This is a rhetorical analysis of Hulu’s televised adaptation of the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid’s Tale as an episodic rhetorical act. This analysis merges feminist and ideological criticism to analyze the show’s twenty-three episodes and explores how the series is influenced by the veneration of feminist tropes within our current cultural milieu and how it influences social and political mobilization from its empirical audience. Within a context of historical gendered oppression, I analyze how The Handmaid’s Tale series furthers hegemonic ideologies regarding gendered behavior and reproduction by representing cisgender, heteronormative, nuclear families. I also examine how the repression inherent in each trope leads to the championing of biological essentialism from the show’s viewers. Finally, I examine how the series denotes personal agency as it relates to biological motherhood and any disruption to the state of biological motherhood as immoral, thus reasserting rhetoric inherent in modern, restrictive reproductive public policies. Drawing from scholarly sources and popular media such as news articles and protest images, this paper deconstructs the show’s narrative which positions reproductive tyranny at its center. This paper examines the cultural perspective on reproduction while contributing to the understanding of reproductive oppression in the United States; broadening the choice/anti-choice conversation to include other examples of gendered oppression, such as forced sterilizations and maternal mortality.

The receptor human protein kinase EphA2 has emerged as a therapeutic drug target for cancer and infectious diseases. However, the dearth of selective EphA2 inhibitors in the field is hampering EphA2-based research and therapies. Our lab recently developed a novel selective small molecule EphA2 inhibitor I268 using medicinal chemistry. Surprisingly, we observed the same inhibitory effects on cell proliferation paradoxically when inhibiting EphA2 with I268 or activating EphA2 with its agonist EphrinA1. We hypothesized that both I268 (inhibitor) and EphrinA1 (agonist) may lead to the same protein-protein interaction network of EphA2 that caused this paradoxical inhibition. We used a chemical proteomic method developed in our lab called “co-clickable precipitation (Co-CP)” to study the interaction network of EphA2 in colon cancer cell line HCT-116. We observed that the onset of inhibitory effect by I268 concurred with the association between EphA2 and a protein interactor called c-RAF, a key player in activating proliferation pathways in cancer cells containing Ras mutations such as HCT-116 cells. We are currently performing confirmatory experiments to characterize whether upon inhibition by I268 or activation by EphrinA1, EphA2 sequesters c-RAF in a form unable to transmit proliferative signals downstream. Our results may demonstrate a possible mechanism for inhibitory effects of EphA2 inhibition on cancer cell growth. These results validated EphA2 as a drug target and may provide novel ways for treating cancer cells by inhibiting cell proliferation pathways indirectly using EphA2 inhibitors.

Is the neutrino its own anti-particle? This is a question physicists do not have the answer to, but if a process known as neutrinoless double-beta decay were observed then it could be said with certainty that the neutrino is indeed its own anti-particle. In an attempt to search for said process, researchers at UW have joined forces with researchers from a number of other institutions to form the group known as LEGEND (Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay). The source used for this experiment that undergoes double beta-decay is Germanium-76. This source is also used for the detector itself. When a beta decay happens in the detector a pulse proportional to the energy of the electrons emitted is produced. If these electrons have all the energy available from the decay, then it will be known that no neutrinos are present. What makes things tricky is that if this process occurs it does so with a half-life greater than 10²⁶ years. Thus, counting rates for this process will be very low, and very low backgrounds will be needed to effectively carry out the experiment. Currently at UW we are working on developing pulse rejection techniques that will allow us to get rid of unwanted background events that our detectors measure. The project I'm presenting on involves aiming a collimated alpha source at our detector, and the goal is to develop techniques that allow us to reject pulses resulting from alpha decays. A number of other collimated sources are also aimed at the detector in order to study rejecting the pulses that they give rise to. In order to help design this experiment I am running simulations in the Geant4 based application “g4simple” to determine collimator dimensions and materials that will work best for different radiation sources.

At present, there is a disconnect between people’s awareness of environmental crises and their motivation to act on this knowledge. Novel ways of fostering a sense of connection with the environment are currently being explored to address this problem. Dance, among other artistic disciplines, has the potential to motivate pro-environmental actions because it appeals to people’s emotional centers through empathy-inducing experiences, community building, and non-traditional communication. Using members of the Seattle dance community as a case study for environmental dance, this research explores whether and how environmental activism through dance is manifested in Seattle, if barriers exist to engaging in environmental dance, and if current forms of environmental dance effectively motivate action. To execute this exploration, I will conduct several one-on-one semi-structured interviews with members of the local dance community; interviews will last between 0.5-2 hours. Interviewees will be selected to represent varying degrees of participation in environmental dance--from minimal to explicit environmental dance activities--and will include internationally recognized dance creatives to rising entrepreneurs. These discussions will inform a qualitative analysis of how dance has or has not been used as tool for promoting environmental action locally. Furthermore, they will provide the context for my own choreographic pursuits on environmental dance. Based on relevant research and my 10+ years of involvement in the Seattle dance community, I predict that environmental dance can be identified as choreographic productions, site-specific explorations, embodied knowledge, sustainable practices in the arts, and collaborations between scientists and dancers. The results will be communicated to a performing arts audience through creative demonstrations of key research findings and through excerpts of my choreography. I hope, by engaging with both the environmental science and dance communities, to promote a dialogue within and between these communities and to inspire further environmental dance endeavors beyond the scope of Seattle.

