Benefits of nature on children’s health and development are becoming increasingly recognized across the globe. Norway is revered for putting this research into practice, centering nature in early childhood education and setting precedents for ways in which preschools and kindergartens can get their children moving beyond the traditional classroom and up into the trees, down into the mud, and everything in between. Norway has taken a progressive stance on multicultural learning as well. The Norwegian Framework Plan for the Content and Tasks of Kindergartens defines education as an inclusive cultural arena to promote respect for the diversities of all children. I explored this intersection as a landscape architecture student. How might nature itself be important to children’s development and expression of cultural values? In what ways was learning facilitated differently outdoors vs indoors, and what implications might that have for the design of outdoor learning environments? Over the course of three weeks in Trondheim, Norway, I visited three barnehage (preschools) and conducted interviews on the connections between the landscape and the Framework Plan’s goal of inclusion. I found that outdoor environments could be less culturally coded than indoor classrooms, creating an unfamiliarity conducive to curiosity. This curiosity, coupled with undefined materials found in nature or man made objects placed outside of typical contexts, encouraged children to use play to design, communicate, and participate in imaginary worlds together, rather than having to rely on language or common frames of reference. Consequently, some Norwegian educators saw nature as a critical component of promoting children’s inclusion, tolerance, respect, and understanding of the diversities among one another, a revelation frequently overlooked in the U.S. More broadly, my findings point to that missed opportunity, where educational goals for children are similar but neglect serious consideration of the landscape as part of the approach.

Chronic respiratory infections and diseases are the third leading cause of death globally. The Frevert lab studies the protein versican (Vcan), an extracellular matrix proteoglycan, whose expression is highly upregulated during lung injury and inflammation. However, it is unclear whether this upregulation is an anti-inflammatory or a pro-inflammatory response. We are testing the hypothesis that the cellular source of Vcan determines its inflammatory actions; versican from myeloid cells is anti-inflammatory but versican from stromal cells is pro-inflammatory. Vcan deletion in our cells of interest can test this hypothesis. To do this we have generated Vcan^fl/fl genetically engineered mice, which allow for conditional removal of functional versican with Cre Recombinase. Cre excises versican’s exon 4, recombining exons 3-5 and creating a premature stop codon. This produces a truncated non-functional form of versican. The goal of this research project is the development of cell-specific protocols for in vitro deletion of versican in both myeloid cells (bone marrow-derived macrophages) and stromal cells (lung explant fibroblasts). These protocols will allow for further evaluation of versican’s role in the inflammatory response when different cell types are confronted by a bacterial or viral agonist. So far, I’ve been investigating the dose response and time course for exposure of macrophages to Cre to optimize its efficiency and have been able to demonstrate by qPCR that intact versican decreases and non-functional versican increases. The inflammatory response is quantified through qPCR analysis of the fold increase of Ifn-b compared to the house-keeping gene MRPL32. Ifn-b is a cytokine released by the innate immune system in response to viral pathogens. Next, I will investigate the conditions necessary for efficient Cre deletion of Vcan in fibroblasts. These experiments allow us to investigate the effects of Vcan made by different cell types furthering our understanding Vcan’s function during injury and inflammation.

The International Panel on Climate Change report of Global Warming of 1.5°C (October 2018) strongly recommends unprecedented scale of systems transitions to ensure little to no overshoot of global warming of 1.5°C. In the interest of examining educational efforts towards this reality, this qualitative study is designed to understand how the field of early childhood education is adapting to living with climate change and preparing early learners for their future under the guiding principle of the required systematic change that must be met to mitigate the effects of the human ecological footprint on the environment. This qualitative study features a cross-cultural comparison of early childhood professionals’ ideas about the role that early childhood teachers play in helping children learn foundational ideas about climate change. Three participants from Washington state and 4 participants from Trondheim, Norway were interviewed and the content of the interviews was analyzed and coded for themes. Participants all had early learning teaching experience, but their roles varied from State policymaking, teacher educators, and early learning educators. Participants described barriers in supporting early learners’ understanding of, relationship with, and caring for the environment and how the field of early education can be intentional in supporting these goals. Participants identified lack of educator knowledge, lack of access to nature, family emphasis on spending time in nature, the risk of scaring children, emphasis on academic readiness, and cultural emphasis on environment as the main barriers to effectively preparing early learners for their complex future. All the participants felt children were capable of understanding topics related to sustainable practices, cause-effect, and co-existing with the other life on this planet. The next steps of this work is to determine how to best prepare early educators in supporting the goals identified by participants through professional development or teacher preparatory programs.

