The three essential structures of life are RNA, protein and a lipid bilayer membrane. We hypothesize that these three structures formed co-dependently in an aqueous environment, as opposed to forming independently in diverse environments. In our scheme, a vesicle (membrane) formed and bound nucleobases and amino acids, the building blocks of RNA and proteins, respectively. Then, the resulting confinement and conformational constraints imposed by the membrane on the nucleobases and amino acids facilitated the formation of RNA and proteins, leading to the origin of life. The work presented here addresses one part of the hypothesis: “Do amino acids increase vesicle formation?” An increase in vesicle formation due to the addition of amino acids would support the hypothesis that membranes and proteins evolved co-dependently. It would suggest that amino acids stabilize vesicles, increasing the likelihood that fatty acid membranes and amino acids co-localized. Our experiments used decanoic acid, a prebiotic fatty acid that spontaneously forms membranes when dissolved in water. In the first part of the research, we added aqueous solutions of amino acids to a solution of decanoic acid at pH 6.83 and determined the extent of vesicle formation by measuring light scattering with a spectrophotometer. In the second part, we added amino acids to a decanoic acid solution above the pH at which vesicles form, and then slowly acidified the solution until vesicle formation began; again, we used light scattering as a measure of the extent of vesicle formation. We found that specific amino acids do in fact increase vesicle formation and also have an effect on the pH at which vesicles form. The next step in this research will be the addition of multiple types of amino acids and peptides additions in order to search for combinations that increase vesicle formation the most. The results contribute to the the possible driving mechanism behind the emergence of protocells.

Smoking is the world's leading preventable cause of death and it is responsible for millions of deaths annually. Smoking costs the United States billions of dollars each year due to medical care and lost productivity. There is very little research that addresses Hispanics working in agriculture jobs. This study evaluates whether and to what extent smoking is a coping mechanism for Hispanic males to manage agriculture work-related stress. This qualitative research study includes 5-10 short formal interviews with Hispanic males residing in Wenatchee, WA who smoke and work in agriculture. Results are analyzed using thematic analysis. Expected results are that Hispanic males who experience agriculture work-related stress use smoking as a coping mechanism, and experience negative health effects caused from either stress and/or smoking. This project will help health centers create programs that promote awareness on smoking and work-related stress that Hispanic males may be experiencing due to job roles.

In this study, I investigate how students with different racial identities -- white students and students of color -- think and interpret their own value of their debt as they near graduation and thus, begin their journey of repayment. Knowing that students of color take on a higher debt burden than white students, I want to look at these two groups of students and see if there is a difference in how students perceive their debt in accordance with their life, racial identity, and social experiences. I will investigate this using in depth interviews of students with $20,000 or more of student debt. This research will provide insight about the intersection of socioeconomic status, race, and student debt within American colleges. This will expand our understanding of how different people place a value on and expand on their student debt. As the student debt burden increases in the U.S., it is crucial that we understand how people make sense of that debt within their lives.

Digital media and mobile applications used for leisure have become increasingly interwoven into people’s daily lives. Although playful mobile applications and their effects on society have been studied from a psychological, business, and computer science perspective, they have not been heavily engaged in the field of geography. Using Pokémon GO as a case study, this work aims to explore the ties between the corporate history and digital data of Niantic (the company that made Pokémon GO) and the effect it imposes on the “real world”. It aims to conduct a spatial analysis of pokéstops and pokégyms in King County, Washington. In order to do this, a discourse analysis of online documents from Niantic, newspapers, social media, and fan websites recounting the company's history with previous applications and press interviews was conducted. In addition, a hotspot spatial analysis of Pokémon GO (pokéstops and pokégyms) overlaid on American Community Survey data was created. The purpose of this analysis is to see potential spatial inequalities that the application may have created. The findings show Niantic’s lack of ethical consideration by how it deals with users data and privacy and as a result shows how the users have responded to issues in the past. The results also illustrate the skewing of data toward urban tech centers and the relative sparsity in rural areas, rendering use of the app pointless for certain users. Pokémon GO is the first location-based augmented reality mobile application to garner worldwide attention, and many application developers will likely use it as a point of reference when creating their own applications. It is imperative that developers and researchers learn from this application’s successes as well as its failures.