Abstinence-based treatment has long been considered the standard of care for people with alcohol use disorders (AUD). However, abstinence-based treatment fails to engage severely affected populations (e.g., homeless people affected by AUD) because many are not yet ready, willing or able to stop drinking. A recent randomized controlled trial tested the efficacy of a lower-barrier harm-reduction treatment for alcohol (HaRT-A), in which participants could define their own harm-reduction and quality-of-life (QoL) goals. The aim of this present secondary study was to describe participants’ own harm-reduction and QoL goals and document their achievement of these goals over the course of HaRT-A. Participants were people currently experiencing homelessness and AUD (N = 86) who attended the 4-session HaRT-A, during which interventionists elicited participants’ own harm-reduction and QoL goals. The Safer-drinking and Harm Reduction Efforts (SHaRE) form was administered to elicit and record participant-generated harm reduction goals, which were entirely participant-driven with no suggestions from study interventionists for any specific drinking-related goals. Directed content analysis was performed to classify participant-generated treatment goals. Results indicated that goals fell into 7 primary categories, the top 3 being drinking-related goals, quality of life goals, and health-related goals. These findings suggest that a client-driven, goals-setting approach could inform accessible and appropriate treatment and QoL-enhancing interventions for people experiencing homelessness and AUD.

Plants take up silica over the course of their lives along with other essential nutrients in the water that they absorb through their roots. The silica becomes deposited within their tissues in the form of solid bodies (phytoliths); when the plant dies and decays, phytoliths are left in the soil where they can fossilize. Fossil phytoliths preserve the original morphology of plant cells and can be used to reconstruct past vegetation. The Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum (MMCO) was a major global warming event that happened ~17-14.5 million years ago. Researcher have reconstructed the climate of the Santa Cruz Formation in Patagonia, Argentina during this period as warmer and drier. While we would expect the vegetation to become more open (i.e., grassy or shrubby versus forested), phytoliths from the Santa Cruz Formation tell a different story; in particular grass phytoliths (and therefore grass abundance) seem to decrease through time, but also become smaller. Some researchers have noticed that grasses tend to respond to reduced water availability with reduced cell size. Therefore, we hypothesize that the reduced size of grass phytoliths observed in the Santa Cruz Formation during the MMCO is due to increasing aridity. However, because this trend of decreasing cell size was only noticed by qualitative observation, we need to quantitatively assess significant changes in cell size. To do so, I studied and imaged grass phytoliths under a microscope, categorized them by subfamily/tribe based on their shape, and measured their size. I then statistically compared the phytoliths from younger and older strata to test whether there was a change in size through time. This work will be used to predict how our current global warming event may impact plant life based on the trends of the past.

My research topic is on Black student-athletes’ classroom experience at predominantly White institutions. As a Black student-athlete myself, I have been in classes where not only am I the only Black student, but the only Black student-athlete. The research shows that Black students are primarily affected by their perceived ability to succeed in college by the lack of Black representation in amongst their peers and professors, in the classroom. In my thesis, I build upon aspects of UCLA scholar, Tyrone Howard’s view of the critical race theory. In particular, I explore the idea that rather than race being biologically grounded and natural, it is socially constructed and functions as a means to maintain the interests of the White population. My thesis argues that Predominantly White Institutions set the “lay of the land” in terms of what is socially acceptable and deemed okay, and which often excludes Black student-athletes. The methods I use are surveys, individual interviews, and a focus group,  with an equal number of of Black men and women study participants. This qualitative data will show that Black student-athletes’ experience in the classroom at predominantly White institutions is directly related to whether they grew up being around White individuals.

