The Toba Batak sub-ethnic group in Indonesia is known for their weaving of the traditional textile ulos. At the same time that they uphold ancient Batak traditions of textile weaving, the Toba Batak people are at the nexus of a growing textile industry on national and international scales. As Western interests further influence Indonesia's economy, Indonesian concerns about the production of ulos become more and more urgent to address. The concern that ulos will be replaced by modern, Western styles of clothing and production gives rise to a more pressing fear that weaving traditions will fade from cultural awareness entirely.

In my presentation, I share the uniquely Indonesian strategies utilized by the Toba Batak people to conserve their cultural knowledge and traditional weaving practices. These strategies keep in mind the shifting trends in the textile industry in order to keep ulos relevant, yet are still respectful of Batak tradition. Primary methods of my research include interviews with traditional weavers, with weavers who supervised modern machine looms, the local non-weaving Toba Batak population, Batak culture experts, and Batak culture conservationists. Secondary research includes the work of Sandra Niessen, who has conducted large scale studies on Batak ulos and culture, and news sources such as The Jakarta Post.

Green burial focuses on the interment of the body of a dead person in a fashion that supports decomposition so that the body can be naturally recycled. Green burial has grown exponentially within the past ten years and are now offered by hundreds of providers across the U.S., making it an increasingly popular alternative to conventional funerary customs, such as casket burial and cremation. While recent research has explored the conditions under which the green burial industry has become normalized and competitive, and the types of predictors of green burial support, we know little about the experience of participants and the characteristics of green burial ritual. To what extent have funeral participants internalized the industry’s goals of conservation and fostering an emotional bond with nature? Do green burial rites reinforce community among the living as with conventional funeral rites? Or does the ritual appeal mostly to participants sympathetic to environmentalism? To answer these questions, I conducted ethnographic interviews with green burial workers and participants and observations of green burial rituals. The results of my study furthered our understanding of the green burial as a growing social movement and new meaning making enterprise and revealed how supporters derived distinctive meaning within green burial.

Seabirds are often used as markers of ecosystem health due to their heavy dependence on the base of the food chain. The Alcidae family consists of small, diving birds who feed exclusively within the water column and rely on the sea year-round. Because of this, many view alcids as the only “true” seabirds. A research apprenticeship at UW’s Friday Harbor Laboratories on the pelagic ecosystem, Pelagic Ecosystem Function, has observed all seabirds since 2004, with consistent data since 2013. Alcids have been largely ignored in previous Pelagic Ecosystem Function studies, as the Common Murre (Uria aalge) artificially inflates the alcid family data due to their high abundance within the San Juan Channel. Upon removal of this species, it is found that non-Common Murre alcids are declining at a higher rate than any other seabird family within the channel, with a near-linear decline since 2013. In order to investigate the leading drivers of population decline, variables regarding food availability and habitat were collected in the form of chlorophyll, photosynthetically active radiation, and sea surface temperature. Compelling correlations were found between non-Common Murre alcid density and photosynthetically active radiation, as well as between chlorophyll and sea surface temperature. The data presented here is important not only for the mitigation of local ecosystem degradation, but also due to the consistency with global trends of seabird populations.

One of the Ultracold Atoms Group’s themes is to study the interaction between trapped ultracold atom mixtures. Certain experiments, such as the study of spin-dependent Feshbach resonance, requires us to select one specific nuclear spin state of the atom from the mixture. This process is achieved by the optical Stern-Gerlach technique, where we use the laser to produce the magnetic field gradient. However, this technique requires us to use the imaging path with relatively poor imaging quality due to, for example, vibrations of the optics. When we normalize these atom images, these vibrations introduce misalignment between images and thus unwanted noises. Hence my project is focused on stabilizing the imaging process by a software implementation of imaging alignment scheme. The code I developed can be seen as the analog to the inner product of two vectors, which characterizes the extent of misalignment between two vectors. This scheme has increased the efficiency of the experimental procedure and at least doubled the signal-to-noise ratio. Its easy implementation provides another route to reduce noises in the data of similar experiments. 

