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LOGOS A Journal of Undergraduate Research Work by Missouri State University Undergraduate Students Volume 5 Fall 2012 © Copyright 2012 Missouri State University ISSN 2153-1560 (print) ISSN 2153-1579 (online) LOGOS Honors College Missouri State University 901 South National Avenue Springfield, MO 65897 [email protected] Editorial Statement LOGOS: A Journal of Undergraduate Research is dedicated to the publication of scholarship and artistry by undergraduate students (or undergraduate stu- dents coauthoring with faculty) of Missouri State University. It is open to sub- missions from all undergraduate students at the university and conforms to the highest standards of scholastic integrity in a blind, peer-review process conducted by distinguished undergraduate students and faculty. LOGOS is sponsored by the Missouri State Honors College, with faculty over- sight and governance provided by a Faculty Advisory Board (see membership below). The journal is produced by a managing editor, a chief editor, associate editors, and a small student editorial board, all Honors College students (listed below). LOGOS encourages submissions from all undergraduate students of Mis- souri State University (or former undergraduate students) who are seeking a professional venue for publication of their undergraduate research. Pro- spective contributors may contact the editor and associate editors with spe- cific questions about publication standards and the peer review process at [email protected]. iii iv LOGOS: A Journal of Undergraduate Research • Missouri State University • Fall 2012 Editorial Staff Managing Editors: Amy Legg Jade Johnson Chief Editor: Cynthia Johnson Lead Associate Editor: Christy Ha Copy Editor: Clare Shannon Faculty Advisory Board John F. Chuchiak IV: Director of the Honors College / Professor, Department of History, College of Humanities and Public Affairs / Young Honors Col- lege Professor 2007–2011 Tracy Dalton: Senior Instructor, Department of English, College of Arts and Letters Associate Editors Laura Davison Erin Hanson Jacob Swett Laura Dimmitt Andy McIntyre Lydia Welker Emma Doner Nonah Olesen Sarah Riccardi Sarah Greenbaum Marin A. Plute Faculty Editorial Board James Baumlin Melissa Duncan Fallone Alessandra Pires W.D. Blackmon Brian Greene Angela Plank Brooks Blevins Edward Gutting Kathy Pulley Joey Borovicka John Heywood John Schmalzbauer Marcus Cafagña Earl Holmer Chris Thompson Cigdem Cidam Jane Hoogestraat William Wedenoja Susan Crain Lanya Lamouria Robert Willenbrink Jen Edwards Sean Lyman Shannon Wooden Michael Ellis Michael Murray Peer Reviewers Claire Bise Vanessa Lea Alexandria Robinette Kelsey Duncan Marian Lyford Cody Vaughn Sarah Greenbaum Heather Messick Lydia Welker Debra Horn Preston Pederson Hanna Landgrebe Jacob Rickey The LOGOS staff would also like to express their appreciation for the help of Mr. Michael Frizell and the spring 2012 Bear CLAW Writing Consultants. Table of Contents Rachel Brown Simulacra 1 Lauren Bansbach Diversity, Abundance, and Vertical Segregation of Algae in Two Ozarks Reservoirs 3 Stephen Barnett Monsters of Their Own Making: Understanding the Context of the Rise of the “Golden Age of Piracy” 20 Zachary Biondi Caught Up: The Tenability of the Rapture 30 Jacqueline Byrket and Dr. Adena Young-Jones The Many Faces of Adolescent Depression: A Multi-Cultural Review 42 Patrick Chism Spontaneous 54 Kelsey Duncan Form in Light and Shadow 60 vi Table of Contents • vii Allison Hall Oil on Canvas 62 Aaron Henson The Confession 69 Nathaniel Lucy Ozark Jubilee: A Crossroads in American History 82 Andrew McIntyre Leoš Janá ek: The Cunning Little Vixen 88 č Katlyn Minard The Ring and The Rolling Paper 93 Zach Morris Is the Stock Market a Viable Short-Term Investment Asset? An Experimental Approach 99 Mandi Reed The Melancholy of Sibling Incest in British Romanticism 111 Simulacra By Rachel Brown Department of Art and Design Abstract The concept of simulacra is most known for its discussion of images, signs, and how they relate to contemporaneity. Jean Baudrillard, a French philoso- pher, claimed that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality. The simulacra that Baudrillard refer to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, as well as the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence are rendered legible. He believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra, and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society, that all meaning had been rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the “precession of simulacra.” In layman’s terms, it means that everything meaningful in our lives has been reduced to—or replaced