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.

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 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.

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.

English and Spanish speakers learn different phonetic systems in their acquisition of their respective languages. Despite having the same phonemic contrast between voiced and voiceless plosives, the stop consonants of the two languages differ in voice onset time, or VOT. They also have different vowels with different formant values. We hypothesized that bilingual children exposed to both languages would display intermediate VOT and vowel formant values for both languages. Measuring readings from lists from four children aged three to five years, we found this to be the case for VOT for only voiced stops and not voiceless stops. VOT for this group seems to collapse into three categories: strongly positive, slightly positive, and negative, to one of which all of their stop productions belong. Vowels did not appear to have a distinct, discernible pattern among bilingual children.

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.

California’s Indígena population (indigenous people who identify with origin communities in Mesoamerica) has grown over the last 70 years, especially during the 1990s. Simultaneously, the number of youth that have enrolled in the public-school system has increased. However, these youth are often not welcomed and instead experience racial microaggressions within schools that alienate and encourage them to assimilate while abandoning their culture. I will explore the history of displacement of Indígena youth and their interactions in schools. I will discuss a selection of Indígena youth experiences in the education system, while critically analyzing the implicit biases of those around them.

The 1910 Los Angeles International Aviation Meet, inaugurated Los Angeles’s inextricable link with the aviation industry. Focusing on key historical actors and art of advertising used to sell the idea of flight to the public, this project posits that the 1910 Air Meet, not only helped to shape aviation, but also inspired the future of flight. This thesis tells the history of the airplane detailing the story of Los Angeles’ boosterism and the role said boosters played in the ultimate stabilization of airplane into a functional, reliable, and lucrative technology and industry.

Engaging youth in Science, Technology, Engineering,and Mathematics (STEM) fields earlier rather than later is important for developing a stronger foundation in these disciplines. The STEMinist project aims to engage young girls (fourth through sixth grade) in science and engineering through interactions with female scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This study aims to identify what the girls take away from their interactions with the scientists and their visits to the labto inform after school STEM programming development. This paper presents themes that emerged from the analysis of participant interviews after completing the program.