The Covid-19 pandemic has made a significant impact on both the stock market and the<br/>global economy. The resulting volatility in stock prices has provided an opportunity to examine<br/>the Efficient Market Hypothesis. This study aims to gain insights into the efficiency of markets<br/>based on stock price performance in the Covid era. Specifically, it investigates the market’s<br/>ability to anticipate significant events during the Covid-19 timeline beginning November 1, 2019<br/><br/>and ending March 31, 2021. To examine the efficiency of markets, our team created a Stay-at-<br/>Home Portfolio, experiencing economic tailwinds from the Covid lockdowns, and a Pandemic<br/><br/>Loser Portfolio, experiencing economic headwinds from the Covid lockdowns. Cumulative<br/>returns of each portfolio are benchmarked to the cumulative returns of the S&P 500. The results<br/>showed that the Efficient Market Hypothesis is likely to be valid, although a definitive<br/>conclusion cannot be made based on the scope of the analysis. There are recommendations for<br/>further research surrounding key events that may be able to draw a more direct conclusion.

The application of Toni Morrison’s Beloved as a lens through which one can analyze intergenerational trauma on an individual and communal level results in a blueprint towards a remedial process. The characters and their experiences in her novel are representative of a myriad of ways in which trauma is manifested. I have broken down the concept of intergenerational trauma into the idea that it can be seen as the state where one is both simultaneously “falling” and “fallen” at the same time. Used here, the term “falling” refers to the consistent, individual trauma that one is experiencing. On the other hand, the term “fallen” refers to the trauma that a community as a whole has experienced and internalized. This framework that I establish based off of Beloved is a launching point for the conversation surrounding the topic of remedial actions in relation to intergenerational trauma that resulted from slavery. Using it as a basis of knowledge allows one to truly gather the weight of the situation regarding trauma postbellum. Considering the current climate surrounding any meaningful dialogue, knowledge is one of the most important aspects. Along with the concepts of “falling”/”fallen,” I also coined the term productive memory, which refers to the act of confrontation as well as the remembering of intergenerational trauma. The use of productive memory is imperative in addressing the prior ideas presented regarding intergenerational trauma and the possible pathways to move forward.

COVID-19 misinformation covers a wide range of topics such as fatality rate, mask effectiveness, potential cures, vaccine development, and the idea of a "plandemic". The spread of this misinformation happens at a rapid speed with the help of social media and powerful influencers, including major political figures. This thesis is a focused case study on hydroxychloroquine, and builds a timeline of the misinformation surrounding the drug. From poorly conducted studies to the use of false experts, this study reveals how politicized misinformation garners more public attention than the actual science.

Covid-19 is unlike any coronavirus we have seen before, characterized mostly by the ease with which it spreads. This analysis utilizes an SEIR model built to accommodate various populations to understand how different testing and infection rates may affect hospitalization and death. This analysis finds that infection rates have a significant impact on Covid-19 impact regardless of the population whereas the impact that testing rates have in this simulation is not as pronounced. Thus, policy-makers should focus on decreasing infection rates through targeted lockdowns and vaccine rollout to contain the virus, and decrease its spread.

This project is a synthesis of the author's learning over the semesters in working with the CFD Group at Arizona State University. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are overviewed, starting with the derivation from the continuity equation, then non-dimensionalization, methods of solving and computing quantities of interest. The rest of this document is expository analysis of solutions in a confined fluid flow, building toward a parametrically forced regime that generates complex flow patterns including Faraday waves. The solutions come from recently published studies Dynamics in a stably stratified tilted square cavity (Grayer et al.) and Parametric instabilities of a stratified shear layer (Buchta et al).

The role of technology in shaping modern society has become increasingly important in the context of current democratic politics, especially when examined through the lens of social media. Twitter is a prominent social media platform used as a political medium, contributing to political movements such as #OccupyWallStreet, #MeToo, and #BlackLivesMatter. Using the #BlackLivesMatter movement as an illustrative case to establish patterns in Twitter usage, this thesis aims to answer the question “to what extent is Twitter an accurate representation of “real life” in terms of performative activism and user engagement?” The discussion of Twitter is contextualized by research on Twitter’s use in politics, both as a mobilizing force and potential to divide and mislead. Using intervals of time between 2014 – 2020, Twitter data containing #BlackLivesMatter is collected and analyzed. The discussion of findings centers around the role of performative activism in social mobilization on twitter. The analysis shows patterns in the data that indicates performative activism can skew the real picture of civic engagement, which can impact the way in which public opinion affects future public policy and mobilization.

Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) with an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) has enabled the determination of protein structures and protein reaction intermediates in millisecond to microsecond time resolutions. Mix-and-Inject crystallography (MISC) at XFELs enables fast mixing in the magnitude of milliseconds in order to achieve desired reaction time points. For these experiments, numerical simulations of a hydrodynamic flow mixer capable of fast mixing by diffusion has been developed using both COMSOL Multiphysics 5.6 and QuickerSims Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Toolbox for MATLAB. These simulation programs were compared by calculations of mixing times and concentration flow profiles. Mixing times in the range of 1-10 ms were calculated in COMSOL under certain flow rate conditions whereas mixing times in the range of 6-15 ms were calculated with QuickerSims. From these mixing times, reaction intermediates can be varied from sub-millisecond to several hundred millisecond time points for a MISC experiment. Explanations for the discrepancies between the two models were attributed to variations in parameter definitions and meshing. Further analysis on the mixing characteristics were investigated by calculating an analytical solution to the convection-diffusion equation for fluid flow in a two-dimensional rectangular channel. The concentration profile along the width of the channel for the analytical solution was compared with the numerical solution obtained with COMSOL and QuickerSims. Upon comparison, it was determined that the diffusion coefficient may not be a significant factor for the disagreement between the two hydrodynamic flow models.

Late Victorian fiction presents scenes of near-death experience that places characters within the literature in a state of precarity. The precarious existence manifests itself as a perpetual near-death experience that makes visible the necropolitical power dynamic and the “death-in-life” condition. Key moments in H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau and Bram Stoker’s Dracula provide evidence for the precarity under which people live in late Victorian literature. Both novels uniquely feature a process of becoming-object, Moreau’s humanization process and Dracula’s vampirization process, that places the victims in a state of precarity and death-in-life. Previous scholars have examined these processes as a means of establishing precarity and as a near-death experience, yet none have contextualized these scenes of precarity within Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics. In an extended reading of both novels, this essay shows how Victorians function as administrators of necropolitics, victimizing non-Victorians to processes of becoming-object, and pushing these victim-objects to the brink of death, where they continue to live in a state of death-in-life. This essay focuses on these two novels because of their genre differences and their geographical differences, which further demonstrates the Victorian attentiveness towards scenes of precarity involving the marginalized and the “Oriental.” Despite scenes of precarity involving select Victorians, both novels inevitably reinforce the necropolitical Victorian hegemony. In the face of over a century of British colonialism, the threat of the colonized breaking the necropolitical hegemony of the Victorian empire is hyper-present in both late Victorian science fiction and gothic fiction, suggesting this anxiety of having precarity established over their own lives by the former oppressed was shared by the majority of the Victorian Empire.