Public transit plays an important role in the daily lives of blind individuals. Unable to drive, blind commuters must rely on buses, subways, and other methods of public transportation to travel from one destination to another. Although transit schedules and even real-time arrival information are now readily available and accessible, there are still barriers to overcome. For example, a blind bus rider may find it difficult to locate a designated bus stop. Prior research has shown that, given a set of information about a bus stop, blind commuters will find their bus stop with significantly greater ease and lesser time spent. Our goal is to create a database of useful and reliable information regarding every bus stop in Seattle and make that information accessible to blind individuals. In order to collect such a vast amount of data, we have turned to crowdsourcing, a process that involves dividing work amongst a large group of workers over the Internet. By providing workers with Google StreetView images (ground-level visuals on the appearance of a location) and simple, multiple-choice questions, we hope to collect accurate information to answer questions such as “How many benches are at the bus stop?” or “In what direction is the bus stop relative to the intersection?” After acquiring a sufficient set of bus stop data, we will test the usefulness of this information to blind commuters by providing them with access to our database and analyzing their feedback. We believe that our work in this field will improve the public transit experience for blind individuals by providing them with a feeling of confidence and independence during their commute. Our work in this field may lead to further research in utilizing crowdsourcing to solve accessibility issues.

While writing the first quarter of a Gothic fantasy novel titled Deathwatch, I also carried out analytical research examining Romantic Gothic themes appearing in my creative text. I was largely unfamiliar with Gothic literature while planning this novel and these themes appeared naturally in my text from the start as a clear example of intertextuality. However, in order to gain a better understanding of the tradition I was referencing and use it effectively as a framework, I began researching features of Romantic Gothic literature. Key to Romantic Gothic literature is its villain-hero model of the outcast who is unable to determine whether his alienation is his own fault or the fault of the larger world. This model in turn leads to the Gothic features of doubles and the dangerous lover, both of which allow the hero frightening insight through physical confrontation with his own self. By identifying these literary themes in both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and my own work over the course of my research, I was able to better understand and deepen my own intertextual framework. As a result, during Deathwatch’s writing process, I was able to both reference and alter these unique features of the Gothic genre in a knowledgeable way, significantly enriching the quality of my own text.

It may be uncommon to associate Christianity with spoken word poetry (poetry that is recited aloud, usually involving a dynamic, theatrical, and urban feel) and dance (esp. street dance). However, several young artists are using urban art forms as a means of cultivating and sharing their faith. This project explored the relationship between the Christian faith and spoken word poetry and dance via the ethnographic research process. Questions that guided my research included: How can the faith and art forms be used together as impactful forms of outreach? Why is poetry and dance valuable to the church? How can Christian poets and dancers successfully engage their audience? The ethnography consisted of interviews and public observations of eight Christian spoken word poets and dancers in addition to reflections on the researcher’s own performance practice. As ethnography is described to be an “encounter of differences”, I have come across new findings that revealed my own biases about how Christianity and the two art forms intersect. Even as an insider to Christian spoken word poetry/dance, my views have been challenged, deepened, and broadened by this work. For instance, I have gained a greater understanding for certain ways a Christian performing artist can be successful in outreach by: 1) clearly conveying how the faith has enabled their own life changes 2) "being real" in sharing important, yet difficult aspects of one's life to others 3) performing with excellence and 4) reaching out to the audience offstage. In this presentation, I will strive to acknowledge and represent the many different findings I have come across in seeking to develop a more comprehensive and evolving understanding of the relationship between the Christian faith and spoken word poetry/dance.

One of the major intracellular barriers to non-viral gene delivery is degradation through the endosomal/lysosomal pathway. To overcome this barrier, pH-sensitive polymers that swell in acidic pH and ultimately disrupt the endosome can be designed to escape these compartments. Previously, the Pun lab developed HPMA-oligolysine copolymers that have transfection efficiencies approaching that of polyethylenimine (PEI), the gold standard for transfection. In order to increase the copolymers’ transfection efficiency, oligohistidines were incorporated into the copolymer in both statistical and block architectures to impart pH-sensitivity. Transfection studies with these two copolymers showed that statistical incorporation of oligohistidine increased transfection efficiency, while block incorporation did not increase transfection efficiency. To determine if structure-function differences affected cellular uptake and endosomal buffering, we performed uptake inhibitor and endocytic buffering inhibitor studies. Through these studies, we found that both copolymer geometries preferred non-clathrin coated caveolae uptake pathways, and that they differed in endosomal buffering capabilities. The statistical copolymer showed increased endosomal buffering capacity, which was consistent with the overall higher transfection efficiency of the statistical copolymers over the block copolymers. From these two studies, we are better able to understand the relationship between structure and function in gene delivery using polymers.

