Lower extremity amputations (LEA) affect more than 1 million people in the US. A large proportion of these individuals, about 300,000, have poor levels of community ambulation, meaning they have limited mobility. They can usually walk less than 300 ft before stopping for rest. Despite this, current patient-centered outcome measures were largely developed and tested with people who exhibit unrestricted community ambulation, and not people who have significant mobility challenges. The purpose of the current study is to evaluate if current, standardized questionnaires for people with LEA are relevant and comprehensive for people with lower levels of mobility. I conducted a literature review and a consultation with experts which resulted in items from twenty questionnaires. Items were compiled from the four most appropriate questionnaires into themes including: transfers, ambulation, static postures and activities of daily life. To assess comprehensiveness, my team and I compared the number of items in each general category across the questionnaires and found that "mobility on uneven ground" is needed for this population. Additionally, I designed an interview strategy so that people with LEA and lower levels of mobility could expand on their opinions of the questionnaires. The combination of the feedback on survey items and interview questions led me to the create the final questionnaire with a Likert scale so that subjects could respond with the relevance of each question. Results from my research will ultimately be used to improve measurement tools that are responsive to meaningful differences in quality of life and functional mobility for this population.

The topic of undocumented immigration is becoming an increasingly prevalent concern in the United States in light of the presidential election. This increase in discussion surrounding migration can be attributed to many factors, namely political discourse, such as presidential debates and legislation. Political discourse and the laws that govern our society play a significant role in creating simple categories of “good” and “bad” immigrants. These identifications are especially evident in the way education is used as a tool to criminalize individuals. The use of such labels in education contributes to social discourse that further reinforces what a “good” or “bad” immigrant is. Through both policy and societal attitudes, these labels create negative repercussions for immigrants who are undocumented and use positive reinforcement to reward those who are documented. Through my project, I argue that legislation reinforces stereotypes about “good” and “bad” immigrants in the education system. I will specifically reference the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), which are both immigration policies that offer certain undocumented immigrants a temporary status to remain in the United States. Along with intended research on legislation and societal attitudes regarding undocumented immigration, I will conduct oral interviews of up to fifteen individuals in order to assess the impacts these framings have had in the lived realities of my interviewees. Through this research I hope to demonstrate the diverse ways in which such labels create a negative lived reality for those who come to the United States as undocumented immigrants. My findings will play a role in determining how exclusionary discourse translates to negative reality and how inclusive language is essential to a diverse and successful community.

SUMO (small ubiquitin-like modifier) is a protein post-translational modification that has wide ranging influence on protein function. Among its many roles, SUMO is known to regulate transcription, DNA repair, and maintain cellular homeostasis under environmental stress conditions. Changes in sumoylation patterns under environmental stress have been identified, yet the specifics of these pathways remain uncharacterized. By using mass spectrometry (MS), we have identified three yeast proteins that are sumoylated in response to high levels of ethanol: Top2, Smc5, and Smc6. These proteins play a major role in maintaining DNA stability during replication and are conserved through higher eukaryotes. We have tagged these proteins with epitopes identifiable by western blot by yeast transformation, and subjected cells with these tags to ethanol stress, which allowed us to verify the hits from the MS screen. This will allow us to begin further investigation of the role sumoylation plays on these proteins. Our next goals include generating sumo deficient mutants and observing the changes in protein function within the cell after exposure to ethanol stress. As these proteins are involved in DNA stability and repair, we are notably interested in the interactions with chromatin. Through this work, we seek to gain us a better understanding of the signaling underlying adaptation to environmental stress. This research has implications for human health as it allows us to understand how cells respond to toxic levels of a recreationally encountered substance.