Homelessness rates among the adolescent population have steadily risen over the past decade, and homelessness is shown to be correlated with a variety of detrimental outcomes. Though prior studies of this population have focused on participant recruitment as well as the representativeness of samples, there has been little work regarding designing survey content to optimize participant honesty, retention, and willingness to divulge often sensitive details about themselves. As a part of a larger investigation on youth/family engagement with homelessness prevention services, this research project uses youth focus group responses to explore how, in conducting surveys, questions can be worded to increase the likelihood of obtaining an earnest and accurate response. We used data from six focus groups across two locations to gather information from housing instable adolescents. The focus groups presented example research surveys and asked participants to provide responses on whether the survey items were well-received and easy to understand, among other factors. Through a grounded qualitative analysis of the responses provided, we determined that there are topics that have a high probability of causing confusion and therefore reducing construct validity, or that may cause participants to become guarded because of their sensitive nature. To address these issues, we recommend phrasing questions to be unambiguous by being hyperspecific—for example, asking how often caretakers give praise for good deeds rather than a general question about pride in their children. We also suggest phrasing topics likely to evoke either a strong positive or negative emotional response in a more neutral manner or, when they are not strictly relevant, eliminating the questions altogether—for instance, instead of asking about whether someone is seeing a counselor directly, which could be a source of stigma and shame, asking instead about whether they have a professional that they can trust with their personal issues.

Since the discovery of extrasolar planets (planets orbiting another star) in the early 1990’s, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been confirmed to exist by January 2020 according to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. We are searching for trends between exoplanets’ atmospheric compositions and their physical and orbital properties. To do so, we gather and analyze numerous publications of transmission spectroscopy data on the atmospheres of these planets. The focus parameter space of each search we conduct is expanded incrementally throughout the research process. This expansion requires remaking plots and reanalyzing data, which is a step that has the potential to be simplified. Another problem was needing to input data that would later be used for representation manually. This allowed for the possibility of errors in the data. We also were not able to easily represent all the aspects of the exoplanets we desired to in our graphs and plots, such as stellar type and atmospheric absorption of elements. In order to accomplish these tasks in a more effective and efficient way, the team is automating the data collection, expansion, and representation processes through developing computer programs that are used alongside database queries. This includes developing code that will reduce the amount of human interaction with the data aggregation and representation steps. We will present the improvements introduced with the SQL Server database to store our large data intake and query relationships between planetary properties. Python code is used in SQL Server Management Studio to visually represent these relationships in plots and graphs. This makes for a more efficient pipeline from information intake to representation, which can then be used for planetary analysis. These results will be included in the Habitable Zone Gallery, making it accessible for the community of researchers who wish to use the information as well.

In recent decades, researchers have begun to learn about exoplanets, which are planets that orbit a star outside of our solar system. Exoplanets are very diverse in their properties, for example, their masses, periods, radii, average temperature, and average densities. They also show a variety of elements and molecules in their atmospheres. One of the ways that we use to analyze the composition of their atmospheres is by using transmission spectroscopy. In our research group we are interested in learning whether there are any trends between the physical and orbital properties of the exoplanets, the host stars, and the atmospheric composition of the exoplanets. Our study centers on exoplanets with up to 3.5-days orbits and radii between 1 to 2 times the radius of Jupiter, the so called “hot Jupiters”. The Habitable Zone Gallery is a website which provides information about planetary parameters and how much time each planet spends in its stars habitable zone. The habitable zone is the region in which exoplanets can be found where they have the ability to hold liquid water on their surface. This region is a specific range of circumstellar distance from the host star depending on the host star. We will present the results of this study, utilizing data from the Habitable Zone Gallery, Astrophysics Data System for published data on each exoplanet, and NASA Exoplanet data archive for additional information. We have focused on studying the wavelength range from 3000 to 17000 Å, which is where absorption by sodium, potassium, and water can be found. Any trends between physical, orbital and atmospheric properties will be useful for future selection of targets.

  Throughout his administration from 1998-2002, Colombian president Andrés Pastrana collaborated with the United States in Plan Colombia, a foreign aid program whose stated purpose was to eradicate the drug trade in Colombia through US military assistance and social development programs. Plan Colombia has been predominantly studied through the exploration of the economic reasons that have prompted US officials to acknowledge the Plan as a successful policy, regardless of its exacerbation of violence in Colombia and its failure to eradicate the drug trade. The lack of scholarship on Plan Colombia from the Colombian perspective fosters a narrative of US imperial imposition. Although this narrative is clearly justifiable, it disregards Colombian agency, and it obfuscates the internal racial and social hierarchies that sustained the Plan's implementation. Therefore, to explore the Colombian State’s project behind Plan Colombia, this research analyzed the Plan through a framework of intervention by invitation. Furthermore, it investigated how the Colombian government utilized hegemonic racial and social hierarchies to facilitate said intervention. Through detailed analysis of Pastrana's presidential speeches, I propose that through Plan Colombia his administration conflated a rhetoric of peace with participation in a modern neoliberal extractive economy. Colombia invited US intervention because it needed its aid funds to build the infrastructure and train the labor force necessary to bring Colombia to the fore of neoliberalism, which would consequently resolve the armed conflict. Furthermore, I argue that through such a conflation, his government instrumentalized Colombian social and racial hierarchies to mobilize impoverished campesinos to become the labor force necessary to sustain a licit neoliberal extractive economy that could attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to Colombia's agricultural and mining sectors. Therefore, this research illuminates the rearticulation of 19th century land struggles and racial and social hierarchies that have historically subjected—and continue to subject—campesinos to political violence.