Hypoxia is the term used in aquatic systems to describe low concentrations of dissolved oxygen (i.e. ≤ 2 mg O2¬/ml). Over the past 30 years, the intensity and duration of hypoxia has increased worldwide, with notable examples in the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, and Hood Canal, WA. Increased nutrient pollution from anthropogenic sources like agricultural fertilizers and raw sewage is contributing to the increased phenomenon of intense hypoxia in aquatic systems. Low dissolved oxygen is not only a major stressor to fishes, but may also be responsible for dramatic ecosystem shifts with respect to energy flows through the food chain. Zooplankton communities, an important energy source for fishes, were analyzed in Hood Canal, WA in relation to summer hypoxia. Zooplankton abundance, taxonomic composition, biomass, and length distributions were compared between areas of Hood Canal that experienced moderate versus intense hypoxia at the beginning and end of the summer hypoxia season. The goal of the project is to track differences in zooplankton composition between the two sites, with intense hypoxia relating to a shift towards smaller types of zooplankton and more gelatinous organisms relative to the site with moderate hypoxia. The size of zooplankton will potentially affect the efficiency of energy transfer between zooplankton and fishes, with larger zooplankton transferring more energy relative to smaller zooplankton. Gelatinous organisms like jellyfish, siphonophores, and ctenophores generally have lower oxygen requirements and few predators. Thus, an increase in these organisms is a ‘trophic dead end,’ shunting energy that may otherwise contribute towards fish growth. Analyzing trophic changes in Hood Canal in response to hypoxia will provide insight into major ecosystem changes occurring as a result of anthropogenic perturbations.

Neutralizing antibodies, which prevent entry of the HIV virus into a host cell by binding to the HIV envelope and neutralizing the biological effects of the virus, is an important focus of HIV vaccine design. It is hypothesized that these neutralizing antibodies may protect against initial infection from HIV if they are elicited by vaccination and are thus present at the time of virus exposure. The high rate of HIV mutation results in an enormous number of HIV variants circulating in the human population. Thus, an effective neutralizing antibody-based vaccine must be broad and potent. In order to understand how to create factors that elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs), it is important to identify and map regions of the viral envelope important for recognition by bNAbs. The best way to map the molecular basis is to identify two closely related variants that are or are not susceptible to neutralization by a certain virus and identify the regions that differ between the two variants. PGT128- is a HIV-1 monoclonal antibody that has been identified as having a broad neutralizing activity that would be desirable for a vaccine to elicit. Our lab previously found that longitudinal viruses from a HIV-1 infected patient, QA255, across 560 days post infection (dpi) display increasing ability to be neutralized by PGT128. PGT128 recognition has recently been found to depend on residue N332 of the V3 envelope region of HIV. As this residue is intact in QA255 viruses over time, there are additional determinants of sensitivity to PGT128. We found that chimeric sequences containing 560 dpi DNA in the V1-C3 region of the HIV envelope sequence show more sensitivity to PGT128 compared to chimeric sequences from earlier time points. This result suggests that amino acids in the V1-C3 region are important for PGT128 sensitivity.