Urban watersheds are uniquely vulnerable to toxic runoff. Rain carries carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) from motor oil into stormwater control measures where they accumulate in the sediment and biosphere. Mushrooms have recently proven to be effective in remediating oil-contaminated sites by processes similar to extracellular digestion, whereby enzymes degrade large recalcitrant compounds into smaller, more bioavailable compounds. Identifying fungal species indigenous to the Pacific Northwest for use in stormwater mycoremediation systems is a critical first step in creating an ecologically responsible, reproducible installation. In this study, thirteen fungi species collected from local, contaminated sites were cultured on agar containing used motor oil to assess for PAH tolerance. Oil amount (% volume) was increased at each stage to select for higher motor-oil tolerance. To quantify PAH degradation of a given fungi species, an agar plate contaminated with oil was inoculated with mycelium, grown for fourteen days and analyzed by GC-MS to determine PAH concentrations. By comparing the original PAH concentrations in the motor oil to the PAHs present in the myceliated agar, each species’ relative effectiveness at reducing large PAHs was determined. Initial results show that ligninolytic fungi such as Hypsizygus ulmarius, Trametes versicolor, and Pleurotis pulmonarius are the most successful at growing in increasing concentrations of oil. Using this method of concurrent fungal selection and testing, the mycoremediation potential of previously unexamined species (of which there are hundreds) can now be easily assessed and characterized. Identifying fungi effective at breaking down PAHs provides a natural and economical means of bioremediation. This research will contribute toward providing organisms and systems capable of bioremediation on larger scales.

Tissue engineering has provided medical researchers with the ability to grow transplantable tissues, simple organs, and complex organ tissues. Despite the tremendous progress in tissue engineering, there is an ongoing emphasis on optimizing cell growth parameters. A lack of sufficient blood flow, vascularization, and the need for oxygen delivery prior to angiogenesis are central problems that need to be overcome when growing cells in vitro. Hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) treatment utilizes elevated pressure and elevated oxygen concentrations. Multiple studies have demonstrated that HBO contributes to increased proliferation and differentiation of cell growth, stimulation of growth factors, bacterial defense, and improved oxygen delivery to cells. In this study, Saccharomyces cerevisiae was used as a model organism for eukaryotic cell growth to gain a better understanding of the effects hyperbaric oxygen has on simple cellular metabolism. This was accomplished with the reduction of a resazurin-based reagent to track cellular metabolism. The samples were evaluated with a spectroscope and absorbance was used to calculate the amount of resazurin reduced by NADH, proving an indicator for metabolic activity. Preliminary evidence indicates that hyperbaric oxygen stimulus increases rate of metabolism. Future experiments will provide optimal pressures and oxygen concentrations for HBO growth protocols. This study indicates that HBO bioreactors provide a useful tool for controlling growth in cell cultures, and provides early evidence for the potential use of HBO for tissue engineering applications. This study will further the applicability of HBO as a tool for enhanced tissue engineering methods.

The proposed study will explore the relationship between temperament and child psychological adjustment in a sample of children during their first year after cancer diagnosis (N = 160, ages 2-18). Multilevel growth modeling will evaluate the longitudinal relationship between three dimensions of temperament (effortful control, extraversion/surgency, negative affect) and trajectories of two psychological adjustment variables (externalizing problems, anxiety/depression scores) across twelve time points. While the primary goal of this study is exploratory, we offer the following predictive hypotheses: (a) psychological adjustment will improve over the course of treatment; (b) negative affect will be associated with higher anxiety/depression and lower externalizing problems; (c) effortful control will be associated with lower externalizing problems; (d) extraversion/surgency will be associated with lower anxiety/depression and higher externalizing problems. The proposed study has numerous advantages over comparable studies in this area of research, such as its relatively large sample size, longitudinal structure with a large number of time points, and measurement of temperament across three specific dimensions. Findings from this study may help health care providers anticipate and mitigate negative psychological outcomes in pediatric cancer patients. Additionally, the findings may inspire future research directions involving temperament and other outcome variables, such as health-related quality of life and family adjustment.

