University of Massachusetts Boston
University of Massachusetts Boston: ScholarWorks at UMassNot a member yet
8618 research outputs found
Sort by
HACK24F: Using AI to Support Teachers Working with Young Children with Challenging Behaviors
Get PDFWhile coaching or mental health consultation can be a promising approach to support educators (Kang-Yi et al., 2018), the cost can be substantial and many school districts find it difficult to hire qualified personnel to coach the educators in need. Previous research has attempted to utilize mobile technology to support parents in addressing children with challenging behaviors (Meadan et al., 2016). There are few tools available to support teachers and that attempt to integrate AI technology in the program design and implementation. Our objective is to develop a prototype AI-based tool called Trick-or-Treat to support teachers in identifying and developing feasible behavioral support plans to prevent and address young children with challenging behaviors
Conserved Transcription Factors Rewire the Hippo Pathway to Regulate a Binary Cell Fate Decision in Color Photoreceptors
Get PDFSignaling pathways are repurposed in different developmental contexts to elicit a wide variety of cellular responses. For instance, the conserved Hippo pathway was initially discovered in Drosophila as a tumor suppressor pathway in mitotically active tissue where it restrains tissue growth. However, in post-mitotic color photoreceptors (PRs), the pathway is repurposed to regulate a binary cell fate decision: activation of the pathway promotes expression of the green-sensitive Rhodopsin Rh6 (Rh6/Hippo ON fate), while inactivation of the pathway promotes the blue-sensitive Rhodopsin Rh5 (Rh5/Hippo OFF fate). The nexus of the pathway, the Warts (Wts) kinase, represses the transcriptional co-activator and oncoprotein Yorkie (Yki) through phosphorylation. When Yki is unphosphorylated, it enters the nucleus and regulates its target genes. In a growth context, Yki activates growth-promoting genes but also promotes the activity of its repressor Wts to achieve homeostasis; thus, Yki is controlled via negative feedback. In the post-mitotic PR context, Yki activates Rh5 and represses Rh6, and contrary to its role in growth, Yki represses its repressor wts, thus establishing a positive feedback loop. The underlying mechanism by which Yki represses wts and Rh6 in post-mitotic PRs remains poorly understood. Here, we elucidate the roles of both permissive (expressed in both PR subtypes) and Rh5/Hippo OFF PR-specific transcription factors in mediating Yki’s repression of both Rh6 and wts to establish a Yki positive feedback loop. This ensures the mutually exclusive expression of two color-sensing Rhodopsins in distinct subtypes of post-mitotic PRs, which is a prerequisite for color vision. First, we show that the conserved transcription factors, Blimp-1 and Hr3, are permissively required to establish a context wherein wts can be transcriptionally silenced to specify Rh5/Hippo OFF PR fate. Moreover, two conserved Blimp-1 motifs in an Rh6/Hippo ON subtype-specific intronic wts enhancer are required for wts repression in Rh5/Hippo OFF PRs, suggesting that Blimp-1 directly represses wts. Furthermore, we show that another pair of conserved permissive factors, Otd and Tj, act in parallel with Yki to activate the conserved homeodomain transcription factor Hmx exclusively in Rh5/Hippo OFF PRs. Hmx then represses Rh6 via a Q50 motif in the Rh6 promoter. Moreover, Hmx also represses Yki’s repressor wts downstream of Yki, thereby establishing the Yki positive feedback loop. Lastly, we show that a transient Activin signal during pupal development is necessary and sufficient to activate Hmx in developing Rh5/Hippo OFF fated PRs. Thus, the role of Hmx is to convert a transient developmental signal into a permanent and robust ‘OFF’ switch for the Hippo pathway by mediating a Yki positive feedback loop. These findings have relevance for human health, since the orthologs of the four permissive factors (Otd/OTX2, Tj/NRL, Hr3/RORβ, and Blimp-1/PRDM1) that promote Rh5/Hippo OFF PR fate in Drosophila, promote rod PR fate in mammals and their mutation causes severe retinopathies. Moreover, mutations in the Hmx orthologue, Hmx1, have been associated with a severe human eye disease known as Oculoauricular Syndrome. Taken together, five evolutionarily conserved transcription factors that have important functions in mammalian eye development rewire the Hippo pathway to control a fate decision in terminally differentiating color PRs in the Drosophila eye
Remembering More or Less: Studies of the Development of Memory in Infants and Young Children