During the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990), attempts to exclude leftist-oriented thinkers resulted in the exile of over one million Chileans from their homeland. In what was perceived to be a temporary absence, Chilean exiles faced unusual dilemmas while waiting for democracy and normalcy to return to Chile. This period of uncertainty was especially pronounced for those exiles arriving in the U.S., a nation that contributed to destabilizing the socialist government and securing the military coup in Chile. This research seeks to examine the ways national identities or concepts of the homeland emerge in testimonies and cultural productions of these exiles. Primary sources include: testimonies of exiles, essays, short film, as well as the 9/11 Collective- a group of exiles responding to the shared date of national tragedy in the U.S. and Chile. Theoretical concepts surrounding diaspora, exile, identity, and memory provide an analytical lens to better understand the fluidity of nation, home, and identity in the self-representations of Chilean exiles in the U.S. This research highlights the permanent impacts that power dynamics impose on identity processes, as well as the role of culture to overcome these obstacles. I conclude with suggestions for possible avenues to both complicate and contribute to conversations surrounding the ongoing identity negotiations for Chilean exiles in the U.S.

The idea of poetry as a literary practice that is concerned with its own ontology has developed through the device of the ars poetica poem—poetry about poetry. Beginning with Horace’s ancient treatise Ars Poetica, published in c. 18 BCE, poets throughout history have sought to explain the nature of their craft through the medium of their craft. In the past century, ars poetica poems have morphed into examples of metalanguage, in which the poems work as vehicles to carry the defining characteristics of poetry itself. In order to track the movement of metalanguage, I examine the progression of the ars poetica poem from the Classical era to the Enlightenment to Modern twentieth and twenty-first century works. My research traces and analyzes the trajectory of poetic modes that discuss language itself. Shifts from didactic to introspective to aesthetic have marked the rhetorical turn of ars poetica, thus exemplifying how poetry as heightened language creates the need for metalanguage. In poetry more than any other literature, each component element is significant, so the elements of a poem inevitably turn in on itself. Ars poetica poems demonstrate how images, rhetoric, narrative, and linguistic mechanisms can all be self-referential. The presence of metalanguage in poetry suggests that the types of poetic knowledge—sensory, emotional, and imaginative—are more than externally meaning-making about “aesthetic” and “ethic” subjects, but that they are intrinsically expressing the nature and value of poetic theory.

Like their Victorian forebears, Modernist authors have always placed keen emphasis on women’s hair, often presenting their luscious locks in vivid and scrupulous detail. Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow (1920) uses hair as a tool of social commentary and trope of the fairytale epic to challenge and even reverse traditional Victorian gender roles and sexuality norms. The tension between the private and public self is also explored; what Modernist women could not say aloud, they expressed through the style, color and length of their hair. Crome Yellow constantly alludes to the hair of the female protagonists Jenny Mullion and Mary Bracegirdle, yet the intentions behind the loaded descriptions of their physical appearance are left up in the air. The characterization of an infamous Fallen Woman and modern flapper girl allows distinctions to be made between the Victorian and Modernist eras that determine the emergence of new gender ideals. This paper will use a close reading of Crome Yellow and Freudian theories on sexuality to explore the multifaceted significance of hair in the Victorian era so we may fully appreciate the past’s influence on modernist eras. A woman’s hair became a phallic image used to engender fear in men, which posits a move towards gender equality and the emergence of the suffragette. Hair was no longer just a physical attribute but a body politic that reflected changes taking place in modernist British society of the entre deux guerres period.

Matthew G. Lewis' Gothic novel The Monk (1796) has often been read as a representation of England's disapprobative response to the violence and chaos of the French Revolution.  The novel's subtle treatment of paranoia, which was a common theme during the Reign of Terror, and clear defilement of the virtuous feminine icon of ancient European government indicates a strong ambivalence toward revolutionary sentiment.  It is perhaps a result of its proximity to the events of the French Revolution that its location within the latter years of the Age of Enlightenment is often overlooked.  During the Enlightenment, reliance upon God as a source of meaning had dissipated in favor of understanding humanity through itself. I will argue that The Monk's depiction of intensely oppressive, Godless religious societies suggests the consequences of this shift.  Without a connection to the sacred, humanity spirals toward damnation; the extremes of unconscious desire are inseparable from the individual and activate supernatural forces within the novel.  Lewis creates a scene akin to that of Original Sin in the Book of Genesis, wherein the consequences of succumbing to temptation are not only inevitable but inescapable: the fall of humankind is unavoidable, and God's absence renders redemption impossible.  Ultimately, the novel offers a reconstruction of the Biblical parable in a way that expresses ambivalence about a secularized, post-Enlightenment world from which events like those of the French Revolution can only be expected.

