Paraeducators are increasingly becoming a key component in special education. As class sizes increase, schools are hiring paraeducators to work with students with disabilities.  However, qualifications and training of paraeducators are minimal in most states. In Vermont, only 30% of jobs specifically required previous experience working with children. The majority of states have no educational requirements for paraeducators beyond a high school diploma. Typically, paraeducators do not receive much training besides an orientation to school policies and special education teachers do not usually help paraeducators understand IEP (individualized education plan) goals. Unfortunately, these kinds of practices lead to turnover rates that can be as high as 50% for recent hires. High turnover rates are costly to the school district, impede cooperation between IEP team members, and negatively impact student learning. A review of recent research pertaining to paraeducator training and instructional strategies for working with students with special needs led to the development of this toolkit. The purpose of this toolkit is to support paraeducators and classroom volunteers who are working with students with a variety of special needs in many different classroom settings. This toolkit provides information about specific disabilities, instructional strategies, background information on special education, and further resources. Particular emphasis was placed on special education in Washington State. There are more paraeducators in the United States than there are special educators—under IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), trained paraeducators are allowed to provide special education instruction. However, most paraeducators get little to no training and a great deal of responsibility for students vulnerable to academic failure or stagnation. This toolkit was designed in the hopes that, as a free resource, it could provide much needed background information to paraeducators and classroom volunteers.

Cognitive theorists argue that mental states, including disorders, are generated and maintained by personal, subjective beliefs, and that events can only be appropriately labeled by the individual experiencing them. Additionally, pervasive negative thoughts are a part of both depression and anxiety. Whereas with depression a person is likely to believe they are incompetent, or that life is hopeless, with anxiety a person is likely to have negative thoughts about what might happen or about threats in the future. Additionally, high levels of self-hate are associated with bulimia and high levels of self-control are associated with anorexia. Current research indicates a connection between depression, anxiety, and self-talk (ST). However, studies have yet to examine whether ST in men suffering from depression, anxiety, or disordered eating (DE) differs from that of women. The purpose of this study is to explore potential gender differences in ST (as measured by the automatic thoughts questionnaire-revised and the anxious self-statements questionnaire) with student’s scores on the Beck Depression Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Eating Disorders Inventory. These differences, if found, may help to explain the disparity between the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and DE between genders. Women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety and ten times as likely to be diagnosed with an eating disorder. We hypothesize that there will be differences in ST between men and women, and that these differences in ST will mediate the relation between gender and depression, anxiety, and disordered eating.

Adolescent use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs is on the rise in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) annual National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (NYRBS), nearly fifty percent of all teens have smoked cigarettes at some point and nearly seventy-five percent have tried alcohol. Research has established several factors known to put adolescents at risk for negative behaviors, including family problems, socioeconomic status, and lack of parental supervision. However, fewer studies have examined what factors prevent at-risk adolescent populations from using alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs. Many potential factors have been identified as buffers for at-risk adolescent populations; some these are creativity, service learning, and community involvement. But research investigating these factors is still limited in scope. The present study examines relationships between protective factors and risky health behaviors of at-risk adolescents. First, we pilot-tested our measures on emerging adult college students and found that students who reported higher levels of family cohesion reported lower levels of cigarette use, illicit substance use, and drunk driving. However, contrary to our hypothesis, the higher the level of reported creativity, the more students reported illegal drug use. Based on our preliminary findings, we are revising our survey and plan to survey adolescents at a Boise, Idaho community center about their use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs using the NYRBS. In addition, factors thought to serve as buffers against these risky health behaviors, including the five characteristics of Positive Youth Development, competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring using the Positive Youth Development Inventory (PYDI). We hypothesize that adolescents who possess these five characteristics will be less likely to engage in risky behaviors. We will test this hypothesis using Pearson's r correlations. Using our research findings, we hope to suggest future prevention program offerings to the community center.

