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Mindfulness and Experiential Avoidance: Targeting Avoidance Behaviors with a Short-Term Focused-Breathing Exercise.
No full textPrevious research suggests that mindfulness holds promise as a treatment for anxiety-related disorders because it aids individuals in lowering their experiential avoidance (EA). In other words, mindfulness helps individuals approach stimuli which seem unpleasant, thus supporting adaptive exposure-based behaviors rather than strengthening avoidance behaviors. The current study is a partial replication of a previous study (Carlin & Ahrens, 2014) designed to investigate whether engaging in a brief mindfulness-based focused-breathing exercise would result in decreased avoidance behavior. Undergraduate students were randomly assigned to listen to a mindfulness or mind-wandering audio file. They were then shown a fear-inducing film clip and subsequently given a series of frustrating math problems to solve. This study expands previous research by measuring avoidance behavior via three distinct indicators: persistence in the frustrating math task, willingness to repeat this task in the future, and latency to start working on each math problem. This study investigates whether a mindfulness induction inhibits experiential avoidance across all three aforementioned markers of EA. Participants in the mindfulness group were more willing to re-experience unpleasant stimuli as compared to participants in the control group; however, there was no effect of group on persistence or latency. These results demonstrate that this short focused-breathing exercise may increase an anxious person’s willingness to re-experience unpleasant stimuli. More research is needed to compare the effects of different mindfulness inductions on avoidance behaviors after an anxiety-inducing situation
Development of an Internet of Things Platform for Elementary School Students.
No full textThis study involves the design, development, testing, and analysis of a new Internet of Things (IoT) platform designed specifically for use in elementary school classrooms. As more products are engineered to be internet enabled, it is important that we start teaching young students about IoT products. Currently, there are no educational platforms appropriate for elementary school students to enable them to build their own IoT systems. The new platform was developed as a way to introduce elementary school students to the Internet of Things by allowing them to build their own smart connected products. The platform was tested in two sections of a second grade coding class. The user test consisted of three, one-hour classes where second grade students used the new IoT platform to build solutions to an engineering design prompt. The results showed that second grade students were easily able to understand the main idea behind IoT and use the benefits of connected devices to build more complex systems than they would have been able to build without an internet connection. While there are many improvements that could be made to this platform, the initial testing results prove that it has great promise and that the Internet of Things can, in fact, be integrated into elementary school classrooms
Life Cycles.
No full textEllie uses animation as a lens for examining overlooked aspects of human experience. She is particularly interested in the ways that systems of power are reflected in life's most mundane moments. Her art practice is characterized by a compulsion to collect and organize observations of the quotidian in her own life. By aggregating these observations she aims to construct a more comprehensive picture of her identity, one detail at a time. Animation is an appropriate medium for this process because an animation is itself a collection of still images that, when brought together, create a moving image.Keywords: Animation, loops, gifs, cycles, quotidian, everyday, body positivity, gender, feminist art
Dora Lee Parham's Kitchen.
No full textSalvadora McCaffrey is a transdisciplinary artist and designer, native to Boston. Through a holistic approach toward art making, she produces works via various production methods and mediums to create spaces and objects for accessible experiences. Public(s), and their engagement, are tapped into with the intention to simutaneously communicate and socially experiment. Spatial theories, matrilineal histories, and sociopolitical excavations are critical points of discussion within her work
Effects of mutant cdc13 on CAG repeat fragility and instability in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
No full textRepetitive DNA sequences break at a higher frequency than non-repetitive DNA sequences. In addition, the repetitive sequences are unstable, and can undergo expansions and contractions. Trinucleotide repeats are a category of repetitive DNA elements that can form secondary structures and cause many diseases. For example, expansions of (CAG)n/(CTG)n trinucleotide repeats are responsible for many neuromuscular and neurodegenerative disorders like Huntington’s disease, myotonic dystrophy, and several spinocerebellar ataxias. The Cdc13 protein is a RPA-like protein that binds to the telomeric overhang and it is the main component of the CST complex, responsible for chromosome end capping and telomere length regulation. Recent evidence suggested that Cdc13 might protect against GAA repeat expansions. In this study, the well-characterized temperature-sensitive cdc13-1 mutation was introduced in several assay systems in S. cerevisiae to study instability and fragility within CAG/CTG repeats. We have found increased rates of chromosome breakage in mutants grown at a semi-permissive temperature. Regarding instability, it was seen that a dysfunctional Cdc13 protein produces a contraction-prone phenotype. When selecting for large-scale CAG expansions, we observed signs of an increased rate of expansion or mutation of the selectable cassette. While further research must be done in this topic, the evidence presented here supports the hypothesis that Cdc13 might be able to protect against CAG instability and fragility by binding to these repetitive sequences when exposed as ssDNA
Evaporation of Elements in Inconel 718.
