Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, has important effects on human sleep patterns and sleep quality. An increased presence of cortisol elicited from stress disrupts biological rhythms, affecting both mood and behavior. Since publications in large journals have historically focused on measuring cortisol levels in the context of alcohol abuse, there is not much data on how cortisol levels may be affected by “social drinking.” We aimed to study if social alcohol consumption bidirectionally influenced the measured cortisol levels in a cohort of 11 students enrolled in BIO A 454/455. Students self-collected saliva three times per day, providing two samples in morning to evaluate the cortisol awakening response, and one sample at night; this procedure was paired with a number of surveys where participants recorded daily mood, behaviors, and sleep. Cortisol concentrations were determined in the BIO A 454/455 laboratory at the University of Washington using an enzyme immunoassay protocol designed for use with saliva samples. Students of BIO A 454/455 evaluated their own saliva samples using the salivary cortisol EIA protocol. We aggregated collection averages across subjects, performing t-tests between groups of individuals who self-reported drinking at least one alcoholic beverage within each 24-hour period, and those who did not. Our results demonstrated a general variation of measurable cortisol levels in each individual, but analysis did not produce statistically significant figures between cohorts. A lack of literature on the connections between alcohol consumption and cortisol response still persists. Therefore, while our data proved to be too narrow to extrapolate conclusive results, we hope the format of this study can be used as a framework to explore the topic further.

In some traditional societies, a strong bimodal pattern of postpartum amenorrhea (PPA) duration has been observed in breastfeeding women. We have recently shown that early breastfeeding behavior is predicative of short-duration (~3 months) or long-duration (~15 months) amenorrhea, but the physiological mechanisms leading to this pattern are unclear. We investigate the relationship between hormone levels and duration of PPA in a sample of rural Bangladeshi women. Data came from an 11-month prospective study in which 261 breastfeeding women were interviewed and provided a urine specimen twice-weekly. It is known that breastfeeding disrupts ovarian cycles by inhibiting release of luteinizing hormone (LH) which in turn inhibits growth of ovarian follicles and release of ovarian steroids (estradiol and progesterone). During this time, women are infecundable. We assay hormone levels of estradiol metabolites, progesterone metabolites, LH, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), and cortisol across stages of PPA until eventual return to menses. We examine how these hormones correlate with the probability of resumption of menses and self-reports of breastfeeding behavior using survival analysis. We expect to see an earlier rise in LH and FSH spikes and increased levels of estradiol and progesterone metabolites in women who experienced a shorter duration PPA. We also expect that cortisol remains unaffected by the length of PPA. These results are used to explore the unknown mechanism that leads to bimodality in PPA.

Graffiti is everywhere - from the low-lying corners of a university bathroom to the soaring heights of a highway overpass. No matter where it is found, the interplay of colors, techniques, style, and wordplay act as a vortex - guiding eyes into a world of abstract creation and interpretation. Based on the sheer magnitude of graffiti present throughout Seattle, it is evident that this community has survived and continues to be quite active. From this, one may ask: What are key patterns exhibited by graffiti artists that are displayed through data analysis? Are there locations writers choose over other spots? Is the type of graffiti hindered by a quality-vs-quantity relationship? Many of these are explored to better understand writers' behavior and intent. By using landscape archaeology and data-science techniques, the observed patterns of three writers have been analyzed and further studied to understand canvas location, graffiti type, color use, visual composition, and other related components. By using data collected from the ARCHY 235: Explore Graffiti course, I have been able to culminate and process individual entries through the computing platform Jupyter Notebooks. Through Python coding, I have been able to derive maps, various descriptive statistics, and charts to help gain insight into each artist's work. Furthermore, by focusing on three specific and well-documented writers, commonalities and distinctive traits have been uncovered. An example of these findings includes the use of high-contrast black and white markers. These are used because of their possible reflective capabilities. Additionally, stickers are popular because artists can mass produce their tag and dramatically reduce the time it takes to leave their mark while significantly decreasing the chance of being caught. Thus, as a result, the study has shed light on this sociological phenomenon by focusing on examining and investigating individual practices exhibited by these artists through their graffiti.

