Yale Undergraduate Research Journal - YURJ

27/10/2021

24/09/2021

YURJ has tons of open positions, and we welcome everyone to join (no application/interview)! Check out the link in our bio to learn more about open positions within our four teams, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions 🤩🔬📚🔎✨

18/05/2021

Our spring print issue is live on our website (https://bit.ly/3fwSr0K)! We'll be publishing an additional 30 excellent articles here over the course of the next month to round out our spring issue.

A huge kudos to dedicated research work of submitting authors, whether selected for publication this issue or otherwise. Keep at it! As we wrap up our spring issue, we have opened submissions for our fall issue (submit here: https://bit.ly/3eVAx8P).

The YURJ team is very grateful for the generosity of our reviewers. We are incredibly lucky to be in a university environment where graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors are so supportive of undergraduate research.

Last but most certainly not least, the YURJ team has put in a lot of time and effort into gathering submissions, locating reviewers, copy editing, laying out articles, and raising money to continue publishing exceptional undergraduate research. Take a look at page 3 for a full listing of everyone who has made this issue possible and give them some love! A number of individuals on the YURJ leadership team deserve a special shoutout. Our managing editors—Mei Chen, Chloe Jensen, Doyoung Jeong, Ilayda Orhan, and Siraj Patwa—worked tirelessly to conduct a successful review process, the first we have handled during the academic semester. Our production managers—Mafalda von Alvensleben and Daphne Zhu—are truly superheroes, who absolutely have carried (and continue to carry) the translation of research papers into stunning spreads. And a huge shoutout to Rachel Welch for coordinating the profiles of our print authors!

If you're interested in joining the YURJ team, email us at [email protected]! We'd love to have you.

13/05/2021

Congratulations to Selena Lee and Henry Jacob, two of YURJ's founding board members, for their fellowships to pursue Masters in Philosophy at Cambridge and to Meghanlata Gupta, published in our first issue, for the same at Oxford!

https://news.yale.edu/2021/05/11/fellowship-winners-will-study-next-oxford-and-cambridge

Eight Yale seniors and a Yale College alumna have been awarded fellowships from a variety of organizations for graduate study at Oxford and Cambridge.

12/05/2021

Our spring print issue will be released tomorrow! Stop by the long tables outside of Bass Library to pick up a copy between ~11am to 6pm. We have a limited number of copies, so come early! We will also be releasing a PDF online.

A huge amount of effort went into our print issue, and the YURJ team is very excited to publish many more excellent articles online over the coming months. A long list of shoutouts to come with the release tomorrow :)

04/04/2021

Announcing the lineup for our spring print issue (volume II, issue 1)! Congratulations to the authors below, whose research submissions were the strongest and highest impact within their respective journal sections. We will be publishing their work in our print issue, to be released later this month. We received really excellent papers this past cycle and are excited to publish many more authors online over the rest of the semester.

We would also like to congratulate our cover design contest winner Laura Padilla ('22), whose artwork will be featured on our print issue cover! We received very strong submissions, including from our runner-ups listed below, whose submissions will be included within the pages of our journal.

Humanities:
Ellie Burke ('24)
Amy DelaBruere ('21)
Claire Gorman ('20)

Social Sciences:
Anaheed Mobaraki ('21)
Mafalda von Alvensleben ('23)
Bradley Yam ('21)

STEM:
Valerie Navarrete ('21)
Mitchell Ostrow ('22)
Anthony Sarkiss ('21)

—

Cover design contest winners:
1st - Laura Padilla ('22)
2nd - Sophia Zhao ('23)
3rd - Yuri B**g ('23)

Honorable mentions - Abby Davis ('24), Sophie Henry ('23), and Flora Ranis ('24)

06/03/2021

Our cover design contest is now OPEN! The top submission will be featured on our spring 2021 print issue, and the top three submissions will receive monetary prizes. The deadline to submit is March 26 at midnight ET.

