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CARING CLASSROOMS ALTERNATIVE HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE LEARNING
Get PDFThis qualitative case study examines alternative high school teachers’ perceptions of social emotional learning, its role in supporting at-risk students, and the systemic factors affecting implementation. Grounded in Nel Noddings’ Ethic of Care, the study explores how teachers define SEL, how care informs their practices, and the barriers they face. Findings reveal that teachers view SEL as a relational process encompassing emotional regulation, relationship-building, and ethical development. While educators prioritize trust and culturally responsive approaches, systemic barriers--limited time, inadequate training, and competing demands--hinder implementation and increase emotional strain. Recommendations include embedding SEL into instruction, expanding professional learning, and fostering systemic commitment to SEL that prioritizes both student and teacher well-being. These findings contribute to SEL scholarship by centering teachers’ voices and advocating for equity-driven, trauma-informed SEL
Generationally-Linked Archaeology: “Living-Off-The-Land” for 4,000 Years on the Salish Sea
Get PDFGenerationally-Linked Archaeology: “Living-Off-The-Land” for 4,000 Years on the Salish Sea adds an innovative, easy to read, test of the author’s far-reaching Generationally-Linked Archaeology (GLA) approach, first developed with over 4,000 years of ancient Coast Salish basketry traditions (Carriere and Croes 2018), and now evaluated with Ed’s early use of 44 natural resources and evidence from over 4,000 years of hunting, fishing, and gathering from archaeological sites within 20 miles of his home. Since Ed was raised by his Great Grandmother Julia Jacobs (born 1874) they essentially “lived-off-the-land” using what anthropologist term their Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with all the native resources to support themselves: shellfish, fish, ducks, mammals and berry crops. Dale and Ed compare these practices with the archaeological fauna/flora analyses near his home allotment lands, including sites in the Seattle Washington area, for 4,000+ years. The results support their GLA basketry style linkage through time, upholding the hypothesis of cultural continuity and sustainability of Coast Salish subsistence, a process they term Generationally-Link Ecological Knowledge (G-LEK), with similar resource use frequencies through these four millennium and two hundred generations of Coast Salish Peoples. Through Ed’s description of 44 natural resources, they provide information not preserved archaeologically: resource behaviors, capture techniques, preparation procedures, cooking, taste, and storage practices. The book is jargon-free and accessible to readers who do not necessarily have training in cultural anthropology or archaeology. Over 200 color photographs and illustrations of the 44 natural resources that Ed used and Dale’s archaeological wet and shell midden sites greatly enhance the text
CLOVER ALL OVER INVESTIGATING WILD TRIFOLIUM MANAGEMENT OF BACTERIAL SYMBIONTS
Get PDFLegumes (Fabaceae) can develop symbiotic relationships with nitrogen fixing bacteria, rhizobia, to meet their need for nitrogen. Legumes recruit rhizobia from soil, house them in root organs called nodules, provide the bacteria with carbon compounds and receive biologically available nitrogen in return. The rhizobial transition from free living bacteria to host associated, nitrogen-fixing bacteroids is poorly understood. One mechanism by which the host manipulates bacterial development uses members of a large family of small antimicrobial peptides called Nodule-specific Cysteine-Rich (NCR) peptides. These are plant proteins exclusively expressed in the nodule and share a 4 or 6 cysteine residue motif. The genes and their associated peptides differ in number, sequence, and function across the legumes. Here we present a literature review of NCR peptides across leguminous species to aid in the understanding of legume host control of bacteria inside nodule tissue. Next, we present greenhouse experiment investigating the influence of non-rhizobia, nodule associated bacteria (NAB) on the fitness alignment of host and symbiont. We find that nodule associated bacteria do not have significant consequences for plant or bacterial fitness but can alter the alignment between host and symbiont fitness. Finally, we present assembled and annotated genomes of five Trifolium species and a summary of each species NCR gene family as an exploration of species-specific changes to NCR gene family structure. The NCR gene family in Trifolium is smaller than that in the model legume Medicago truncatula and similar across the species investigated
