Pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is a rare and aggressive cancer that arises from skeletal muscle precursors in muscle and connective tissues. The molecular mechanisms underlying RMS progression, relapse and metastasis remain poorly characterized. CD82, a novel metastasis suppressor gene, has been shown to decrease tumor progression in a subset of human cancer types when expressed. Recently, two scientific publications investigated the role of CD82 in cellular differentiation and proliferation in muscle precursor cells. Uezumi et. al (2016) claimed that loss of CD82 results in premature differentiation and a depletion of muscle precursor cells. In contrast, Alexander et. Al (2016) discovered opposing results in which loss of CD82 in fetal muscle cells impairs the capacity of myogenic precursor cells to differentiate into mature muscle cells. In RMS, tumor cells keep on proliferating and have lost the capacity to differentiate into mature muscle cells. The role of CD82 in regulating cell proliferation and differentiation in RMS is unknown. In order to investigate the function of CD82 in differentiation of RMS, I used the CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering system to target the gene in RMS cell lines. To characterize the knockout phenotype, I performed various cell-based assays to characterize the effects of CD82 gene knockout on the cellular phenotypes in tumor cell differentiation, proliferation, and self-renewal. Investigating the role of CD82 in regulating cellular differentiation and proliferation in RMS would provide important insight into the pathogenesis of cancer.

In the Tacoma area, lake sediments contain high levels of arsenic due to past emissions from the now-closed ASARCO smelter. Arsenic is a harmful neurotoxin and carcinogen. When arsenic enters the oxygenated (oxic) water column, it can bioaccumulate in aquatic organisms, potentially causing harmful health effects in people who consume fish from these lakes. Arsenic typically does not remain in the oxic region of the lake, preferring to adsorb onto sediment particles and sink out of the water column. However, elevated arsenic concentrations have been observed in the oxic regions of lakes near Tacoma. This research project investigates the water and sediment characteristics of four fished, urban lakes in the Tacoma area, two of which have elevated levels of arsenic found in the oxic water. The goal of this project is to model the physical and chemical conditions that cause this phenomenon of elevated arsenic in oxic water to better predict unsafe water conditions in other lakes. My research investigates the chemical characteristics of arsenic in the lake sediments, the primary source and sink of the arsenic for the lake water columns, to understand the mobility of arsenic into and out of the water column. The sediment profile is established with a sequential chemical extraction of various species of arsenic measured at various depths in the sediment. The differences in sediment arsenic speciation illuminate its potential mobility. Sediment samples are collected every three months, which allows us to see seasonal effects on solid phase arsenic levels. We also investigated seasonal trends in the concentration of dissolved organic carbon in lake waters, which may increase the lifetime of dissolved arsenic in the water column after it is mobilized from the sediments. Understanding the limnological factors that influence arsenic mobility is the first step toward ensuring public health. 

Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations are well documented to contribute to global warming through the greenhouse effect. However, increased CO₂ concentrations can also alter entire ecosystems due to biochemical feedback on a variety of scales. As plants process atmospheric carbon, they exude some of that carbon from their roots into the rhizosphere where it is taken up and metabolized by microbial communities. These populations include methanogens, which produce methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO₂. As atmospheric CO₂ concentrations increase, plants allocate more carbon belowground. In order to investigate the plant mediated interaction between atmospheric CO₂ and rhizosphere microbes, we grew Carex aquatilis, a common wetland sedge, in growth chambers and at two points pulse-labeled the plants by exposing them to an atmosphere enriched in ¹³CO₂. We destructively sampled boxes over the course of a week following labeling and extracted microbial DNA from the peat soil. We found that as the week following labeling progressed, more of the labeled carbon was incorporated into soil microbe DNA and emitted from the boxes as methane, demonstrating that carbon exuded from plant roots fuel the microbial populations responsible for methane production. Using the collected DNA we are working to identify microbe species present in our experimental system and to characterize those involved with the transformation of plant carbon exudates into methane. By comparing this initial experiment to a future run with CO₂ concentrations above current ambient concentrations, we can begin to understand how soil microbes may react to projected future CO₂ concentrations and how this may affect greenhouse gas emissions from wetlands.

When open-air drug markets, the geographic clustering of street-level purchasing and selling of drugs illegally, are introduced into urban environments with high levels of poverty, low levels of education, and gang networks, they act as a tipping point for lethal violence. Drug markets create economic incentives to utilize spatial and interpersonal relationships among gangs for generating income, increasing intense competition between and within gangs. Seattle is an optimal city to examine due to the availability of data and low overall homicide rate, making homicide hotspots even more curious. I evaluate my hypothesis systematically by conducting a bivariate and trivariate regression analysis, utilizing homicide, gang territory, and drug market data. I found that open-air drug markets are positively associated with homicide clusters. Further multivariate regressions will be completed that control for multiple factors where homicides are likely to occur, including poverty, education attainment, population density, neighborhood residence stability, gender, age, and race. This project is important for both scholars and policymakers, as a causal explanation for concentrated violence, or hotspots, will contribute to literatures on urban politics, crime, criminology and help identify ways to decrease the national homicide rate.