In the population of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in Shark Bay, Australia, groups of two or three adult males form long-term alliances that sequester, harass, and intimidate adult females, presumably to increase their chances of mating success. Costs that males inflict on females include physical injury, changes in home range and habitat use, reduced foraging, and changes in calf care. Although altered female behavior is evident during association with males, the direct impact males have on female behavior is not entirely clear. That is, male behavior and female responses to such behavior during consortships have not been explicitly documented. A long-term study has collected detailed behavioral data on the Shark Bay population since 1988. Using this dataset, this project will quantify the rate of male aggression directed at females and how female activity budgets and foraging tactics change in response. Preliminary work indicated that rates of received aggression were higher for cycling females than non-cycling females, and higher when females were in the presence of more than one male, potentially confirming that males use aggression to coerce reproductively viable females. Females also spent less time foraging when in the presence of more than one male, hinting at potential costs to the female owing to loss of food. Because females have highly specialized foraging tactics, changes in foraging behavior and home range during prolonged or repeated consortships could impact female condition.

 Scholars in many disciplines have used the concepts of charisma and charismatic authority to describe leaders of prominent terrorist groups. These researchers do not give the breadth and depth these topics require when attributing them to casual relationships between leaders and followers. As a field, the study of terrorism is lacking in substantial work on the subject. This leads to an absence of deep conceptual understanding and incorrect or ill-defined usage. I will address the gap created by these missing definitive parameters to build a clearer understanding of the concepts. Through systematic comparison of the social tools employed by the leadership of Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram I will explore the characteristics of charismatic authority. I will analyze comparative parameters of group leaders, local demographics, institutional structures, and major national or regional events that precede violence. This goal will be achieved through historical document analysis using primary and secondary sources. Primary sources include documented speeches and interviews, documents released by the groups, and personal documents of leaders. Secondary sources include news stories, scholarly articles, and other academic literature. The purpose of this research is to set the stage for those with access to their followers to adequately explore the potential causal relationship between charismatic leadership and the actions of their followers.

DNA replication is critical to cellular reproduction. In bacterial and eukaryotic cells alike, DNA replication occurs in immobile, discrete complexes (so-called “factories”) enriched for replication proteins. However, the size of these replication complexes is well below the optical diffraction limit (~250 nm), making them difficult to study using conventional microscopy. Using Escherichia coli as a model organism, the goal of my project is to create an ultrastructural model (50-nm resolution) of the bacterial replication complex. To this end, I have developed an expansion microscopy (ExM) protocol that is compatible with bacterial cells. In short, E. coli cells harboring fluorescent fusions to replication proteins are embedded in a swellable polymer gel and physically expanded by a factor of four. The expanded specimen is subsequently visualized at high-resolution using a conventional fluorescence microscope. Unlike more traditional super-resolution methods, ExM is compatible with simultaneous imaging of up to four replication proteins, which I expect will be critical in determining the overall organization of the replication complex. Although ExM is established for eukaryotic cells, I am the first to apply the method to visualize the interiors of bacterial cells. I expect that this project will not only contribute a new super-resolution-microscopy method for bacterial cells, but also reveal the structure of the replication complex with unprecedented detail, perhaps providing insight into the mechanism of the fundamental process of DNA replication. This, in-turn, could lead to new therapies for combating diseases associated with replication defects, including cancer.

The years between 1889 and 1922 saw great archaeological activity in Egypt, a period known as the 'Golden Age' of Egyptology. Our research seeks to answer the question: “What were women’s experiences during the ‘Golden Age’ and what impact did their work have?” Mrs. Emma B. Andrews and Mrs. Helen Winlock are unique characters, choosing to escape the rigidity of Victorian society and pave their own way on the dusty roads of Egypt. Their letters and diaries bear witness to an exciting period of history. Our survey begins with the record of travel and excavation kept by Mrs. Emma B. Andrews and Helen Winlock, wife of Herbert Winlock, Director of the Metropolitan Museum Egyptian Expedition. They describe challenges of archaeological missions in Egypt, recounting issues of site and workforce management, as well as their interactions with diverse explorers and adventure. From scans of original handwritten letters, we transcribe frequently challenging handwriting and record Andrews’ and Winlock’s unique observations. These include descriptions of difficulties of daily life on site, of managing large groups of workers, and offer insights into the personalities and characters of eminent archaeologists. The results of our work are open source and offer important insights into the lives of the foremost Egyptologists and their families. We utilize technology such as iPads, Basecamp project management, and collaborative software to facilitate transcription. Ultimately, we will produce output that is accessible online to encourage collaborative engagement with others researching this ‘Golden Era’ of excavation. This information is stored in a database and will be freely available on our project website, to encourage collaborative engagement with others researching this ‘Golden Era’ of excavation. In doing this, we aim to recreate the world of archaeology from a bygone era, seen and described through the eyes of women who were ahead of their time.

