Nursing is recognized as a high stress career that is linked to depression, anxiety, and burnout. Today's healthcare environment is even more challenging due to distrust of medicine, racial tensions, and understaffing related to the seemingly endless COVID-19 pandemic. The prevalence of burnout, depression, and suicide among healthcare professionals is high. Nursing students are experiencing the chronic stress of COVID-19 as they train in trauma-filled environments. Students need foundational clinical knowledge and skills learned during nursing school; however, they also need resiliency skills to manage stressors throughout their training and into their careers. Resiliency skills have the potential to mitigate poor mental health outcomes and burnout, which ultimately contribute to retaining nurses in the profession. To build resilience, we need to understand the full picture of students' baseline resilience, mental health, and stressors, including adverse childhood events (ACE). The purpose of this study, therefore, is to explore the contributions of ACE scores, university stressors, self-efficacy, and perceived stress on self-reported resilience and mental health of nursing students at University of Washington (UW). We (Vasquez, Santoyo), with our mentor Amy Walker, participated in all aspects of developing and implementing this study. We performed statistical and thematic analysis. We expect to find high levels of perceived stress, numerous university stressors, and low levels of resiliency in undergraduate and graduate nursing students. The findings will be used to identify targets for future interventions to improve the resilience of nursing students during their education and their transition to practice.

Preferred methods to engage with music vary among d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing people (d/DHH), depending on a number of social, environmental, and technological factors. Previous research on music for the d/DHH population has pursued specific methods such as dance, sound vibrations, and captioning. Other literature has focused on applying a hearing standard of music engagement and fluency to the d/DHH community and is outdated with regards to technological advances that improve music access. In this generative research, our goals are to understand how various social and technical environments affect music experiences and discover design opportunities to improve music accessibility for d/DHH people. We are conducting semi-structured interviews with d/DHH adults ages 18-49. These interviews undergo design research activities consisting of word exercise, image exercise, and cognitive mapping to uncover the background, current, and ideal music experiences of participants. We are developing a design prototype based on research findings that addresses the accessibility shortcomings of music experiences and adapts to numerous music scenarios and environments. This prototype can be used as a tool to inform future design solutions for existing music platforms to accommodate the needs and wants of the d/DHH community.

Mental state terms refer to the narrator’s interpretation of a character’s cognitive state such as what the character says, wants, intends, or thinks (Altman et al., 2015). However, previous research on mental state terms has documented conflicting results regarding the frequency of mental state terms used across languages (Altman et al., 2015; Fichman et al., 2021). The current research examines children’s use of mental state terms by elementary school students (1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th grade) enrolled in a Mandarin-English Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program in California. Children completed a story-telling task, and their narratives were based on the wordless picture book “Frog where are you?” in English, and “Frog goes to dinner” in Mandarin. Speech samples were collected and recorded over Zoom and then transcribed on Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) software. Transcripts were coded for instances in which individuals of each grade level used mental state terms. Data collection is complete and analysis is in progress. In this study we will answer: (1) How often are children using mental state terms during a narrative production task in Mandarin and English? (2) What kind of emotional language use differences are seen across Mandarin-English and grade levels? We hypothesize that the frequency of mental state terms will be higher in English because English-speaking cultures place greater emphasis on conveying motivations or feelings involved (Sah & Torng, 2016). Across grade levels, we expect older children to use mental state terms at a higher frequency than their younger peers. Investigating how children make use of these devices in narrative production as they acquire two languages can provide insight into cultural priorities around storytelling.

One of the great outstanding challenges in neuroscience is to understand how the human brain represents distinct objects. Studies have shown that a significant number of neurons in the visual cortex of non-human primates responded differentially to the sides of figures in 2D images even when the figures were outside of their classical receptive fields. This selectivity, termed border ownership, is believed to be responsible for the Gestalt idea of figure-ground organization, a process that allows specific regions of an image to be grouped together and given "thing-like" qualities. Many computational models have been developed to reproduce the experimental results of border ownership studies. At the same time, convolutional neural networks (CNNs), especially those specialized in image segmentation, are able to learn to solve the problem of figure-ground organization through supervised learning, all without the need for explicitly defined computational rules. We hypothesize that there is knowledge to be gained from CNNs, for they are excellent computational models for visual selectivities. Our novel 'artiphysiology' technique allows us to study the border-ownership phenomena in CNNs at a single-unit level in the same way an electrophysiologist studies the brain. The technique takes advantage of the accessibility and lack of noise of CNNs to enable high-throughput identification and analysis of circuit mechanisms. Starting from border ownership, the research aims to elucidate the mechanism by which figure-ground organization occurs at different layer depths and in different CNNs, using natural and artificial visual stimuli. The research has several applications, including improving CNN efficiency and interpretability as well as allowing for a better understanding of object recognition.