Over the past century, most of the highly debated political issues evaluated through a religiously influenced moral lens, such as gay marriage and abortion, have gained legislative support and restrictions were ultimately ruled unconstitutional. With this rise in progressive politics, why has the United States continued to criminalize sex work, another moral topic where women’s bodies and sexuality are heavily regulated? Many Western countries similar to the United States, including Germany, have legalized prostitution in order to support labor rights for sex workers. This paper seeks to examine why sex work is not legal in the United States. Germany will be used as a case study to distinguish why the United States continues to criminalize prostitution. By evaluating American and German history, I conclude that past and present patriarchal laws and culture, molded by a lasting religious influence, have heavily shaped the lens through which Americans view sex and sex work, and therefore establish prostitution laws. In conjunction with a religious and patriarchal society, the creation of the nonprofit sector allowed religious congregations to further their ideals and use philanthropic work as a way to eradicate sex work. Men and women alike capitalized on this philanthropic movement to ensure that sex workers did not disrupt traditional family values and erode the morality of the nation. This fight against sex work has shaped the current goals of anti-prostitution organizations, where human trafficking is conflated with prostitution. This perspective that human trafficking and sex work are interdependent has convinced politicians that legalizing prostitution would lead to an increased demand for human trafficking. Powerful faith-based groups have brought this issue to their congregations and lead anti-sex trafficking organizations and lobbying efforts in the United States. Religious influence on the government has prompted the moral lens through which sex work is viewed and regulated.

Aggressive cancers are resistant to apoptosis, and stem-like cancer cells might be responsible for re-growth of cancerous tumors. This inspires the search for compounds that could aid in the destruction of cancer cells with stem-like properties. Drosophila germ line stem cells under radiative or chemo-toxic stress are protected by a molecular signal from apoptotic daughter cells via the TIE receptor. Thwarting this protective signal by the introduction of a small molecule may lead to the discovery of compounds that can be effective against stem-like cancer cells. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) diversity set of 1,596 small molecules is screened, in vivo, to find compounds that can induce apoptosis in the germ-line stem cells of Drosophila melanogaster. We tested several compounds from the NCI diversity set on 0-5 day-old fruit flies to get an understanding of the effects of the compounds on stem cells. Multiple compounds, including Camptothecin and Maytansinol, have been found that can induce apoptosis in both the male and female germ-line stem cells. Future investigations will uncover the mechanism of action and efficacy against stem-like cancer cells. After determining which compounds work effectively to target stem cells, this knowledge will be applied to understanding the mechanism responsible for resistance to cell death by stem cells and potentially some cancer cells, which could lead to more effective cancer-eradicating drugs.

I view energy as strongly intertwined with emotions, and that they are powerful forces that fluctuate and influence decisions. Thus, I chose to track instances where I felt a change in emotion in conjunction with its duration, what thought caused it to emerge, and if there was an attempt to deliberately shift moods. By developing my own codes and keys, I was able to monitor these fairly accurately on paper. However, I wanted to present this data in ways that differed from “traditional” portrayals of information. Hence, I used yarn and glitter in glass bottles to mimic bar graphs and liquid samples, respectively. These materials also served to emphasize the therapeutic nature within my project. The ideas of tracking something and its presentation were heavily inspired by duration exercises, which were done as assignments for the Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities 2016, as well as Dear Data. The former required us to keep track of the passage of time for a minute, an hour, and 24 hours; the latter was a collaboration between Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec where they exchanged weekly postcards over the course of one year. Each week’s postcard included a theme of what they would both monitor in their daily life, a visual representation of the data they collected, and a key to decipher the image. Initially, my desire for this project was to encourage others to engage in mindful practices in order to experience the benefits it may have in their everyday life. However, by making this project deeply intertwined with something so personal as emotions, I also hope to challenge people to contemplate the relationship between emotions and data and the emphasis placed on pursuing objective results.

What happens when the form in which whales communicate, locate food and find each other, is clouded by large ships, sonar technology and increased ice cracking noise in their environments? This presentation considers what the world of whales looks like beneath the ocean. I address this by taking a closer look at the auditory world of whales as a direct result of the lack of visual abilities due to limited light. I have focused on the chaos whales feel as a result of noise inserted within the depths of the ocean. With an increase in technological advances we see an increase in the number of ships and consequently of noise in the ocean. Underwater noise pollution is also attributed to ice fractures and collisions. These events do not occur at one singular time, they occur simultaneously for unknown periods of time and unpredictable areas. Understanding how animals feel and what they think is a difficult task, but we can better understand them by taking a closer look at their behaviors as the noise in the ocean becomes more abundant. My intention is that I will be able to formulate the chaos heard underwater into a humanized perspective and begin to understand these creatures as the hearing, feeling mammals they are.