Ceramic petrography involves the examination of the mineralogical and microstructural composition of ceramic artifacts known as sherds. Traditionally, this examination to generate quantitative data from the ceramic material is often done by the hand, particularly the examination of ceramic inclusions in both their size, amounts, shapes, and density. This process is time-consuming, error-prone, and leads to limited datasets which are difficult to compare. By leveraging Python imaging analysis capabilities, a standardized and rapid method to generate repeatable datasets can be achieved on a greater scale. From work previously performed by my mentor, Alec Iacobucci, Alec created a robust set of internally consistent functions to collect multivariate data from ceramic sherd scans including inclusion size and count. This was done through Scikit-Image, an open-source image processing library for Python. However, Scikit-Image has its limitations, specifically in its computational efficiency as processing times are long and extensive. My goal for this project is to move the current material we have in Scikit-Image and translate it into OpenCV which is another library for image processing, but OpenCV is better optimized and specializes in computer vision. I will match similar functions and capabilities between Scikit-Image and OpenCV, perform data analysis on the ceramic inclusions to see the degree in which OpenCV outperforms Scikit-Image, and expand on previous determined variables such as average color of inclusions, orientation, and shape. The broader implications of this research is to reduce processing time of inclusion counting in the field which not only allows for larger and standardized datasets that can be compared and analyzed but to automate the ceramic petrographic process beginning at the dig site all the way to data analysis. This will be through the creation of an on-site scanner that implements our algorithms that is both portable and efficient where researchers can carry with them. 

Graffiti surrounds us everywhere we go. It can be found throughout Seattle, ranging from small tags or stickers that are just about anywhere to large pieces on walls and the sides of buildings. Even though it is so widespread, the locational aspects of graffiti remain unexplored. The data used in this project was collected by students using a mobile phone app as part of the fall 2021 course Archaeology 235: Exploring Graffiti: Combining Landscape Archaeology and Data Science. This study attempts to determine whether different types of locations emerge when attending to various locational factors (e.g., viewing potential and accessibility). To this end, I use various multivariate techniques (e.g., clustering, multiple correspondence analysis) utilizing various Python packages (Pandas, Scikit-Learn). These techniques reveal natural clusters within the data by grouping data points that are more similar to each other than they are to data points in other groups. Each technique does this differently. The goal of this research is to explore how locational factors of graffiti interact with each other and to investigate which clustering techniques are best at uncovering these interactions. The findings of this research show how different aspects of graffiti are associated with one another, allowing me to understand how various factors influence graffiti production. With this understanding, we can study Seattle’s graffiti scene on a larger scale.
 

This research aims to understand why such a reliance exists within the disability parent community in Washington State in terms of navigating healthcare, and how the healthcare system can do a better job of supporting families who have children with developmental disabilities. There is an incredible disconnect and lack of support at the time of diagnosis for these families, and often it is not the healthcare providers that support these families and assist in their navigation of the health system. Rather, the experience of other parents that have gone through the process of navigating the health system for their child with a developmental disability are the best resources for these newly diagnosed families. My major research question is: How can the disability community and the healthcare system work more in unison to ensure that families are able to maneuver through the health system successfully from the start of their journey with a child with a disability? I have conducted ethnographic research through interviews with disability parents, healthcare providers in developmental medicine, patient navigators, and various in-person and Facebook disability parent support groups. The results of this work are presented as a written thesis, highlighting the challenges these families face, the nature of the reliance on community to navigate care, and proposed suggestions for the healthcare community to assist families in accessing parent support networks. This research highlights the strength, reliance, and efficacy of the disability parent community in helping one another navigate a health system that is lacking adequate support for newly diagnosed families. This research is being utilized to bridge a gap between the healthcare system and the disability parent community, so that they can work more in unison to serve families with children with developmental disabilities, and most importantly, improve the lives of these children.

Regular physical activity protects against cellular aging, but a recent study found shorter telomere length (TL) in professional swimmers compared to less active controls. Shorter TL is associated with increased cellular senescence and functional decline with age, suggesting swimmers may be at increased risk for age-related morbidity. Previous studies reported competitive swimmers face high levels of psychosocial stress, which, in turn, is posited to accelerate TL shortening. I hypothesize that competitive collegiate swimmers experience increased psychosocial stress, leading them to have shorter TL despite their active lifestyles. I conducted a mixed-methods study to examine whether TL differs between Division-1 and Division-3 National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA, swimmers (N=28 respectively) and their non-athlete counterparts (N=15) and if differences in TL is associated with psychosocial stress (Total N=43). Collegiate swimmers face a unique set of stressors to perform for scholarships and professional opportunities while simultaneously continuing their responsibilities as students. Accordingly, I measured overall psychosocial stress (Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale; PSS) to compare swimmers and non-athletes as well as sports-related psychosocial stress (The Student Athletes’ Motivation toward Sports and Academics Questionnaire; SAMSAQ) to compare D-1 to D-3 swimmers. Further, I conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews to better contextualize how student-athletes perceive how the psychosocial stress they experience impacts their lives and performance. I expect swimmers to report higher levels of overall psychosocial stress (PSS) and have shorter TL compared to non-athletes. Further, I expect that D-1 swimmers will report higher levels of psychosocial stress (SAMSAQ) and have shorter TL compared to D-3 swimmers. There are over 10,000 NCAA swimmers across the country and minimal studies have looked at their physical and mental health simultaneously. This study hopes to highlight the areas we can better support and improve both the physical and mental health of our collegiate swimmers, and NCAA student-athletes as a whole.