We accept submissions from a range of fields, including but not limited to photography, graphic design, illustration, and printmaking. Any form of original art that meets our requirements is eligible for submission.

Submission guidelines: yurj.yale.edu/cover-design-contest
Questions? Email us at [email protected]

Poster design by Lea Kim

09/01/2021

Our submission form officially closed last night — thank you for sharing your research with us. We received a record number of submissions! 🎉 Already, the review process is underway and will take place over the next couple months. We are thrilled to begin reading your research works. Like this page and follow our instagram () to stay up-to-date as our spring issue progresses.

Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors interested in serving as a reviewer can sign up with the link below. Undergraduates have found YURJ peer reviews to be some of the most meaningful feedback they have ever received. Reviewers will receive a maximum of 2 articles per cycle within your area of expertise and may choose to opt out at any time. https://forms.gle/JYHnLtmkEpyBhjtK7

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal seeks to showcase outstanding undergraduate scholarship across all disciplines. In anticipation of our spring issue, we are keen to recruit Yale graduate students, postdocs, and professors to help review student submissions. We accept submissions only twice pe...

08/01/2021

Submissions for the second issue of YURJ are due today! See information about submitting your work here: https://yurj.yale.edu/submissions

Thank you for your interest in submitting your work to the Yale Undergraduate Research Journal! We hope this will serve as an invaluable opportunity to receive high-quality feedback on your work from graduate students and professors in your field. We look forward to reading your exceptional scholars...

29/12/2020

The last two articles of the first ever issue of the Yale Undergraduate Research Journal! We're ecstatic and extremely grateful that we've been able to get thousands of eyes on the outstanding research of Yale undergraduates during a pandemic, while countless presentations, fairs, and conferences have been canceled, and we're looking forward to continuing to show everyone how great our research community is. We hope you'll join us!

Caught Not by Surprise: Captatio in Roman Satire and Law by Alisia (Si Hui) Pan
Investigating Factors that Affect HIV-1 Capsid Stability by Max Mao

Read all articles from the first issue here:
https://issuu.com/theyurj
or see all this issue's articles here:
https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-fall-20
Submit your work to the next issue here:
https://yurj.yale.edu/submissions

Publications from YURJ

24/12/2020

Three new articles today! Don't forget to submit your articles by the extended deadline, January 8th. Historically, our front cover authors have a 100 percent chance of winning a Rhodes scholarship (Our congratulations to Brian Reyes, whose article is now online!).

Environmental Racism in Historical Context: The Robbins Incinerator Debate, 1980s-1990s by Brian Reyes
Environmental Determinism and Spurious Correlation: Just-so stories in phonology by Jeremiah Jewell
Examining Variations in Community Benefit Generation Across Namibian Conservancies by Amanda Zhang

Read them all here:
https://issuu.com/theyurj
or see all this issue's articles here:
https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-fall-20
Submit your work to the next issue here:
https://yurj.yale.edu/submissions

Publications from YURJ

16/12/2020

Three new articles!

A Silent Injustice: Air Pollution as a Contributing Factor of COVID-19 Health Disparities by Spencer Johnson
The Dark Side of Variety: An Economic Model of Choice Overload by Teeger Li Blasheck
Social Movements in the Information Communication Technology Age: The Case of Hong Kong by Justin Jin
Read them all here:
https://issuu.com/theyurj
or see all this issue's articles here:
https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-fall-20

Publications from YURJ

08/12/2020

Three more articles come out this week on some very fascinating topics! The image here is from Karli Cecil's piece on how children ages four to nine perceive in-group and out-group obligations and interactions.

Children’s Reasoning About In-group and Out-group Obligations by Karli Cecil
In Search of Play by Margaret Saunders
Altering Sensory Learning by Chronic Inactivation of VIP Interneurons by Christopher Alba

Read them all here:
https://issuu.com/theyurj
or see all this issue's articles here:
https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-fall-20

01/12/2020

"In the midst of all of the homophobia emitted towards q***r people, J.P. insists that one of the most powerful aspects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic was its ability to combat homophobia through this newly created intersection between medicine, politics, and identity. “It made a whole generation of men and women stand up and say, ‘You cannot ignore us anymore.’” -- Maxwell Richardson

Three more articles as we start off December (see below)! If you're interested in submitting your work to the next edition of YURJ, check out the submissions tab on our website.