MODELING THE BOVINE INTESTINE INTEGRATING 3D ORGANOIDS AND 2D MONOLAYERS TO ADVANCE GUT HEALTH AND PATHOGEN RESEARCH
Get PDFAdvancements in bovine intestinal organoid technology have unlocked new potential for modeling intestinal physiology and pathology in vitro. This dissertation explores the establishment, characterization, and application of neonatal bovine intestinal organoids derived from various gut segments, including the duodenum, jejunum, ileum, colon, and rectum, utilizing novel sampling and culture methods. The generated organoids faithfully replicate the multicellular architecture and functional dynamics of the bovine intestine, exhibiting cellular polarity, diverse epithelial lineages, and robust self-renewal, making them a physiologically relevant model for intestinal research.The dissertation presents protocols for developing ileal and rectal organoid-derived monolayers from adult cattle, addressing challenges in luminal accessibility critical for host-pathogen interaction studies. Although rectal organoid-derived monolayers were successfully generated from neonatal bovine intestinal organoids, ileal monolayers were not, emphasizing age-specific variability in organoid technology. These monolayers demonstrated functional barrier integrity and cellular diversity, supporting their utility in advanced in vitro studies.This research confirms the ability to generate neonatal bovine intestinal organoids and organoid-derived monolayers, establishing a foundational framework for applying bovine intestinal organoid models in veterinary medicine, agricultural science, and zoonotic disease research. By bridging the gap between traditional cell culture and animal models, these findings advance gut health research in species critical to both veterinary and human health
HIGH PERFORMANCE AND RELIABLE PROCESSING-IN-MEMORY ACCELERATORS FOR GRAPH-BASED MACHINE LEARNING
Get PDFGraph-based machine learning has emerged as a critical tool for solving complex problems in domains such as social networks, recommendation systems, and biological research. These applications require the processing of massive, irregularly structured datasets, posing significant challenges for traditional von Neumann architectures due to frequent memory access and data movement bottlenecks. Processing-in-Memory (PIM) accelerators offer a promising solution by enabling computation directly within memory, thereby reducing data movement and improving efficiency. However, achieving both high performance and reliability in PIM designs is crucial to meet the demands of graph-based workloads, which often involve diverse and dynamic computations. This dissertation explores the design of high-performance and reliable PIM accelerators tailored for graph-based machine learning, addressing challenges such as irregular data access patterns, fault tolerance, and scalability, while pushing the boundaries of energy efficiency and computational throughput. The first part of this dissertation focuses on the use of model and data pruning for enabling energy-efficient and high-performance acceleration of Graph Neural Networks on ReRAM-based PIM architectures.Later in this dissertation, we discuss the challenges associated with Neural Network training and inference using existing PIM-based architectures, as well as the inherent reliability and non-ideal behavior of PIM devices. Finally, we present a heterogeneous PIM-based architecture that combines more than one type of PIM device and achieves a balanced tradeoff between performance, power, area, and predictive accuracy compared to homogeneous counterparts.Overall, in this dissertation we demonstrate various methods enable the design of PIM-based manycore architectures optimized for high-performance machine learning and big data workloads
Influence of Sugar and Nitrogen on Alcohol Reduction in Wine Sequentially Inoculated with Metschnikowia Pulcherrima and Saccharomyces Cerevisiae
Get PDFAlcohol concentrations in wine have risen due to longer grape ripening periods, which have been implemented to meet the consumer’s preference for richer and fruitier wine. One consequence of this practice is that grapes are harvested with elevated sugar contents which, in turn, increases the amount of alcohol produced during fermentation. Higher amounts of alcohol can result in higher tax rates, unappealing sensory profile, and dislike by health-conscious consumers. The present study aims to reduce alcohol concentrations by sequentially inoculating Metschnikowia pulcherrima followed by S. cerevisiae, and to define must composition that will support a sequential fermentation. To accomplish this, grape must and synthetic grape juice medium (SGJM) were adjusted or prepared as follows: (1) Cabernet Sauvignon must containing 25˚, 28˚, or 