Geographers generally define sense of place as the meaning an individual ascribes to a particular location. Collectively, sense of place creates the identity and character of a region and is represented through culinary, literary, visual, and many other forms of art unique to the local culture. Technological advancements in communication have changed sense of place by affecting how these cultural differences are maintained, but also offer new ways of capturing and sharing sense of place. What elements and by which means individuals choose to capture personal representations of an environment shape the way communities as a whole perceive, ascribe meaning to, and amass their own descriptions and representations of that place. My project explores this iterative relationship between visual representation and written description of place. I have selected a collection of crowd-sourced pictures of the local landscape using an app that pulls up publicly posted Instagram images that have been geotagged near the location of the user. I consider these pictures to be modern forms of landscape folk art and conducted visual content analysis to code the images with descriptive terms. I have also created an in-person, crowd-sourced cartography installation consisting of three simplified maps of Seattle that was placed in a gallery where patrons were asked to write, directly on the maps, descriptions of their own sense of place associated with the locations. I then compared the language from the installation to that from the analysis of the Instagram images. Strong similarities between the two suggest the possibility of using crowd-sourced visual representations of place from social media to offer a greater understanding of how natural and built environments evolve and what they mean to the people who inhabit them.

The goal of this project is to explore how Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) devices are depicted in the media, especially news media. BCI technology is not new, but it is still very much in its infancy, with few feasible embodiments usable for practical, non-medical applications. Additionally, a majority of BCIs that are (only somewhat) feasible require dangerous invasive surgical procedures. Yet in the last year, the technology has received a higher-than-average level of press coverage. Media coverage of upcoming medical technology is not a trivial issue. Substantial research has shown that positive portrayals of novel medical technology in the media can indirectly affect patient consent to undergo treatment. Consequently, we argue that it is essential that the media reports and discusses the ethical impacts of BCIs. We aim to discover whether media coverage depicts the technology realistically, discussing its shortcomings, risks associated with its use, and ethical issues related to neural implantation. We use a research software called FACTIVA to survey and analyze the depiction of BCI technology inn English-speaking media such as news publications, radio transcripts, press releases, etc. This content analysis allows us to understand mass media values and narratives in three general ways: 1) it generates evidence to demonstrate whether there is any positively-biased and over-enthusiastic depiction of BCI in mass media; 2) it sheds light on whether there is an absence of discussion of risks and ethics associated with BCI technology; and 3) it exposes unrealistic discourse, such as wide-reaching claims of the panacean nature of BCIs (i.e. transhumanist arguments, the race against artificial intelligence, etc.). In brief, this study allows us to explore whether media misrepresentations of BCI could influence the narrative about the technology in ways that may increase the risk of harms for prospective patients and their families.