Advancements in the design of robotic prostheses have provided promising new prototypes as well as highlighted the need for continued development in myographic sensors essential for fine control of prosthetic limbs and other assistive devices. Force myography (FMG) sensor matrices have the potential to improve upon the granularity of motion control present in current non-invasive robotic prostheses. FMG utilizes pressure sensors to detect flexion and extension of muscle fibers, requires no complex signal processing, and has the potential for improved accuracy and robustness over other myographic interfaces, which have known issues of data clarity. In this study, FMG was investigated through sensor matrix design and data collection. A matrix of force sensors was constructed for use in human-computer interaction, using the open-source prototyping platform Arduino for data collection and mechanism control. The sensors were constructed from pressure-sensing material (Velostat) layered between conductive foil, arrayed in a grid, and housed in an adjustable sleeve. Data collection was focused on identifying force patterns which correspond to the eight classes of motion critical to a robust transradial prosthesis. Preliminary prototyping and data analysis indicate that simple, widely-available materials provide sufficient pressure sensitivity for prosthetic applications when compared to more common, prohibitively expensive sensors. The matrix returns pressure data regardless of radial position on a user’s arm, such that pattern recognition algorithms will likely be sufficient to translate user intent into action. This approach will provide a framework for further development of low-cost prosthetic control alternatives, of particular interest for developing countries with limited funds for healthcare.

Traditional antibiotics are known to wipe out many species of bacteria, but often leave several resistant microbes to dominate. These resistant bacteria are a huge concern for human health. Medical researchers are on the hunt for new approaches to combat bacterial infections on a large scale. It has recently been discovered that bacteria communicate through Quorum Sensing (QS), which if inhibited, presents a promising strategy to control these pathogenic bacteria. Instead of eliminating the weakest strain of bacteria resulting in a proliferation of antibiotic resistance, inhibition of quorum sensing silences gene expression, virulence and pathogenicity. A variety of marine organisms have demonstrated quorum sensing inhibition (QSI) potential, however there are many marine organisms that have yet to be screened for QSI compounds. In this study, three species of marine algae native to the Pacific Northwest were investigated for quorum sensing inhibition (QSI) capabilities. Ulva Lactuca, Chondracanthus exasperatus, and Iridaea Cordata were subjected to QSI capability testing that involved use of the indicator strain Chromobacterium violaceum Bergonzini (ATC 12472). The indicator bacterium uses the QS signal N-acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) to produce a purple pigment. Each species of algae was overlaid with agar inoculated with Chromobacterium violaceum and incubated overnight. Absence of pigment in the indicator strain suggested the presence of a QSI compound. Preliminary evidence indicated that two of the three species of algae tested demonstrated QSI activity. The next step of this research involves identification of the specific compounds involved in QSI, thereby contributing to the expanding catalogue of known QSI molecules from marine environments. Ultimately this work aims to make a contribution to the fight against antibiotic resistant pathogens.

Algae have been shown to be a promising renewable source of biofuel due to the ease of large scale growth, significant lipid content (30% by dry weight) and the low impact on global food supply. Current studies have provided foundational information to aid producing and extracting oil from a variety of algae species, yet there remains a need to establish species specific and local protocols. Here, an investigation focused on developing Pacific Northwest algal growing conditions and combining this with an optimal oil extraction technique is presented. Chlorella vulgaris, Botrycoccus braunii, and Nitzschia sp. were used as model organisms to establish growing, culturing and oil extraction parameters. Crucial for efficient extraction of the lipid content in algae cell walls was the use of silver nanoparticles (AgNP), which help break down cell walls and generally increase oil extraction yields. Based on preliminary experiments, it is anticipated that ideal conditions for growing algae will be around 5% moisture content and 55°C incubation temperature. Oil extraction yields were highest when AgNP were utilized, and with a 6:1 solvent-to-solid ratio (1% diethyl-ether and 10% methylene chloride in n-hexane solvent). This study, in combination with other similar investigations, will contribute to the establishment of ideal growing conditions for algae biofuel production and ultimately provide a best practice for producing biofuel from algae in the Pacific Northwest.

