Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Journal

The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between implicit gender bias in medical professionals and misdiagnosis in young female-identified patients. The study examines the ways in which the age and gender of the patient can impact the accuracy and timeliness of the diagnoses young women receive. Furthermore, it analyzes how experiences with misdiagnosis alter patients’ perceptions of doctors. The findings of this study are based upon the survey responses of 21 young women, ages 19-25 years old.

In the last thirty years, mathematics standards have undergone frequent changes due to two conflicting perspectives: reformists and traditionalists. The purpose of this study is to assess any lasting impacts of the 1997 California Math Standards. I interviewed three faculty in three categories about diversity, curriculum, and stakeholder perspective. Presented here are findings and common themes that emerged from the analysis of interviews. Results showed that a lasting impact of the Math Wars was the 2010 Common Core Standards, written in a way to favor the reform movement of the 1990s. A professional development perspective as an approach is utilized.

Honduras has endured a long history of environmental problems that are fueled by pressure from international bodies to increase economically-fueled activities that result in extreme land degradation. Logging, dam building, mining, and deforestation operations have all been met with extensive protests by indigenous groups, coalitions and movements. In response, interests supporting the continued exploitation of resources have subjected these groups to extreme and systematic violence in the hopes of silencing them. How successful is this use of terror to coerce violence? This paper reviews two case studies of violence in Honduras: the murder of internationally-recognized activist Berta Cáceres, and the violence perpetrated against the Tolupan people.

The purpose of this research project is to assess the reliability of UN Peacekeeping as a strategic conflict resolution tool in the context of modern global conflicts. This paper evaluates the efficacy of UN Peacekeeping on the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of operation, and analyzes its performance through the lens of Clausewitz’s concepts of fog and friction. This paper concludes that the systematic challenges peacekeeping operations consistently face at each level of operation, coupled with the increasing complexity of contemporary global conflicts, calls into question the ability of UN Peacekeeping to reliably navigate and resolve modern-day global conflicts.

The topic of religious tolerance is one that spans the scope of human history. In the following essay, this subject will be examined within the context of the late Roman Empire (180-395 CE.). This ancient period represents a chapter of Roman history almost exclusively recounted by ancient Christian historians, the result of which has led to the establishment of the famous narrative depicting late Romans as severely intolerant of non-Roman religions– most notably, Christianity. Through the analysis of extensive documentation, leading to the uncovering of inherent Christian bias, this established history will be challenged in an effort to present a narrative which characterizes the Roman society as exhibiting substantially more religious tolerance than previously believed.

This research examined the effects of induced emotional states on individuals’ moral values endorsements. Participants were induced to feel joy, hope, fear, or anger at either the individual or group level through an event recall task. Subsequently, their endorsements of six moral foundations were measured. Results did not support the hypothesis that joy, hope, fear, or anger, experienced at the individual or group level, would significantly affect moral foundations endorsements. Endorsements of fairness/cheating did not significantly differ from care/harm, which in turn did not differ from liberty/oppression. These three foundations were rated as significantly more relevant than all others.

Oral contraceptives (OCs) are used by over 100 million women worldwide. They contain synthetic hormones which may alter brain structure and function; however, only a few small-scale neuroimaging studies have examined their effects on the brain thus far. Taking a big data approach, the Jacobs Lab at UCSB launched a database which pairs structural brain scans with reproductive health histories. Preliminary findings from the database found that, compared to never users, OC users had an increase of grey matter volume (GMV) in an area of the brain called the cerebellum (n=48). In this replication study, participants showed similar results (n=24).

This paper focuses on the lives of two of the most well-known female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Within this paper I analyze different documents that relate plausible histories of these two women’s’ lives and differentiate between the accuracy of sources. I question modes of discussing these women and utilize a variety of secondary sources to examine primary sources and their impacts. This paper critiques standard discussions and histories of these two women, instead offering a more humanizing and historically accurate way of seeing them that exists outside of popular culture’s romanticism and mythologization of them.

Humans search for specific targets in complex scenes to navigate the world. This ability to search is integral to survival in many ways, from its most basic role in hunting and gathering to its more advanced application to the detection of medical conditions in the field of radiology. According to previous research, the ability to search efficiently in a visual task can be learned over time. Despite sufficient evidence, in this paper, we recognize numerous findings that support the presence of greater learning and confidence curves in 3D versus 2D image search. The study of such learning patterns is important to the field of medicine as we hope to train radiologists to be as efficient, accurate, and confident as possible.

Dreams are the subjective experiences that occur during sleep, and their subject matter differs as a function of sleep stage or time of night. Dream content is reflective of the activity of brain structures concerned with information processing and memory consolidation [1]. Sigmund Freud, the founder of the psychoanalytic approach and author of The Interpretation of Dreams, described dreams as the “royal road to the unconscious.” He believed that the dreaming and the waking mind were continuous and that dreams were reflections of conflicts between unconscious desires and the conscious mind [2]. Freud proposed that the symbolic language of reported, or manifest dreams could be decoded to reveal the hidden latent dream—the result of a forbidden wish. His work inspired further research on the meaning and imagery contained within dreams that corroborated some of his views but not others, so that we now believe that dreams are the product of more than just unconscious desires [3]. This project seeks to comprehend the local understandings of dreams and their meanings— implicit and explicit— among young people in the United States today.