Many membranes spontaneously demix into coexisting liquid phases. These include membranes that are as simple as three-component lipid vesicles and as complex as protein-rich vacuole membranes within living yeast cells. The resulting membrane phases are enriched in particular lipids and proteins. Membrane phase separation is one of several mechanisms proposed to explain the observation of heterogenous distributions of lipids and proteins in cell membranes ("rafts"), which are thought to be important in cell signaling, apoptosis, and protein regulation. The overwhelming majority of experiments that probe phase separation in membranes uses only one type of lipid (namely phosphatidylcholine). However, it is known that biological membranes also contain significant fractions of other kinds of lipids (e.g. phosphatidylethanolamine, or PE-lipids). An experimental challenge is that membranes composed of high fractions of PE-lipids are unstable – the lipids assemble in tubes instead of lying in sheets. In my project, I am [1] determining the maximum amount of saturated and unsaturated PE-lipids that can be incorporated into stable membranes, [2] measuring the temperature at which the membranes demix into coexisting phases, and [3] imaging the vesicles by fluorescence microscopy. Results from Aim 1 inform future researchers which lipid ratios they can use to produce stable membranes. Results from Aim 2 provide data against which the scientific community can calibrate molecular dynamics simulations. Results from Aim 3 provide a direct test of a recent prediction that PE-lipids should be anti-registered across fluctuating membranes.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a debilitating disease with few treatment options available for recovering motor function. Based on past studies using electrical stimulation of the spinal cord, we believe that long-term optogenetic spinal stimulation (OSS) may improve motor function after an SCI. We are investigating this therapeutic potential using a rat model of SCI with an implantable LED to deliver optogenetic stimulation in vivo. However, activation of the LED produces heat that could damage the surrounding tissue. I have modified these LED implants by incorporating a thermistor that tracks temperature changes during optical stimulation. Using this device, I determined how the modulation of stimulation parameters affects heat production at the site of the implant and have identified several safe parameter sets. These results will inform the parameter choices used in future studies on OSS. An optimized OSS methodology has the potential to improve the lives of those with an SCI by enhancing their capability for volitional movement.

G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) are seven-transmembrane proteins present throughout the body that can be activated upon binding of drugs, hormones, or neurotransmitters. Acting like an inbox for messages, these multi-protein complexes play a significant role in the body by regulating cell expression and signaling, making them attractive targets for drug development. One class of GPCRs, known as the adrenergic receptors (ARs) are critical in modulating the function of numerous targets, including cardiac muscle, vascular smooth muscle, and bronchial smooth muscle. There are nine AR subtypes: three α1s, three α2s, and three βs. In my research, I focus on deciphering the interactions of proteins with the α1D-AR due to a recent publication of the Hague Lab, which discovered that α1D-AR forms a multi-PDZ protein complex. To determine the participants of this complex and identify the presence of associated proteins, I first purified the proteins that potentially bind to α1D-AR. In my purification process, I first conducted Polymerase Chain Reactions (PCRs), transformed my bacteria, grew my bacteria, and finally purified my proteins of interest. With this information, my lab and I intend to identify the complexes using mass spectrometry and Octet. Determining how α1D-ARs are organized can create a deeper understanding of how drugs work in the body and assist in new drug development.

Despite the intense coverage of the Syrian Civil War in US media, consensus about what started the Syrian Civil War is highly debated. The variety of explanations cited as leading to the Syrian Civil War range from: corruption, protests, sectarianism, climate change, and drought. My mixed methods research begins by exploring whether certain conflict explanations like the Arab Spring Protests are overrepresented in discourse whereas conflict explanations using climate change are underrepresented. A manifest content analysis of 134 American newspaper articles of causes for the conflict from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal yielded that they did indeed favor Arab Spring protests but that the results varied by newspaper. The right-leaning Wall Street Journal failed to mention climate change in a statistically significant manner whereas the Washington Post repeatedly mentioned climate change as a major factor for the Syrian Civil War. Interpretations and analysis of the same conflict produced different ideas about what started the conflict. The second part of my research involved an inductive latent content analysis of these news sources to truly understand the perceptions that drove news organizations to report the way they did. Here I report two key findings: a better understanding of how causal factors for conflict are explained in American media and how media organizations justify and convey narratives of importance to them. Such research is important because climate change and conflict is an issue that is important to the stability of the globe. Understanding how and why it’s importance is overrepresented and underrepresented in news sources can help determine how popular geopolitics shapes perceptions and how to make discussions of climate change in the lens of conflict more acceptable.

This study explores the use of media to construct social valuation and devaluation in racial discourse on the internet. The use of social media and on-line platforms contribute to complex power relations that mediate social and racial difference. I am investigating how both news sources and social media are used in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement and All Lives Matter campaign to expose the relational construction of value, race, and the “other.” Through an inductive content and discourse analysis of primary movement resources, news media, and Twitter, I reveal the controversial ways in which the value of Black lives is affirmed and challenged on public platforms. This project is significant for understanding how social media and online news sources have created new opportunities for protest as well as new revelations of how the process of “othering” racialized groups persists in the twenty-first century.

