Rice University Undergraduate Research

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Contains reports, papers, and other research performed by undergraduates at Rice University.

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Mercy through the Ages: A Glance into the Window of Paradise - A Study of Surah al-Rahman with Six Exegeses, Dating from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century
(Rice University, 2011) Sheikh, Selim
This paper explores the distinctions in interpretation of surah al-Rahman of the Holy Qur’an based on the exegeses of al-Tabari, al-Huwwari, al-Qushayri, al-Qurtubi, al-Jalalayn, and al-Maraghi. These commentaries range in time period from the late ninth century to the late twentieth century and are also representative of different modes of thought, such as mainstream, Sufi, and modernist frameworks. Interpretations also reflect emphasis upon grammatical explanations or legal issues in some cases. The study first discusses a context for the time and location of each commentator, whereupon the paper moves into an analysis of the components and depictions of the surah, or chapter. The final section of the paper illustrates the timelessness of this surah and its significance to Muslims everywhere.
Kingship in the Age of Extraction: How British Deconstruction and Isolation of African Kingship Reshaped Identity and Spurred Nigeria’s North/South Divide, 1885-1937
(Rice University, 2015) Williamson, Hurst; Staller, Jared
To the outside observer today, Nigeria is a state whose political troubles are sunk in its oil wells. Yet in truth the difficulties facing Nigeria are reflective of colonialism’s alteration of Nigerian society, and in order to truly understand Nigeria’s complex landscapes, one has to understand the evolution of complex national identities. As modern states emerge, each of them are influenced, driven, or in some extreme cases formed entirely around ethnic, religious, and cultural histories. However within some states with sizable minority populations, a counter-cultural form of nationalism is created, whereby a specific group’s culture, beliefs, or history becomes a call for that group’s own state. Whether in the Basque region of Spain, in Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan, in Quebec, or in Scotland, self-identity around a specific culture can directly lead to nationalist movements. These movements can either resu lt in violent struggles (Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions), prolonged postponement (Morocco’s Western Sahara region), or in independence referendums (Scotland in 2014). Yet regardless of the various effectiveness of identity-driven nationalist movements, states with large populations that share a common social cleavage eventually must deal with their identity crisis in some capacity. Nigerians, however, face an ongoing identity crisis whereby it can be difficult to conceptualize a singular Nigerian identity. Yet herein lies the value of understanding colonial influence on Nigerian identity: Islam and Modern Nationalism are so generationally ingrained that these two competing ideologies supersede all other social cleavages on a national scale. Nigeria’s north/south divide is a rift created as two supremely opposite regions were morphed into two distinct colonies and then abruptly joined together. As northerners of different ethnicities were coalesced into Northern Nigeria, Islam became the uniting identity category that grew in importance as the effects of colonial neglect grew more pronounced. On balance, the institutionalization of hundreds of groups of southerners as a result of a loss of traditional kingship placed southerners in colonial positions and institutions that would eventually lead to pan-Nigerianism. Rather than the single group counter-culture n ationalism prevalent in many states, Nigerians instead face a unique challenge as the ethnic, religious, and culture cleavages of several hundred groups have been consolidated and generalized into a north/south regional divide. As a result of direct rule through the deconstruction of kingship in the south and as a result of indirect rule and isolation of kingship in the north, Nigerians’ identities have been ideologically blended, but geographically placed into contention.
Expression and purification of LiaX, an uncharacterized protein involved in daptomycin resistance in E. faecalis
(Rice University, 2015) DeBruler, Kimberly; Shamoo, Yousif
Remembering and Forgetting Salvador Allende: An Examination of Institutional Memories in Post-Authoritarian Chile
(Rice University, 2016) Meléndez, Mónica Alicia; López-Alonso, Moramay
African Americans in Tom’s Town: Black Kansas City Negotiates the Pendergast Machine
(Rice University, 2017) Vigran, Sydney
The Call of Higher Duty: How the Economy of Patriotism Extends from Real Civilians to Virtual Soldiers
(Rice University, 2017) Johnson, Robert; Boyer, Dominic
This project explores how military first-person shooter videogames serve as cultural artifacts grounded within the economy of patriotism. Essentially, the economy of patriotism is the system of exchange in which civilians are attempting to repay patriotic indebtedness that is enabled by perceptions of soldierly sacrifice, that forces conformity to and propagates an idealized patriotic narrative of sacrifice that is at odds with the real experiences of soldiers. Due to their crafted narrative’s mirroring of real civilian perception of soldierly duty, these videogames not only serve as part of these economic exchanges but extend them into virtual worlds. Focusing on the single-player modes within three recent Call of Duty titles, I explore first how these narrative simulations/simulated narratives invoke the sacrificial mythology of soldiers of the civilian public. Secondly, I detail how Call of Duty videogames expand experiences of the economy of patriotism. Ultimately, I bring attention to how these games may contribute to the civilian-military divide
The Origins of George F. Kennan’s Theory of Containment: Stalin’s Russia and the Failure of U.S. Foreign Policy
(Rice University, 2017) Powell, Becky
OLEDs are Lit
(Rice University, 2017-05-04) Gonzalez, Victor A.; Hellar, Jennifer L.; Klimko, Benjamin H.; Zhang, Yongan (Luke); Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
RAM, the main memory