31˚ Brix soluble solids and a total of 220, 250 or 280 mg N/L yeast assimilable nitrogen (YAN) respectively; (2) SGJM prepared with YAN (40 or 280 mg N/L) and soluble solids (24˚, 27˚, or 30˚Brix) as variables; (3) High YAN SGJM prepared with 450 mg N/L and either 24˚, 27˚, or 30˚Brix; (4) SGJM prepared with 0, 1, or 100 μg/L pantothenic acid. Inexperiments, M. pulcherrima P01A016 was inoculated on day 0. S. cerevisiae was inoculated on day 4 in all experiments except the fourth experiment where it was not introduced. The sequentially inoculated SGJM treatment containing 40 mg N/L and 24˚Brix had 0.7% (v/v) less alcohol than the same medium singly inoculated. No other sequentially inoculated treatment reached dryness and had less alcohol than the singly inoculated treatment. Many treatments ≥27˚Brix failed to reach dryness, likely due to insufficient nutrition. In the Cabernet Sauvignon experiment, sequentially inoculated wines contained 0.177, 0.181, or 0.287 g/L less acetic acid than singly inoculated wines. Pantothenic acid did not benefit M. pulcherrima’s growth or metabolism. Overall, this experiment highlights the need for proper yeast nutrition to complete fermentation in a wine sequentially inoculated for alcohol reduction
OPTIMIZING CONFIDENTIAL DEEP LEARNING FOR REAL-TIME SYSTEMS
Get PDFDeep neural networks (DNNs) are increasingly used in time-critical, learning-enabled cyber-physical applications such as autonomous driving and robotics. Despite the growing use of various deep learning models, protecting DNN inference from adversarial threats while preserving model privacy and confidentiality remains a key concern for resource and timing-constrained autonomous cyber-physical systems. One potential solution, primarily used in general-purpose systems, is the execution of the DNN workloads within trusted execution environments (TEEs) available on current off-the-shelf processors. I review the various TEE architectures and techniques employed to achieve secure neural network execution and provide a classification of existing work. Additionally, I discuss the challenges and present a few open issues. However, ensuring temporal guarantees when running DNN inference within these trusted enclaves poses significant challenges in real-time applications due to (a) the large computational and memory demands of DNN models and (b) the overhead introduced by frequent context switches between “normal” and “trusted” execution modes. This thesis introduces new time-aware schemes for dynamic (EDF) and fixed-priority (RM) schedulers to preserve the confidentiality of DNN tasks by running them inside trusted enclaves. I first propose a technique that slices each DNN layer and runs them sequentially in the enclave. However, due to the extra context switch overheads of individual layer slices, I further introduce a novel layer fusion technique. Layer fusion improves real-time guarantees by grouping multiple layers of DNN workload from multiple tasks, thus allowing them to fit and run concurrently within the enclaves while maintaining timing constraints. I implemented and tested my ideas on the Raspberry Pi platform running a DNN-enabled trusted operating system (OP-TEE with DarkNet-TZ) and three DNN architectures (AlexNet-squeezed, Tiny Darknet, YOLOv3-tiny). Compared to the layer-wise partitioning approach, layer fusion can (a) schedule up to 3x more tasksets for EDF and 5x for RM and (b) reduce context switches by up to 11.12x for EDF and by up to 11.06x for RM
PONDERING PONDEROSAS PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES OF PINUS PONDEROSA PROVENANCES IN A PALOUSE COMMON GARDEN STUDY
Get PDFPonderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), an economically, ecologically, and culturally significant tree species native to the Pacific and Inland Norwest, is experiencing a decline innatural regeneration as a result of anthropogenic climate change and the increasing prevalence of high-severity wildland fires (WLFs). To better understand the species’ ability to withstand more arid conditions brought on by a changing climate, we studied 28 different P. ponderosa provenances sourced from across the Inland Northwest and grown in a common garden located in eastern Washington state.Our study investigated how climate characteristics of provenance sites – such as mean annual precipitation (MAP), mean annual temperature (MAT), continentality (∆T), seasonality index (SI) of precipitation, vapor pressure deficit, elevation, latitude, and longitude - interacted with common garden growth traits (height growth rate (HGR) and radial growth rate (RGR)), physiological responses (non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs), leaf %N and water content (LWC), stable carbon isotope composition (ẟ13C)) and spectral reflectance