Measuring client adjustment throughout psychotherapy has been supported as a method to improve client outcome upon cessation of treatment. Weekly assessments inform the clinician how the client is responding to therapy and illuminate when adjustments to treatment may be necessary.  The Evidence-Based Assessment System for Clinicians (EAS-C) is a computerized outcome tracking system that allows psychotherapists to measure weekly progress and instantly view results with their clients in session. While there are excellent measures for tracking general psychological adjustment, many are too lengthy and arduous to facilitate completion on a weekly basis. Therefore, we created the seven-item Brief Adjustment Scale for EAS-C. We hypothesized a high correlation between the BASE-7 and the Outcome-Questionnaire 45.2, an established measure of psychological functioning. Furthermore, we hypothesized participants would report more willingness to complete the BASE-7 and would rate it as easier to complete than the OQ-45.2. Adult participants were recruited through the online survey website, Mechanical Turk, and completed the BASE-7, OQ-45.2, and an acceptability and utility questionnaire online. The BASE-7 correlated highly with the OQ-45.2, indicating high concurrent validity. Participants rated the BASE-7 significantly more acceptable than the OQ-45.2, suggesting participants would be more willing to complete the BASE-7 on a weekly basis. Participants’ ratings of the utility of the BASE-7 and the OQ-45.2 were not significantly different, indicating participants believed both measures would adequately communicate levels of psychological distress to a mental health provider. These findings demonstrate that the BASE-7 is a valid tool for measuring psychological distress that may be more suitable for weekly administration than lengthier measures. As a brief outcome measure, the BASE-7 is a promising new tool that may be used to inform both clinician and client of treatment progress over time.

Homo floresiensis diverges from the traditional morphological form associated with bipedalism: the size of their foot is long compared to the length of their femur. Here we examine the effect of lengthening the foot of modern humans to proportions like that seen in H. floresiensis on gait parameters. We hypothesize that the swing leg will need to be raised to allow the longer foot to clear the ground.  A sample of 8 women aged 18-30 years was used. A ratio of 0.87 (foot length / fibula length) was calculated using estimated measurements of the type specimen of H. floresiensis (LB1). A foot extension device (FED) was created to extend the feet of each participant. Each participant walked for a total of 10 trials at slow, preferred and fast velocities both with and without the FED. An 8-camera Qualisys system was used to measure the 3D trajectories of 3 markers placed of standard anatomical landmarks. The trajectory of the patella marker was analyzed to determine if there was a significant change in the height that the leg was raised while wearing the FED compared to without. Participants raised their right leg an average of 121 mm without the FED and 125 mm with, a nonsignificant difference (p = 0.446).  These results indicate that there is no significant change in the kinematics while walking with an extended foot, although a larger sample might reveal more subtle changes. Future work will include the analysis of more anatomical markers and larger sample sizes.

Currently, southern resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) comprise a population of eighty-seven individuals. It is believed that disturbance by vessels may affect key behaviors and mask echolocation, which is critical for foraging and communication. Within the Puget Sound, Southern Residents are exposed routinely to commercial whale watching, and vessel interaction has been listed as a contributing factor to their endangered status. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are currently implementing vessel guidelines to decrease anthropogenic influences on this population. Beginning in summer 2011 these federal laws came into affect. Understanding boater behavior on the water is essential for federal enforcement and revision of current laws. By working with Soundwatch, an organization that has been documenting vessel interactions for 18 years, I assisted in data collection, entry, and analyzing boater density and trends. In the summer of 2011 2,500 incidents were observed including violations of federal law and voluntary guidelines. The top incidents that were observed were being within 200 yards of a whale, being inshore of whales, and parking in their path. On average 12 vessels were surrounding this population on a daily basis, with the majority being whale watch boats. Private vessels, generally due to their irregularity on the water, do not generally know about the new federal law or guidelines. Resulting in private boats accounting for 58% of the observed incidents. In addition to assisting with data gathering and analyzing I will compare the 2011 results to 2010 report. Providing a summary of themes observed on the water and future recommendations for federal law revision. Moving forward it will be critical to enforce current laws, and understand the dynamics between vessels and whales. My project will provide a succinct summary of 2011 trends and compare them with previously observed boater interactions.