My proposed research examines how sexual racism is experienced by LGBTQ+ community members in the greater Seattle Area who use Tinder and Grindr and other mobile dating apps. Sexual racism can be defined as a specific form of racial prejudice enacted in the context of sex or romance. My primary research investigates a series of in-person interviews that qualitatively analyze and articulate the various experiences of Black individuals, as well as focus groups to help to understand different and diverse manifestations of sexual racism. I use information/narratives from the in-person, and one-on-one interviews to analyze the experiences and compile them into a data set that can be closely looked at for trends and overlapping experiences. My research analyzing the effects of the experience of sexual racism as shown through mobile dating apps helps readers understand one form of inequity in our modern digital society that often goes unspoken. In addition, my research helps to identify how microaggressions work by the microagressor’s dismissing their racialized/sexualized comments as simply an issue of personal preference. While my primary research focuses on sexual racism in local communities, my secondary research draws on literatures that examine sexual racism both nationally and internationally. By working closely with a variety of people in the local community as well as drawing on research from other scholars focusing on the ideas of white privilege, constructed racism, and intersectionality, this research helps me speak up for Black LGBTQ+ individuals who are often marginalized by sexual racism.

Research has shown transgender children respond similarly to categorical measures of gender identity as their gender-matched cisgender peers, rather than those who share their sex assigned at birth. However, categorical measures may be limiting responses and not encompassing the diversity of gender identities. We presented a continuous measure to 223 transgender children (socially-transitioned children to live and present as a gender opposite the one assigned at birth), 71 gender nonconforming children (children who have not socially transitioned but show characteristics stereotypically associated with a gender other than the one assigned at birth), 281 cisgender control participants, and 181 cisgender siblings of transgender and gender nonconforming participants. Provided a line, participants were asked to mark their gender identity, with the left-most end indicating feeling completely like a boy, the right-most end indicating feeling completely like a girl, and in between representing varying degrees of a mixture of both. Each participant’s mark was converted to a percentage, with 100% indicating feeling completely like the gender they present as (for transgender/gender nonconforming children, opposite the gender assigned at birth). A univariate ANOVA examining the effect of participant group on identity showed a significant main effect, F(3,752)= 38.72, p < .001. Post-hoc Tukey comparisons showed, consistent with previous research, transgender children (M=0.81, SD= .189) did not differ significantly from the cisgender controls (M=0.87, SD= .181), nor cisgender siblings (M=0.87, SD=.206), in their identification with their current gender. However, gender nonconforming participants (M= 0.59, SD = .309) differed significantly in their scores from each of the other groups (ps < .001). These results are consistent with previous research conducted with categorical measures. Additionally, as none of the groups showed 100% binary identification, this study also demonstrates the importance of continuous measures of gender identity within gender development research.

Here at the University of Washington we are characterizing one ton of NaI[Tl] crystal scintillator detectors for use in the COHERENT project. NaI[Tl] scintillating crystals detectors work by producing photons from the kinetic energy of charged particles passing through the scintillating material. COHERENT aims to detect coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, a novel interaction between neutrinos and matter that was first observed less than two years ago. It employs a large scale of scintillator detectors in order to record these events at an appreciable scale. Our characterization campaign allows us to group crystals with similar outputs by voltage which will determine the setup of our detectors once at ORNL. During this characterization, the crystals exhibited behaviors that correlated with the ambient temperature of the lab. The temperature dependence was first noticed during voltage gain characterization tests taken at different times of the day in the uncontrolled temperature environment of our lab. We expect the gain of our crystals to fit to a curve function, which breaks down if data is taken at different times of the day. The goal of this study is to understand the impact of temperature dependencies on our characterization campaign, and in particular to derive a relationship between voltage gain and temperature. I will present the data gathered toward this goal, and also our larger body of data on the relationship between light yield, voltage gain, peak resolution, and waveform rise time, as well as the techniques used to re-characterize previous crystals gain curve based on the derived relationship from this study.

High purity germanium (HPGe) detectors are an important technology in several leading experimental searches for dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay. Understanding the interaction of various types of radiation on the different surfaces of HPGe detectors is essential to developing methods to reject unwanted signals from radioactive background sources. I have taken a leading role in the construction and use of the Collimated Alphas, Gammas, and Electrons (CAGE) test stand at the University of Washington, whose goal is to evaluate the response of an HPGe detector to different types of radiation on its various surfaces. CAGE is a vacuum cryostat with an internal system of motors that move a radiation source while keeping the detector active. It requires the operation of a liquid nitrogen cryostat, vacuum pump, temperature sensors, and various radioactive sources, all of which must be integrated into a single data acquisition (DAQ) system. We are currently constructing this system, fabricating and installing parts, and are planning to take initial data with the HPGe detector in the summer. In this talk I will present the current status of the CAGE detector, as well as preliminary data from radiation signals in the detector.