The spread of grasslands 26-22 million years ago has been linked to global climate changes in the late Oligocene to early Miocene. The pattern of vegetation change was established analyzing assemblages of microscopic plant silica (phytoliths) extracted from sediment samples from the Central Great Plains of North America. It is often presumed that as open-habitat grasses became abundant, vegetation structure concurrently transitioned from closed forests to open landscapes. However, recent work in the Cenozoic of Patagonia has pointed to a decoupling of grass dominance and habitat openness, each independently driven by climatic conditions. We set out to test if a similar decoupling occurred in the Central Great Plains by means of an a-taxonomic phytolith proxy using phytoliths produced in non-grass epidermal cells. Work in modern plants and soil assemblages has shown that the size and degree of undulation in these phytoliths (quantified by, respectively, Phytolith Area, PA, and the Phytolith Undulation Index, PUI) is correlated with the amount of light in the environment, reflecting habitat openness (measured as Leaf Area Index, LAI). We measure the PA and PUI of phytolith samples from Nebraska, dating 35 to 17 Ma, to reconstruct the regional LAI over time and place time constraints on the opening of habitats. By comparing this timeline to that of the rise to dominance of grasses, we hope to better understand changing vegetation and linked climatic conditions in Cenozoic North America.

A cardinal feature of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is avoidance of trauma-related stimuli. This avoidance is implicated in the development of PTSD. Other common features of PTSD include anhedonia, a loss of pleasure, as well as anxiety, and problematic substance use. Anhedonia may impact avoidance by decreasing motivation to approach and substance use is conceptualized as a form of avoidance. Trait anxiety is defined as a predisposition to response with feelings of apprehension, dread, and tension. Higher levels of trait anxiety have been found to predict avoidant decisions. The current study investigates the relationship between self-report avoidance and anhedonia, substance use, and trait anxiety. Participants will be recruited through community advertisement as a part of a larger experimental study. Participants will complete self-reports to assess constructs of interest, including the Snaith Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS), Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (MEAQ), the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test (CUDIT), the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), and the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). We hypothesize higher self-report avoidance will be associated with higher levels of anhedonia, higher substance use, and higher trait anxiety. Through their impact on avoidance, these constructs may help explain why some individuals are more likely to develop psychopathology following trauma. Targeting anhedonia, substance use, and anxiety-related cognitions after traumatic events could lead to decreased avoidance behavior and lower rates of PTSD development overall. Additionally, these constructs could prove to be important secondary clinical targets which help to attenuate avoidance behavior in those with PTSD.

 Seed dispersal is a crucial phase of plant lifecycles. Effective dispersal is important to the ecosystem as a whole because it affects composition of the community, ecological succession, and response to climate change. Given the importance of seed dispersal, understanding the factors that contribute to the evolution of varied dispersal modes and promote convergence on specific dispersal strategies is particularly important to understanding grass ecology because it may allow us to understand the relationship between dispersal mode and habitat. In this study, we are interested in dispersal modes within the onion grasses (Melica), a small genus of perennial grasses, primarily distributed in temperate regions. The onion grasses are found in a wide variety of habitats and possess a remarkable diversity of seed dispersal strategies. These traits make them a useful case study for better understanding the factors that influence the evolution of dispersal strategies in grasses. We are testing the hypothesis that evolution in traits associated with seed dispersal is correlated with changes in habitat. In particular, we hypothesize that the evolution of wind dispersed seeds follows transitions into open habitats. Seed dispersal structures (diaspores) were collected from 46 grass species (35 Melica and 11 outgroup). To assess wind dispersal potential, we quantify falling velocity by filming seed descent at 1000 fps. Lower falling velocities are associated with higher wind dispersal potential. Diaspores were photographed and the images were used to measure surface roughness, which is associated with adhesive dispersal potential. These data, along with diaspore mass and plant height, were mapped onto the evolutionary tree of the onion grasses. We then ran tests of correlated evolution between seed dispersal traits and habitat type. Initial results indicate that convergence upon wind dispersal may be in part driven by convergence upon disturbed habitat types.

Worldwide, there are 153 million orphaned children, and in addition to the trauma of losing a parent, they are also at greater risk for additional traumatic exposure. Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) is proven effective to improve mental health outcomes for trauma-exposed youth in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), however there is a need for implementation strategies to support the adoption and sustained use of mental health interventions in LMIC with limited mental health services. Hence, this study aims to describe implementation strategies used by lay counselors to support the implementation of TF-CBT in school and community settings in Western Kenya. “Pamoja Tunaweza” (PT), a version of TF-CBT adapted to address posttraumatic stress symptoms among orphaned children in Kenya, was delivered by lay counselors, including community health volunteers (CHV) and teachers. After the first year of implementation, stakeholders identified different implementation strategies necessary to implement TF-CBT. Lay counselors and leaders, including Community Health Extension Workers (CHEW) and Head Teachers, developed strategy recommendations to guide future sites implementing TF-CBT. Supervisors (N=5) and a subset of lay counselors (N=10) and leaders (N=10) from the initial sites conducted 6 coaching meetings with subsequent sites initiating TF-CBT delivery. New sites included schools (N=5) and communities (N=5) consisting of CHV (N=15) and teacher (N=15) counselors and their leaders (N=10). During meetings, participants selected implementation strategies from recommendations to develop work plans to support TF-CBT implementation. Work plans and follow-up forms measured the actor carrying out each strategy, temporality, frequency, adaptations, and completion rate of each strategy. Descriptive statistics will be used to describe the characteristics of strategies. Measuring and describing implementation strategies may improve research on methods to enhance implementation and aid organizations in applying strategies to adopt and sustain evidence-based practices. Ultimately, this may improve effective mental health services for children living in LMIC.