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Episode 10: Zipline DC2122
Get PDFEpisode 10: This episode features four alums from the Class of 2022: Kirsten Appell, Kalyani Weiss, Harriet Wright, and Sophie Yates. Their Design Clinic project with Zipline was on the design of an anti-icing solution for Zipline\u27s unmanned aircraft
Trauma Prevalence and Desire for Trauma-Informed Coaching in Collegiate Sports: A Mixed Methods Study
Get PDFThis study investigated trauma prevalence amongst collegiate student-athletes and openness towards trauma-informed coaching practices among athletes and coaches at two small Division III colleges. Surveys gathered quantitative data from athletes (n = 91) and coaches (n =18) and qualitative data from athletes (n = 33). Quantitative results indicated that 52.7% of athletes experienced at least one potentially traumatic event during their lifetime. The most prevalent trauma was unwanted sexual contact. Additionally, 50.5% of athletes experienced sport-based harassment or abuse during their lifetime, with 21.7% of affected athletes experiencing said abuse in college sports. Athletes reported that 8 out of 10 trauma-informed coaching techniques included in the study were already implemented or desired for implementation at rates between 73.2–93.1% on their teams. Coaches also showed support for trauma-informed coaching, with 88.2% indicating they believed the practice was necessary in college athletics and a large majority of coaches agreeing or strongly agreeing with 8 out of 10 techniques. Qualitative results highlighted the variety of impacts that traumatic experiences have on athletes. The most reported themes were negative psychological and performance effects. Findings support the idea that trauma-informed coaching is necessary and desired in collegiate athletics
Environmental Education in Western Massachusetts Curriculums
No full textResearch has shown that providing ample opportunity for children to go outside and interact with the outdoors increases cognitive, social, and emotional well-being (Bento and Dias 2017). But do curriculums really allow for this type of learning? In an attempt to understand what restrictions educators might have that prevent them from incorporating environmental education into their curriculum, we looked through documents published by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
The Effect of Experimenter Demand on Inference
Get PDFExperimenter demand is a clear threat to the validity of experimental results. To understand the extent of this threat for lab studies, we apply the quantitative frame- work from de Quidt, Haushofer and Roth (2018) to explore whether experimenter demand can generate flawed qualitative inference in experimental studies, using four classic behavioral findings. In these four settings we examine the extent to which demand can alter the nature of a comparative-static conclusion, a stronger test of the potential distortions resulting from experimenter demand. Starting with the laboratory population, we demonstrate that even in a stark environment with deliberate researcher attempts to manipulate participant behavior, quantitative effects are small and experimenter demand effects are not large enough to impact the core qualitative inferences in our four experimental comparisons. This result is then extended to two commonly used online populations, Prolific and mTurk–which show larger quantitative demand effects, but again, not large enough to alter the qualitative conclusions
A World of Difference: The Fundamental Opposition between Transhumanist “Welfarism” and Disability Advocacy
Get PDFFrom the standpoint of disability advocacy, further exploration of the concept of well-being stands to be availing. The notion that “welfarism” about disability, which Julian Savulescu and Guy Kahane debuted, qualifies as helpful is encouraged by their claim that welfarism shares important commitments with that advocacy. As becomes clear when they apply their welfarist frame to procreative decisions, endorsing welfarism would, in fact, sharply undermine it. Savulescu and Kahane\u27s Principle of Procreative Beneficence—which reflects transhumanism, or advocacy of radical bioenhancement—morally requires parents to choose the child who will, in all probability, have “the best life.” Assuming the emergence of potent biotechnologies, procreative decision-making would be highly standardized, for prospective parents would be morally obliged to maximize select capacities, including intelligence, self-control, and hedonic set-point, in their children. Welfarism, applied to reproduction, is staunchly objectivist about what course is incumbent on decision-makers, giving no credence to first-personal values, aspirations, and experiences. Though this dismissal of individual perspectives applies to everyone, its implications for disability advocacy are especially severe. With that advocacy in view, greater attention to “well-being” should, therefore, be severed from the welfarism of Savulescu and Kahane
Social Contagion of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury
Get PDFThis chapter explores the social contagion of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) via interpersonal, media and online exposure among both youths and adults by referencing social learning theory and the Social Exposure to Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Scale. According to social learning theory, people imitate and learn certain behaviors by identifying with people who act as models. The chapter elaborates on the concepts of social learning, modeling, and imitation, and general recommendations for the assessment and treatment of clinical practice addressing social contagion factors. It then suggests utilizing ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and single-case experimental design (SCED) for future studies on social contagion of NSSI.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/psy_books/1001/thumbnail.jp
Making Reflection Critical: Structural and Historical Attributions for Inequity