Drinking water is essential in a person’s everyday life. However, not everyone has access to clean drinking water. This research explored the societal, economical, and environmental issues that are involved in helping a small system deliver clean and safe drinking water. The nearby community of Rollinsford, New Hampshire, was studied and worked with to help understand their issues and solve Rollinsford’s problems. As a small community that has approximately 2,600 people, Rollinsford wrestled with many challenges. Such as a need for optimization of their existing corrosion control due to recent lead and copper rule violations. This research explored the challenges faced by Rollinsford on an everyday basis. By expanding their website to include the latest information on lead and copper as well as answering their frequently asked questions, the community better understood the challenges it faced. To develop the best possible economic and environmental options for Rollinsford’s drinking water, we established a direct partnership with the town water facility operator and assisted him with laboratory research and water analyses. People in Rollinsford may not have the information they need about their water supply and might drink dirty water that could affect them for the rest of their lives. Therefore, this research helped inform a small town and provided the knowledge and experience that can then be applied to communities everywhere.

Over 350 million people are affected by major depression on a global scale according to the World Health Organization with an increasing economic impact of over $210 billion annually with a growth of 21.5% since 2005. The ability to switch behaviors or strategies when faced with chronic stress is an important determinant to the susceptibility and longevity of depression within people, also referred to as cognitive flexibility. The objective of this proposed study is to analyze the effects of the endogenous cannabinoid (ECB) system on cognitive flexibility through the lateral habenula. Cannula implant surgeries will be conducted on rats to input antagonist or agonist drugs into the brain. Behavioral tests will be conducted on rats to examine whether these manipulations will promote or deter cognitive flexibility.

Minimizing cognitive load is an integral part of human-centered design, where a more intuitive, easy to learn, and adaptive interface is desired. In this study, I implemented a program which was used to measure cognitive load using blink rates collected from pilots during takeoff and landing in a flight simulator. A GoPro camera was used to capture pilots’ blink rate. The program I wrote analyzed the GoPro video by first extracting the face of the pilot and then points on the face called facial landmarks. These facial landmarks are then rotated and scaled to standardize for analyses. The facial landmarks are fed into an Support Vector Machine (SVM), a type of machine learning model. To train the model I labeled around 60,000 frames that were sampled from the GoPro videos, as having pilot eyes “open” or “closed”. To predict blinks, the model is tasked with classifying each frame in a video as either eyes open or eyes closed. This data is then smoothed by a heuristic 20 frames. That is, if any two frames within a set of 20 frames is marked as closed, the entire series is marked as closed. The middle of each series of closed eye frames is then marked as the frame where the blink occurred. The output of the process is the video where each frame is marked as being the apex of a blink or not. I evaluated several machine learning models (random forests, gradient boosted decision trees, a multi-layered perceptron, and a support vector machine) and the support vector machine had the greatest precision and recall. This work is important because identifying peak workload tasks in aircraft cockpits contributes to the identification of areas that require better user interfaces and automation improvement to increase safety and efficiency of aircraft operations.

Dynamic coordination of animal motion depends on the interaction between the neuromuscular system and body mechanics. Changes in muscle length resulting from neuromuscular activation drive the control of locomotion. This project seeks to predict change in muscle length over time based on electrical activity in the complex physiological environment of a living organism. During energetically costly insect flight, the antagonistic shortening of the dorsal longitudinal muscles (DLMs) and dorsal ventral muscles (DVMs) deform the thorax to indirectly power wing flapping. Using electromyography (EMG), we recorded both DLM and DVM activity in vivo during tethered flight of the insect model Manduca sexta. Simultaneously, we captured high-speed video of thorax deformation to measure the change in length of the DLM muscles, which attach directly to the exoskeleton. Unlike other insects, in M. sexta there is a one-to-one relationship between muscle electrical activation and length-wise contraction, allowing direct comparison between these two temporal data sets. Using machine learning, we created a model to predict the amplitude and time course of changes in muscle length 𝓁(𝑡) based on characteristics of the EMG recording. Predicting downstream insect flight mechanics based on EMG data is an exciting application of machine learning which enables us both to better understand the factors influencing muscle length in vivo, and to connect multi-scale muscle structural data through the common link of EMG data. For example, we will predict organism-level changes in muscle length that would have occurred in existing data sets of sub-cellular muscle kinematics based on EMG data collected simultaneously.

LGBTQ+ students face overwhelmingly negative statistics in and out of school, here and across the world. Supportive teachers and the educational efforts they are involved in like GSAs (Gay Straight Alliance), inclusive curriculum, and specifically inclusive policies make significant positive effects on LGBTQ+ students. The teachers that can understand these students the most though are LGBTQ+ themselves. This project explores the following questions. 1. How do teachers who identify as LGBTQ+ interact with their public education system? 2. Do teachers who identify as LGBTQ+ feel supported in the daily work life and in their professional goals as teachers? 3. What insights do teachers who identify as LGTBQ+ have for their LGBTQ+ students? Through collaboration with various equity and educational leaders, primarily from Washington State and the UW College of Education, a Google Forms survey was created and shared through various digital platforms. Qualitative data was taken from the survey responses of 20 LGBTQ+ identifying teachers in the United States and 2 in China. Responses were analyzed using coding techniques where I deep read responses and categorized them by relationships and on a scale of trust. A majority of teachers were open about their identity and stated feeling supported by their schools. However, analysis revealed that most long answer text responses showed varying levels of mistrust: between teacher and faculty; teacher, student and the school community; as a factor of race and ethnicity; and learned from their life history from student to teacher. The suggested solutions are to recreate and implement discrimination and protective policies, curriculum, and space and face reforms that are specifically inclusive to the entire range of identities that LGBTQ+ individuals inhabit. Additionally, more research needs to be done in how policies and LGBTQ+ issues affect the symbiotic relationships between students and educators.