Decision making and risk factors such as media, peers/friends, and family, represent the two main areas that researchers have examined in an effort to understand the cause of disordered eating. Research on decision making has identified a strong tendency toward self-gratifying or disadvantageous decision making among disordered eating populations. Furthermore, persons with disordered eating demonstrate sensitivity towards risk factors as a source for self-perception which in turn plays a large role in binge eating symptomology. However, research on the interaction of these two components with regards to disordered eating is yet unexplored. This gap in understanding was the source of inquiry for my study. Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is the most prevalent of the eating disorders. Being that I did not have access to a sizable BED group, I focused on subthreshold BED (SBED). I hypothesized that (a) SBED participants will demonstrate disadvantageous decision making; (b) SBED participants will place high value on media, peers, and family as a source self-perception; (c) SBED participants’ high sensitivity to media, peers and family promotes self-gratifying DM; (d) Gender differences will be significant with regards to external risk factors, but no difference in decision making. Participants were recruited from introductory psychology classes. An online survey was administered to measure eating attitudes, decision making pattern, and influence of media, peers, and family on binge eating symptomology. I anticipate finding that SBED participants demonstrate decision making impairments and sensitivities to risk factors. Additionally, I anticipate differences in the way risk factors are perceived between genders. Understanding the interaction between decision making and risk factors could lead to possible therapies for and preventive measures against disordered eating. A more in-depth study of clinical and subthreshold disordered eating is needed to ascertain a clearer understanding of the interplay between these two key components of disordered eating.

Schizophrenia is a debilitating neuropsychiatric disorder with a worldwide prevalence of 1%. Although the heritability of schizophrenia is high, there is a large proportion of affected individuals with no family history. We are testing the hypothesis that many different severe mutations are the causal genetic factors for schizophrenia. In order to test our hypothesis, we sequenced the exomes of approximately 50 trios consisting of an affected individual and his/her parents who are free of mental illness. Exome sequencing is a rapid and robust method for looking at only coding portions of the genome, and allows for the detection of rare variants in those regions. Sequence data is then run through several bioinformatics filters to ensure that the variant is not common in the general population, and that the variant is probably damaging to the gene product. All variants that pass through the bioinformatics filters are validated with Sanger sequencing. De novo mutations were found in 19 different genes in 11 trios. Of the mutations 13 were single base pair changes, and 6 were truncating nonsense or insertion/deletion events. After these experiments have been carried out on approximately 100 trios, we will use the group of candidate genes to identify critical pathways that may be affected in schizophrenia. Understanding the structure of these pathways may allow for the development of targeted therapies for schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a devastating neurodevelopmental disorder whose genetic influences continue to be elusive. Rare, gene-disrupting genomic deletions and duplications – called copy number variants (CNVs) – have been implicated in schizophrenia; however, much remains to be understood about which genes are causative, as well as the cellular mechanisms involved. Biological follow up of individual CNVs may give insight to the origin of schizophrenia. We focused on a CNV present in a patient with early onset schizophrenia. This mutation duplicates the 5' ends of two genes that lie head-to-head on chromosome 11q22: DCUN1D5, a previously uncharacterized gene predicted to be involved in cullin neddylation of ubiquitin ligase complexes, and DYNC2H1, a dynein active in cilia. Both are expressed in brain and are plausible candidate genes for schizophrenia. Using RNAseq, we detected novel DCUN1D5 transcripts in the patient’s lymphoblasts that we predict will result in aberrant, truncated DCUN1D5 protein. To test the conformational stability of these aberrant proteins, we then expressed epitope-tagged full length and truncated DCUN1D5 in HEK293 cell lines. These transfected cells also allow us to study the functional capabilities of the aberrant proteins in the cullin neddylation pathway, and the specific cullin binding partners of DCUN1D5. Investigation of these aberrant proteins and their function may shed light on pathways that contribute to schizophrenia, potentially guiding the search for new candidate genes and the development of novel treatment strategies.