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a degenerative disease leading to fatal respiratory and cardiac complications. It is caused by loss of functional dystrophin through mutation of the dystrophin gene. Possible treatments could use Adeno-associated virus (AAV) to introduce genes into muscle cells. This strategy requires muscle specific regulatory cassettes containing sequences specific for transcribing the therapeutic gene in muscle cells. My studies seek to increase the activity of one such cassette, MHCK7. Since AAV vectors can package only ~5000 basepairs of DNA, the dystrophin cDNA and regulatory cassette must be miniaturized. I am modifying MHCK7 by adding a 95 bp intronic enhancer (SIE) from the muscle creatine kinase (MCK) gene that is important for MCK expression in slow muscle fibers and cardiac muscle. The SIE has been placed ~1kb 3’ of the MHCK7 luciferase reporter cDNA to mimic its endogenous genomic location. SIE addition was performed by introducing a HindIII site 3’ of the luciferase polyA sequence by site directed mutagenesis, and the subsequent opening of DNA at that site. The SIE was transferred from a previously made plasmid and ligated into the opened MHCK7. Restriction digests and gel electrophoresis were used to assess successful introduction of HindIII and to confirm digests for opening the DNA and isolating the SIE. New recombinant MHCK7-3’-SIE will be transfected into skeletal and cardiac muscle cultures, and its activity will be assessed through luciferase activity. The SIE’s contribution to expression will be compared to that of the original MHCK7 plasmid as well as to MHCK7 with the SIE located immediately 5’ of the cassette. If the new regulatory cassette is more active than MHCK7 and 5’-SIE-MHCK7, further studies will test the cassette in conjunction with a microdystrophin cDNA. If activity is not increased, I will test alternative locations of the SIE.

In primates, ventral striatum contains many reinforcement sites. These sites, when stimulated with electrical current, mimic behavioral reinforcement. Monkeys trained to perform behavioral tasks will often work solely for stimulation at these sites without food reward. Using these sites, we can further understand the plasticity of the brain by altering neural activity through conditioned changes in connectivity. We implanted moveable stimulating electrodes near the nucleus accumbens. Reinforcement sites are identified by whether stimulation elicits reinforcement behavior. This is done by the use of alternating reinforced and non-reinforced trials (R/NR) while the monkey performs a simple manual force step-tracking program by controlling a cursor’s movement on a computer screen with forces generated with their wrist. Their objective is to move the cursor into different boxes representing different wrist forces. During each R period, the monkey receives electrical stimulation at the potential reinforcement site for every completed trial. During NR periods, however, the monkey has the opportunity to work but no stimulation is given for completed trials. If the number of completed trials is significantly higher during R periods than NR periods, a reinforcement site has been found. We next condition single neuron firing rates using this reinforcing stimulation. Chronically implanted micro-wires record discriminated neuron activity from primary motor cortex. We determine the cell’s baseline firing rate and trigger stimulation of the reinforcement site on action potentials that exceed this rate-threshold. Our objective is to train the monkey to increase the cell’s activity for reinforcing stimulation in set time periods. This experiment enables us to condition volitional control of brain activity to manipulate neural prosthetics and restore motor function in paralyzed patients. Since this conditioning can also be done with an autonomous brain-computer interface, this paradigm can be extended to freely behaving monkeys and has the potential to be applied to humans.

Electric vehicle infrastructure is the support network that allows electric vehicles (EVs) to travel farther than battery capabilities currently make possible. The infrastructure includes privately and publicly owned charging stations, upgraded electrical utilities capable of handling the output demanded by charging stations, and the internet technologies that give drivers the latest information on charging station locations and availability. This research investigated and developed a process to install a charging station on a roadway project in order to encourage expansion of electric vehicle infrastructure. This process could be recognized as a potential sustainable activity in the Greenroads Rating System. The rating system assigns points for completion of a number of sustainable activities on a roadway project that contribute to creating a "greener" road. Laying out such a process is especially challenging because it must remain applicable to many types of roadways in diverse environments, even with future advancements in electric vehicles, charging stations, and battery technologies. Two types of roadway projects were studied as cases: projects that have already installed charging stations and others that were considering installing charging stations. Through communication with professional design engineers on these projects and exploring numerous government EV infrastructure documents, preliminary findings determined that location characteristics, local markets for EVs, and local rules and regulations were the three key components to establishing EV infrastructure. Using these components, a short rubric was created, that allows project engineers to evaluate the feasibility of installing a charging station on a road project.

The flux of oxygen between the ocean and atmosphere is a measure of net biological oxygen and carbon production in the euphotic zone of the ocean, which are key fluxes in the global carbon cycle. Seasonal measurements of O2 in the surface ocean are necessary to determine the flux. To date these measurements have been made in only a few time-series sites in the world’s oceans, but it may soon be possible to determine the global flux by deploying oxygen sensors on the world-wide Argo profiling float program. Before this can be achieved the accuracy of oxygen sensors deployed on these floats must be improved. My project will evaluate a series of calibration methods for increasing oxygen sensor accuracy to better than ±0.5% and establish a standard calibration protocol. Ten Aanderaa oxygen sensors will be submerged in a constant-temperature water bath under different oxygen concentrations. The sensor response will be determined along with the oxygen concentration measured by Winkler titration at each temperature and pOOxy value. The sensors will then be cycled in a separate housing between water and air at 100% humidity, constant temperature, and known atmospheric pressure to determine the oxygen sensor response in air. Laboratory-calibrated oxygen sensors will be deployed on the University of Washington vessel, R. V. Thompson in Northwest Pacific Kuroshio current in winter of 2012/13 to demonstrate increased accuracy and test in-situ calibration capabilities. The establishment of a standard calibration protocol will expand the spatial and temporal scale of dissolved oxygen oceanographic research.