Get PDFBook Abstract: Critical consciousness represents the analysis of inequitable social conditions, the motivation to effect change, and the action taken to redress perceived inequities. Scholarship and practice in the last two decades have highlighted critical consciousness as a key developmental competency for those experiencing marginalization and as a pathway for navigating and resisting oppression. This competency is more urgent than ever given the current sociopolitical moment, in which longstanding inequity, bias, discrimination, and competing ideologies are amplified. This volume assembles leading scholars to address some of the field\u27s most urgent questions: How does critical consciousness develop? What theories can be used to complement and enrich our understanding of the operation of critical consciousness? How might new directions in theory and measurement further enhance what is known about critical consciousness? It offers cutting-edge ideas and answers to these questions that are of critical importance to deepen our critical consciousness theory and measurement. Source: Publisherhttps://scholarworks.smith.edu/psy_books/1002/thumbnail.jp
Childhood Trauma and Brain Structure in Children and Adolescents
Get PDFThe dimensional model of adversity proposes that experiences of threat and deprivation have distinct neurodevelopmental consequences. We examined these dimensions, separately and jointly, with brain structure in a sample of 149 youth aged 8–17—half recruited based on exposure to threat-related experiences. We predicted that greater threat would be uniquely associated with reduced cortical thickness and surface area in brain regions associated with salience processing including ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and insula, and that deprivation experiences would be uniquely associated with reductions in cortical thickness and surface area in frontoparietal areas associated with cognitive control. As predicted, greater threat was associated with thinner cortex in a network including areas involved in salience processing (anterior insula, vmPFC), and smaller amygdala volume (particularly in younger participants), after controlling for deprivation. Contrary to our hypotheses, threat was also associated with thinning in the frontoparietal control network. However, these associations were reduced following control for deprivation. No associations were found between deprivation and brain structure. This examination of deprivation and threat concurrently in the same sample provided further evidence that threat-related experiences influence the structure of the developing brain independent of deprivation
Base Excision Repair of Oxidative Guanine Lesions in Nucleosomes Initiated by Formamidopyrimidine DNA Glycosylase
No full textDeoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is constantly under attack from reactive oxygen species (ROS) from endogenous and exogenous sources, which can cause various forms of damage, including mutagenic damage that threatens genomic integrity. Oxidative DNA damage has been implicated in inflammation, carcinogenesis, neurodegenerative diseases, and aging. Of the four canonical nucleobases, guanine (G) has the lowest reduction potential and is most easily oxidized to the lesion 8oxoguanine (8oxoG), which has an even lower reduction potential and can be further oxidized to hydantoin lesions. One of these lesions is spiroiminodihydantoin (Sp), a chiral propeller-shaped lesion that can destabilize the DNA duplex and transversion mutations. Oxidative lesions and other non-bulky lesions can be repaired by the base excision repair (BER) pathway, which occurs in five core steps. Bifunctional glycosylases can perform the first two of these steps: extrusion and excision of the damaged nucleobase, leaving an abasic (AP) site, which is then incised by AP lyase activity to form a single-strand break (SSB). The bacterial bifunctional glycosylase formamidopyrimidine (Fpg) can excise both 8oxoG and Sp at comparable rates in free duplex (leippold, krishnamurthy). However, most DNA in cells is packaged in nucleosomes: 145-147 base pairs of DNA wrapped around an octameric histone protein core. Nucleosomes form the polymer chromatin, which condenses into chromosomes and compacts the genome. Nucleosome core particles (NCPs) pose a steric hindrances to glycosylases and decrease the efficiency of excision. It is therefore necessary to study the kinetics of glycosylase activity in nucleosomes to better understand lesion excision in physiological conditions. This project’s eventual goal is to determine the rate of excision of Sp by Fpg in nucleosomes using an Fpg glycosylase assay. The extent of reaction can be visualized and quantified using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). But in order to form nucleosomes, it is necessary to synthesize and purify strands of DNA long enough to wrap around a histone core
Characterizing Lineage-Specific Genes in Testate Lobose Amoebae (Arcellinida)
No full textThe evolution of lineage-specific genes, genes found in one lineage with no homologs in others, remains poorly understood in uncultivable microbial eukaryotes. Here, we study lineage-specific genes in Arcellinida, an uncultivable clade of shelled amoebae whose fossil record dates back ~800 million years. As this lineage lacks reference genomes, we used single-cell transcriptomic data to explore lineage-specific gene families (LSGFs) in this diverse clade. Here, we characterize Arcellinida-specific and Hyalosphenia species-specific gene families through analyses of 131 Arcellinida transcriptomes representing most major lineages. We deployed bioinformatic tools such as a machine-learning algorithm (TIdeS) to identify open-reading frames (ORFs) from transcripts and analyze the results. Using scripts written for this project, we identified 82 ancient Arcellinida-specific gene family candidates as well as 123 gene families and 86 gene families specific to Hyalosphenia papilio and Hyalosphenia elegans, respectively. Hyalosphenia papilio and Hyalosphenia elegans are two ubiquitous Arcellinida species found in bog habitats that are suspected to have cryptic species. Our results show that it is possible to study the evolution of new genes in uncultivable microorganisms using transcriptomic data and bioinformatic tools. Future work includes looking for positive selection signatures in these genes, and finding LSGF evolutionary patterns by mapping the appearance of LSGFs onto the Arcellinida phylogenetic tree. These new genes can give us insight into the population genomics and the evolution patterns of new genes in these understudied taxa