The Coalition for Reform of Undergraduate STEM (science, technology, engineering & math) Education and other prominent agencies have called for increased integration of STEM content, particularly in the first two years of a student’s post-secondary education. Interdisciplinary learning in the humanities has been shown to foster a more complete understanding of core concepts and provide a method for incorporating complex thinking and heightened cognitive demands into daily classroom activities. Despite the compelling evidence for this approach, interdisciplinary curriculum is still rare in introductory STEM courses. Even more rare are studies that focus on identifying the impact interdisciplinary thinking activities have on student learning, student motivation and retention in STEM disciplines. In this study, a recently designed RISE (Research-based Interdisciplinary Science Education) curriculum was implemented in the general chemistry series at North Seattle College and student learning was investigated through a multi-modal approach. Student drawings and video of student working groups were analyzed and coded as a means to capture the thinking that occurs during an interdisciplinary investigation. Exam questions were collected from a traditional classroom and from an interdisciplinary classroom and assessed for understanding of hydrogen bonding (a threshold concept). Preliminary analysis of student pre- and post- challenge drawings indicates that there is an increasing trend in the ability to demonstrate integration of disciplines, in the overall complexity of the thinking that occurs, and in creativity. In addition, students in the interdisciplinary course scored higher on the hydrogen bonding exam question than the students in the traditional course. The results of this study demonstrate that students benefit from an interdisciplinary approach to learning chemistry and provide a pathway forward as more educators seek to transform how we teach introductory STEM courses.

The purpose of this study was to explore how parent communication about sex with their male children relates to objectification and sexist attitudes toward women measured in late adolescence, as parents may play a key role in the development of sex-related attitudes in their children. I predicted that the more sex communication children received from their parents, the less likely they are to exhibit sexist attitudes and objectify women. One-hundred and twenty-eight undergraduates at the University of Puget Sound responded to electronic surveys containing questions regarding sources of sexual information (parents, friends, school, TV/Movies, and pornography), parent sex communication, sexist attitudes, and objectifying behavior. A one-way repeated measures ANOVA compared the means for sources of sex information including parents, friends, school, TV/Movies, and pornography. The results were statistically significant, F(3.67, 462.4) = 12.42, p < .001. A Tukey’s HSD test revealed that participants were less likely to get sex information from their parents than from friends, school, TV/Movies, or pornography. The amount of sex information gained from friends was also significantly higher than both TV/Movies and school. Contrary to my hypothesis, Pearson’s r correlations found no statistically significant relationships between parent sex communication and sexism or objectification. However, there were significant positive correlations between the body evaluation subscale of the objectification scale (e.g. “How often have you whistled at someone while walking down a street?”) and the amount of information about sex that participants reported getting from friends (r = .40, p < .01), TV/Movies (r = .21, p < .01), and pornography (r = .34, p < .01). There were no significant correlations between sources of sex information and other sexism measures.

The phytoplankton assemblage around the Olympic region is well described, but due to the various hydrologic and oceanographic features that affect water conditions, little is known about the phytoplankton assemblage in the Chehalis River Basin. This research seeks to provide an outline of common species of different locations, the environments in which they were found, and the obstacles that block their movement. To do this, sampling sites around the basin that would cover various different geographic features of the Chehalis River Basin were selected, along with the phytoplankton sample, salinity and temperature were taken, and wind direction and strength were taken to determine if an upwelling or downwelling phase could be predicted. When back at the lab, toxin and chlorophyll samples were filtered for future analysis and saved. Microscopy was performed to identify species, if a harmful algal bloom species was identified, a whole water cell count was performed. Species that were found ranged from freshwater to marine; however, frequently species that are marine were found in low salinity environments. These results can be used to identify locations of interest in further studies and could be used to identify areas that may be useful for shellfish harvesting.

Previous research demonstrates that patients of color are significantly less likely than white patients to receive total knee replacement surgery (TKR), a generally effective and safe treatment for end-stage knee osteoarthritis. These disparities have been found for adults of all ages and of racial/ethnic backgrounds including Black, Latinx, Asian-American/Pacific Islander, multiracial, and First Nations patients (although research has concentrated on Black-white disparities and seniors), and persist even when controlling for insurance type and income. This study investigates utilization rates of TKR in Washington State in 2013 in four different geographic area types (rural low-income, rural higher-income, urban low-income, and urban higher-income), comparing rates for each group by calculating odds ratios. In order to focus on the role of race in physician-patient interactions, odds ratios will be adjusted with logistic regression for age, gender, overall “comorbidity burden” as calculated by the Deyo index, insurance type, and median income in the patient’s zip code. Data for the study comes from the 2013 Washington State Inpatient database, which is derived from hospital billing records and includes roughly 85% of all hospitals in the state. It is important to note that hospitals' methods of demographic information collection are frequently inaccurate, and findings for First Nations patients in particular cannot be interpreted with confidence. Regardless, Black, Latinx, Asian-American/Pacific Islander, multiracial, and First Nations patients are all expected to have lower odds of receiving TKR compared to white patients, a finding which will strengthen the growing conclusion that racial disparities exist independently of access factors and thus that physician-patient interactions likely play a role. No prediction about differences in racial disparities by geographic area type is offered, but these results may lead to new hypotheses about the pathways of the disparities.