Students who speak English as a foreign language (EFLs) are pushed within U.S. academic settings to strive for “standard” English—an academic English heralding grammar “correctness” and adherence to rules. EFL curriculum prioritizes for “standard” English, but ignores the ways that terms like “standard” are exclusive, and rarely addresses how an EFL writer may use language in more inventive ways. How do we re-imagine the teaching of writing in ways that can not only help EFL writers in formal high-stakes writing, but also open the door to other creative uses of writing which need not adhere to such strict and increasingly hackneyed standards? My research will draw from many of the conversations focused on second-language acquisition and bilingual education, including work from scholars such as David Freeman and Sara Alvarez, to understand the most recent and effective approaches to teaching English as a second language, as well as discover what approaches to teaching creative writing hold untapped potential for EFL students to acquire new language skills. I will use The Chicago Manual of Style as a contemporary example of a style guide which prescribes “standard” grammar convention. Using an assortment of the grammar topics selected from Chicago for comparison, I will discuss examples of deviations from grammar conventions by writers from various linguistic backgrounds, including Safiya Sinclair, Ocean Vuong, and Mohsin Hamid. By investigating who makes English “standards,” how EFLs best learn, and how these standards have been broken for the better, I aim to create a subversive style guide for EFL writers which is useful for both formal and creative writing.

 As the number of American students who identify as mixed race or biracial continues to grow, the American education system still has yet to make the necessary changes that are responsive to the needs of this shifting demographic. While identifying students on their own terms is important for all students, for mixed-race students, the questions and potential disconnect between racial labelling and how one defines themselves is fundamental. This study examines the roles biracial categorization plays in today’s classrooms through lived experiences as remembered by college students. Many classrooms still struggle to incorporate the achievements of minorities, and, in some cases, the mixed identity of a historical figure is overlooked entirely. The inability to see themselves in the curriculum may be causing mixed-race students to feel invisible in the classroom and disconnected from their education (Joseph-Salisbury, 2017). Drawing on findings from survey results, focus groups, and individual interviews, this research project contributes to studies focusing on the schooling experiences of mixed-race students. Maria Root (1996) and Kristen Renn’s (2003) models of biracial categorization are used as a framework for the study, as the project re-assesses the inclusivity and adequacy of the biracial categories introduced. In the classroom, seemingly small interactions and events may be forcing students to choose one aspect of their identity, rather than celebrating both. Focusing on how the classroom setting impacts identity has the potential to make the classroom a more inclusive space that is responsive to the myriad of ways biracial students may or may not choose to identify.

Advanced oxidation treatment processes involve powerful and indiscriminate radical intermediates, including hydroxyl radicals (•OH) and sulfate radicals (SO4-•). Inefficiency in radical-driven treatment systems involves scavenging reactions where radicals react with non-target species in water and solids. Radical scavenging studies have been focused on soluble scavengers in the water and have not assessed radical scavenging by solids which are also present in oxidation treatment systems. The objective of this study was to quantify radical scavenging by solid surfaces. •OH were produced in iron (Fe)- and UV-activated hydrogen peroxide (Fe-AHP, UV-AHP) systems where the loss of rhodamine B (RhB) dye served as an indicator of •OH activity. The basis used to estimate the •OH surface scavenging rate constant (k≡S) were comparisons of treatment results between simple solids-free oxidation systems and more complex systems containing mineral solids. The solids-free system was based on Fe-AHP and UV-AHP reactions; the solids-amended systems were identical but contained different mineral species. Therefore, differences in the loss of RhB were attributed to •OH scavenging by the solid surfaces in the Fe-AHP and UV-AHP treatment systems. Alumina (Al₂O₃), silica (SiO₂), and montmorillonite (Al₂H₂O₁₂Si₄) (MMT) are solid minerals found in soil and aquifers. These minerals were used in this study to assess the solid surface scavenging rate constants. Preliminary results in the Fe-AHP system indicated that k≡S for silica (2.85×10⁶ 1/m²×s) was not statistically distinguishable from alumina (3.92×10⁶ 1/m²×s). k≡S values in the UV-AHP system for silica (4.50×10⁶ 1/m2×s) and alumina (7.45×106 1/m2×s) were greater than estimates in the Fe-AHP system and may be due to pH. k≡S,MMT (≤ 4.22×10⁵ 1/m²×s) was much less than k≡S for silica and alumina indicating k≡S is mineral-specific. A critical analysis suggests that radical scavenging by solid surfaces in aquifer systems is orders of magnitude greater than scavengers in the water.

