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Browsing Theses - Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies by Title

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Browsing Theses - Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies by Title

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  • Abandoned minds : the escalating crisis of geriatric mental illness 
    Sipics, Michelle (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006)
    Older adults are susceptible to the same mental afflictions that affect other age groups; depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and other illnesses affect all adult age groups to varying degrees. Yet despite recent ...
  • AcidopHiles : a not- so-basic life 
    McPherson, Stephanie M. (Stephanie Mae) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)
    There are conditions on the Earth that are completely inhospitable to humans. Macroscopic life forms in these conditions are extremely rare. Microscopic life forms, however, thrive. They are called extremophiles. One subset ...
  • Across the great divide : chimeras and species boundaries 
    Bourzac, Katherine Anne, 1981- (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004)
    We have always been fascinated by borderline creatures. Chimeras, hybrids of multiple animals-and sometimes humans-appear repeatedly in mythology across cultures from ancient times to the present. Since the early 1980s, ...
  • Air trade : promises -- and pitfalls -- in the coming carbon market 
    Harris, Lissa E (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008)
    Market mechanisms for controlling pollution and other environmental problems, once considered experimental, have recently become favored tools for regulation, both in the U.S. and abroad. In the last several years, a $64 ...
  • All that is worth remembering 
    Young, Jessica Olivia (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006)
    In the December of my Senior year, my old piano teacher died. Old not in the sense of age, because he was really quite young (in general, but specifically to die), but in the sense that I took lessons from him when I was ...
  • Aspartame : artifice and the science of sweet 
    MacLachlan, Allison (Allison Stollery) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)
    Aspartame has become an extremely popular artificial sweetener since its entry into the American market in 1981. Humans have an evolutionary preference for sweet tastes, and artificial sweeteners became a mainstream ...
  • Barren promise : the hope and heartache in treating infertility 
    McDonough, Maureen (Maureen Ann) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005)
    Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is a reproductive medicine technology that allows the genetic characteristics of embryos to be examined. Created through in vitro fertilization, embryos are grown in a Petri dish for ...
  • A bright idea? : the promise and peril of a memory drug 
    Dowd, William (William Michael) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007)
    In the MIT lab of neuropharmacologist Richard Wurtman, rodents that received a new Alzheimer's drug have shown a marked improvement in learning and memory. They are able to master elaborate mazes in half the time of their ...
  • The buffalo wars 
    Nasr, Susan L (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006)
    The wandering buffalo of Yellowstone National Park are the subject of a heated debate in the western United States. The animals carry a disease called brucellosis, which infects both buffalo and cattle and has economic ...
  • Bulletproof gossamer : spinning a superfiber 
    Conahan, Gillian S (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)
    Spider silk is a material of extraordinary beauty and utility. From the spider's perspective, it is foremost a building material, but also a safety net, a sensory organ, a weapon. From a human perspective, it is a material ...
  • The butterfly clock : illuminating the molecular mysteries of monarch migration 
    Rice, Jocelyn (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007)
    Each fall, the entire monarch butterfly population of the Eastern United States and Canada funnels into a handful of oyamel pine groves in Michoacan, Mexico, to weather the winter months. Each spring, the butterflies mate ...
  • Cancer and the clock : chronotherapy's struggle for legitimacy 
    Kagan, Emily M (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005)
    Circadian rhythms govern almost every process in our bodies. Chronotherapy is the practice of giving medications in synchrony with these rhythms. For cancer chemotherapy, study after study has shown that paying attention ...
  • Catalogue of a Loss 
    Berger, Larisa (Larisa A.) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)
    Catalogue of a Loss is a collection of sixty-two prose poems written within the past year and half. The work is printed on 4x6 cards. Each poem may be read individually from a single card or the poems can be read in ...
  • Changing her tune : how a transsexual woman claims a new identity through voice 
    Gammon, Katharine Stoel (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007)
    The human voice is an important indicator of a person's gender. For male-to-female transgender individuals (or transsexuals) the voice is one of the most difficult parts of the gender transition. Males have larger and ...
  • The chosen genes : Jews, genetics, and the future of ethnic medicine 
    Anthes, Emily Kennedy (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006)
    All humans have certain genes that cause or predispose them to various diseases. In the ideal medical future, scientists will have hyperfast gene analyzers able to sequence anyone's DNA in a matter of minutes. In that ...
  • The clearest mirror : the science of laughing and crying 
    Wanucha, Genevieve M. (Genevieve Marie) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
    There are few things as familiar to us as the experience of laughing and crying. Studying the two emotional expressions side to side is a way to see our species anew. A way of linking what we share with other mammals to ...
  • Computer, MD 
    Feblowitz, Joshua (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010)
    Clinical decision support is an emerging type of healthcare information technology that aims to actively guide doctors' decision-making processes. In its various forms, it can help physicians design treatment regimens, ...
  • Cosmos incognito : Vera Rubin shines light on dark matter 
    Yeager, Ashley (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008)
    This thesis, a profile of astronomer Vera Rubin, highlights her scientific achievements, most notably the irrefutable evidence she gathered to persuade the astronomical community that galaxies spin at a faster speed than ...
  • The dancer in nature 
    Naone, Erica (Erica Beth Aana) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007)
    A rich body of science has grown up around the art of dance. It includes study of a dancer's relationship to Newtonian physics, dance medicine, the role of the spine in balance, and the emerging study of the neuroscience ...
  • Distant harvest : the production and price of organic food 
    Sherburne, Morgan (Morgan L.) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010)
    Organic food is growing in popularity, enjoying a 15 to 20% increase in sales, yearly, since about 1997, according to the Organic Trade Association. Organic produce makes up about 2% of the United States' total food sales ...
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