by—symbols and signs, and this has had a profound impact on our culture. I wanted to draw something about this concept. I used black Copic ink pens and cool grey and neutral grey Copic markers to draw a gorgeous woman, her hair full of contemporary signs and symbols. She is ultimately beautiful and full of meaningless meaningful symbols. I chose to draw a woman because, to me, women are symbolic of the image itself, while men often stand for the power of text, the written word. In Leonid Shalin’s book, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, he proposes that before the written word, ancient cultures worshipped a female deity and held up the right-brained feminine values of the image, the symbol, and the fertility of the natural world. It wasn’t until the development of the alphabet that a radical shift in consciousness towards more masculine left-brained values took place. Shalin writes that with our culture’s shift to image dominance through photography, video, and the internet, humankind is transitioning into its next stage. Thus, I chose to depict a woman, herself a symbol of the Goddess, surrounded by symbols. She hearkens a new era, the era of women, the era of symbols taken to the extreme, the era of Simulacra. viii Rachel Brown • Simulacra • 1 (Cover Image) Rachel Brown is a junior at Missouri State University studying art, creative writing, and Spanish. For the most part, her work is driven by reading, trav- eling, and spirituality. Her goal is to create something new, colorful, and full of symbols and meaning, and to tell a story that only she can tell. She strives to breathe life into paint and to become fleetingly godlike in that harmonious moment of creation. Diversity, Abundance, and Vertical Segregation of Algae in Two Ozark Reservoirs By Lauren Bansbach Department of Biology Abstract Algae are important in lakes both as primary producers and for impacts on water quality. Several factors influence the community structure of algae, such as nutrient levels, herbivory by zooplankton, and light availability. Thus, the species composition may greatly vary spatially within a lake. I examined algal community structure in two Missouri reservoirs in September 2011. McDaniel Lake in Greene Co. (area of 1.12km2, mean depth of 4.9m) is a drinking water source for Springfield. Bull Shoals Lake in Taney Co. (area of 182.7km2, mean depth of 23m) is a large reservoir built for flood control and power generation. I assessed vertical segregation of algae by identifying and counting algae from three depths (at the surface, above the thermocline, and below the thermocline) for each reservoir. I identified a total of 54 genera. I calculated a Shannon- Weaver diversity index to compare diversity and abundance between each depth and overall. McDaniel Lake (47 genera) exhibited higher diversity than Bull Shoals Lake (31 genera) among all factors tested. Introduction Algae play many important ecological roles affecting aquatic food webs, nutrient cycles, and human affairs. They are primary photo- synthetic producers and provide food for zooplankton and thus pro- vide the energy base of many aquatic ecosystems (Graham et al. 2009). Phytoplankton ecology is highly relevant to human activities and under- standing the diverse functions of algae and the ways humans affect the popu- lations is crucial since algae contribute greatly to global ecology and provide numerous economic benefits to humans. Specifically, algal diversity is an important concept to study because as primary producers in aquatic food webs, changes in species diversity arising from global climate change, nutrient pollution, and other influential human disturbances can have significant and 2 Lauren Bansbach • Algae in Two Ozark Reservoirs • 3 possibly detrimental effects to ecosystems. An important goal of algal research is to better understand these roles of algae and how algal communities respond to environmental change. Tracking this community composition and species diversity can illustrate changes. As there are an estimated 36,000 to over 10 mil- lion algal species worldwide (Graham et al. 2009), understanding the impor- tance and interactions of these species is a vital component of aquatic biology. While one or more algal species is often dominant in a community, many rare species are nearly always found among them (Wetzel 1983). In theory, niche overlap should competitively exclude the less dominant spe- cies, but instead, algae maintain a multi-specific equilibrium, often referred to as the “paradox of the plankton” (Hutchinson 1961). Thus, algae diver- sity is much higher than expected based on traditional mathematical calcu- lations. This is likely due to a number of factors. For competitive