Public transit is a quasi-public space between the public and private, acting as a fabric connecting the lives of many different types of people. Working within a framework of feminist urban geographies, this research seeks to understand how fear, safety, and emotion are constructed and interpreted within transit space in the city. With a particular focus on the experiences of women and queer individuals, I questioned how geographies of fear and safety impact movement and behavior in the city. Additionally, I examined the role of city officials and policy makers in creating safer transit spaces. Using a synthesis of qualitative research, media analysis, and autoethnography, I present the policies and practices that have, and have not, been successful in cities across the United States. The results of this research have shown that women and queer people consistently report feelings of insecurity and lack of safety in urban spaces. Policies and campaigns introduced in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles have had measurable success in combating harassment and violence, while smaller cities such as Seattle have yet to implement policies to do the same. This research is intended to contribute to the larger discourse surrounding feminist geographies and urban studies.

The global focus on health equity and the injustice of health disparities highlight the need to explore social determinants of health. While socioeconomic differences in alcohol use are well documented, the socioeconomic differences of those that have experienced positive outcomes from drug and alcohol treatment remain largely unexplored. Per the Stress Process Model and Fundamental Cause Theory, we would expect treatment’s ability to reduce substance use to be significantly influenced by access to resources—time, energy, and both economic and social capital). Moreover, if class-based disparities in recovery from addiction exist, this important dimension of inequality must be incorporated into our understanding of stratification in health outcomes. Using pooled cross-sectional time series data over 6 years on adults over 25 from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (N = 118,392), this study aims to answer the question: Does socioeconomic status (SES) moderate drug and alcohol treatment’s ability to reduce substance use? We operationalized measures of SES and receiving treatment as independent variables, the number of binge drinking days (five or more drinks in a day) in the last month as the dependent variable, and controlled for demographics and characteristics of past use. Additionally, we extend this research by comparing results from three years of low unemployment (1999, 2000, and 2001) and three years of high unemployment (2009, 2010, and 2011) to explore how the economic climate interacts with SES’s impact. Initial findings support the Stress Process Model and Fundamental cause theory by revealing that those of higher SES see a greater reduction in binge drinking after treatment. We expect times of high unemployment to exaggerate these findings, revealing structural barriers to recovery. The goal is to add to the academic understanding of social stratification, aid in targeted resource allocation to improve health, and promote health equity.

Archaeological studies of Native American communities focus primarily on pre-colonial periods. Analysis of nail types and styles from Native sites are thus quite rare. Recent fieldwork conducted by Field Methods in Indigenous Archaeology (FMIA) on the Grand Ronde Reservation in northwestern Oregon provides more information about colonial life and gives more attention to reservation inhabitants. The nails excavated by FMIA offer a glimpse into reservation life during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This project focuses on nails recovered from a property in the east central reservation that was occupied by reservation families from the 1850s through at least the 1920s. I developed a typology of the nails recovered from the site and compiled this information into a comprehensive database. This database provides unique insight into the builders, inhabitants, and significant events that took place at the site. Nails shed light on builders’ access to resources, while their building paradigms can tell us of their cultural backgrounds and ideologies. Nails also tell us about the day-to-day lives of inhabitants and whether buildings sustained damage and consequentially required repairs. This project adds clarity to our understanding of the built environment at Grand Ronde. This archaeological analysis offers an approach to tracking construction projects on the reservation in the absence of maps and written records about these structures.

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) research is a rapidly growing area of development in biomedicine. As this neurotechnology continues to be developed it is important to address the following question: what is the most appropriate way to conceptualize BCIs from the ethical point of view? This is important to consider because how we understand the device will shape how it is developed and used in ethical discussions. Potential end-users and ethicists while beginning to investigate BCIs have identified nuanced issues specific to BCIs in the areas of privacy, security, identity and intimacy. To understand these issues physicians, scientists, ethicists and patients are conceptualizing BCIs through analogies drawn from both the medical and consumer realm. This has been shown through a comprehensive lit review and analysis of coded focus group discussions with a spinal cord injury group, a non-disabled group and a mixed group. Analogies to medical and consumer technologies, such as the cardiac pacemaker, wheelchair and iPhone, were most commonly drawn from. Although descriptive, these analogies do not fully encompass the nuanced issues presented by BCIs. Drawing on analogies that do capture these nuances could change the direction of our research, miscommunicate risks to patients or change the way we fundamentally understand brains and computers.

