Veterans and civilians in areas of military conflict are often exposed to explosions, resulting in blast injury: a complex polytrauma experience usually characterized by traumatic brain injury. Blast injury is also accompanied by observable changes to gut bacteria populations. These microbiota alterations influence the gut-brain axis, a two-way communication lane between the digestive tract and the central nervous system (CNS). Changes that impact the axis are linked to neuroinflammation, altered behavior, and more, affecting the overall health of the CNS. In fact, blast-induced microbiota changes are correlated with increased anxiety-like behavior as demonstrated recently in the Schindler Lab, the mechanisms of which are not fully elucidated. The current study aims to investigate the pathophysiology of the gut epithelium after blast exposure, an area no known studies have explored, as a potential route by which the microbiota affects behavior. With collected gut tissue from blasted mice, histological analysis will be carried out using hematoxylin & eosin (H&E) staining and Visiopharm software to measure morphological differences in villus length and smooth muscle thickness between blasted mice and a control group. Generally, short villus length and decreased smooth muscle thickness are signs of high intestinal permeability, which may lead to increased systemic inflammation that eventually reaches the CNS. Further studies will include in vivo assays investigating gut permeability, immunofluorescence histopathology, and fecal microbiota transplant studies to establish a potential causal role of the gut microbiota in driving blast injury outcomes. In short, blast injury is a traumatic experience that affects veterans and military violence victims alike, and understanding the mechanisms by which the gut-brain axis aggravates inflammation and behavior potentially provides therapeutic targets for treatment.

The Pacific Northwest (PNW) saw an unprecedented heatwave between June 25 to July 3 of 2021, with temperatures reaching up to 15℃ above the climatological mean. Previous studies have focused on this event’s impacts on plants in Western Washington and Oregon through direct observations, or have focused on the economic implications from poor crop turnout. We used remote sensing data to take a holistic approach and examined how all plants throughout the PNW fared during and after this historical heatwave. We found that solar induced fluorescence (SIF) and near-Infrared reflectance of vegetation (NIRv), two remotely sensed vegetation health markers, had regionally dependent plant responses to the extreme heat. In particular, anomalously high SIF regions coincided with anomalously high photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) regions due to low cloud cover. As SIF has been used as a proxy for gross primary productivity (GPP), our findings begs the question: was the elevated SIF during the heatwave indicative of higher GPP, or was the SIF response an artifact of the higher radiation? Our study aims to further our understanding of how extreme events impact plant health, which is increasingly important as heatwaves become more intense and frequent in the future.

The merits of undergraduate research are well-established at four year institutions, but little is known about the impact it has at the community college level. In this work, we examined a Pacific Northwest two-year college physics education research program to identify possible impacts of undergraduate research on the academic journey of community college students. We designed an interview protocol for current and past students from the program using open-ended questions. Students shared how their undergraduate research experiences affected them personally and educationally, and using a qualitative analysis, we coded for keywords and ideas that aligned with: increasing sense of belonging, boosting self-confidence, building a stronger community, and fostering student-instructor relationships. With all the advantages shared by these students, it is not far-fetched to posit that undergraduate research experiences can lead to better retention, completion, and transfer of community college students. In this presentation, we hope to highlight exemplary work already occurring at the community college level and recommend that a stronger focus be placed on increasing opportunities for these students to engage in research in the future.

Although much has been explored regarding introductory physics students' everyday ideas about energy, it is often still taught in much the same way as it was 30 years ago (e.g., balls falling off cliffs, roller coasters, skateboarding). During that same time period, the climate crisis and society’s energy consumption has become a culturally important topic that is largely neglected in physics courses. At a community college in the Pacific NW, instructors introduced activities from Levy et al. (2023)  “An Energy Unit Fueled by Climate Change” to the physics curriculum, aiming to explicitly tie energy topics to climate change issues. Post implementation of the unit, we asked students to share their views of the relevance of and relationship between energy topics in physics and their society, specifically in the context of climate change. Using a phenomenographic qualitative analysis, we examined students' written reflections and coded their responses into similar themes. In this presentation, we share the results of our analysis and recommend a more robust integration of the culturally relevant topic of climate change into introductory physics education.