McGovern, Warren Wm.

The present study investigates the objectivity of the current affirmative asylum approval decision-making process in the United States. It provides a brief history of asylum law and the relevant statutes that determine an applicant’s eligibility to be granted asylum. This study will show that the current strict criteria to be granted affirmative asylum in the United States does not reflect the reality of the decision-making process done by asylum officers and adjudicators.
Using affirmative asylum approval data by country from the Department of Homeland Security alongside computational libraries found in Python 3, the study will perform correlation and ordinary least squares regression analysis to show how external factors, such as political and economic conditions of an applicant’s country of origin, influence the decision to approve an applicant for asylum. The study will provide statistically significant results that show that nearly one-third of the variability of affirmative asylum approval decisions can be attributed to political and economic conditions of an applicant’s country of origin. These results will be presented with data visualizations, and code snipped will be provided for future researchers to replicate this study’s methods.

A fractal is a shape that is self-similar through infinitely many iterations. There are many instances of self-similarity in nature, but fractals can be computer-generated and even modeled after nature. One of the most notable examples of a computergenerated fractal is the Mandelbrot set, which is defined as the set of those z for which the orbit of fc(z) = z2 + c is bounded. This set is an instance of how a simple iteration can be extremely intricate.

The Problems of Antiquity, which have challenged and fascinated mathematicians for hundreds of years, include squaring the circle, trisecting the angle, and doubling the cube. Mathematicians of Ancient Greece attempted to solve these problems through the traditional construction methods involving a compass and straightedge. It was discovered in the nineteenth century, however, that these problems are impossible to solve using a compass and straightedge. Surprisingly, it is origami - the ancient art of Japanese paper folding - that holds the key to solving two of these classical problems. The development of the field of origami constructible numbers has led to modern axioms that, when coupled with traditional paper folding techniques, make trisecting the angle and doubling the cube possible. The applications of mathematical origami are seemingly endless, ranging from solving these ancient problems to designing folding space telescopes.

From reading the articles [1] and [2] we became to be interested in understanding the group of transformations on the set of all 9 x 9 sudoku grids. We wanted to understand characteristics of those sudoku grids that had the property where said sudoku grid rotated clockwise by 90o is equal to the sudoku grid acted on by a permutation. This led us to understanding which possible 4,4 cycle permutations were allowed. Through our research we developed theories for how these transformations worked and found how they influenced the rules of the games. We also tried to find what information can be given in order to solve the puzzle. An example puzzle is shown to illustrate the theories and potential of a single puzzle.