Artifacts associated with popular culture have potential to reveal activities, interests, and societal influence amongst a community. This is especially true on Native American reservations, where families balanced participation in dominant economies with preservation of traditional practices. This project examines a 1930s comic book fragment excavated during the 2017 Field Methods in Indigenous Archaeology field school conducted on the Grand Ronde Reservation in Oregon. The comic book is a unique find that provides historical information about Grand Ronde children growing up on the reservation. This research provides a better sense of students’ activities at the schoolhouse site and explores the impacts and influence of pop culture on the students of Grand Ronde. We use several methodologies for this project, including: paper conservation, archival research, and analyzing physical artifacts collected via the excavation. By sourcing and dating the comic book, we make inferences about the entertainment experience of students at the Grand Ronde school through exploring the influence of popular culture at this site and the impact that mainstream media had on those attending Bureau of Indian Affairs scholastic institutions. This research contributes to knowledge of the cultural interplay of mainstream influences within a reservation schoolhouse environment.

Archaeologists have long used ceramics as evidence for reconstructing what people ate, what they did, and how they impacted the world. However, few studies examine the use of Euro-American manufactured ceramics by Native communities. For this project, I examined decorated ceramic pieces recovered from the Grande Ronde Agency schoolhouse archaeological site from 2015 to 2017. A wide variety of ceramic artifacts were found at this site, which illustrate everyday activities within the schoolhouse. This schoolhouse was in operation from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, and the decorated pottery gives a significant illustration of when, where, and how ceramic pottery was acquired and utilized on the reservation during this time. To determine this, I examined the physical characteristics of the ceramics such as sherd form, paste, and decoration. The results suggest that students had access to utilitarian, medium-quality dishware, and some higher quality porcelain of various decoration styles. This project provides significant insight into mealtime activities and other aspects of student life at the schoolhouse.

The stories and activities of children are usually disregarded in the archaeological record. However, at the nineteenth to early twentieth century Grand Ronde Agency Schoolhouse, excavated by the Field Methods in Indigenous Archaeology field school, it is hard to ignore the presence of children in the material remains. Using historical records, objects of personal adornment, and school-related artifacts, I examine how children at the Grand Ronde schoolhouse stayed connected to their culture and community. Analysis of these objects convey information about identity and cultural practices of the children at schoolhouse. I analyzed artifacts excavated at the schoolhouse privy like buttons, barrettes, beads, and other accessories subject to personal choice as well as child-sized scissors and pencils. The current knowledge and research about reservation schools has been focused on the tragedies that happened at reservation and boarding schools, but the Grand Ronde material and historical records are stories of survival and optimism during the reservation periods.

Our previous study demonstrated that individuals in the experimentally induced social exclusion condition showed a weaker self-association to life-related words. While ample studies investigating the effect of long-term mindfulness intervention suggest the potential benefit of mindfulness interventions for suicidal behaviors, the underlying mechanism is unclear. The current study is conducted in two phases. The pilot study validated the mindfulness activity for the main study, using State Mindfulness Scale. The main study assesses the potential mediating role of brief mindfulness intervention by comparing the group differences between Mindfulness group and control groups (filler activity and no activity) in their implicit attitudes toward death and level of emotion dysregulation after experiencing social exclusion. Data are currently being collected. We investigated the groups differences in Mindfulness group (n=50), filler activity group (n=50), and no activity group (n=50) in their implicit attitudes toward death (death/suicide Implicit Association Test) and their level of emotional dysregulation (State Emotion Dysregulation Scale) after experiencing the experimental social exclusion. The predicted result of the study is that participants in Mindfulness intervention group will have higher emotion regulation after the social exclusion task. Their self-association to life is also predicted to be stronger than the no Mindfulness activity groups. Such findings will support the role of brief mindfulness intervention in buffering the negative effects of stressful experiences such as social exclusion by increasing emotion regulation and state mindfulness. It will be able to address the research gap of the importance of mindfulness interventions on social exclusion and suicide-relevant constructs.