data interpretations (vegetation indices such as, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), Normalized Difference Red Edge Index (NDRE), Photochemical Reflectance Index (PRI)). Using a combination of correlation matrices, linear regressions and partial least squares regression (PLSR), we analyzed the provenance in a common garden setting to gain insights into ponderosa pines’ physiological responses and its capacity for local acclimation to a more arid environment.We hypothesized that (1) trees from wetter and cooler provenances would exhibit less growth and show more signs of physiological stress, and (2) physiological traits can be sensed through hyperspectral measurements and PLSR analysis. Our findings indicated that provenance site precipitation influenced physiological responses of %N and δ13C, while provenance site temperature (MAT) affected NSC concentrations and growth rates generally supporting our first hypothesis. Hyperspectral PLSR and indices explained some variance in observed physiological traits, such as NSC concentrations, leaf %N and water content, but overall correlations were low, providing limited support for our second hypothesis.Overall, provenance climate had a relatively small influence on variation in physiological responses and growth, explaining only 10% of the variability. Nevertheless, trees from all 28 provenances have been able to persist, grow, and even reproduce at the common garden site, suggesting that stress tolerant P. ponderosa from sites with a range of climates can acclimate to hotter and drier conditions
SUSTAINABLE ORGANIC MATERIAL-BASED ARTIFICIAL SYNAPSES FOR NEUROMORPHIC COMPUTING
Get PDFThe demand for sustainable, energy-efficient memory technologies drives innovation in neuromorphic hardware. This thesis investigates fructose and Fructose/CNT-based memristors for sustainable neuromorphic computing. Pure fructose-based devices exhibited stable bipolar resistive switching, reliable endurance, and robust retention characteristics, demonstrating effective analog synaptic behaviors such as potentiation and depression. Incorporating carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into the fructose matrix significantly improved switching consistency, reduced voltage variability, and enhanced overall electrical performance due to the conductive pathways and charge trapping provided by CNTs. Comparative analysis indicates CNT integration shifts the dominant switching mechanism from pure electrochemical metallization to a hybrid mechanism involving both electronic and ionic processes, thereby enhancing device uniformity and reliability. These findings underscore the promise of fructose-based materials as eco-friendly candidates for scalable neuromorphic applications
AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST OF REMEMBERED AFFECT ON AFFECTIVE ASSOCIATIONS FOR PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Get PDFTraditional approaches to increase physical activity (PA) have largely ignored the role of affect, but recent research suggests that affective factors may be stronger predictors of intentions to exercise and subsequent PA than cognitive factors. The primary aims of this study were to 1) experimentally test remembered positive affect after exercise on positive affective associations and intentions with PA in a natural non-lab setting, and 2) determine whether there is an indirect effect between positive remembered affect and intentions to engage in PA through affective associations. A secondary aim of this project explored whether the remembered affect intervention impacts related constructs of anticipated affect and affective attitudes. Using an ecological remembered affect intervention, participants wrote about remembered positive in-task affect experienced during physical activity (experimental condition) or listed details about a bout of physical activity (e.g., type, time, duration, intensity, location, etc.) immediately following a prescribed 30-minute PA session. Affective associations for PA, anticipated affect, affective attitudes, and intentions to engage in future PA were assessed at baseline and study completion. The intervention significantly increased immediate post-task core affect and positive affective associations at follow-up but did not influence intentions, behavior, or the other affective constructs. Mediation analyses did not support indirect effects through affective associations. These findings suggest that remembered affect interventions may be a useful strategy to increase positive affective associations but may not be an effective strategy to increase PA intentions or behavior. Future research should explore combining remembered affective interventions with other strategies to promote long-term PA behavior changes