No full textWorking memory refers to the system that temporarily holds information, and the processing that acts upon this information, for an ongoing task (Baddeley, 1992). It is essential to human cognition, from language comprehension to reasoning and planning (Oberauer et al., 2018). It also provides “an interface between perception, long-term memory, and action”(Baddeley, 2003, p. 829). One of the generally accepted features is its limited capacity (Oberauer et al., 2018). Given the central role of working memory in cognition functions, its limited capacity is one of the constraints on these functions (Gruszka & Nęcka, 2017). However, humans have been using physical actions and external resources to help overcome such capacity limitations, or just to minimize cognitive effort (Bocanegra et al., 2019; Clark, 2008; Risko & Gilbert, 2016). Using external resources to support internal functions has a long history, from ancient carved rocks to recent smartphones. Given the close connection between the internal mental processes and the external world, philosophers have proposed the Extended Mind thesis suggesting that the external world is not just supporting the mind, it actually becomes part of the mind (Clark & Chalmers, 1998). In other words, when people are making notes or sketches on paper when they are working, they are not just keeping a record of their thoughts on the paper, they are “thinking on the paper” (Clark, 2008). To be included as part of the mind, external resources need to meet three criteria. They should be: accessible, reliable, and trustworthy (Clark, 2008; Gallagher, 2018). Using the classic example, if the information in a notebook is easily reachable (accessible), available when needed (reliable), and accurate (trustworthy), the notebook (and the information in it) becomes part of the mind. Inspired by the Extended Mind Thesis, in a series of studies (Chapters 1 & 2), I investigated if 5-8-year-old children were sensitive to the accessibility and reliability of external resources from a working memory perspective given its essential role in cognitive function. In Chapter 1, I describe experiments using a novel ‘Shopping Game’ on a tablet to investigate how children trade off their use of external resources and working memory based on the accessibility of the external resource. In the shopping game, children were asked to pick items from a store based on a shopping list, but the shopping list and the store were not visible simultaneously. However, children could toggle between them. I manipulated the “access cost” by varying an annoying, but not overtly aversive, delay (0 s / 4 s) before the list’s reappearance. Across three experiments (N = 141), I found that 5-8-year-old children visited the list more often, spent less time studying the list, and selected fewer correct items when the access cost was low, indicating that children at this age generally rely on external resources, in an attempt to reduce cognitive effort. On the other hand, when access costs were high, children visited the list less often, spent more time studying, and selected more correct items in an attempt to reduce the access cost. In addition, children were sensitive to the accessibility of external resources and chose the low-access cost condition as the easier and preferred one. In Chapter 2, I investigated whether young children are sensitive to the reliability of an external source and adjust their reliance on external resources when reliability is manipulated. Using a modified version of the Shopping Game, I manipulated the impression, but not the actuality, of the reliability of the external resource. The results show that 5-6-year-old children (N = 37) made significantly more trips to the list, spent less time studying it, and picked fewer correct items when they expected the external resources to be reliable. On the other hand, children visited the list less often, spent more time studying it, and picked more correct items. In addition, children were also able to choose the reliable condition as the easier one and preferred one. In short, these results showed that children were sensitive to the reliability of the external source and were able to adjust their strategies accordingly. The above studies with children and previous studies with adults (Ballard et al., 1995; Draschkow et al., 2021; Somai et al., 2020) show that people, especially adults, rely on accessible, reliable external resources to minimize cognitive effort and use a “just-in-time” strategy where they just store the most relevant information in the memory at the point it is required for the task (Ballard et al., 1995; M. Hayhoe & Ballard, 2005). However, this highly controlled and selective strategy can be detrimental to infants\u27 and children’s learning early in life. In fact, studies have shown that infants and children were less selective in their attention and acquired more task-irrelevant information compared to adults in category learning tasks, leading to better learning of the multiple features of a category and less learned inattention (Best et al., 2013; Deng & Sloutsky, 2015, 2016). It seems that this less selective attention and the acquired irrelevant information can contribute to wider exploration that is beneficial to cognitive development and early learning (Plebanek & Sloutsky, 2017). Based on this literature, in Chapter 3, I investigated if infants can use seemingly task-irrelevant, extra information to facilitate their performance in a visual search task using a visual statistical learning paradigm. In this study, 14-to 22-month-old