“Hong-Kong Style Cultural Revolution” — Weaponization of the Cultural Revolution in the 2019 Hong Kong Protests by Yat I Fung
Racial, Gender, and S*xual Imagery and the Black Q***r Man by Maxwell Richardson
The Keiretsu Advantage: How Japanese Automakers Thwarted American Competition by Jasper Boers

As always, find these on our website at https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-fall-20
or on Issuu at https://issuu.com/theyurj/stacks/3e86037aab1348d5b43f6d495d2876a2

Vol 1.1 by YURJ on issuu.

25/11/2020

"One cannot help but wonder if Korean Americans’
implication in the mechanisms of U.S. capitalism haunts them even as they at times benefit from it. After all, one of the predominant negative stereotypes of Korean Americans during the 1992 Los Angeles uprising was, in Itagaki’s words, that of “the heartless capitalist.” (Kim 41) The irony of this stereotype is, I posit, that it instantiates the failure of the Korean American tactic of accessing the rights and privileges of citizenship via absorption into U.S. capitalism." -- Hannah Kwak

Three more online articles! As always, on our website and issuu, linked below.

Co-opted by U.S. Capital: A Diachronic Study of Korean Americans’ Relation to the Model Minority Myth by Hannah Kwak

Russian Peasants in Tolstoy’s War and Peace - Idealized and Instrumentalized by Antonia Seyfarth

Resisting Gentrification: Everyday Politics & Collective Action From Oakland to Madrid by Caitlyn Clark

https://issuu.com/theyurj

Publications from YURJ

18/11/2020

Thanks Lucy Hodgman and the YDN for the great article!

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/11/18/yale-undergraduate-research-association-launches-journal/

On Nov. 12, the Yale Undergraduate Research Association released the print edition of the first issue of the Yale Undergraduate Research Journal, marking the formal launch of the first peer-reviewed publication to focus on the interdisciplinary research conducted by Yale students. The publication ....

18/11/2020

"It is difficult to suggest concrete solutions to determine what is the most appropriate way to utilize culture in health care. But what I have found is that the language, tone, and attitude that is used when discussing culture is crucial—all of these factors contribute to the way that a certain population’s customs and traditions are distributed to and conveyed by the broader public." -- Helena Bui

Three more articles today, one highly relevant to the recent mRNA vaccine candidates from Pfizer and Moderna if you're looking to understand the biology of COVID better. Check 'em out!

A Comparison of the Evolution, Structure, and Function of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 Spike Proteins by Tai Michaels

Operationalizing Culture: Refugees, Migration, and Mental Health in the Wake of the Vietnam War by Helena Bui

Specularizing myth: (de)constructing feminine identity in “The Bloody Chamber” and “Wolf-Alice” by Angela Carter by Ishana Aggarwal

Read them on issue here:
https://issuu.com/theyurj/stacks/3e86037aab1348d5b43f6d495d2876a2

or as always find them on our website at yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-spring-20

Vol 1.1 by YURJ on issuu.

12/11/2020

Our print edition is out! Featuring a forward from Nobel Prize Winner and Yale Professor James Rothman alongside nine outstanding student research works, it's got a little something for everyone. We hope you enjoy it!

