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Examining the Predictive Utility of the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure in Exploring the Relationship Between Gender-Related Implicit Relational Responding and Cooperation in an Analog Work Task
No full textGender inequity is ubiquitous in our society. As a function of our unique history, shaping the way we think, talk, and behave, one vantage point towards gender inequity may be “implicit” or brief, immediate, relational responses (BIRRs). Research has demonstrated the ability of the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) to measure BIRRs and predict Extended and Elaborated Relational Responses (EERRs) towards particular stimuli, such as those related to gender. Recent literature has captured BIRR-EERR relationships as they pertain to cooperation in medical data entry work analog tasks providing insights crucial to high-reliability organizations where the relationship between BIRRs and cooperation are critical. The present study extended these findings by exploring the relationship between gender-related BIRRs and participants’ cooperation with pseudo-partners of different genders in a medical data entry work analog task. In order to enhance the relevancy of the BIRRs being assessed by the IRAP, an IRAP stimulus-selection survey was conducted with a representative sample. The primary study assessed the predictiveness of the IRAPs including gender-related stimulus sets. Visual analyses and group statistical analyses were used to explore the predictive utility of the two IRAPs on differential choices to pick a woman or man for a partner in the work task. Overall results suggest the Gender-Cooperation IRAP predicted some participants’ BIRRs in the work task as measured by the first three partner choices and the change in choice proportions immediately following a partner error. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research will be discussed
Seismic Performance of Nonstructural Cold-Formed Steel Framed Exterior Walls with Drift-Compatible Details in a 10-Story Mass Timber Building
No full textInterstory drift is a primary cause of seismic damage to building elements that span vertically between floor levels, such as nonstructural, cold-formed steel-framed exterior walls. Prior research has indicated that sliding horizontal joints can lessen seismic damage in interior partition walls, but experiments considering exterior walls with similar “drift compatible” components are lacking. To study this issue, three exterior wall subassemblies were incorporated into the recent shake table test of the full-scale NHERI TallWood 10-story mass timber building at UC San Diego. The subassemblies were built with details intended to improve seismic resilience by permitting horizontal slip and preventing damage at intersecting walls. This dissertation describes the design, development, and experimental performance of the subassemblies. Overall, only minimal wall damage occurred. Slotted slip tracks and drift clips caused wall drifts to be significantly less than building drifts, but only minimal slip occurred in nested slip tracks. However, both slotted slip tracks and drift clips demonstrated significant resistance to slip. As a result, drift clip pullout occurred. Placing vertical expansion joints at wall intersections completely prevented corner damage. In addition, a simplified model of the bypass-framed subassembly was developed in OpenSees. The model was calibrated to match observed test behavior, then the model was used to examine the effects of varying slip joint friction on wall drifts and forces. Recommendations were made for accounting for slip joint friction in wall design
Measurement of a natural visual orienting behavior in mice enhances the utility of mouse models of neurodevelopmental disorders
No full textAutism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects social, cognitive, and motor behaviors while also altering fundamental sensory processing. Historically, a diagnosis of autism occurs when difficulties in complex social interactions, such as language acquisition and other cognitive functions, become overwhelmingly apparent. However, there is increasing recognition that more fundamental aspects of non-verbal communication related to visual motor processing in infants precede these complex social communication deficits. For example, significant differences in eye movement, visuospatial attention, eye-contact, and an increased incidence of amblyopia, where visual information from one of the eyes is perceptually suppressed, has been linked with later emergence of more severe behavioral deficits in families with inherited forms of autism. All of these visual processes are subject to experience-dependent plasticity at early stages of brain development and may therefore be sensitive to the effects of the underlying cause(s) of autism. A wealth of evidence supports the idea that modifications in brain wiring during development, and how that wiring is altered by experience, underlies the emergence of ASD. Further, differences in brain plasticity during development are thought to also explain why the disorder manifests as a spectrum of symptoms across sensory, motor, social, and cognitive domains. Though mice are widely used to study and model the progression of “disease” processes in known genetic causes of ASDs, few behavioral assays exist in mice to quantify early visuomotor responses likely conserved between rodents and primates that are also affected in ASDs. This has thus prevented targeted investigation of possible neural circuit developmental mechanisms in the visual system that may be affected early in the progression of ASDs. My dissertation describes several connected studies that 1) establish a novel visual behavioral paradigm to study neural mechanisms underlying visual orienting plasticity throughout development in the mouse and 2) validates its relevance to the study of mouse models of neurodevelopmental disorders
Ideal Wallet Worksheet
No full textAn in class assignment teaching students how to use the Design Thinking Process to design an ideal wallet
Cloning a MiniTurbo Fusion Construct of the Antiviral Mosquito Gene CqBravo for Proximity Proteomics
