Since the discovery of extrasolar planets (planets orbiting another star) in the early 1990’s, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been confirmed to exist by January 2020 according to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. We are searching for trends between exoplanets’ atmospheric compositions and their physical and orbital properties. To do so, we gather and analyze numerous publications of transmission spectroscopy data on the atmospheres of these planets. The focus parameter space of each search we conduct is expanded incrementally throughout the research process. This expansion requires remaking plots and reanalyzing data, which is a step that has the potential to be simplified. Another problem was needing to input data that would later be used for representation manually. This allowed for the possibility of errors in the data. We also were not able to easily represent all the aspects of the exoplanets we desired to in our graphs and plots, such as stellar type and atmospheric absorption of elements. In order to accomplish these tasks in a more effective and efficient way, the team is automating the data collection, expansion, and representation processes through developing computer programs that are used alongside database queries. This includes developing code that will reduce the amount of human interaction with the data aggregation and representation steps. We will present the improvements introduced with the SQL Server database to store our large data intake and query relationships between planetary properties. Python code is used in SQL Server Management Studio to visually represent these relationships in plots and graphs. This makes for a more efficient pipeline from information intake to representation, which can then be used for planetary analysis. These results will be included in the Habitable Zone Gallery, making it accessible for the community of researchers who wish to use the information as well.

In recent decades, researchers have begun to learn about exoplanets, which are planets that orbit a star outside of our solar system. Exoplanets are very diverse in their properties, for example, their masses, periods, radii, average temperature, and average densities. They also show a variety of elements and molecules in their atmospheres. One of the ways that we use to analyze the composition of their atmospheres is by using transmission spectroscopy. In our research group we are interested in learning whether there are any trends between the physical and orbital properties of the exoplanets, the host stars, and the atmospheric composition of the exoplanets. Our study centers on exoplanets with up to 3.5-days orbits and radii between 1 to 2 times the radius of Jupiter, the so called “hot Jupiters”. The Habitable Zone Gallery is a website which provides information about planetary parameters and how much time each planet spends in its stars habitable zone. The habitable zone is the region in which exoplanets can be found where they have the ability to hold liquid water on their surface. This region is a specific range of circumstellar distance from the host star depending on the host star. We will present the results of this study, utilizing data from the Habitable Zone Gallery, Astrophysics Data System for published data on each exoplanet, and NASA Exoplanet data archive for additional information. We have focused on studying the wavelength range from 3000 to 17000 Å, which is where absorption by sodium, potassium, and water can be found. Any trends between physical, orbital and atmospheric properties will be useful for future selection of targets.

  Throughout his administration from 1998-2002, Colombian president Andrés Pastrana collaborated with the United States in Plan Colombia, a foreign aid program whose stated purpose was to eradicate the drug trade in Colombia through US military assistance and social development programs. Plan Colombia has been predominantly studied through the exploration of the economic reasons that have prompted US officials to acknowledge the Plan as a successful policy, regardless of its exacerbation of violence in Colombia and its failure to eradicate the drug trade. The lack of scholarship on Plan Colombia from the Colombian perspective fosters a narrative of US imperial imposition. Although this narrative is clearly justifiable, it disregards Colombian agency, and it obfuscates the internal racial and social hierarchies that sustained the Plan's implementation. Therefore, to explore the Colombian State’s project behind Plan Colombia, this research analyzed the Plan through a framework of intervention by invitation. Furthermore, it investigated how the Colombian government utilized hegemonic racial and social hierarchies to facilitate said intervention. Through detailed analysis of Pastrana's presidential speeches, I propose that through Plan Colombia his administration conflated a rhetoric of peace with participation in a modern neoliberal extractive economy. Colombia invited US intervention because it needed its aid funds to build the infrastructure and train the labor force necessary to bring Colombia to the fore of neoliberalism, which would consequently resolve the armed conflict. Furthermore, I argue that through such a conflation, his government instrumentalized Colombian social and racial hierarchies to mobilize impoverished campesinos to become the labor force necessary to sustain a licit neoliberal extractive economy that could attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to Colombia's agricultural and mining sectors. Therefore, this research illuminates the rearticulation of 19th century land struggles and racial and social hierarchies that have historically subjected—and continue to subject—campesinos to political violence.

Since they were first discovered in the 1990’s, technological advances have led to a rapid growth in the study of exoplanets, which orbit stars outside of our solar system. Sodium was first detected in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in 2001 with transmission spectroscopy, and a limited but growing number of the 4100+ exoplanets which have been discovered to date have had their atmospheres probed with this technique. Despite the growing number, few studies exist with the aim of comparing the physical properties of different planets and atmospheric information. The goal of our research is to gather previously published data in order to characterize trends relating exoplanet physical properties to their atmospheric compositions. Our research has started with a focus on hot Jupiters: gas giant exoplanets which orbit very close to their host stars. We have expanded the parameter region of interest we are studying, and are working on streamlining the search so that results can be shared more easily with the community through the Habitable Zone Gallery website.