infants (N = 43) searched for a target in snapshots taken from different viewpoints of a panoramic scene of a room. The target either always appeared in the same relative location in a panoramic scene (e.g. always on the bed) or in different relative locations (on the bed, table, etc.). Critically, the target’s absolute location in the snapshots varied due to the change of viewpoints but was matched across conditions. I investigated whether infants would acquire and use task-irrelevant information (the configuration of the non-target objects in each snapshot) to build a panoramic scene to facilitate their search for the target. The results showed that infants located the target significantly faster when it was always in the same relative location in the panoramic scene. These results provide evidence that infants acquire irrelevant information to build panoramic scene representations from snapshots and use it to facilitate their search. Taken together, my work has shown that children are efficient in saving cognitive effort and only memorizing a small amount of the most task-relevant information when the external resources are accessible and reliable. In the meantime, from early in life when they are infants, they will acquire task-irrelevant information implicitly to support their performance. These studies provided a perspective on how these different mental processes can work together to support their learning and adapting to the world
Up From Slavery: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study of the Perilous Passage of Black Students in Doctoral Programs
No full textThis dissertation explores the impact of racism, the campus racial climate, and the racial climate of graduate programs on the lived socialization experiences of Black students in doctoral programs. This dissertation utilizes a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to explore the experiences of Black doctoral students, discusses the historical context within which graduate programs seek to socialize Black students to the academy, and describes the inherent challenges associated with the socialization of Black students to academic norms. This dissertation uses Critical Race Theory (CRT), the Campus Racial Climate (CRC) framework, and racial socialization to better understand the lived socialization experiences of Black doctoral students in the academy. This dissertation focuses on Black students and situates Black students within the context of the racism that permeates society, the campus racial climate, and the racial climate of graduate programs, while considering how the racial socialization of Black students aids in their socialization. This dissertation utilized a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to deepen our understanding of the Black doctoral student and to uncover the essence of the Black doctoral student socialization experience. The findings of this study are aligned with the findings of other scholars who have centered Black doctoral students in their research. In addition, this dissertation advances several originary phenomenological insights and understandings where Black doctoral students are concerned and proposes the Black Doctoral Student Socialization Circle, which includes the racial socialization of Black students as a key component. This dissertation details several implications for future research and practice and serves as a beacon for future studies that consider the perilous passage of Black doctoral students
Gray Seal (Halichoerus Grypus) Diet and Microplastic Ingestion on Great Point, Nantucket
Get PDFDue to their semi-aquatic lifestyle, pinnipeds are an ideal sentinel group used to study anthropogenic threats to the marine environment. Microplastics, primarily transported to the ocean through river discharge or weathering of larger plastics, are a threat to both pinnipeds and humans. Bioaccumulation of microplastics within the marine food web has been observed, with pinnipeds indirectly ingesting microplastics through their prey. As generalists, gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) are a pinniped species that can provide information on microplastic exposure to many lower trophic level organisms. This thesis explores the relationship between the diet and microplastic ingestion of gray seals on Great Point, Nantucket. Firstly, gray seal diet was assessed using two methods, prey hard parts and DNA metabarcoding, from 112 scat samples. Our results support previous findings that DNA metabarcoding reduces the biases of prey hard parts, identifying more prey types in more samples. We then compared the DNA metabarcoding diet results to microplastic concentration, type, fiber color, and polymer type. Anthropogenic microparticles were found in 111 out of 112 gray seal scat samples. Our findings suggested weak relationships between the microplastic variables and diet, however our methods were not able to determine the abundance of each prey type, making it difficult to draw any real conclusions. More research using quantitative methods is needed to determine whether gray seals’ diet is influencing their microplastic consumption. Given their role as a sentinel species, gray seals, along with other pinnipeds, offer valuable insights into the distribution and impact of microplastics throughout their range. Future research should continue to utilize pinnipeds as indicators to further investigate microplastic pollution in marine ecosystems