No full textTo Catch a Virus: the Development of Immunoassays to Detect Viral Pathogens
No full textViral pathogens make up a large percentage of global infectious disease. Diagnostic immunoassays play a critical role in curbing the threat of emerging and endemic viruses and contributing to improved disease detection and surveillance. There is a need for global access to accurate, affordable diagnostic assays to facilitate outbreak response and clinical management. This dissertation will explore the development of immunoassays for three such viral diseases: coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Rift Valley fever (RVF), and hepatitis B. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the virus responsible for COVID-19 and the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-2023. The widespread availability and usage of immunoassays, particularly in the form of lateral flow immunoassays (LFIs), were instrumental in stymying the spread of the virus and leading to better disease surveillance. The natural mutation rate of the virus led to new SARS-Cov-2 variants appearing which detrimentally affected commercial diagnostic performance. In this work, 18 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were developed following immunizations with SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein. Two of these mAbs (1CV7 and 1CV14) were utilized in LFI development. Experimentation indicated that this prototype LFI is both sensitive and specific for SARS-CoV-2. Additionally, in a direct comparison analysis, the LFI prototype outperformed the commercially available BinaxNOW COVID-19 Antigen Card. Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is the etiological agent of RVF. RVF is a severe disease affecting both humans and animals. Due to its aerosol spread and significant public health risk, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) deemed RVFV a Select Agent with the capability of being used as a bioweapon. The World Health Organization (WHO) also listed RVFV as a Blueprint Priority Disease, indicating that more research needs to be done to prevent, treat, and detect RVFV around the globe. RVFV is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Existing diagnostics for RVFV are primarily reliant on nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR). NAATs require dedicated laboratory infrastructure and trained personnel, making the largescale implementation of these tests impractical in the resource-limited settings RVFV is endemic to. The described work explores the utilization of rapid immunoassays for the diagnosis and detection of RVFV in austere environments. An LFI was developed that demonstrated low limits of detection for the RVFV nucleocapsid (NP) biomarker. Additionally, collaborators at the University of Arizona Zenhausern laboratory were able to further implement the LFI pair into a rapid vertical flow immunoassay capable of sub-nanogram/milliliter levels of NP detection. Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is a lifelong infection caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV). CHB was responsible for 1.1 million deaths in 2022 and is additionally responsible for a majority of hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC). CHB has a worldwide prevalence; however, it is most abundant in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. CHB is readily treated with antiviral therapies. These antivirals significantly lower the risk of CHB complications such as cirrhosis and HCC. The key to successful CHB treatment is effective CHB monitoring and management. NAATs are frequently implemented to monitor disease state by assaying serum HBV DNA levels; however, these are expensive and inaccessible for many suffering from CHB. Hepatitis B core-related antigen (HBcrAg) is a recently defined biomarker with high correlations to serum HBV DNA levels. Here we investigated the implementation of HBcrAg specific mAbs into immunoassays for the sensitive detection of the antigen. A colorimetric LFI, fluorescent LFI, and antigen-capture ELISA were developed to facilitate the point-of-care (POC) detection and management of CHB. Furthermore, an acid/base pretreatment protocol to expose HBcrAg epitopes was developed to allow the assays to be potentially performed in low-resource settings. All the assays were shown to have clinically relevant limits of detection, indicating they have promise for future diagnostic applications
On machine-learning based surrogate modeling of soil-structure interaction problems
No full textThis dissertation explores the use of machine learning approaches as surrogate models for problems involving soil-structure interaction. As a first step, we investigate the potential of data-driven models by employing long short-term memory (LSTM) networks to perform uncertainty quantification for a buried structure and predict its seismic response under various earthquake excitations. To improve performance, we enhance conventional LSTM models to accept both time-dependent inputs and scalar random variables. This extension enables the incorporation of a broader range of uncertainties, including mechanical properties such as the soil’s shear wave velocity profile and geometric factors like the structure’s burial depth, in addition to the aleatory uncertainty associated with seismic motions.Next, we employ physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) to model site response analysis in one-dimensional soil columns. For this purpose, we incorporate a viscous damping term in the governing equations using the Kelvin-Voigt damping model. Additionally, we propose a methodology for deriving the dimensionless form of the governing equations under various excitation scenarios. This formulation enables the analysis to be independent of specific mechanical properties and geometric scales. Notably, the dimensionless representation also helps eliminate the need for additional
techniques to address challenges related to weighting loss terms and capturing high-frequency response components. As a final step, we integrate temporal domain decomposition with transfer learning to assess PINN’s performance in modeling site response under long-duration earthquake ground motions.