Despite the separation of church and state, religion and the religious beliefs of legislators have influenced the outcomes of elections since the founding of the United States. Measuring variation in the relative religiosity of congresses has not been possible because of the lack of available information. Nonetheless, religion has played a central role in campaigns. Political campaigns have claimed time and time again that they need to restore order in Washington D.C. and cite the religious beliefs of the candidate as evidence that they will be able to do that. This study examines whether or not that argument is persuasive to voters. To move beyond previous literature, this project has collected original data and has quantified the religiosity of congress by examining senatorial webpages and the rate with which they use religious terms on their webpages. This will be compared to survey data in the senator’s states. A multivariate regression has tested if there is a statistically meaningful association between voters’ concerns about public safety or economic conditions will lead to the election of senators that appear to be more religious. A relationship between public concerns about safety or economic concerns would indicate that voters are persuaded that a candidate’s religious beliefs make the candidate more qualified to restore order.

What would it mean to be able to hear light? How could this new perspective on light illuminate the fundamental intricacies of light energy? In Gilbert Simondon's musings on individuation he argues that the individual is never given in advance but is constantly coming into being through a process of interacting with its milieu and realizing potentials out of huge pool of possibilities. This work uses Simondon's focus on individuation and life as a never ending process of development to understand how energy exists through a similar process of change and potentials. Utilizing solar panels hacked into speakers, this installation seeks to employ the construction of a new relationship to light as a methodology for thinking about how energy emerges. The solar panels in the installation transduce light energy into electrical energy which is then fed into speakers for the participants to hear. Energy is most essentially a process of change, disruption and movement. It demonstrates to us the myriad of potentials which lie within and between us and energy. Through the use of transduction of energies this installation allows us to peer into the minutiae of our relationship with energy and begin to conceive of how we absorb, alter, collaborate and connect with it on a daily basis.

We live in a time where information is presented to us at a fast pace from all directions. Content is circulated on the web at incredible speeds, with real time streaming and instant sharing capabilities; audiences are redefining their relationship with themselves, time, and the intangible world around them. This excess of data makes it increasingly difficult to process new information before the next event unfolds. Especially in occurrences of violence, there exists little to no time to fully deal with the aftermath before the next one is being broadcast and reduced to hashtags. While all of this seems daunting and even debilitating, I argue that at the same time, the high pace and volume of information is our way of concretizing personal and collective experiences. I draw heavily from George Bataille’s The Accursed Share and the work of Katherine Behar to explore what it means to exist in a constant flow of information. Visibility creates tangibility, and although the virtual sphere is oversaturated, the act of sharing, publishing, liking and commenting further establishes those experiences as real. As a way of making sense of data excess, I created an immersive art installation that attempts to confront this problem. For this project, I constructed a space that transforms user input from social media, specifically Twitter, into a visual and auditory experience. In a multichannel display, I use real-time tweets and trending topics that literally immerse the spectator in information. The goal of this experience is to juxtapose overwhelming amounts of data within an intimate setting, thereby recognizing the comfort and discomfort of excess.

Can the fullness of conscious experience be communicated? Can one trace the diffuse paths of energy traversing through and beyond their perceptive faculties? In other words, can one render intelligible that which they cannot fully comprehend, and if not, of what value is the cultivation of mind? These questions are the fervent mysteries at the center of my research and artistic work investigating how our perception of depth orients us in the world. The depth I refer to is not simply distance between points in space, it is the depth of one's psychological appreciation that all phenomena is a confluence of interrelating entities that can be labelled neither subject nor object. In my research thus far, I am drawn to theories of “speculative realism", a branch of epistemology that attempts to construct less 'certain' theoretical frameworks by which to understand how organisms both human and nonhuman interact in nature. Steven Shaviro’s Discognition, for instance, compellingly argues a history of misplaced certainty in neuroscientific explanations of consciousness and the difficulty of communicating "qualia", or qualitative experience. He lays out a theory wherein experiential dimension is of indefinite depth, incommunicable at its core, and thus translatable only through a distance, requiring faith that one’s words can accurately convey the nuances of whatever experience unfolds before them. I endeavor with my art to express the notion that observation is, as Gilles Deleuze said, “a flow of flows”, a way of playing with delinitation of relations that may capture traces of the energetically-excessive phenomena of the world. My installation, a 3d-rendered video reflected by glass into a projection feedback circuit, is an attempt to visualize the barely visible, and under-appreciated, depth of perception. I've tried to craft a truly dynamic moving picture; one that radiates its energetic excess, beckoning the viewer to consider what complex dimensionality lay in the gulf between the grid lines superimposed by language (the threshold at which the descriptive accuracy about sensory content becomes too broad) and the unspeakable depths of phenomenological experience.

I have completed a series of 16 multimedia collages inspired by and in reference to Beethoven’s 16 string quartets. My project can be understood as a visual prose – a colloquial yet refined exploration of major themes such as layers of abstraction, data structure, and emotional processing. My work aims to respond to the popular concept of humans as high powered computational machines by emphasizing how computers simultaneously mimic and record human thought processes. I am inspired by the way these metaphors juxtapose human spontaneity, creativity, and emotion with the human tendency to build highly structured and explicitly organized environments. I have chosen Beethoven as my muse because of the expansive volume of existing literature on his life and work, in both English and German, and because of the deeply embedded cultural references and acquired connotations that surround his life and music. My ultimate problematic is to demonstrate the power of sets, collections, and standardized forms as indispensable aspects of creative innovation, and to apply these insights to a well-known and generally accessible body of classical literature.