Engaging Survivors in Transnational Justice Governance: Global, National and Local Perspectives from Uganda\u27s Post LRA Insurgency
Get PDFThe end of the Second World War established the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo tribunal while the United Nations (UN) system established ad-hoc tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and multilateralism facilitated the creation of the present-day International Criminal Court (ICC). These trials and tribunals established liberal approaches to transnational justice governance. Despite the dominance of a liberal universalist justice framework, non-liberal justice approaches have also emerged. Considered as alternative customized justice structures, including South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, these community emergent approaches emphasize a transformative approach to addressing legacies of civil conflict and war. Key to these customized justice processes are survivors whose agency in universal transnational justice adjudication models has not been adequately acknowledged. Within these models, a role for survivors is critical in addressing systemic social conflict challenges and achieving greater survivor participation using more expansive grassroots mechanisms. Motivated by these trends in customized transformative justice approaches, this dissertation study reveals how the agency of survivors espoused by justice frameworks from the Global South is significantly missing in the global governance of transnational justice. Using the Ugandan post Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) conflict era and experiences as a case study, the current dissertation compares the agency of survivors of atrocities as they are presented by liberal internationalist justice governance frameworks as well as by the emerging customized justice frameworks through three perspectives: (a) the process through which they deliver justice, (b) the justice results of those approaches, and (c) the contributions they make to the global governance of transnational justice. The dissertation’s distinctive research questions rely on postcolonial international relations and Third World Approaches to International Law theoretical framework to examine the critical role that African justice governors and survivors of conflict in the continent play in customizing Western transnational justice to the unique contexts of their transitioning postcolonial states and societies. To support the dissertation’s research objective, the study applies qualitative multi-methods, including on-site, in-country field and archival research to three judicial or extra-judicial case studies of transnational justice adjudication processes emerging from the LRA conflict in Uganda. The first case is the Dominic Ongwen versus The Office of the Prosecutor, adjudicated by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The second case is the Thomas Kwoyelo versus the Government of Uganda under the auspices of Uganda’s International Crimes Division (ICD) of the High Court. The third case draws from community level alternative justice process of reconciliation and reintegration based on the Acholi tradition of Mato-Oput. The research emanating from this dissertation reveals a main finding supporting the study’s thesis that a liberal teleology of transnational justice used by the ICC and Uganda’s government (ICD) represent top-down approaches, and they are mostly conducted indirectly through intermediaries. These two approaches engage survivors as objects of the justice processes in ways that limit their contributions to the governance of justice. On the other hand, the local, customized approaches, such as the Mato-Oput, bring survivors back to the center of justice and make them the subjects of an inclusive restorative justice process. To this end, the dissertation concludes that customized justice models may reflect the expectations of local communities in post-conflict transition since they bear their survivors’ vision of justice and allow for their full exercise of agency
Getting Through a Dual Pandemic: Hardship and Social Resiliency in a Cambodian American Community
Get PDFIn cities and towns across the United States, Asian Americans experienced the early 2020s health crisis as a dual pandemic of COVID-19 and anti-Asian racism. In Lowell, a large proportion of Cambodian American residents live in multi-generational households and are employed in working-class occupations with a high risk of exposure to the coronavirus. For this and other reasons, the pandemic had especially serious health and financial consequences for many members of the Cambodian American community. These pandemic challenges in Lowell mounted when a nationwide surge of anti-Asian racism swept through the city and surrounding areas.