Weather forecasts often contain some level of uncertainty. Previous studies suggested that probabilistic forecast with percentage probability information usually induces higher trust rates and better decision quality in subjects than does deterministic forecasts. Two recent studies at UW Decision Making with Uncertainty Lab found that the effect of better decision quality or higher trust ratings in probabilistic information was varied due to the existence of a motivational pressure driven by a goal with rewards or preference of a weather scenario. These findings were both unexpected and not part of original hypothesis. The purpose of this study is to find out whether motivational pressure moderates the effect of probabilistic information versus deterministic information on trust. The hypothesis is that the presence of motivational pressure leads to higher trust in probabilistic forecasts than in deterministic ones, while lack of motivation attenuates the difference in trust between probabilistic and deterministic forecasts. This study is designed to be a single-blind between-subject experiment with two distraction sections and one experimental section. In the experimental section the subjects are exposed to a hypothetical scenario where subjects are prompted to prefer high or low temperature or to have no preference, and be given 6 hypothetical temperature forecasts for which they will provide trust ratings. 90 subjects are recruited from Online Research Pool Program so far. The preliminary results indicate no significant preference in promoted temperature information in each condition. There is a trend shows higher trust ratings in deterministic information especially in low temperature condition, however, this result is not statistically significant at this point. It is possible for this result to become significant when a total of 360 subjects are recruited. The potential finding of this study may shed light on the role of motivational pressure in perceiving uncertainty, and facilitate in advancing forecast communication formats.
 

Desirability bias, or wishful thinking, denotes that our desire toward certain outcomes affects perception of predictive information. The effects include altered perception of probability of events and altered trust ratings towards information in line or not in line with the desire. Previous studies found the bias robust in fields such as card drawing, where subjects predicted the probability of the card drawn from a deck. I designed and acted as the sole investigator of this independent study to explore the effect of desirability bias in weather forecasting, a previous untouched area by desirability bias researchers, which in its essence involves uncertainty. This study also strived to detect a potential residual effect in trust on future forecasts. I speculated that the distrust caused by the bias targets the source of information, thus all future forecasts, even those not paired with a desire, are affected. Over 300 subjects recruited from ORPP, a UW program recruiting psychology students as research subjects, participated in a computer based single-blind test where they were exposed to 5 hypothetical weather forecasts predicting snow or no snow on respective days. A prompt was introduced in trial 3 to induce a desire for a certain weather. Trial 4-5 were used to measure residual effects. Trust ratings and probability estimation of weather events and self-reported awareness of the bias were measured. The result revealed a small but significant effect of desirability bias in both trust and probability estimation. However, I found no residual effect. Half of subjects reported aware of the bias. The result also suggested the potential role of motivational pressure as a moderator in the perception of probabilistic information, warranting future studies. This study casted light on the effect of desire in perceiving forecasts and helped us better understand how the public perceive weather forecasts under different circumstances.