Immanuel Kant, in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, describes how we come to find objects beautiful through an aesthetic judgement. In particular, he claims that an object is beautiful in virtue of its property that we cannot find a concept to match it with. This explains our contemplation when looking at art whereas an object such as a hammer does not motivate us to contemplate it. He also notes that beauty does not rely on the idea of perfection, which is to have the most of certain qualities. In contrast to beauty, Kant puts forth the idea of purposiveness, which is a consideration towards an object's existence being a part of the causation of some end. This means for an object to have a purposiveness would be for it to fit as a means to an end goal. Kant then puts forth the idea of there being two types of beauty, being adherent and pure. Pure beauty follows Kant's general agreement that beauty should be free from concepts. However, Kant experiences certain tensions in terms of adherent beauty, in which an object is beautiful because of its utility. This appears contradictory to Kant's previous commitments to a lack of concepts. I explore these tensions and consider possible Kantian explanations for this. I’ve begun study on Robert Clewis’ “The Origins of Adherent Beauty” to inform this topic as well. Clewis elaborates on the different approaches during that time to reconcile utility and beauty, noting several position Kant takes before assuming his current ideas. If we are able to resolve answers relating to adherent beauty, we will be able to design possible criteria for secondary adherent beauty. Doing so will also allow us to possibly add a purpose to different types of art depending on what concept they are the perfection of.

The Puget Sound is an economically and culturally important marine ecosystem, and insects are a little understood part of this ecosystem. Research suggests that insects are an important food source for near shore juvenile salmon which has wider ecological and conservation implications, including at higher trophic levels; while some work has been done in coastal British Columbia, little work has been done on the insects themselves within the environment of the Puget Sound. To close this biodiversity knowledge gap, field and museum collection surveys were and are being conducted to gain a better understanding of the insects of Puget Sound. Various hand sampling techniques were utilized including net, aspirator and insect vacuum. So far, 15 individual species of 6 families of 2 different orders of insects were confirmed present in Puget Sound in this study. Additionally, 10 species of 2 families of 2 different orders of insects were reported in similar conditions in the literature, but were not observed in this survey or found in museum collections. The most abundant order was Diptera. In all, 14 beaches on the Puget Sound have assessed and some contained unique species. Further studies, in seasonality (and food availability), habitat substrate preference, insect behavior, insect population dynamics and a deeper look at predation of marine insects by juvenile salmon could be investigated based off the work done in this study.

The human adaptive immune system is composed of B and T cell lymphocytes. Of the latter, these cells are further differentiated and identified by the presence of CD (cluster of differentiation) molecules. CD molecules are expressed on the surface of the cell and can range from receptors essential to the cell’s functionality to glycoproteins marking distinct stages in their maturation. For example, CD45RA is expressed on naïve T cells while the presence of CCR7 marks the change to effector memory cells. Flow cytometry can be used as a tool to aid in detecting multiple types of T cells in a peripheral blood sample both rapidly and accurately. The use of 10-color flow cytometry in the clinical laboratory can provide simultaneous detection of ten cell markers to help differentiate the populations of T cells in a patient. Seattle Children’s Hospital utilizes this technology to monitor immune status in patients with auto-immune disorders, immunodeficiencies and post transplantation. Extended T-cell immunophenotyping by flow cytometry is not a mainstream clinical test. Since only a few laboratories offer this service, samples are often received from sites outside the hospital. With distance comes the issue of peripheral blood stability, especially regarding the loss of CD markers among the T-cell population over time. This study will compare the stability of T cell subsets through peripheral blood samples collected in EDTA vs sodium heparin collection tubes through four days of daily T cell immunophenotyping testing, as well as to determine the last day of stability for each T cell subset. The results will help form the guidelines regarding specimen stability for transport and the availability of offering this test to both adult and pediatric patients across the globe and help aid the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases and conditions that these patients face.