We consider a mathematical optimization problem that can be used to describe various physical situations that arise in physics and EE applications. In its general form, we study the following physical setting: There is some substance emanating from a source, which propagates through an inhomogeneous medium and reaches a drain. As a motivating application, we imagine a spark of fire igniting and spreading through a forest landscape. Alternately, light may be emitted from a point source and travel in a space with lenses of varying indices of refraction. In each case, we would like to influence the substance’s movement by optimally altering the medium in which it propagates. In the case of a forest fire, this corresponds to locating optimal places on the forest landscape to place water, in order to minimize the first arrival time of the fire at a specific location. To solve this convex optimization problem, we perform two tasks. In its general form, our first task relates to finding the shortest distance between a pair of points on a curved space, which is the solution to the Eikonal partial differential equation. Secondly, we take the derivative of the Eikonal solution with respect to a medium parameter. Due to the nature of our problem, these operations cannot be performed analytically. The results are approximated with the Subgradient Marching Algorithm. The unique element of this project has to do with the way we preform the algorithm. Once the shortest-path-length solution and its subgradient are known, we recognize a strategic location on the forest landscape to place a fire deterrent. In this work, we study and implement the overall optimization algorithm, and demonstrate an application to the forest fire problem.

On November 1, 1871, the first Italian performance of an opera written by Richard Wagner was presented at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna. Despite nearly forty years of resistance to the works of the revolutionary German composer, this performance of Lohengrin marked a watershed in the integration of foreign influences into the unstable musical culture of post-Risorgimento Italy. While a distinct disdain for Wagner and Wagnerism continued to permeate Italian society, dividing critics and musicians, the influence of Wagnerism on Italian composers is evident as the nineteenth century draws to a close. While scholars such as Julian Budden have argued that Wagnerism in Italian opera is most strongly heard in the operas of i veristi such as Giacomo Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo, I maintain that even Giuseppe Verdi, a man who can too easily be classified as anti-Wagnerian, begins to show evidence of Wagnerism in his compositions during this period. In examining the associations of his librettist, Arrigo Boito, with gli scapigliati, and his influences on Verdi himself, I intend to discuss the effect of Wagnerism on Verdi’s compositional style and to demonstrate the influence of Wagnerism in his opera Otello.

Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 is a methylotroph that metabolizes reduced C₁ compounds. In particular, methanol metabolism by M. extorquens AM1 requires two cofactors: tetrahydromethanopterin (H₄MPT) and tetrahydrofolate (H₄F). MeOH is first oxidized to formaldehyde, a highly toxic compound. MtdB is involved in formaldehyde oxidation to formate using H₄MPT and both NAD+ and NADP+ as co-substrates. Formate is the branching point for either further oxidation to CO₂ or assimilation. MtdA is a NADP+-specific enzyme that uses H₄F to generate methylene-H₄F, the intermediate that enters the assimilatory serine cycle. Previous in vitro studies have shown that MtdA is capable of using both cofactors and more efficient using H₄MPT. This suggests that it may have a dual role in both the oxidation and assimilation steps of methanol metabolism. However, in vivo, MtdA is unable to fully substitute MtdB as an mtdB mutant is auxotrophic on methanol. Interestingly, when MtdA was over-expressed the same mutant was no longer methanol sensitive. This observation poses two questions: 1) What is the role of MtdA in the H₄MPT pathway? And 2) Why is MtdA activity unable to substitute for MtdB activity in vivo? To answer these questions, we identified that an mtdB mutant is able to grow on methylamine and that this growth is H₄MPT dependent. This suggests that MtdA under this condition is able to substitute for MtdB. Further, we identified that a higher defect on growth on methylamine correlated with increased MtdA expression. This strongly suggests the accumulation of a toxic compound. We have also shown that the different phenotypes of mtdB on methanol and methylamine are due to an alternative pathway for methylamine oxidation. Together, our results suggest that MtdA is a key factor for regulation of carbon flux from the oxidative pathway and the assimilation pathway on one carbon compound metabolism.