The process of building is not permanent, but encompasses changes far beyond the initial construction. The Moore Theatre, at the corner of Second Avenue and Virginia Street in Seattle, is much more than the innovative 1907 combination of steel, brick and plaster conceived by architect E.W. Houghton and owner James A. Moore. It has evolved over the course of the past century, serving as a testament to the individuals who have owned and occupied the building, and to the changing Seattle society since it first established the city’s national cultural prominence. Many buildings as old as the Moore had their lives cut short by management that was slow to react to changing cultural tides. The Moore, in stark contrast, has continued living due to the efforts of a few individuals who were brave enough to intervene – particularly women. My research examines the architectural and programmatic changes during the reigns of the “Moore women,” Cecilia Schultz and Ida Cole, and determines the extent of their influence on continuing and shaping the life of the Moore Theatre, and, as an extension, the history of Seattle. I will investigate this by taking apart historical, first-person accounts of the women’s involvement in the form of interviews and newspaper articles, analyzing architectural documentation in the form of original and altered plans, sections, elevations, and detail drawings, and currently accessing and analyzing the building physically. I hope to discover the extent of these women’s influences on the Moore, and to draw larger conclusions about women’s roles in Seattle history and the history of historic preservation and architectural history nationwide. These results could implicate the different genders’ roles in architecture and the performing arts and how these have shaped their current ability to gain meaningful leadership in these areas.

Mosquitoes, such as Aedes aegypti, mainly rely on olfaction to find a host to feed on. By exploring mosquitoes’ olfactory learning abilities, we can increase our knowledge of how they choose their hosts. Using an olfactometer, we have conducted behavioral experiments demonstrating mosquitoes can associate a single odorant, 1-octen-3-ol, with a punishment. To further these results, we tested if mosquitoes would use their experience to guide their host feeding preferences, even when confronted with strong appetitive stimuli such as heat and potential blood meal. We found mosquitoes are indeed capable of aversive conditioning in the context of feeding. In this present project, we investigate if mosquitoes can learn the association between more complex vertebrate body odor mixtures (e.g. rat, chicken, human) and a punishment. After sampling the body odors of various vertebrates, we will aversively train mosquitoes to these odor bouquets. Mosquitoes are trained by simultaneously pairing the delivery of the host odor with a negative stimulus (mechanical shock), mimicking host defensive behavior. Upon training the mosquitoes, we test them in an olfactometer giving them the choice between the aversively trained odor bouquet and the solvent used as a control. To examine whether learning affects mosquitoes’ preference between two individual hosts, we plan to use both olfactometer and blood feeding assays. Further analysis of chemical profiles of the vertebrates species using a gas-chromatograph coupled with a mass spectrometer (GC-MS) will provide insights on the interspecific variability that may be used by mosquitoes to discriminate between individual hosts. These results help to advance knowledge of the behavior and biology of disease transmitting mosquitoes and provide interesting cues to develop efficient tools (e.g. bait) to fight them.

Real-time quantification of chemical compounds in urban and non-urban environments has far-reaching prospective benefits for our society. Such a possibility could provide instantaneous detection of dangerous chemicals, identification of areas that require air quality restoration, estimation of agricultural effectivity, etc. However, currently, dynamic and efficient platforms to perform quantification do not exist and only a few static sensors are deployed in sparse locations, e.g., a typical city has only a handful of such sensors. While several mobile devices have been constructed, they are typically large, expensive and imprecise. These factors make them practically unrealizable for gathering environmental data in real-time from a wide variety of locations. In our project, we address this fascinating and challenging problem by building an inexpensive, mobile multi-sensor device, that communicates with a mobile phone. We designed the device to incorporate an array of inexpensive sensors, many of which have cross sensitivities to particles measured by other sensors. We had performed testing on a variety of sensors to identify most efficient and precise sensors. To improve performance of the device and obtain readings, we have implemented a neural network, based on olfactory system in moths. We have assembled a prototype of a multi-sensor device according to our design. Our preliminary results show that the network was capable of discriminating and tracking more precise values of contaminants, that could even include mixtures of compounds. We are currently working on implementing a server-side application that will integrate information from multiple devices and will produce a real-time “heat-map” of contaminants and pollution levels across a geographic area.

Carnivorous plants inhabit low nitrogen soils and must consume insects for nutrition. They achieve this by using modified leaves, called traps, which can catch prey. Thus, the ability of carnivorous plants to attract prey is key for their survival. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that carnivorous plants use scents to lure insect prey. We considered two possible cases: 1) prey are lured by only trap scents, so they will only detect trap scents or 2) prey animals are lured by both trap and flower scents, so they will detect scents from both organs. We focused on Sarracenia pitcher plants, a genus that is indigenous to the southeastern United States, and their interactions with calliphorid flies (commonly known as blow flies), one of their major prey. We used electroanntenograms (EAGs) to determine whether flies were responding to specific smells. We did this by hooking up a whole fly prep to the EAG machine, pulsing specific scent compounds over the antennae, and recording the electrical responses produced by the fly. In our tests so far, we have found that flies respond most strongly to pulses of DMT, a compound which is found in the scents of traps that have captured prey. Flies also respond to beta-ionone, a compound that is found in pitcher plant flowers. Our preliminary results indicate that flies are able to detect both trap and flower scents, so this supports the hypothesis that pitcher plants use a combination of trap and flower scents to attract their prey. We plan on testing a wider range of trap and flower scents using both EAG pulses and gas chromatography - electroantennography (GC-EAG).

Traditional remote sensing techniques are best suited to aid in large scale geospatial problems. With the advent of terrestrial LiDAR, detailed remote sensing of surface environments has become more practical than ever before. However, terrestrial LiDAR units are expensive and often difficult to carry into remote field locations. As an alternative, using Structure from Motion (SfM), a digital photogrammetry method traditionally used to build models from aerial photos, to build spatial models in surface environments could be adequate for many remote sensing applications if spatial resolution and model accuracy is found to be high enough. The technique we are using to evaluate the efficacy of SfM uses oblique images taken using an inexpensive digital camera, and Agisoft PhotoScan processing software to generate surface environment models. To evaluate the accuracy of these models, we compare the spatial dimensions of objects measured in the field to the spatial dimension of objects measured from the models. Presented here are several examples of the models we have created using SfM and comparisons to on the ground measurements. These examples include both laboratory and natural settings.