Many have demonstrated that Edmund Burke and other male writers contributed to, if not constructed, a gender binary in which males perpetually subdue and dominate the feminine. For instance, in A Vindication of the Rights of Men, Mary Wollstonecraft deconstructs passages from Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, demonstrating that his ideal world is one in which sublime, masculine authority usurps the rights of women. For Wollstonecraft, Burke's efforts to counter revolutionary ideas are of no benefit to women. While these readings are certainly valid, some scholars have expressed the concern that in limiting our understanding of masculinity to its being a fixed institution determined to maintain power over women, we are grossly over-simplifying individual as well as collective masculine experience(s). Thus, I hope for this project to contribute to a more complex portrait of masculinity particularly in the late 18th century. Limiting my discussion to Burke's Reflections and Thomas Paine's Common Sense, I argue that however much these two literary works convey opposing ideologies, elements of their rhetorical strategy reveals that both writers understood that the success of their arguments largely depended on how effectively they controlled the semantic value of manliness. In order to provoke revolution, Paine seeks to assure his readers that engaging in revolution is an indisputable reflection of manhood. But unlike Paine, Burke wrote in order to prevent revolution. In the Reflections, Burke argues that the failure to sustain the pre-established order would result in the failure to retain masculinity. Ultimately, that Paine and Burke fought to control the meaning of manhood suggests masculinity was a loosely defined social institution--one consisting of males who lived in perpetual fear of losing, or failing to perform their masculinity; who were ever in need of affirmation that they were, indeed, men.

A vast amount of research exists in the field of education psychology concerning topics such as brain-based learning, teacher-directed versus student-centered learning, the impact of social and individual factors on the learning experience, and more. Despite this wealth of information, there is often a striking disconnection between the current educational research and the actual experience of students in the classroom. Undergraduate classes, modeled on teaching practices that have been the norm for decades, are often out of sync with contemporary research addressing the scientific and social realities of the learning process. An exception to this phenomenon is observable in dance technique classes in the University of Washington Dance Program. Dance instructors at the UW implement many education theories successfully in their classes, and students reap the positive benefits of these teaching techniques. In order to better understand the teaching methods at work in these learning environments, I conducted observations of UW dance classes and interviewed dance students. Through my research, I have identified key factors that combine to create a classroom environment conducive to learning theory application in everyday teaching. Although the physicality of dance sets it apart from most academic classes, I argue that these same factors could be replicated and utilized in academic classes with similar success. This research is a critical step towards closing the gap between what we know to be effective education theories (and related teaching techniques) and the reality of student experience in many academic classrooms.

The discovery of a new particle, which we suspect is the long-sought-after Higgs boson, has opened a wide range of opportunities to explore new physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). One particularly promising direction is the search for "flavor violation" in Higgs decays, where a Higgs decays to a non-matching pair of particles. We focus particularly on decays into a tau and a mu lepton (both of which are heavier relatives of the electron). At present, indirect data from low-energy experiments allows these Higgs-to-tau-mu decays to make up up to 10% of all Higgs decays, while the current Standard Model of particle physics does not expect them to happen at all. The goal of my research is to develop a method for separating these decays out of the other billions of collisions that happen every second in the ATLAS detector, and analyzing them in such a way to make flavor violating decays stand out against background events (which look similar but have different origins). This will allow us to put much stricter limits on the rate at which these decays occur, and if any do occur we will have made a big step into previously-unexplored physics territory.

Despite considerable effort, immune correlates of protection against HIV have not been identified, therefore making a successful vaccine challenging. In other words, since we have no examples of a successful immune response against HIV, we are unable to mimic that in a vaccine. One aim of the Overbaugh Lab is to identify immune correlates of protection by studying individuals who have mounted an immune response against HIV and who are at risk of superinfection, which is a second infection of HIV after the initial infection. My project is to clone a library of autologous HIV envelope genes from superinfected individuals whose immune responses we’re interested in studying, isolating both initial and superinfecting variants. These clones I generate will be tested for functionality (infectivity), used to produce target viruses in neutralization assays that measure the neutralizing antibody response in patient plasma, and used in assays measuring non-neutralizing antibody functions. Cloning patient envelope sequences involves isolating viral RNA from patient plasma and reverse transcribing it into DNA. After a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the target envelope DNA sequence, I then ligate it into a mammalian expression vector. Sequencing analysis of the clones we obtain from each sample enables us to ensure that viral variants from the initial and second infection events are represented so that we can measure immune responses against both. After working with three patients, I have successfully obtained 11 initial and superinfecting variants from one patient, which produced 10 replicating viruses. From the next two patients, I cloned nine variants from each. Performing the functionality assay is in progress for these patients, as well as the neutralization assay. Currently, the assay to measure non-neutralizing antibody response is under optimization.

