The Honors College

Although Tariq Ramadan, a self-described "radical reformer," has emerged as a powerful voice within the global discourse concerning Islam and modernity, his theories of reform, which at surface level appear as a wholly revolutionary addition, are in truth an amalgamation of the ideas of his predecessors, from the Mu'tazilis to Muhammad 'Abduh and Hasan al-Banna. However, in a slight twist, he presents an Islamic modernity that values critical reasoning, a strong sense of spirituality, and honest interaction and integration with the West.

Due to the focus on male sex offenders and the insufficient amount of literature on female sex offenders, the purpose of this study was to examine the opinions of college students toward female sex offenders in comparison to male sex offenders. The study also examined student reactions toward both male and female sex offenders when the sexual offense involved a homosexual relationship. Very few studies have examined the effect of legal history on attitudes towards sex offenders.

Previous research has sometimes found that older adults make less apt financial decisions than young adults. Although this has been attributed to declines in cognitive functioning, in daily life older adults are quite adept at compensating for losses in cognitive functions. In this thesis, I investigated whether differences in financial decisions could be due to motivational changes in adults across the lifespan.

In this paper I will critically examine popular assumptions about what constitutes "The Economy." All over the world, people create livelihoods in complex ways that defy many of the boundaries placed on economic activities and actors in mainstream economic theory. The formation and enforcement in theory and in practice of strict boundaries that determine what is good and necessary for economies (and what is not) result in the invalidation of many existing ways of creating livelihood. New ways of looking at economics are needed.

The PI3k/AKT/mTORC1 pathway is a major signaling mechanism that regulates the balance between skeletal muscle protein synthesis and protein degradation, which contributes to the maintenance of muscle mass. Phytoecdysteroids are natural steroid hormones found in certain plant species that possess medicinal and pharmacological properties. Previous studies have demonstrated that the phytoecdysteroid, 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E), stimulates the PI3k/AKT/mTORC1 signaling pathway activation in muscles cells in vitro.

This work is focused on the indirect measurement of enzyme activity using a multicomponent instrument that interfaces capillary electrophoresis (CE) with chemiluminescence (CL) detection. The CE-CL system was validated by injecting various concentrations of luminol to react with hydrogen peroxide in a post-column reactor, where chemiluminescence was detected using a photon counter.

In December 2008, an unprecedented spill of coal ash occurred at the Kingston Fossil Plant near Harriman, Tennessee. Despite dredging efforts by the Tennessee Valley Authority, approximately 229,000 m3 of ash remains in the rivers of the Watts Bar Reservoir system and is available for transport during high discharge events. Grab samples of bottom sediment were collected in 2010-11 adjacent to, upstream and as far as 24 miles downstream of the spill. The morphology of coal ash is heterogeneous, but several of its magnetic properties are remarkably consistent between samples.

An increase in global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from anthropogenic sources is causing long term climate patterns to be altered. A more complete understanding of the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is important for the development and implementation of CO2 mitigation strategies. This paper addresses the drivers of the locations of large point sources of CO2 emissions. The spatial relationship between two primary drivers, political boundaries and water bodies, is identified and analyzed.

Experiencing the death of an immediate family member is often followed by changes in personal values and treatment preferences regarding end-of-life care. This study examines how past death experience alters decision-making and personal treatment preferences in end-of-life scenarios. Data is drawn from the Detroit Area Study: Life and Death Decision-Making (Anspach, 1999) and includes 1109 participants questioned on their treatment preferences for prospective illness scenarios from a variety of decision-making roles.

Creating a video game is not an easy task, and creating a 3-dimensional (3D) game versus a 2-dimensional (2D) game adds more than one extra dimension of difficulty. The scope of this thesis involves development of a 3D game level for a game called Quaffle and will cover the creation of the map, the characters, and a brief tutorial on each of the applications that these processes require. Two different applications are used in the creation of the level.