The crustaceous zooplankton Daphnia magna usually reproduce asexually but are also capable of sexual reproduction. Daphnia populations are generally all female; however, they occasionally produce male offspring for sexual reproduction. In lakes, the production of males and sexual eggs (ephippia) usually occurs in autumn, allowing Daphnia populations to reestablish in the spring. However, in our research, introducing males into some replicates but not others increases variability and decreases the ability to determine treatment effects. There are many hypotheses for what causes female Daphnia to have male offspring – the most common being alterations in light cycles or temperature – but we have encountered male offspring despite controlling these variables. Another hypothesis is that crowding leads to behavioral changes that cause female Daphnia to produce males. I am exploring this hypothesis to determine if the production of males is a behavioral response to crowding or to a lack of food availability. My experiments consist of two treatment groups of four replicates each: crowded and uncrowded. These groups are then fed proportionally upon creation, and reproductive behaviors are measured. The Daphnia cultures are fed with a mixture of three species of algae – Ankistrodesmus sp., Scenedesmus acutus, and Selenastrum capricornutum – to maintain a consistent level of food availability based on measured algal cell density estimated from in vivo fluorescence. If the hypothesis that density causes a behavioral change in reproduction is correct, the crowded treatment will produce more male offspring despite having the same amount of food. If food availability is the major factor impacting reproduction, the number of male offspring between the two groups will be constant. Eliminating sporadic male production would improve reproducibility within and between experiments.

2023 was the Year of Open Science, part of a national push requiring public accessibility to the products of federally funded research. The Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) Network is one such federally funded multi-site research network collecting neuroimaging data to study early brain development in infants with Down Syndrome. Data from the IBIS will be part of the INCLUDE Data Coordinating Center (DCC), a National Institutes of Health (NIH) managed open database intended to accelerate Down Syndrome research through sharable data. Understanding attitudes towards data sharing is important to ensure public trust in scientific research, and though much research exists assessing attitudes towards public sharing of genomic data, there is a lack of knowledge regarding attitudes towards public sharing of neuroimaging data. To combat this gap, I helped develop the CARDS-DS (Capturing Attitudes towards Research and Data Sharing in Down Syndrome) questionnaire, a novel parent-report measure to understand the perspectives of families participating in longitudinal Down Syndrome neuroimaging research. Currently, I am interviewing families enrolled in Down Syndrome neuroimaging research to get their feedback on the effectiveness of the questions asked in the CARDS-DS, a method called cognitive interviewing. Following this pilot study, CARDS-DS will be implemented throughout the IBIS Network. As such, CARDS-DS queries parent attitudes towards aspects of research participation that are particularly relevant to the INCLUDE DCC goals, namely: attitudes towards sharing of a child’s neuroimaging, genomic, and behavioral data, perspectives on data privacy, preferences for return of research results, and attitudes towards ongoing engagement with research teams throughout a longitudinal project. The anticipated data will reveal how attitudes may differ between parents from different sociodemographic or educational backgrounds, how attitudes may differ between the sharing of neuroimaging versus genomic data, whether attitudes are associated with study retention, and how attitudes may change over the course of longitudinal participation.

Our team conducted a study to understand the public attitudes towards creating human brain organoids (HBOs), a relatively new technique in neuroscience used to study brain development and disease. HBOs are structures derived from human donor stem cells and they mechanistically mimic certain aspects of the human brain. The goal of this study was to explore the values, priorities, and concerns that a sample of the general public has towards brain organoid research. An online survey was sent to 801 participants through Qualtrics. Respondents were asked to answer 51 yes or no, multiple choice, ranking, or open-ended questions, and provide their demographics. My colleagues and I qualitatively analyzed the open-ended responses to 3 questions using ATLAS.ti to code and identify themes in the general public’s opinion about brain organoid research. We found intriguing preliminary findings; 333 statements were supportive of the research and did not express concerns; for example, “it’s [brain organoids] created for research, thus it’s like hair, can be discarded”. 86 statements expressed concern about the potential future uses of brain organoids, for example: “it’s taking the first steps on the way to cloning…Dracula like”. Finally, 41 statements questioned the ethics of brain organoid research explicitly, for example: “people like to abuse things and this is no exception…[researchers] would end up using this for very harmful and unethical practices”. In open-ended responses, respondents expressed strong positions on the implications of brain organoid research, whether supportive or concerned. Further analysis of the open-ended responses is ongoing, and we plan to identify more themes. Increased knowledge of public opinions on brain organoid research could be valuable because it can help researchers improve informed consent for future studies, increase understanding of common misconceptions and concerns in the field, and influence how this type of research is regulated and conducted.

A century-old building is currently being renovated in the Green Lake neighborhood. Hubbard’s Corner is an adaptive reuse project attempting to reduce its carbon footprint by replacing conventional building materials with novel, low-impact materials such as concrete-free “C-crete”, hempwool insulation, cross-laminated timber, and reused structural steel. This building project is the first instance of real implementation of some of these novel materials. The manufacturing of two building materials, cement and steel, are responsible for over 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this study is to use Life Cycle Assessment to analyze the impacts and possible benefits of using novel, low-carbon building materials. We will use environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate environmental impacts of manufacturing these novel materials. We will then estimate the difference in environmental impacts between the novel materials and functionally equivalent conventional materials and expect the results to be significantly lower. By analyzing the materials through an LCA framework, we will be able to compare the relative impact of the different design decisions on this project and help understand the relative significance of choosing these materials.