Madjedbebe is the earliest known site of human activity in Australia with artifacts dating to 65,000 years ago. However, the presence of termite mounds in the landscape of the site have led some to question this notable date. Termites have the potential to affect the stratigraphic integrity of archaeological sites, their subterranean movements mixing sediments from deposits of different ages. Such activity may have led to the overestimation of the age of artifacts at Madjedbebe. Our study investigates the extent to which termites disturbed Madjedbebe’s archaeological deposits, thereby providing key insight into the reliability of the ages of the site’s sediments and artifacts. We used micro X-ray fluorescence (μXRF) to quantify and compare elemental concentrations in blocks of resin-impregnated archaeological sediments and sediments collected from termite mounds. We analyzed the μXRF data using log ratio analysis. Our research seeks to identify whether chemical traces of termite activity exist within sediments at Madjedbebe. Our results indicate that termite-impacted sediments have distinctive chemical signatures that distinguish them from archaeological deposits; generally, this signature is not present in any of the Madjedbebe samples. There is therefore little evidence for termite activity and mixing in the archaeological deposits. Our findings are indicative of high stratigraphic integrity at the site, suggesting that the proposed 65,000-year-old ages of the Madjedbebe artifacts are sound. This is important for understanding the timing of the arrival of humans in Australia, the earliest movement of humans out of Africa, and the chronology of human interactions with Denisovans and Neanderthals. Our research also demonstrates the applicability of material science methods to archaeological questions.

Current research in Anthropology of children and their agency is generally lacking as they are often viewed as passive appendages to adults. This study seeks to study the moral agency of children from a gender perspective in a conventionally patrilineal, patriarchal cultural context. To investigate the ways in which gender interacts with and exert influence on children's moral development, we examine an unpublished archive of interviews and observations of rural Taiwanese children compiled by the late anthropologist Arthur P. Wolf in the 1950s using modern computational methods. For this research, I apply techniques such as statistical modeling and social network analysis to explore children’s interpersonal behaviors. Our preliminary findings show that although boys and girls exhibit different behavioral patterns, gender does not seem to be a factor that affects a child’s centrality in the network based on co-occurrence. My future analysis will focus on children's conflict and cooperation, the dark and bright side of moral development, by studying the general behavioral patterns within and across gender and/or age group, but will also highlight representative or epicentic individual observation entries. By looking into the social life of school-age and pre school-age children of rural Taiwanese children in the 1950s, this study also sheds light on the influence of gender on children's moral development in a non-Western historical and cultural context.

Patterns in three dimensional artefact orientation can provide insights into the environmental and cultural processes that form archaeological deposits. A range of post-depositional processes can be inferred from non-random patterns of artefact orientations. We apply statistical and graphical techniques to artefact orientation data from Madjedbebe, a site in northern Australia with evidence of human activity at 65 thousand years ago. The three-dimensional positions of artefacts were recorded in situ using a total station (survey equipment), and analysed following McPherron’s (2018) methods. Through this I investigate how accurate the site's dates are through analyzing deposition processes and site formation processes. I compare the orientations of the archaeological artefacts to orientations of experimentally trampled artefacts, and to orientations from simulated slopes and terrains. I found that the archaeological orientations are significantly different from the trampled artefacts, which have a strongly linear orientation. The orientations of archaeological artefacts are most similar to simulated orientations from sloped and irregular surfaces. The upper phases at Madjedbebe present more isotropic orientations than the lowest phases, which are strongly planar. These patterns suggest minimal post-depositional disturbance in the deposits containing the earliest artefacts at Madjedbebe, which provides support for a stable stratigraphy, which provides added confidence for the association of stone artefacts and the dates of 65 kya. This methodology can be used to reinforce conclusions about site dates in other sites with questionable stratigraphy.

