MessageGuard: A Secure Webmail System Coupling Security with Usability

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Joshua Lowe and Faculty Mentor: Kent Seamons, Computer Science While working on my undergraduate degree, I developed an interest for computer security and started working in the Internet Security Research Lab on campus. A PhD student who I had worked with before previously, had proposed a webmail system called MessageGuard as an ubiquitous web encryption […]

High Resolution Shock Capturing on GPUs

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Forrest Glines and Faculty Mentor: David Neilsen, Physics Department This research project concerns the development simulation code to confirm neutron star mergers as the progenitors of Short Hard Gamma Ray Bursts. Short Hard Gamma Ray Bursts (SHGBs) are short (less than 2 second) high energy bursts that we observe with satellites. Their exact cause has […]

Political Messaging on Social Media: Facebook Campaigning and Political Silos

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Morgan Williams and Jeremy C. Pope, Political Science The make-up of political campaigns has transformed with the creation of the internet. What used to be a world of door to door canvassing and mass produced mailers sent to party members is now a world of entertaining YouTube videos and Facebook likes. It is no longer […]

Flexible Censored Interval Regression with Experimental Applications

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Daniel Walton and James McDonald, Economics Department Introduction Interval censored data, or grouped data, appears in well-established measurement techniques employed in many economic situations, including experimental economics. Estimation of parameters of models using these data de- pends critically on the model specification and method of estimation. Some methods can yield inconsistent and biased estimators when […]

The Distributional Effects of Redistributional Tax Policy: A Dynamic Tax Scoring Model

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Isaac Swift and Kerk Phillips, Economics Department Introduction In 2013 French economist Thomas Piketty, one of the leading experts on inequality, published a book titled Capital in the Twenty-First Century. This book quickly became a bestseller and received worldwide attention. In his book Piketty described data that he had carefully collected on income and wealth […]

Somos Machistas: Paraguayan Perceptions on Machismo

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Rachel Schwartz and Greg Thompson, Anthropology Introduction Throughout this paper I will argue that the actual real lives and behaviors of Paraguayan men are in contradiction to the discourse of Paraguayans about Paraguayan men. Paraguayans, through their discourse of machismo, have created an ideal type of machismo with carefully constructed categories which defines and describes […]

Marital Satisfaction, Error-observation, and the Brain: Harmful or Beneficial Effects of Spouse Observation?

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Chelsea Romney and Michael Larson, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Introduction Romney, Chelsea Marital Satisfaction, Error-observation, and the Brain: Harmful or Beneficial Effects of Spouse Observation? Faculty Mentor: Larson, Michael, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Introduction Rewarding marital relationships are associated with many positive outcomes in one’s physical and mental health (Robles, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2003). […]

Quantile Treatment Effects with Endogeneity: A Monte Carlo Comparison of 3 Quantile IV Estimators

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Alexander Poulsen and Brigham Frandsen, Economics Introduction Quantile instrumental variables estimators are a relatively new development in the econometric literature. Modern quantile regression was introduced in Koenker and Basset (1978), and has been used in many important applications in which researchers are interested in learning about the effects of variables on the distribution of an […]

How Much Do Skills Developed Before School Matter? An Intra-generational, Non-linear Approach to Understanding Extreme Achievement

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Ian Peacock and Dr. Benjamin Gibbs, Sociology The hierarchical ranking of children in schools based on cognitive skills has important implications for understanding processes of social stratification. Scholars have noted that differences in cognitive skills in the school context can reach well beyond school, influencing later occupational and economic outcomes (Kerckhoff, Haney, and Glennie 2001). […]