Proteins serve very specific and powerful functions in the cell by maintaining a specific shape through chemical interactions in the protein sequence. Under stress conditions however, these chemical interactions holding the protein together may break apart, leading to the protein’s loss of function and exposure of hydrophobic patches that can interact with other proteins to form toxic aggregates. Heat shock proteins (sHSPs) act as safeguards under conditions of stress and protein misfolding as molecular chaperones that interact with exposed hydrophobic patches to stabilize unfolded proteins. The importance of sHSPs in the cell is exemplified through various disease associated mutations of sHSPs. sHSPs are a large and diverse family of proteins distinctive in their ability to form multimers of various sizes, which correlates with varying ability to prevent aggregation. However, little is known about how different structural elements of sHSPs influence function. The Klevit lab aims to better understand the molecular interactions of human sHSPs with themselves, how these sHSPs are activated in cellular conditions, and how they recognize and bind unfolded protein. My work focuses on the characterization of the structure and function of the human sHSP, HSPB8. Specifically, I am studying the effects of HSPB8 binding to zinc, the cellular levels of which vary in response to stress and regulate the function of many other proteins. By comparing zinc bound and non-zinc bound protein samples using various biophysical techniques such as NMR, circular dichroism and fluorescence, I aim to elucidate the effects of zinc binding on structural and functional elements of HSPB8.

Matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is a method of organism identification that is currently used widely in clinical microbiology. Compared to traditional biochemical testing, it offers a faster turnaround time and provides a more cost-efficient way to identify clinical isolates. Currently at the University of Washington clinical microbiology laboratory, if a yeast grows from any media other than inhibitory mold agar (IMA) media, it is subcultured onto IMA and incubated to test by MALDI-TOF the following day. This validation study will allow medical laboratory scientists (MLS) to bypass the subculturing step, which will decrease the turnaround time by approximately 24 hours. We evaluated five different media types and incubation conditions, with a sample size of 51 organisms. Through this validation study, it was concluded that the various media and incubation conditions had little to no effect on yeast identification by MALDI-TOF. Because the different conditions tested had no effect on the MALDI-TOF MS score values, this successful validation will allow for shorter turn-around time for yeast identification, which in turn will allow for faster and more accurate patient care.

When cold-season oceanic midlatitude cyclones make landfall over coastal mountain ranges, forecasters commonly assume that locations at higher elevations and closer to the mountainous interior will receive greater orographic precipitation enhancement under all synoptic conditions. In this study, we test this assumption by examining precipitation data obtained at two stations on the windward slopes of the Olympic Mountains in the northwest corner of Washington State. These stations are located 35.2 and 45.4 km from the coast along the Quinault river valley, only 10.2 km apart. It was found that the two stations often recorded drastically different amounts of rain for the same storm system. The U.S. Climate Reference Network (CRN) site is located immediately northeast of Lake Quinault at 86.7 meters elevation, only slightly lower than the second station in Bunch Field at 115.8 meters elevation, which is located slightly closer to the higher terrain of the Olympic Range. This study examines daily rainfall at the CRN and Bunch Field sites over 9 winter seasons (Sept 1 -Mar 31) from October 2006 through December 2015. Dates were identified where one station received 15 millimeters more precipitation than the other in a 24 h period. Composite synoptic maps were made using the NCEP North American Regional Reanalysis data for dates when CRN exhibited higher rainfall totals and for when Bunch exhibited higher rainfall totals. It was found that when CRN had significantly more rainfall than Bunch Field, the flow was predominantly from the SW at all levels and warmer than climatological average. When Bunch Field had significantly more rainfall than CRN, the synoptic flow was more southerly with a large trough and a strongly baroclinic structure. These subtle differences illustrate that orographic enhancement patterns vary strongly with large-scale environmental conditions. The results can be applied to how flooding events can vary on small scales, which in term will inform the management of hydrologic resources.

Identifying the bacteria that inhabit a stream is important to determine the overall health of the stream and its inhabitants. Previous studies have stated Proteobacteria, Bacteriodetes and Firmicutes to be the dominant phyla found in water microbiomes, while Flavobacterium, a microbe responsible for many salmon diseases, is the dominant genus. For this project, we performed a microbial analysis of Alder and Fry Creek through biochemical assays. 8 water samples, each from different sites, were plated onto Mannitol and MacConkey plates to determine the relative proportions of fecal coliforms within the aerobic bacterial population. Additionally, the Alder Creek samples were characterized through 16S sequencing. Our findings are in agreement with previous studies, with the exception of two sites, which were located at the intersection of residential areas and natural habitat. These sites were consistent with the major phyla expectation, except their major genus were Arcobacter and Crenothrix. Arcobacter species are typically found in sewage and some are human pathogens. Infections from some Arcobacter species are similar to a Campylobacter jejuni infection. The Crenothrix genus contains iron precipitating species that have been known to form deposits that clog or stain pipes and make water look unappealing. These findings contribute to our understanding of the health of the water, specifically related to fish bearing streams running through residential and industrial regions. This project will continue as a three-year study to monitor changes in the microbiome during the course of stream restoration.