The increased development of space programs globally has led to increased funding for interplanetary sampling rovers, like MINERVA-II-2. However, in order for these autonomous space probes to reliably explore rough and unpredictable surfaces on other celestial bodies, they require more versatile and energy efficient robotics. Bio-inspired structures following the rigid origami design approach have the potential to be more compact, adaptable, and structurally efficient than conventional devices. The Leafout origami structure exhibits bistability, meaning that it can be configured in a stable-stored or stable-deployed shape without having an external power supply maintaining its configuration. Due to these unique features, the Leafout structure is capable of storing the potential energy generated from motions like jumping to repeatedly actuate with reduced energy inputs into the system. First, we corroborated dynamic simulation results with fabrications of cm-scaled prototypes composed of Bristol, PET, and Nylon as well as mm-scaled prototypes composed of Carbon-fiber-reinforced Polymers and Kapton. To emulate locomotion results from our Project Chrono physics engine simulations, we utilized frequency-based actuators attached to the Leafout's main crease lines to demonstrate repeated jumping motions. Attaching actively controlled small-scale servo motors allowed the Leafout structure to repeatedly jump in any direction on a 2-dimensional plane. Designing more structurally efficient systems in this manner may be the most practical solution to addressing both critical power and versatility limitations in autonomous space probes.

Since they were first discovered in the 1990’s, technological advances have led to a rapid growth in the study of exoplanets, which orbit stars outside of our solar system. Sodium was first detected in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in 2001 with transmission spectroscopy, and a limited but growing number of the 4100+ exoplanets which have been discovered to date have had their atmospheres probed with this technique. Despite the growing number, few studies exist with the aim of comparing the physical properties of different planets and atmospheric information. The goal of our research is to gather previously published data in order to characterize trends relating exoplanet physical properties to their atmospheric compositions. Our research has started with a focus on hot Jupiters: gas giant exoplanets which orbit very close to their host stars. We have expanded the parameter region of interest we are studying, and are working on streamlining the search so that results can be shared more easily with the community through the Habitable Zone Gallery website.

Cannabidiol (CBD), an active compound in marijuana that provides diverse health benefits such as treating epilepsy, anxiety, inflammation, and chronic pain, is increasingly used in the United States. However, little is known about the pharmacological effects of CBD on neurological diseases. Although the chemical-induced dimerization (CID) system, in which dimerization binder and anchor binder dimerize only in the presence of small molecules, has been well established, very few studies have applied it as a biosensor, especially to detect CBD. This hinders our exploration of the medical values of CBD. Here we utilize the nanobody-based CID system to develop a novel CBD biosensor, consisting of split nano luciferase - a reporter protein, CBD induced CID - a sensor protein, and glycine-serine linker - a protein linker, which ensures the biosensor efficiency. We validated the biosensor between Dimerization binder 1(DB1) and CBD anchor 14 (CA-14) both in vitro and in vivo. From our previous in vitro data, we predict that the biosensor containing Dimerization binder 4 (DB4), an analog to DB1, can detect CBD at a higher concentration in vivo than DB1, which detects better at lower CBD concentrations. We use split-luciferase assays to test the binding affinities of DB4 for a better biosensor with a broader range of drug concentration-response evaluation. This study demonstrates an effective method to maximize the CBD biosensor system, extending the applications onto detecting drugs in several brain regions, different cell populations, and even subcellular components, thus, furthering the understanding of physiological mechanisms and therapeutic potentials of CBD.

