Rope sponge diversity and Health status in Roatán, Honduras

Yuto Goto

McLennan Community College

Sponges play essential roles in Caribbean reefs through filtration, nutrient cycling, and habitat formation. Their abundance has increased where coral cover has declined. Rope sponges such as Aplysina cauliformis and Aplysina fulva are common in this region. Emerging diseases have been reported, including Aplysina Red Band Syndrome (ARBS) in Aplysina spp. and Sponge White Patch Disease (SWPD) in Amphimedon compressa. A paucity of data on rope sponge populations and disease status in Roatán limits the ability to detect future outbreaks. This study was conducted to assess rope sponge diversity and disease prevalence in Roatán, Honduras.

2026 Boe Award Winners

From Crisis to Monument: Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple and Ashoka’s Pillars as Strategic Branding Campaigns

Emanuely Carmo

Lone Star College

With an aim to investigate branding in ancient contexts, this research explores the relationship between architectural investment, religious ideology, and political communication by comparing Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple with King Ashoka’s Pillars and Edicts. While literature does apply branding to ancient contexts, few studies examine monuments under this lens.

For the Sake of Tradition: Federico García Lorca’s Critique of Francisco Franco’s Spanish Fascist Party in La Casa de Bernarda Alba

Sasha Joy

Emporia State University

Federico García Lorca’s play, La Casa de Bernarda Alba/The House of Bernarda Alba, can be considered a strong economic and political critique of the rise of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and the fascist movement in 1930s Spain. García Lorca’s play was not staged in Spain until 1950 after the eventual fascist victory; after the author’s death in 1936, his work was burned and banned (Columbia 250). Despite the fact that the Axis powers ultimately lost the Second World War, other Western powers, including the United States, continued to support Franco after World War II, ignoring his oppressive regime and allowing fascism to reign in Spain until the 1970s (Graham 166).

The Continuity of Control: The Shifting Faces of Patriarchal Control over Women from Witchcraft in the 1600s to Hysterics in the 1800s

Aaliyah Linton

Lone Star College–Kingwood

Throughout history, women who challenged the limits of socially accepted behavior have often been reinterpreted according to the prevailing ideological framework of the era. This research explores how the transition from witchcraft accusations in the seventeenth century to hysteria diagnoses in the nineteenth century reflected evolving patriarchal methods of controlling women, with an aim to identify the shifting but continuous roles of religious and medical authorities in shaping that control.

Mother Death: a Symbol of Agency in the Context of Twentieth-Century German Feminism

Isabella McCord

University of North Texas

Violently, Death descends on an unsuspecting monk. He who should be mostly ideally positioned to receive God’s generosity shakes with fear as he realizes the immediate reality of his fate. This is the image of death Hans Holbein the Younger presents to us in his print of Der Münch (The Monk) from his 1523 Totentanz series (Dance of Death; figure 1). A series deeply rooted in German artistic tradition since the Middle Ages, the Totentanz depicts members of different social classes—from laborers to monarchs—as they encounter a masculine Death.

Crossing Boundaries: What Jewish & Dutch Epigenetics Reveal about Stress Markers in the Chickasaw Nation

Abiela Swan

Lone Star College - Montgomery

As the Cold War came to a close, MI6 Deputy Chief Sir Gerry Warner was asked how he would describe the role of Britain’s foreign intelligence service to Queen Elizabeth II. The career intelligence officer answered rather starkly, telling the man opposite him that Britain’s foreign intelligence apparatus was “the last penumbra of empire.”...