Galanin is a small protein found in the gastrointestinal tract, and several places within the central nervous system. My project is to test the function of galanin-expressing neurons in the hindbrain of mice, specifically the projection from the Nucleus of the Solitary Tract to the Parabrachial Nucleus. Contrary to effects shown in other brain areas, my preliminary data suggest that the activation of galanin expressing neurons in in the hindbrain decreases feeding, in mice. These neurons are activated artificially in genetically modified mice, allowing us to then measure food intake and body weight. Their activation decreases food intake under normal conditions, but not with prior food restriction. I predict that these neurons are activated by visceral signals from afferents, or neurons that carry input from sensory organs, which are then responsible for the ensuing lack of appetite. By expressing a fluorescent protein in these neurons, I can also trace this projection to see where other connections are. Then, by examining Fos, a marker of neuronal excitation, I will investigate the activation of downstream projections. This is relevant to many current health issues, such as obesity and anorexia, as the circuits involved in hunger and appetite are not entirely understood yet.

As wolves (Canis lupus) recolonize Washington and other parts of the United States it is important to understand what sort of effect their presence will have on other species. Wolves are known to influence the behavior, distribution and abundance of coyotes (Canis latrans) and many studies have been done on this topic. However, none have studied how human presence may mediate the strength of mesopredator suppression exerted by apex predators. Mesopredator suppression is a phenomenon in which the top predator in a food chain suppresses the behavior and number of mid-level predators. We examined the ecological effectiveness of wolves in a human-dominated, multiuse landscape, an area utilized by ranchers, hunters, and many species of wildlife with few protections. We hypothesized that humans will act as super-predators and reduce mesopredator suppression of coyotes by wolves. We used motion activated cameras to track temporal niche partitioning of humans, wolves, and coyotes in northeastern Washington State. Temporal niche partitioning is a method by which competing species can utilize the same space or resources by using it during different seasons or times of day. The results of this research offer insight into the mesopredator release hypothesis and provide information necessary for implementing more effective conservation efforts that focus on combining top-down and bottom-up trophic cascades and take human presence into account.

The Olympic Mountains Experiment (OLYMPEX) was a ground validation field campaign centered on the Olympic Peninsula designed to provide physical validation and verification of satellite precipitation measurements from the constellation of satellites known as the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM). The goal of OLYMPEX was to validate and document precipitation measurements in midlatitude frontal systems moving from the Pacific Ocean to the coast and then to the high terrain and leeside. The assets featured in OLYMPEX included extensive ground instrumentation, soundings and dropsondes, several radars, and aircraft all helping to monitoring storm systems as they approached and then traversed the Olympic Peninsula during the intensive field operations from November 2015 through March 2016. Ground instrumentation was located at a number of different elevations mainly focusing on the windward southwest side of the Olympic Mountains and scattered in other areas of the Olympic Peninsula in locations where precipitation has not been previously measured. This presentation examines patterns of orographic precipitation enhancement using this extensive gauge network and ground radar data to describe and quantify patterns of enhancement and how they vary with synoptic conditions, specifically during the December 8-10th atmospheric river event. The key synoptic parameters that affected the patterns of enhancement included the stability, the strength and direction of the low level flow, the intensity of synoptic scale forcing and the transport of water vapor. These synoptic parameters varied with storm sector. Deep stratiform precipitation with high melting level and low level jet produce strong orographic enhancement along initial windward slopes. Post-frontal conditions accompanied by a low melting level and convective cells are associated with a greater degree of enhancements over interior locations. Pre-frontal and blocked flow conditions show no significant level of enhancement between coastal and inland sites. These findings provide never-before-seen detail of the relationships between storm sectors and orographic precipitation enhancement and can be applied wherever midlatitude cyclones cross coastal mountain ranges around the world.