 Chemically induced dimerization (CID) systems, in which a pair of proteins only dimerizes in the presence of a specific ligand, have wide use for the biosensing of small molecules, such as drugs, metabolites, and signaling molecules. However, few CID systems are currently available, and thus, until recently, little work has been done to design effective and highly specific CID-based biosensors, limiting the diversity of our small molecule detection toolkit. Previously, we established a highly efficient and generalizable method for de novo engineering of new CID systems, and demonstrated its effectiveness by designing a CID system specific to cannabidiol (CBD). Here, we engineer circularly permutated green fluorescent proteins (cpGFP’s) to have the cannabidiol CID system flanking it, allowing for small molecule detection via protein dimerization to be translated into measurable changes in fluorescent signals. As an experimental platform to screen high-performance designs, we employ the yeast display technique, where yeast cells are engineered to display on their surfaces any cpGFP-CID biosensor constructs we wish to screen. The lengths and compositions of the linker regions connecting the cpGFP and the dimerization proteins play a crucial role in the efficiency of the biosensor. Currently, we seek to understand what linker lengths and contributions help optimize biosensor performance. Initially, we introduced linkers with lengths of about 20 residues that are composed of alternating glycine and serine residues. Biosensor constructs with these linkers exhibited minimal, baseline performance. We generate biosensor construct libraries by mutating the linker regions, displaying this library on yeast cells, and performing high-throughput screening to identify optimal linker lengths and compositions for our biosensor constructs. Afterwards, we will validate the biosensor’s performance in vivo and in vitro. Our research will not only contribute to fluorescent and CID-based biosensor design and study, but will also aid in the expansion of clinical small-molecule detection toolkits.

Kaposi's Sarcoma associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) is an oncogenic human herpesvirus and the etiological agent of Kaposi's Sarcoma (KS), a cancer that afflicts HIV-positive individuals worldwide and is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa. KS tumor cells, known as spindle cells, originate from latent KSHV infection of endothelial cells. We have previously used a phosphor-proteomics approach to identify changes in the phosphorylation state of proteins during KSHV infection. We identified Platelet/Endothelial Cell Adhesion Molecule-1 (PECAM-1) to be significantly phosphorylated during KSHV infection as compared to mock infected cells. PECAM-1 phosphorylation leads to a cascade of signaling that promotes cell adhesion, migration, and cell survival, however, the role PECAM-1 plays to aid KSHV infection is currently unknown. To determine whether PECAM-1 expression and phosphorylation is important for KS pathogenesis, I propose to assess differences in gene expression levels with RT-qPCR, validate phosphorylation levels in vitro via western blot, and generate CRISPR-lentiviral constructs to knock out PECAM-1 and express PECAM-1 isoform variants in endothelial cells. These experiments will paint a more complete picture of how PECAM-1 interacts with endothelial cellular processes during KSHV infection. Many rounds of RT-qPCR have been conducted to asses gene expression levels with highly variable results. This indicates that some uncontrolled factor in the cell culture process is affected PECAM-1 expression levels. I hypothesize that cell density is the cause behind this variability and plan to use western blotting to elucidate differences in PECAM-1 protein levels in low and highly confluent cells.

Tracing the lineage of individual cells within a multicellular organism has been one of the key struggles of modern developmental biology. The ability to trace the differentiation of individual cells over various timescales would give extensive insight into many fields of biology. Techniques using large scale genomics based on natural DNA mutations have been used in the past. However, in recent years, novel techniques using CRISPR-Cas9, and more recently recombinase, have been developed to study cell lineage in a more precise and dynamic manner. Each of these methods have different specifications in their readout methods, time-dependent resolution, spatial integrity, and accuracy. I have constructed a review summarizing these methods, and will present their impact on dynamic cell lineage tracing. While most of this research has been done in animals, I will also propose a design for cell lineage tracing in plants based on these reviewed methods.

Ongoing research has been conducted to design optimal routes for vaccine distribution to health centers in Mozambique. Distance between health centers is needed in order to construct routes, but is not easily available. My objective is to easily generate distances between health centers, given their geographic coordinates, and to visualize the optimal routes on a map. Using a conglomeration of tools including Python, API, OpenRouteService and Excel, I was able to read an Excel file of latitudes and longitudes for health centers, separated into provinces and districts, and produce an Excel matrix of distances from health center to health center as well as an API map visualizing the routes to and from the given health centers. My Python code utilizes OpenRouteService with an API that provides data including distance, travel time, direction, maps, etc. OpenRouteService also allows the user to specify their route preferences. We can choose the road type, the speed limit, the time of travel, the mode of transportation, etc. The created distance matrix and map will be used in an interactive route optimization tool. The route optimization tool allows end users to efficiently distribute vaccines using available vehicles. The distance matrix gives the tool correct distances between health centers and the map gives visualizations of the distances. The optimization tool provides routes for efficient distribution and my Python code maps the routes for easy interpretation of the delivery system. Moving forward, we want to make the code more user-friendly, so anyone can create a new and improved version.