Grasslands cover approximately 20% of Earth’s land today and spread gradually worldwide in subtropical areas during the last 40 million years. Pollen data from sedimentary rocks in Myanmar suggest that grasslands might have existed there as early as 25 million years ago but did not spread to other Asian regions until much later, 10-6 million years ago. To fully understand the ecology of these early Asian grasslands, I reconstructed the paleoenvironments of Myanmar during the late Oligocene and early Miocene, 25 to 18 million years ago. I used two paleoenvironmental proxies on paleosol samples from Burmese sedimentary rocks: carbon isotopic composition of bulk sediment and phytolith analysis. The bulk carbon isotopic composition in paleosol is an indirect insight into the local aridity and can help reconstructing soil productivity; phytoliths–silica bodies deposited inside living plant tissue that remain in the soil after the tissue decays, forming fossils—when extracted, can help identify the grass types and their relative abundance in the ecosystem. Documenting the characteristics and paleoenvironmental setting of these early grasslands will help us understanding why they did not spread until millions of years later in Asia –and if this timing of ecological expansion is linked to the regional evolution of monsoonal intensity.

I have always wanted to see someone that looks like me in a museum. This desire to be represented in society is something people fight for. I want to create work that empowers cultures and features that are not represented. I want to depict those that have been colonized in the same way their colonizers have been historically celebrated, through paintings. This series of paintings will go beyond just my culture but others that share similar wounds and scars from colonization. Addressing problems that come with colonization such as assimilation, patriarchy, cultural disconnect. The process of my paintings is finding a model that inspires me to paint. The model will most likely have features that don’t follow these western idealizations. Then I look into the model’s heritage and find clothing, embellishments, weaponry from their culture with the use of the Burke museum’s data base. I begin to draw the model adorned with these objects. Hours of preliminary work goes into composing these objects with the model. I will have set up the model in a pose that was popular in western paintings depicting royalty or power. I want to flip these preconceived notions of these colonized nations on its head. I invite the discussion of cultural identity and colonized beauty. The goal is to preserve these cultural aesthetics that were pre-colonial. I want to come out of this project with a deeper knowledge of who I am. I also want to have a body of work that provides the viewer insight into my culture and many other cultures that lack representation.

My pieces are an exploration of how characters form manga and comics intersect with my own identity. The first piece is called the “Power of Uchiha Snake”. I am the character Uchiha Sasuke from Naruto who possesses the Uchiha bloodline special visual power Sharingans. The second piece is called “Death to Wayne(Wei)”. Adapted from the Deadpool movie poster. Wayne, and “Wei” is the last character of my Chinese name. Deadpool has super power of infinite regeneration. Although he runs his mouth, no matter how mad he gets his enemies, they won’t be able to destroy him. For these two pieces, I used the techniques and visual patterns of capturing the geometric shapes of human figures, and the rules of composing art works, and analyzing the shading to get how the light hits on the figures as well as the perspective analysis. Figure study is when human figures exist visually as geometric shape, proportions of figures are supposed to be treated as lines, lines of geometric shapes. In terms of the study of art history, European art is directly derived from the Christianity trinity. The triangle pattern is the central balance of human figure, as human figures are derived from the God himself. The lines form the geometric balance and then the balance itself forms human figures into perfect combination. The light determines the perspective significantly for the dimensions closer to the viewer are thicker while the further side of the dimension are relatively vague in visual. It creates the perspectives of human figures on the drawing. In the photographic term, it’s called “depth of field”. This enables the figures on paper to be dimensional and closer to real human figures. My conclusion of the drawings as present, is that human eyes is an interesting tool, that gifted the mankind.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by clinically recognized deficits in social communication, repetitive behaviors, and restricted interests. While the etiological underpinnings of ASD have yet to be determined, biological indicators of the disorder (e.g. biomarkers) hold promise as valuable diagnostic methods. Neurological biomarker initiatives are particularly essential in their potential to pinpoint the neural activity that gives rise to the disorder’s hallmarks. Resting state electroencephalography (EEG) studies suggest altered default signaling associated with ASD, with particular deviations in the power of the alpha frequency band. However, previous work has produced contradictory findings regarding the directionality of these abnormal power patterns, which motivate the need to better understand the implications of certain methodological decisions. In this study, we acquired EEG recordings during resting state paradigms in individuals with ASD and a neurotypical control group. We hypothesized that individuals with ASD would display reduced alpha activity, in comparison. We suspect that activity will be reduced, both when analyzed by peak power and average power over the entire frequency band.

 Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is associated with both acute and chronic alcohol-related harm. Marginalized populations, such as those experiencing homelessness, are both less inclined to successfully achieve abstinence and at higher risk of experiencing alcohol-related harm. Identifying strategies for safer use are thus particularly important for this population. To this end, we analyzed interview data collected from 86 adults experiencing homelessness and AUD who received harm reduction treatment (HaRT-A) during the parent randomized controlled trial. Participants were administered the demographic and alcohol measures at baseline (week 0) and were provided with HaRT-A, at which point interventionists introduced a list of safer-drinking strategies. Participants’ endorsement of safer-drinking strategies was assessed at HaRT-A appointments at weeks 0, 1, 2, and 6. For the current analysis, we conducted a mixed methods approach to characterize and evaluate endorsement and implementation of safer-drinking strategies at week 0 and week 6. Findings indicated use of strategies to buffer the effects of alcohol (e.g., eating while drinking), change the manner in which one drinks (e.g., counting drinks), and reduce alcohol use. Quantitative analysis indicated all participants were able to successfully endorse and implement safer-drinking strategies over the course of the study. These findings support that people experiencing homelessness and AUD adopt strategies that minimize alcohol-related harm, including ways that change the amount and manner of drinking and buffering the effects of alcohol. This extends the findings from our parent study among chronically homeless individuals to people experiencing transitional or episodic homelessness.

In human-robot interaction, virtual reality (VR) provides strong potential to aid in the design of social robots. In order to understand teens' perceptions of, and interactions with social robots, we utilized a human-centered design methodology to develop a collaborative VR game for teens. The design process involved interaction studies with a local high school in three phases: (1) Brainstorming and Sketching environments on Paper, (2) Card sort game play for exploring robot design options (3) Developing and usability testing the low-fidelity VR game play. The design goals were to create an inviting game context for teens to engage in collaboration and to elicit and capture the details of teen-teen and teen-robot interactions within VR. From the design process, we found that (1) the human-centered design process engaged teens in the design process (2) teens expressed positive emotions during collaboration and (3) the asymmetric design of the VR game allowed for not only strong engagement, but also unexpected role play as teens identified themselves as the robot during gameplay. Through the design and development of this VR game, we recognized the effectiveness of a VR platform as not only a design tool, but also as an engaging collaborative platform for gathering interaction data from teens. Given this potenial, we anticipate several future applications for the study of teen-teen interaction through VR collaboration.

Self-disclosing personal stress is an effective way of managing stress. Previous research has shown that high school students disclose more when prompted by robot that discloses vulnerability. Thus, disclosure reciprocity in human-robot interaction (HRI) provides a promising way of offering stress intervention. The current study examines how different types of disclosure from a social robot affect reciprocal human disclosure and other user outcomes through a stress-disclosing activity. Using a between-subject design, 36 young adults were randomly assigned to converse and engage in a stress-disclosing activity with a robot that shared technical facts (technical condition), feelings from other users (by-proxy condition), or feelings from itself (emotional condition). We hypothesize that emotional robot disclosure will elicit longer and deeper participant disclosure, and higher robot attributional ratings (such as likeability, perceived safety, user satisfaction, and intention for future use) than technical disclosure or by-proxy disclosure. Participant self-disclosure was measured by word count and depth of response during the robot interaction. User satisfaction, intention for future use, robot likeability, and perceived safety were captured using 5-point Likert scales. Our multivariate generalized linear model revealed that participants who experienced the technical robot disclosure condition gave the robot significantly higher rating for perceived safety, but no significant differences in other variables, such as length and depth of participant disclosure among robot disclosure conditions. Surprisingly, we found that people with higher perceived stress significantly disclosed less in both breadth and depth, and rated the robot as less likeable, had lower future intention to use and user satisfaction. This study demonstrates the complexity of designing robot for stress-intervention and the importance of capturing perceived stress as a predictor for stress intervention in HRI. Future research will examine how high stress and low stress group might perceive and interact with a social robot differently in long-term repeated interactions.

T-cell immunotherapy is a treatment utilising the body’s own immune system to target cancer cells. Dr. Marie Bleakley’s immunology lab at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center uses T-cell immunotherapies to treat hematologic malignancies — blood cancers which include acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). These treatments rely on the identification of neoantigens (cancer-specific gene mutations) which are potentially highly cancer-specific and are promising as targets for new immunotherapies. My project will be in the identification of these neoantigens, under the supervision and mentorship of Dr. Melinda Biernacki, a research associate in Dr. Bleakley’s lab. My project will focus on generating in silico and preliminary in vitro data for candidate neoantigens in high-risk MDS.
The project will have two parts. First, the identification of candidate MDS neoantigens using human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-binding prediction algorithms to identify mutated amino acid sequences (peptides) that have a high probability of binding HLA molecules. Because T-cell antigens consist of a peptide-HLA molecule complex, this step will filter out mutant peptides that are unlikely to be recognized by T cells. Second, in vitro assays will determine which candidate neoantigens are immunogenic (can actually be recognized by the body’s T-cells). HLA-binding predictions do not reliably predict immunogenicity of candidate neoantigens, so in vitro testing is needed to assess T-cell recognition. The end product will be the identification of potential T-cell targets from mutations in various genes that are shared in subgroups of MDS patients that could be used to develop immunotherapies for MDS.