In 1737, Gaspar Miguel de Berrio painted El Patrocinio de San José. Now housed in La Casa Nacional de Moneda de Bolivia, the canvas is one of reverent exuberance. In an aura of golden sand, Saint Joseph’s cloak gently shelters earthbound saints, separating them from the ethereal realm above. The holy figures appear attentive to Christ’s foster father, raptly gazing at the golden glinting figure. Like other Andean Baroque painters, de Berrio juxtaposed European and Pre-Columbian details, though his paintings in particular are exceptional in their subtle yet innovative reappropriations and combinations of motifs. In this presentation, I explore de Berrio’s choice to enclose the saints surrounding Joseph in relationship to Medieval images of the Virgin Mary. Though this connection has been marginally noted in the literature, a proper study of such a striking feature remains necessary to understand the adoption and modification of European iconography by Andean Baroque artists. Studying de Berrio’s oeuvre in relationship to European references, I argue that Gaspar Miguel de Berrio not only intentionally depicted Saint Joseph in a manner similar those medieval virgins in his El Patrocinio de San José , but that this artistic choice reveals the power of the Cult of Saint Joseph in the Viceroyalty of Peru.

The South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) is the most prominent rain feature of the Southern Hemisphere, but is a very understudied region. Changes in the SPCZ can affect freshwater availability to people living on the islands in the South Pacific. The satellite record shows precipitation patterns from the past 37 years; in the tropics the best way to investigate rainfall before 1979 is to examine lake sediment. We used sediment cores with age models from Barora Lake, a shallow freshwater lake in the Solomon Islands, to obtain a detailed view of past rainfall patterns. This lake’s lack of oxygen one meter below the water’s surface has left its sediment in a uniquely undisturbed state. Because of this, and a high accumulation rate, the sediment provides a record of the rainfall in the Solomon Islands over the last millennium. Lipids are well-preserved in sediment over geologic time, making them an ideal proxy for reconstructing tropical paleoclimate. The lipid dinosterol is produced primarily by a limited group of dinoflagellate microalgae and acts as a “molecular fossil”. The isotopic ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (2H/1H) found in dinosterol reflects the 2H/1H ratio in the lake water, which is dictated by changes in precipitation and evaporation. In the tropics, more rain results in 2H-depleted rain and lake water. After purifying dinosterol from the sediment with column chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography, we found minor fluctuations in the dinosterol 2H/1H ratios, which implies a fairly stable rainfall pattern at this location during the past millennium.
 

I examine the aesthetic representation of autism in two contemporary Spanish graphic novels that successfully counteract the typical medical presentation of disability: María y Yo (2007) and María Cumple 20 Años (2015), both written and drawn by Miguel Gallardo with his daughter Maria. Each text incorporates purposeful visual techniques in order to present the peculiar characteristics of Maria’s autism as well as her father’s preoccupations with her future. I share how their presentation facilitates educational discourse, empowers the disabled and their families, and reflects the capability of the graphic novel to give authority to groups who are often overlooked.

Using a similar study completed by José Franco Rodríguez in 2005, I have studied the districts in the City of Seattle to determine the ethnolinguistic vitality of the Spanish language in Seattle. In doing so, I searched through the busiest areas in two neighborhoods for each of the thirteen districts in Seattle to find where the presence of written Spanish was the most prominent. I hypothesized that the ethnolinguistic vitality of Spanish would be greatest in areas in which the population of Hispanic people was greatest, and used census data provided by the City of Seattle to determine the areas with the largest Hispanic population. In order to measure the ethnolinguistic vitality of the language in the city, I took pictures of Spanish signage throughout the city and codified the images based on where they were found, the actors responsible for their creation, the social realm in which the sign was found, and a variety of other factors. In conducting my research, I have also considered the existence of inequity between Spanish and English in the city of Seattle, and have found that signage presented by non-Hispanic entities are more likely to be discriminatory in nature and are more likely to contain grammatical and lexical errors. While I am still in the process of codifying the images, I am seeing a correlation between population of Hispanic people in a given area and presence of Spanish signage in that same area. At the Undergraduate Research Symposium, I will present my conclusions about the overall "health" of the Spanish language in Seattle and the various inequalities between Spanish and English that were encountered during data collection.

Research has shown that online mindfulness training is an effective means to reduce stress and increase coping among university students. The beGreatful project builds on the findings of this research to create an online platform which students can use to participate in mindful practices. The platform operates around two key components. The first component is an online gratitude journal. This component is designed to encourage mindful thinking by guiding the user through the process of completing a journal entry. Our goal within this component is to help students build the habit of setting aside time to reflect upon their day. This helps foster the habit of positive thinking which can lead to increased resilience. The second component is an analytical feature designed to help users visualize patterns that occur in their journal entries so that they can become more aware of their thought patterns. This feature also reinforces the habit of writing in the journal daily by providing a snapshot of each day and showing the user’s improvement overtime. The online platform will serve as a low cost, accessible tool for college students to maintain a healthy mindset. We are currently in the design phase of the project. We have surveyed approximately 50 students at the University of Washington to gauge initial student interest in the project and have tested our first iteration of prototypes with 10 students. Based on these tests, we are working on our second iteration of prototypes which we will continue to test and improve. We will begin developing the platform next quarter and will have built the first live version of the beGreatful web application by the end of spring quarter.

Sea otters (Enhydra lutris spp.) play a significant role as a keystone species in shaping nearshore marine ecosystems of the northern Pacific coast through their primary diet of bottom-dwelling invertebrates, like sea urchins. Northern sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) were hunted to extinction from Washington State in 1911 due the fur trade of the 18th and 19th centuries, and remained locally extinct until their reintroduction to Washington State from Alaska in 1969 and 1970. We studied the foraging ecology of this species since this reintroduction, specifically how the diversity of prey species consumed by sea otters has changed from the 1990s to the present day. The prey switching hypothesis suggests that predators preferentially consume the most abundant prey species, then as a given prey item becomes rare, the predator will add a prey item of the next highest rank to their diet, increasing their diet diversity. Based off of this hypothesis, we expected sea otters in the 1990s to consume a lower diversity of prey species compared to recent years. Using sea otter diet data we collected from 2014-2016 as well as data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey from 2010-2011, we compared prey species diversity from 1990s data to present day data with the Shannon-Wiener Diversity Index. Preliminary analyses suggest that sea otter diet in the 1990s consisted primarily of clams, while it consisted primarily of snails in the 2010s.