Humanities:
For a New Ethics of Reading: Analyzing Tea in the Harem's Reception by Hannah Kwak
Environmental Racism in Historical Context: The Robbins Incinerator Debate, 1980s-1990s by Brian Reyes
Operationalizing Culture: Vietnamese Refugees, Migration, and Mental Health in the Wake of the Vietnam War by Helena Bui

Social Sciences:
Resisting Gentrification: Everyday Politics & Collective Action From Oakland to Madrid by Caitlyn Clark
"When Boys Become the Second S*x": The New Gender Gap Among Chinese Middle School Students by Jessica Xu
The Impact of Hospital Concentration on Municipal Finances by Jarrett Bell

STEM:
Altering Sensory Learning by Chronic Inactivation of VIP Interneurons by Christopher Alba
Designing a Microsecond-Long On-Chip Microwave Delay Line Using SrTiO3 Dielectricity by Kazemi Adachi
Applications of Bayesian Interference for Modeling Dynamic Instability in Neuronal Dendrite Morphogenesis by Daniel Fridman

We extend our gratitude to every student that submitted their work, the professors that helped reach out to students, our graduate student and professor reviewers, our advisors, and YSEA, E&EB, and Saybrook College for funding our first issue. We're looking forward to many more!

https://issuu.com/theyurj/docs/yurj_webcopy

Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get them in front of Issuu’s millions of monthly readers. Title: YURJ Vol 1.1 Print Edition, Author: YURJ, Name: YURJ Vol 1.1 Print Edi...

03/11/2020

"There is, however, a deeper and more sinister
structure at work; one that takes advantage of women who feel ostracized and foists a sense of purpose upon them. It is because of this structure that these women feel compelled to share their stories and to fight for redemption – not only for themselves – but for others who have left the movement as well. Their experiences illustrate the great potential of not just former female white power members, but of women in general in
deradicalizing extremists." -- Julia Yingling on women leaving white nationalist movements.

Three new articles this week! Check them out at https://issuu.com/theyurj and come back next week for more 🙂

Why Women Leave White Nationalist Movements by Julia Yingling

The Structural Grammaticalization of the Biblical Hebrew Ethical Dative by Oliver Shoulson

High-Spatial-Resolution Transcriptomic Map of the Mouse Lymph Node Microenvironment Using Deterministic Barcoding by Archibald Enninful, Yang Liu, and Rong Fan.

Publications from YURJ

20/10/2020

"This case sheds light on the complex relationship between elites and public opinion, in which the former actively shapes the latter, while the latter constrains the behavior of the former. It also serves as an example of the role that domestic affairs play in the two-level game of international arms control; public opinion has the potential to influence arms control proposals, negotiations, and outcomes." -- Rezvani on the Baruch Plan

Three more fantastic articles this week, all of which you can read at https://issuu.com/theyurj. Check back next Tuesday for more!

“An International Law with Teeth in It”: The Baruch Plan and American Public Opinion by Amir Rezvani

The Misunderstood Monstrous: An Analysis of the Word “Monster” in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Caroline Benedetti

Applied Statistical Models for Evaluating Firm Operating Performance and Investment Returns by Christopher Chen

Publications from YURJ

13/10/2020

"Story telling is a vital part of who we are as human beings. Stories teach and enforce moral systems for a society. They allow us to connect to one another. They provide opportunities for shared cathartic experiences. They create a shared cultural knowledge from which we can all connect. Now, VR is providing us an entirely new look at stories we know and love and holds the potential to shape our view of these classic plays, and even of our world, into something entirely new." -- Paige Hann

Four new articles this week, all of which you can read at https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-spring-20, and stay tuned for more!

A Midsummer Night’s VR: An Exploration of Virtual Reality Theater by Paige Hann

LGBTQ in Russia: Obstacles in the Late Post-Socialist Period by Mary Tate

Applications of Bayesian Inference for Modelling Dynamic Instability in Neuronal Dendrite Morphogenesis by Daniel Fridman

Designing a Microsecond-Long On-Chip Microwave Delay Line Using SrTiO3 Dielectricity by Kazemi Adachi

The Giant Under Salvini’s Feet: An Analysis of La Lega by Samuel Landino The Impact of Hospital Concentration on Municipal Finances by Jarrett Bell Deep Learning in Musical Lyric Generation: An LSTM-Based Approach by Harrison Gill, Daniel (Taesoo) Lee, and Nick Marwell What Two Canonical Novels Te...