Antimicrobial peptide (AMPS) hold promise as novel antibiotics for treatment of human infections. However, in general, they fail to reach clinical application because of issues with human cell toxicity or other factors. The AMP colistin (CST), is a rare AMP in clinical use and despite its nephrotoxic effects, has seen increasing use as a last resort to antibiotics. There’s now widespread CST resistance among bacterial pathogens. Our chemist colleagues recently synthesized a new class of AMP mimics, main chain cationic polyimidazoliums (PIMs). Their lead PIMs are potent broad spectrum antibiotics with a novel mode of action. We are interested in developing PIMs for inhalation therapy to treat respiratory infections in people with the genetic disease cystic fibrosis (CF). The bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, is the major contributor of disease in patients with CF lung infection. Unlike CST, PIM-resistant P. aeruginosa do not emerge in laboratory evolution experiments. We wanted to assess a particularly potent PIM called PIM1D as a potential CF therapeutic. Many antibiotics are inhibited by the secretions in CF lung and we expected this might be true of PIM1D. We used a special in vitro culture medium designed to mimic CF sputum, synthetic CF medium (SCFM). The medium contains the nutrient composition of CF sputum (SCFM-1) along with mucin and DNA (SCFM-2), polymers present at high concentrations in CF lungs. These polymers are known to inhibit many antibiotics’ activity. PIM1D retains high activity in SCFM-1 but activity is reduced by 90% in SCFM-2 compared to SCFM-1 and standard media. The inhibition might be due to either mucin, DNA, or both together. We aim to answer which of these molecules is responsible for inhibition of PIM1D activity. In collaboration with chemists who synthesized PIMs, they will provide PIM1D derivatives and PIMs packaged in nano-carriers to test for better activity in SCFM-2. 

Open-source communities are central to facilitating the development of collaborative computing projects online. In any community, there are often policies that govern how the community functions, and as such communities become larger, projects have slowly seen more variety in their governance systems, making it no longer possible to just assume the governance structure of a project. The emergent practice of GOVERNANCE.md files in online collaborative code repositories such as GitHub works to close that gap by clearly defining the governing rules of what role contributors play and what guidelines they should be following. In this project, we developed a python script to scrape all the public GOVERNANCE.md files on GitHub in order to understand what the landscape of governance on GitHub looks like according to these files. Then, we analyze these files by creating data visualizations to compare different features of these files and characteristics of the community or repository (number of collaborators, creation date, number of edits to file, etc). This can then help develop answers to other key questions—how community governance files and models have changed over time, what aspects have changed and the driving factors/rationale behind these trends, and whether or not the changes in these models are following any specific trends (such as becoming more democratized).

Misinformation is a major problem in today’s online information ecosystem. One way that platforms address this problem is by providing viewers with signals so they can assess the credibility of the content that they encounter. However, there are few existing signals on online video-sharing platforms, which is concerning as video platforms like YouTube are a common way for people to get information. We seek to understand how citations can be applied as credibility signals to videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube. First, in an interview study, we investigated how users interacted with existing credibility signals on YouTube, and found that video intent and context shaped how users would apply both existing signals as well as future citations. We used these findings to inform our design and implementation of a browser plug-in that allows users to create and view citations on all videos they see on YouTube. We now want to explore how users might use this system to apply citations on YouTube and how viewing citations on a video might impact user behavior. In this second study, we plan to observe how the system affects the user's perception of video credibility and the effectiveness of our system as a credibility signal. 

Wildfire smoke contains fine, inhalable particles called PM2.5, as well as dangerous levels of heavy metals and other toxins. Wildfire smoke can increase emergency room visits for asthma and upper respiratory infections in kids, reduce immune function, lead to cardiovascular and lung diseases later in life, and create long-term cancer risks. When schools close from wildfire smoke, learning loss and lost school days can affect children’s health and wellbeing throughout the rest of their lives. Low-income kids could be left without access to learning resources, meals, or school support services. Installing, improving, and maintaining HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) systems is critical for mitigating exposure to smoke, as well as other emerging challenges. The state does not keep records of the ventilation systems in California’s 10,000 public schools or which schools might need additional support in funding their HVAC. I calculated the cost estimate of installing, maintaining, and upgrading HVAC systems to all K-12 schools in California. Methods I conducted include gathering data from the county Superintendent of education, emailing school admins listed on the California Department of State database, calling over 700 school districts for data collection, and consulting with HVAC contractors and other partners. The estimate for installation, maintenance, and upgrading cost is approximately $4.0 billion. The estimate will be used to advocate for further funding for wildfire preparedness for schools. Results will be used in the policy roadmap for implementing the Green New Deal for Public Schools in California and policy brief.

Creating novel anti-cancer drugs aimed at targeted glioblastoma multiform (GBM), a type of brain cancer, is slow, extremely expensive, and remains a persistent challenge within the medical field. To address this challenge, our team’s research project is aimed at creating scaffolds from chitosan-hyaluronic acid (CHA) to mimic the brain microenvironment and serve as a platform for high throughput screening (HTS) of cancer drugs. 3D culture systems can promote more cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions, which can closely mimic the in vivo extracellular matrix environment. Studies have shown that the drug resistance of 3D-cultured cancer cells can better reflect the in vivo situation, and thus can potentially improve the success rate in drug screening processes. CHA scaffolds are especially beneficial for culturing GBM cells, as hyaluronic acid (HA) is a major component in brain tissues. To generate the scaffolds, we used different freezing rates and temperatures to create freeze-dried 8 wt% CHA scaffolds with pore sizes of 60, 120 and 180 μm. We characterized the compressive modulus of the scaffolds using the Instron test machine, and the porosity using liquid replacement methods. Cell studies with 3 different cell lines are currently being conducted on these scaffolds, after which an AlamarBlue assay will be used to determine the optimal pore size for each cell line in terms of their growth and drug resistance. The results of this can prove that our CHA scaffolds have good flexibility in response to different cancer cell line 3D cultures and have good potential to be an HTS platform.