There are a variety of air pollutants that can adversely impact health, including diesel exhaust from vehicles and other sources. In the Duwamish River valley of Seattle, WA, there are many sources of air pollution that emit diesel exhaust. Based on concerns of local residents, the overall objective of the Diesel Exhaust Exposure in the Duwamish Study, or DEEDS, was to measure exhaust levels throughout two Duwamish River valley neighborhoods: South Park and Georgetown. I assisted in nearly all spects of this pilot study which included the deployment of nitrogen oxides (NOx) air samplers to nine sites throughout the two neighborhoods to perform passive sampling over a ten day period in the summer. During NOx sampling, fine and ultrafine particle measurements were also collected for ten minutes at each of the nine sites using direct reading instruments and a mobile setup. These pilot study results collected from this preliminary assessment were used to optimize location selection for measurement of NOx, NO2, 1-nitropyrene, light absorbing carbon, and fine particulate matter during the DEEDS sampling campaigns taking place over the past year.

The pro-apoptotic (cell death inducing) peptide (KLAKLAK)2 (“KLA”) has been recently investigated for tumor killing applications. To increase the efficacy of the peptide, our group has added additional charged amino acids to increase cellular uptake (Gly-Lys-Arg-Lys-(KLAKLAK)2) (“GKRK-KLA”) and synthesized a polymeric construct of this peptide and HPMA (N-(2-hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide) (“p(HPMA-co-GKRK/KLA”). Preliminary studies have shown an increase in cell death per KLA unit in the modified constructs over the unmodified KLA construct. However, the mechanisms of cellular internalization and subcellular distribution of the peptide is unknown. Recently, we showed using fluorescence microscopy that the KLA constructs do not colocalize with mitochondria, the organelle that was believed to be affected. In this work, we applied radiolabeling and organelle separation techniques to investigate the mechanisms behind cellular uptake and subcellular trafficking over time of both the KLA peptide and our modified designs. These insights will allow us to design better materials to increase the efficacy of KLA peptide delivery.

The field of synthetic biology aims to modularize gene-networks within microorganisms for the purpose of using them as well characterized parts in building novel, useful biological systems. Realizing this goal is vital because biology’s inherent practicality holds the key to needed energy efficient technologies. As the human population increases, energy efficient technologies will become more and more a necessity. The first step in realizing this vision of adapting biology into an engineering discipline is through properly characterizing gene expression and enzyme function within engineered and natural biological systems. To do this, I have developed a turbidostat with mixture control and fluorescence sensing capabilities. A turbidostat is a continuous culture bioreactor that maintains constant culture volume and microbe density through a feedback loop between turbidity measurements and dilution with fresh media. The constant culture environment and microbe density allows the cultured microbes to reach a “steady state” where growth and all environmental conditions are kept constant. By maintaining microbes at steady state, variables that effect microbial processes are minimized, which facilitates accurate examining of gene-network dynamics. The mixture control ability of the turbidostat allows for the concentration of a given molecule within the culture environment to be modulated through time without altering any other environment variables. Through mixture control, a molecule that acts as an input to a gene-network (i.e. an inducer molecule that initializes a gene-network) can be varied in concentration through time within the culture environment. Since most gene-networks utilize fluorescent protein production as their output, the turbidostat’s fluorometer (a fluorescence detector) can monitor the output of a gene-network while the input to the network is modulated. We believe that the ability of this turbidostat to look at the input-output dynamics of gene-networks under defined environmental conditions will yield enhanced behavioral understandings, aiding to the modularity of these systems.