06/10/2020

Three new articles this week! See them all at https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-spring-20 or in Issuu below.

Immunity as an Integral Aspect of Tribal Sovereignty: An analysis of the Supreme Court Case Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community by Meghanlata Gupta

Jewish Ancestral Languages and Communicating the Sephardic Experience: The Judeo- Spanish of Tela de sevoya by Julia Kahn

From “Pseudowomen” to the “Third S*x:” Situating Antisemitism and Homophobia in N**i Germany by Gabriel Klapholz

The Giant Under Salvini’s Feet: An Analysis of La Lega by Samuel Landino The Impact of Hospital Concentration on Municipal Finances by Jarrett Bell Deep Learning in Musical Lyric Generation: An LSTM-Based Approach by Harrison Gill, Daniel (Taesoo) Lee, and Nick Marwell What Two Canonical Novels Te...

29/09/2020

Check out three more online articles below, and come back next week for more!

See them all at https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-spring-20 and come back next Tuesday for more from YURJ's first online issue.

For a New Ethics of Reading: Analyzing Tea in the Harem’s Reception by Hannah Kwak
Interwoven Histories: A Chinese Family, a Yale Graduate and the Nanking Massacre by Isabella Yang
“When Boys Become the Second S*x”: The New Gender Gap Among Chinese Middle School Students by Ruqing (Jessica) Xu

Deep Learning in Musical Lyric Generation: An LSTM-Based Approach by Harrison Gill, Daniel (Taesoo) Lee, and Nick Marwell

22/09/2020

Today three more online articles come out--we hope you'll find them as insightful and impressive as we did!

See them all at https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-spring-20 and come back next Tuesday for more from YURJ's first online issue.

Deep Learning in Musical Lyric Generation: An LSTM-Based Approach by Harrison Gill, Daniel (Taesoo) Lee, and Nick Marwell

What Two Canonical Novels Tell Us About Linguistic Prejudice in United States Courts by Charlotte Van Voorhis

“But the city made us new, and we made it ours”: Reflections on Urban Space and Indigeneity in Tommy Orange’s There There by Meghanlata Gupta and Nolan Arkansas

The Giant Under Salvini’s Feet: An Analysis of La Lega by Samuel Landino The Impact of Hospital Concentration on Municipal Finances by Jarrett Bell Deep Learning in Musical Lyric Generation: An LSTM-Based Approach by Harrison Gill, Daniel (Taesoo) Lee, and Nick Marwell What Two Canonical Novels Te...

15/09/2020

Our first online articles are out! Check out our website at https://yurj.yale.edu/journal-issues/vol-1-issue-1-spring-20 to read Samuel Landino's "The Giant Under Salvini’s Feet: An Analysis of La Lega" and Jarrett Bell's "The Impact of Hospital Concentration on Municipal Finances." Stay tuned for new online research articles weekly and our print journal making its way to a dining hall near you soon!

Online Articles: The Giant Under Salvini’s Feet: An Analysis of La Lega by Samuel Landino (view online here) The Impact of Hospital Concentration on Municipal Finances by Jarrett Bell (view online here)

26/06/2020

More fantastic interviews from Symposia highlighting Yale student researchers!

The Parallel Lives of Michael Najem and DJ Khaled

15/06/2020

Symposia, our associated online blog, posts fantastic profiles of Yale researchers. Check out their latest piece here!

Digging for the Truth: Seeing History Through Scientific Glasses

02/06/2020

Thank you to everyone who submitted research to YURJ's first issue! We received over 100 submissions spanning an incredible academic breadth--Native American History, Analytic Philosophy, Experimental Astrophysics, and everything in between. We'll be sending out articles to reviewers over the coming week, but it's already clear we have some amazing work.

Like the page to stay updated on the research of Yale's talented undergrads, and stay tuned for our first issue coming out in the early Fall!

01/06/2020

01/06/2020