistent with an independent judiciary? Is it aligned with the principles of the judiciary? When it comes to the Supreme Court of the United States, being the highest court of all the land, it has no oversight. Because of this, these questions direct our attention to whether this code of conduct will be enforced and, if implemented, will be done so effectively. In this analysis, there will be an assessment of the Court’s statement on ethics through textual and comparative analyses of the document and the practices and formal policies of other courts in the U.S.. The deficiencies of the Court’s statement on judicial ethics are woefully inadequate, and these inadequacies underscore the need for analysis of the document itself and the various holes within it. There will be a comparative look at different judicial structures to determine if there are practical alternatives or a better way to enforce ethical guidelines within the U.S. Supreme Court while preserving its institutional and constitutional role. In the United States, there should be a better way to formulate the judicial system in regard to oversight, where it is clearly lacking