The acceptable performance of PINNs in predicting the response of one-dimensional systems motivates their extension to two-dimensional problems, where the objective is to predict the seismic response of a near-field domain subjected to remote excitation. To achieve this, we propose a two-step methodology that reformulates the strong-form governing equation in the original problem, with a distant excitation source, into an equivalent problem where the excitation is applied at an auxiliary boundary located near the region of interest. We then evaluate the effectiveness of this approach under two types of truncated boundary conditions: absorbing and transmitting boundary conditions. Consistent with the one-dimensional case, we demonstrate that the use of dimensionless governing equations yields acceptable results, regardless of the specific problem configuration
Catalyzing Change: Is it Time for a Paradigm Shift in Sulfide Leaching?
No full textThis paper was presented at the Heap Leach Solutions Conference, October 19-21, 2025, Sparks, Nevada.While regularly achieving copper recoveries approaching 100% for oxide ores, traditional acid heap leaching process leaves as much as 80% of copper in sulfide mineralogies unextracted. This performance gap is critical because sulfide ores represent 70-80% of remaining copper reserves, while declining grades and complex mineralogies are making pyrometallurgical processing increasingly uneconomical. Unlike oxides, sulfide leaching requires microorganisms to catalyze iron and sulfur oxidation. Since the discovery of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans in 1947, the dominant approach has been the introduction of lab-cultivated microbes, like A. ferrooxidans to enhance copper recovery from sulfide heaps. However, such past and current strategies have largely failed to address two critical points: (1) efficient copper dissolution requires coordinated reactions between multiple microbial types - iron oxidizers, sulfur processors, and acid producers working together, not individual strains acting alone; and (2) like all natural environments, leach heaps contain resilient microbial communities, well adapted to site-specific mineralogy, pH conditions, and nutrient availability, which the introduced microbes have to outcompete and may disrupt. This has led to inconsistent results, typically failing to translate from controlled laboratory environments to real world heaps at considerable time and financial expense. Here we propose a new paradigm for optimizing sulfide heap leaching efficiency by supporting biological processes already occurring in the heap. Drawing on the modern scientific understanding of microbial ecology in human gut and other environments, we propose that improvements in sulfide leaching can be achieved through what effectively amounts to a prebiotic approach. By delivering targeted chemical additives that support beneficial microbes in existing communities rather than attempting to replace them, natural community resilience can be leveraged to unlock significant improvements in metal recovery, cycle time, and acid consumption. Moreover, this approach requires no flowsheet change and no additional capital expenditure. By enabling heaps to function as efficient bioreactors, this method increases copper recovery while reducing operating costs and reducing environmental liabilities - offering a sustainable pathway for processing low-grade sulfide ores
Examining the Impact of Power-Based Violence on Nevada's Hispanic and Latino Communities
No full textNevada has extremely high rates of power-based violence, or any form of interpersonal violence intended to control, intimidate or harm another person through the assertion of power over the person (NV Rev Stat 396.1285, 2024). This is a pressing issue that is often addressed through resolution attempts and providing resources to survivors; however, these provisions often focus on broad groups with little information pertaining to helping specific identities. Within my Pack Research Experience Grant, I am working alongside Dr. Melody Huslage to address this gap in the literature and resource provision by analyzing data collected from an anonymous quantitative cross-sectional survey to better understand and address how power-based violence throughout Nevada specifically impacts the Hispanic and Latino communities living here. This project focuses on the outcomes of this survey, the broader impact of survey responses, and what needs to be done to better suit Hispanic and Latino survivors of power-based violence.The Office of Undergraduate Research Pack Research Experience Gran
Dental Morphology of Lagoa Santa and Implications for the Peopling of the Americas
No full textThis thesis evaluates the dental morphology of a population in the archaeological region of Lagoa Santa, located in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Lagoa Santa has an archaeological record of ~12,500 years of human activity. Since its discovery in the 19th century, about 300 sets of human remains have been recovered from the archaeological municipality. It has been suggested that the oldest remains recovered from this area are unlike other Native Americans. Studies using cranial measurements have found that the earliest individuals from Lagoa Santa are most similar to Australo-Melanesians, not Native Americans. Using dental trait frequencies and distance analyses, this study explores the relationships of the earliest inhabitants of Lagoa Santa. Dental morphology does not support claims of Australo-Melanesian origins for the early populations of Lagoa Santa. Rather, crown and root traits from this area are entirely consistent with those of other native populations from North and South America