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) patients have mutated dystrophin genes and suffer from muscular degeneration, which leads to cardiac, respiratory and general skeletal muscle disabilities. Potential treatment of DMD patients could involve gene therapy in which Adeno-Associated Viruses (AAV) deliver functional dystrophin cDNA ligated to muscle specific regulatory cassettes that express dystrophin exclusively in striated muscle tissues. The Hauschka lab has been designing regulatory cassettes (e.g. MHCK7) that contain control regions from genes that are highly active in skeletal muscles such as the muscle Creatine Kinase (MCK) and α-Myosin Heavy Chain (α-MHC) genes. Due to the limited size of DNA that can fit into AAV capsids, the cassettes need to be as compact as possible. My goal is to test whether adding a small intronic enhancer (SIE) from the MCK gene, that is known to have high activity in skeletal muscle in vitro, will improve transcriptional activity in cardiac and skeletal muscle cultures compared to MHCK7. The SIE was isolated and cloned immediately 5’ of MHCK7. After sequencing to confirm the SIE orientation, we carried out a pilot study in which 5’-SIE-MHCK7 was transiently transfected into skeletal muscle cultures. 5’-SIE-MHCK7 activity, as measured by the reporter gene firefly luciferase, was several fold higher than MHCK7. This suggests that the addition of the SIE to two known muscle specific enhancers increases transcriptional activity in skeletal muscle cells. Future studies will focus on confirming this result, and comparing 5’-SIE-MHCK7 activity to aMHCK7-SIE cassette in which the SIE is located 3’ of the luciferase reporter, so as to mimic its normal location in the MCK gene. The 5’-SIE-MHCK7 cassette will also be tested in cardiomyocyte cultures, and smaller cassette versions will be designed that eliminates additional non-conserved DNA sequences from the SIE and MHCK7 components.

The spinal cord represents a key site of convergence for sensory feedback and cortical commands, but determining how each contributes to movement has not been uncovered.  Understanding how spinal circuits are structured and utilized to generate complex movements will be necessary to understand how the nervous system processes multiple inputs.  One approach to understanding motor circuits is to know how the output effects of neurons change between tasks.  Here we investigate the state of the spinal cord by stimulating at specific sites in the cord and recording electromyographic activity (EMG) in the forelimb muscles of a non-human primate.  By comparing the output effects of stimulation between two behaviors, a flexion/extension wrist task and a reaching task, we hope to understand the effects of cortical and sensory interactions in shaping motor output.  In addition, by creating a spinal map of stimulus triggered EMG activity, we hope to reveal the functional organization of spinal outputs during the behaviors.  In this experiment, we compare the effects of stimulus triggered averages of EMG between these two tasks at various sties in the cord.  Our results show a change in the effects on EMG activity dependent on the behavior performed in roughly 2/3 of sites.  Indicating that the configuration of the circuit that our electrode stimulates is dependent on the task performed.  When the non-human primate performs a wrist task, cortical input and sensory feedback recruit specific spinal pathways to activity certain muscles in order to perform the task.  When the task is altered, different cortical inputs and sensory feedback may inhibit or further excite that circuit, changing EMG activity.  Understanding the circuits responsible for the control of arm movements and how these circuits change with varying tasks, may allow us to utilize and exploit these spinal circuits to treat patients with spinal cord injury.

Information from rods and cones influences color vision because all signals travel on the same neural pathways. We are studying the rod effects on hue for small foveal stimuli compared with those of large peripheral stimuli in order to understand the neural mechanisms of rod influence on small foveal stimuli. Using a CRT display, we measured the rod hue biases that shift the balance point of the four unique hues (red, green, blue, yellow) at low light levels for foveal stimuli of varying sizes: 0.5°, 1°, and 2° diameters, and compared them to results for large peripheral stimuli. We are assessing the reliability of rod hue biases across subjects. So far, we have data on three observers, and more in progress. The hypothesis that direct stimulation of adjacent rods and cones is needed to produce rod hue biases predicts that we would not find foveal effects because there are few rods in the fovea. Results so far vary among observers, both in the specific unique hues that show rod effects, and in the dependence of these effects on stimulus size. For one observer, all rod hue biases disappear for stimuli smaller than 2° diameter. For two other observers, some specific rod hue biases persist for the smaller sizes. In addition, the pattern of rod effects for specific unique hues does not match for foveal and peripheral stimuli. These results suggest that, at least for some observers, foveal rod hue biases are mediated by neural interactions acting laterally across the retina. Further testing will address alternative explanations based on differential eye movements and attempt to understand the basis for foveal-peripheral differences. These results will allow for greater understanding of the rod influences on the fovea and of neural mechanisms of color vision.