Little information has been reported to date by researchers about the specific nature of challenges Cambodian Americans faced in Lowell. This study built an academic-community research partnership to address these questions. The research was designed and conducted by a collaboration between the Institute for Asian American Studies at UMass Boston and the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell. Through a bilingual community survey, focus groups and interviews, the research team inquired about the health, social, and financial impacts of the dual pandemic, as well as access to health information and to public aid or community-initiated mutual assistance. The field work was conducted from October 2023 to June 2024
Sanctified Spaces: An Analysis of Lived Religion and Ceramic Tableware at the Martin Luther Orphans\u27 Home in West Roxbury, Massachusetts
No full textThis thesis examines the ceramics recovered from the Martin Luther Orphans’ Home (1871-1945) within the Brook Farm Historic Site assemblage, to assess the ways in which the “orphan-parents” who ran the institution used material culture to shape the religious and domestic ideology of the children. The site provides a unique opportunity to study the lived religion within an institutional context and the engagement with domesticity to adhere to a pious lifestyle. This study isolates the archaeological contexts that can be associated with the orphanage occupation and that show minimal levels of disturbance through a series of statistical tests. Through examination of the material culture and documentary records, the study analyzes the symbolic narratives embedded within the daily rituals of the institution. Analysis of the ceramic tableware sheds light on the Martin Luther Orphans’ Home use of ceramics to emulate specifics of a middle-class domestic experience within the institutions, reflecting 19th-century notions of respectability and Christian moral values. The presence of specific decorative motifs and prevalence of plain tableware have strong Christian connotations, revealing a material component of the intentional construction of a sanctified space within the institution
White Noise: A Dialectical Analysis of Fascism and Supremacy Movements
No full textFascism is without a universal definition. A discipline specific universal definition is one that scholars of fascism agree is key to understanding the phenomenon that is fascism. Objectively, fascism is known and knowable, it is the meaning of the word itself that is conceptually in contention as it is intrinsically in consequence a social relation to itself and to antifascism. The sociology of fascism utilizes the historical and generalized contexts to explain, explore, and expand on the contemporary and emergent forms without a meaning-informed definition. This study deconstructed the known fascisms as it sought to generate a universalized definition through an exploration of emergent contemporary fascism in America. Utilizing a multimethod qualitative process, this study used a dialectical analysis and approached negative social movements that separated colloquial and emergent American Fascism from its European roots through a case study. This showcased how American Fascism is present in the analysis of the negative movements: Patriot Front and the III% Organization. The sociological definition concluded, through the dialectical process, how fascism seeks to redefine social values around norms concerning liberty and freedom to oppress the everyday people. This is expressed too, through the exploration of American Fascism in the deconstruction of Patriot Front and the III% Organization
Interplay of Common Climate Change Stressors: Experimental Effects of Diet C:N Ratio and Temperature on Color and Heat Absorption of Tobacco Hornworms
No full textOrganisms respond to stressors related to climate change in many ways. Two common climate change related stressors experienced by most insect herbivores are changes in temperature and increased plant C:N ratio due to elevated CO2 concentrations. To investigate how diet C:N impacts the potential morphological response to temperature, we used Manduca sexta caterpillars reared at different combinations of temperatures and diet C:N ratio, and measured pupal mass and development time (performance metrics), color morphology and heat absorption. We specifically used a full-factorial design to test the combination of two temperature treatments (27 and 18 °C), and two artificial diets with different amounts of protein, and conducted the experiment in two trials using caterpillars from different genetic lineages. A high temperature treatment (27 °C) had a positive impact on caterpillars’ performance, whereas high C:N ratio was related to lower performance. Using a fitness metric that considers both pupal mass and development time, we found a positive effect of both higher temperature and nitrogen-rich diet. We found evidence for caterpillars reared at cooler temperatures being darker and heating up faster than caterpillars reared at a high temperature, but this pattern was not consistent across trials. Additionally, we found that diet affected coloration of caterpillars when measured by mean luminance, in which caterpillars fed a nitrogen-rich diet were darker. A direct correlation between darkness and heat absorption was only seen for caterpillars reared at the low temperature, nitrogen-rich treatment. Our results suggest a clear consistent effect of temperature on performance, and of diet on performance and color morphology, but a highly variable effect of temperature and diet on heat absorption. Global warming and CO2-related changes in plant quality could be associated with changes in insect herbivore performance and coloration, whereas the effect of these stressors on heat absorption can be more variable