In Southeast Asia, it is common for there to be a lack of clear typological categories in stone artefact archeology, but this is typically informally observed rather than empirically demonstrated. In Northern Vietnam, Mau A, an open air site located near the Red River in Yen Bai Province, Northern Vietnam, stone artefact flakes were excavated and analyzed in order to answer these questions: What variation exists within the assemblage of flakes, and are there distinct typological groupings corresponding to different tool categories? 1058 stone artefacts were excavated from four square meters using hand tools. The artefacts were measured using calipers, and these measurements were converted into outlines that we analysed using geometric morphometry and Principal Components Analysis (PCA). The PCA plot we made revealed that there was a great amount of overlap between reduction categories with a lack of typological groupings distinct from one another, although there was high variation in the amount of dorsal scarring. Primary flakes (the flakes that have been worked upon the least) have the least variability in terms of shape, with tertiary flakes having the most variability. We also created additional boxplots which revealed a lack of shape and material variation as well as confirming the PCA's results that dorsal scarring impacts flake variation. Our results suggest that flake shape is sensitive to assemblage reduction intensity, and may give useful comparative insights when other attributes show little variation. These results are important for understanding stone artefact assemblages from Southeast Asia which often yield little variation when analysed with traditional approaches.

A comparison of rates of osteoarthritis in the spine by occupation allows us to understand the impact of different jobs on spine health. This study will compare the rates of spinal osteoarthritis between non-manual labor workers (such as retail/service and information technology workers) and heavy-lifting occupations (such as agricultural, building, and manufacturing laborers). We will be evaluating the spines of decedent individuals with known occupation categories, available through the New Mexico Decedent Image Database, for spinal disk space narrowing and osteophytosis with a grading scheme of 0-3. For disk degeneration, 0 = normal disk spacing, 1 = mild disk space narrowing, 2 = moderate disk space narrowing, 3 = severe degeneration of the disk space. To assess osteophytosis, we will grade the anterior side of each vertebral body for the presence of osteophytes on the 0-3 scheme (0 = no osteophytes, 1 = mild osteophytosis, 2 = moderate osteophytosis, 3 = severe osteophytosis) with a score for each vertebral body and intervertebral space. We will calculate the prevalence of osteoarthritis and perform regression analyses between the occupation categories to determine the relationship between occupation and spinal osteoarthritis. As osteoarthritis is positively correlated with age, age categories will be established for the analyses. In addition, we anticipate that different trends in the development, location, and prevalence of osteoarthritis within the spinal column may exist between the occupation groups due to differences in biomechanical loading and areas of "wear and tear." We will perform regression analyses to determine if any such pattern is present in our sample. The results of this study will increase our understanding of the prevalence of osteoarthritis by occupation, aiding health care providers in developing preventative care and treatment plans for their patients and occupational health officials find effective ways to protect their employees.

Deformities of the foot often have serious implications for people's health. In particular, hallux valgus (HV) is a painful condition in both children and adults, in which the medial column of the foot is angled outward. In severe cases, it causes gait problems. Although flat feet are considered to be one of the main causes of HV in the medical literature, the correlation between arch index (AI) and HV severity remains to be explored. The purpose of this study is to explore the correlation between AI and the degree of HV deformity and to investigate how foot arch contributes to foot deformity, using footprints from 79 subjects recorded by a plantar pressure measuring device. I quantitatively analyzed each arch index and measured the angle, using Fiji ImageJ, which is an image analysis software. I drew a line tangent to each side of the footprint and calculated the angle that each creates with the midline. AI is derived by dividing the foot into three equal parts, excluding the toes, and dividing the central area by the total area. I hypothesize that the higher the AI, the more likely the foot is to have a high HV angle. The results of this study may support the development of a system to predict the likelihood of developing HV from the AI derived from the footprint by confirming the correlation between AI and HV severity. Furthermore, finding prospective patients with HV in a community of people with flat feet based on this study could lead to more specific medical prevention ideas to prevent their morbidity and improve the overall health of the community.

Monitoring is a key component of any successful ecological restoration project. Being able to see how an ecosystem responds to restoration treatments is not only vital for planning out future restoration work, but also for more fully understanding how an ecosystem functions. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between two culvert removals done in Carpenter Creek, a tidal creek feeding an estuarine wetland in North Kitsap, WA and the texture of the alluvial sediments bedded by the creek. The R programming language was used to analyze and visualize sediment texture data collected by Stillwaters Environmental Center, an environmental monitoring non-profit operating out of the local area. Generated data visualizations suggest that the first culvert removal, done near the mouth of the creek in 2012, resulted in a change in overall texture and an increase in fine sediments, while in 2014 and 2016 sediment texture drifted back towards the base state seen in 2011. In 2018, when the second culvert, this time located upstream near the marsh, was removed, a greater change in texture and increase in fine sediment was observed. These results suggest that an increased level of stream connectivity has been achieved, thereby allowing a freer and more natural sediment transportation regime. This increased understanding of Carpenter Creek’s evolution was made possible through a long-term monitoring effort. Understanding how estuarine wetlands respond to restoration treatments is key for successfully planning out future restoration work, as both adaptive management in existing projects and new restoration projects rely upon past experiences to inform management decisions.