The energy crisis of 2001, high prices for gas and electricity and worries of climate change have caused a growing awareness about energy issues in California. The problems are clear. This paper looks at the next step of finding and implementing solutions. In this case the contribution that solar photovoltaic and solar thermal generation could make toward solving the problem. This paper looks at technological change, the current state of solar energy research, current government policies on solar energy, and finally makes policy recommendations to meet the stated problem.

The purpose of this capstone project is to tell a place-based story about an often forgotten part of campus: the Wash. Beginning as a likely Tongvan campsite, the Wash, after donation to Pomona College as “Blanchard Park” underwent a series of land-use changes. Originally, a designated green space, its present-day composition includes athletic fields, the organic farm and the historic remnant oak grove. Throughout time the value of the Wash changed with its differing caretakers and inhabitants. To bring attention to this evolving landscape and to inform more sustainable and equitable land use in the future, our project aims to acknowledge past narratives about this place, take stock of its present ecological significance and recommend best practices going forward. We accomplished this by putting together a history of the Wash using indigenous knowledge, archival information, biological surveys and GIS.

This thesis draws on student testimony, curriculum analysis, and statistical tests to explore 1) the degree to which gender, financial aid status, and race/ethnicity correlate with student perceptions of Intro to IR course content and 2) the degree to which students conceptualize IR as interrelated with social identities, as opposed to an abstracted state-centric discipline.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for New Construction (or LEED-NC) has become one of the most commonly used green building standards during the turn of the 21st century. While many champion LEED-NC, certain architects and academics believe that its low-environmental impact design approach toward green building isolates people from nature and thus cannot achieve sustainable development over the long-term. Pomona College’s green buildings, including its newest LEED Platinum certified Sontag and Pomona Residence Halls, exemplify this fact, as their designs fail to communicate their sustainable goals or inspire sustainable behavior. By examining the LEED-NC standards, the history of environmental conservation, Modern architecture, biophilia, and the Living Building Challenge, this thesis seeks to provide recommendations for how Pomona College can alter its existing green buildings as well as improve its green building policies for future projects so that its built environment better fosters positive human-nature interactions.

Using the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Martini et al. (2006) found that the AGN fraction of galaxy clusters was five times higher than previous optical studies suggested. Using visual observations only, Dressler et al. (1985) estimated the AGN fraction of field galaxies to be 5%, while that of clusters was thought to be 1%. To understand the role that the environment plays in AGN fueling, the author studied a variety of environments, ranging from the field to groups to clusters. Will the AGN fraction of groups also be higher than that of the field? The author demonstrates how the AGN fraction of groups compares to that of clusters. In the following sections, the author describes the mechanics of X-ray astronomy, the group environment, and the characteristics of active galactic nuclei. The author briefly describes the possible mechanisms for AGN fueling.

Four students portray Pomona College housekeeping staff that cannot speak for themselves, taking their words from letters written to Pomona College President David Oxtoby about problems in the work environment. Problems includede are sex discrimination, failure of managment to respond, gossip being reported to managers and used in evaluations, employees being kept as 'on-call' for years without health benefits, a sense of hopelessness, that no one is listening, and if they talk to students they are labeled troublemakers. The film ends with a series of still photographs of 17 Pomona staff members taken on the Pomona College campus in various locations with their names and number of years employed by Pomona College.

The fuzzball model of a black hole is an attempt to resolve the many paradoxes and puzzles of black hole physics that have revealed themselves over the last century. These badly behaved solutions of general relativity have given physicists one of the few laboratories to test candidate quantum theories of gravity. Though little is known about exactly what lies beyond the event horizon, and what the ultimate fate of matter that falls in to a black hole is, we know a few intriguing and elegant semi-classical results that have kept physicists occupied. Among these are the known black hole entropy and the Hawking radiation process.

This work examines the chemical and physical effects of a material treatment process on the biopolymers PEEK, POM-h, POM-c, PTFE and UHMWPE. The polymers are analyzed physically and chemically using atomic force microscopy, profilometry, scanning electron microscopy, optical microscopy, contact angle measurement, FT infra-red spectroscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry. PEEK is found to be the most suitable polymer and FT Infra-red spectroscopy an informative analytic tool.

Paper discusses the expected uncertainty of orbital parameters of binary stars as measured by the space-based gravitational wave observatory LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) and how the inclusion of spin in the model of the binary stars affects the uncertainty. The uncertainties are found by calculating the received gravitational wave from a binary pair and then performing a linear least-squares parameter estimation. The case of a 1500 solar mass black hole that is 20 years from coalescing with a 1000 solar mass black hole--both of which are 50 x 10^6 light years away--is analyzed, and the results show that the inclusion of spin has a negligible effect upon the angular resolution of LISA but can increase the accuracy in mass and distance measurements by factors of 15 and 65, respectively.

Four students portray Pomona College housekeeping staff that cannot speak for themselves, taking their words from letters written to Pomona College President David Oxtoby about problems in the work environment. Problems included are sex discrimination, failure of management to respond, gossip being reported to managers and used in evaluations, employees being kept as 'on-call' for years without health benefits, a sense of hopelessness, that no one is listening, and if they talk to students they are labeled troublemakers. The film ends with a series of still photographs of 17 Pomona staff members taken on the Pomona College campus in various locations with their names and number of years employed by Pomona College. Notes "This film is dedicated to the staff of Pomona College and to the students who support them. May no one in our community ever feel thrown away. No staff member appearing in this video is in any way associated with its making."