(Rice University, 2017-05-04) Lawrence, Logan C.; Lyon, Ethan N.; Morris, Nathaniel A.; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Supercapacitors
(Rice University, 2017-05-04) Berg, Eduardo; Gomez, Andres E.; Hudelson, Austin S.; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Fiber Optics
(Rice University, 2017-05-04) Vadasz, Daniel A.; Henderson, Carl J.; Chapagain, Ayush; Kim, Robin; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Lasers
(Rice University, 2017-05-04) Grzesik, Jakob M.; Mandava, Archana; Loredo, Emmanuel; Santos Castejon, Claudio Vinicius; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The Ugly OLEDuckling
(Rice University, 2017-05-04) Taylor, Brady G.; Flechas, Robert J.; Heggie, Connor B.; Grinage, James M.; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Touch Screens
(Rice University, 2017-05-04) Mutammara, Matthew J.; Sanchez, Ronaldo B.; Chivetta, Christopher R.; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Thermoelectrics
(Rice University, 2017-05-04) Hwang, Alex; Morera, Alfonso; Phuathavornskul, Fasai; Zhang, Tianyi; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The Long Brexit: Postwar British Euroscepticism
(Rice University, 2018) Ratnoff, David; Caldwell, Peter C.
The 2016 British vote to exit the European Union (“Brexit”), was greeted with global dismay as the very project of Europe was called into question. The phenomenon of Euroscepticism in postwar European politics has been regarded as a function of party politics. Existing frameworks of Euroscepticism, which have regarded it as a fringe political belief, did not hold up in the British case. Periodicals, political speeches, party literature, and government documents were used to examine how British politicians across the ideological spectrum described the country’s role in Europe. Chronicling how new political actors honed and refined Eurosceptic arguments, the conversion of European integration from a technocratic to a domestic political issue was documented. The decision to hold the 2016 referendum resulted from the ways that political parties discussed Europe at different stages of EU integration. Similarly, contradictory arguments that activated diverse groups of voters to unite against Europe and David Cameron’s inability to move his party beyond the issue of Europe carried Eurosceptics to success in the polls.
The Interactions Between Land Use History and Soil Chemistry at the Katy Prairie Conservancy
(Rice University, 2018) Wahab, Leila
¡Vota!: Spanish-Language Ballots Affect the Policy Preferences of Voters
(Rice University, 2019) Rothschild, Connor; Scannell, Maddy; Stone, Eric; Berton, Sarah
Present research related to racial group interactions has pointed to the existence of a group status threat; when a majority group feels threatened, it takes action to protect its status. This backlash has been observed in white people when primed with an increase in Hispanic immigration or demographic statistics indicating that white people as a racial group will no longer be in the numerical majority. Given these demographic trends and prior literature, this study investigates if backlash can occur against Spanish-speaking populations in elections when voters are exposed to an English-Spanish bilingual ballot. Utilizing Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, 723 participants voted in a mock election with either a monolingual English or bilingual ballot. The ballot contained two races: a mayoral race with a Democrat and Republican and a proposition to support Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Participants then answered a series of questions about their political ideology and perceptions of group status. The results from the election and post-election questionnaire indicate that white, non-Spanish-speaking conservatives report a higher group status threat in the post-election survey, in line with previous literature. In terms of altering election results, we found that the mayoral race was not significantly affected by the presence of Spanish. However, white, non-Spanish-speaking moderates tended to vote against DACA when exposed to Spanish. As demographics change in the United States, there may be an increased need for bilingual ballots as stipulated under the Voting Rights Act, and given the results of this study, that increase could have electoral consequences.
A Phenomenological Critique of Irene McMullin's Formulation of Heideggerian Temporality
(Rice University, 2019) Barton, Jason; Crowell, Steven
This paper aims at differentiating Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology from Emmanuel Levinas’s phenomenological ethics on the experiential level of encountering otherness. In addition to drawing from each author’s seminal texts, I will contextualize the disagreement between Heidegger and Levinas to Irene McMullin’s Time and the Shared World: Heidegger on Social Relations. McMullin, in her response to Jean-Paul Sartre’s criticism of Heidegger’s ontology, provides a formulation of Heideggerian temporality that markedly deviates from Heideggerian ontological commitments in Being and Time. I present and develop two deviations: (a) McMullin positions Dasein’s original encounter with the Other before the establishment of Dasein’s ontological structures (i.e., Being-in-the-world and Being-with-others) and (b) McMullin attributes Dasein’s inauthenticity to the Other’s limitation of Dasein’s temporalization of Being. I contend that both deviations correspond with Levinas’s phenomenology of temporality more than Heidegger’s phenomenology of temporality. It is through McMullin’s deviations, therefore, that distinctions can be drawn between Heidegger’s ontological articulation of Being-guilty, the call of conscience, Being-towards-death, and Angst on one hand and Levinas’s metaphysical articulation of conscience, shame, and death on the other.
Human Trafficking
(Rice University, 2019) Jelley, Shannon; Baker, Sierra; Messineo, Ashley; Minarro, Marta Cano; Nwadei, KC
This document is a guide to leading a workshop on human trafficking in Houston. Included is an explanation of human trafficking's prevalence in Houston and what can be done to combat it. For the workshop, there is a true/false questionnaire, explanation of root causes, and a game demonstrating how the consumption of certain products increases demand for human trafficking.

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