No full textResearch on the evaporation of elements within Inconel 718 is required to more accurately simulate industrial casting. Specific thermophysical properties of an alloy are required for these models and investigators must conduct experimental testing to validate the model. To do this a mathematical model was created using Langmuir’s equation for mass evaporation. The agreement between the predictive mathematical model to the experimental results is encouraging but future work is needed
“Not the America We Dreamed Of:” Latinx Immigrants in a Trumpian Suburbia.
No full textThe 2016 United States presidential election and the rise of Donald Trump has been life-changing for Latinx immigrants across America. In this project, I ask: How has Donald Trump’s presidency impacted the day-to-day lives of Latinx immigrants living in America? How does the political climate shape social control over this suburban community and its members? What role does citizenship or documentation play in protecting Latinx immigrants from Trump’s policies? How have Latinx immigrants’ perceptions of America and Americans been impacted by Trump’s policies and rhetoric? I detail, depict, and analyze the Latinx immigrant experience on Long Island at this particular moment by uplifting and centering the lives of the participants to best understand negotiations of identity, citizenship, safety, hope, and control through formal and informal means
Online vs Offline: The Impact of Social Media on the Processing and Understanding of One's Grief.
No full textThe present study investigated how college students used their social media to present their grief, and answer the question of whether dealing with grief publicly on social media helped or hindered the grieving process and impact how we understand the experience
The Interaction of DNA Double-Strand Break Repair and CAG/CTG Trinucleotide Repeat Instability in Drosophila melanogaster.
No full textTrinucleotide repeats are the underlying molecular cause of many neurodegenerative disorders. A common feature of these repeats is their length dependence. When the repeat number is below a certain threshold, there are no symptoms of disease. Once expanded past a certain threshold, however, these repeats cause pathology on the DNA, RNA, and protein level. Repeats can expand in both somatic tissue and in the germline. Expansions occurring in the germline lead to genetic anticipation: when a larger number of repeats are passed on to each successive generation, causing an earlier age of onset of the disease as well as a more severe phenotype. Models for repeat instability focus on the ability of these GC-rich repeats to form secondary structures, especially when the DNA is single stranded. These models therefore describe instability as occurring during replication, transcription, and repair of trinucleotide repeats. Studies in yeast show increased instability of CAG repeats during double-strand break repair via homologous recombination. Therefore, the goal for this experiment was to create and characterize a novel assay in which a double-strand break is created in the male germline of Drosophila melanogaster and repaired via homologous recombination through a region of CAG repeats. We created several constructs through molecular cloning in order to study repeat instability with a varying number of repeats, injected these constructs into Drosophila embryos, and created stocks. We performed the first iteration of the assay in a stock containing 71 CAG repeats before the induction of a double-strand break and repair. Results of the assay showed that the majority of repair events were end joining, with a small percentage of repair events being completed recombination, and an even smaller number of events being aborting recombination that completed repair via end joining. Experiments are ongoing to determine the stability of the repeats across generations and after repair
Effect of Pro-Inflammatory Cytokines on Lacrimal Gland Myoepithelial Cell Functions.
No full textSjögren’s syndrome is a systemic inflammatory disease that affects the lacrimal gland and is the leading cause of aqueous-deficient dry eye. The lacrimal gland is the main contributor of the aqueous layer of the tear film. Overall, there are three different cell types in the lacrimal gland: acinar, ductal, and myoepithelial cells. Myoepithelial cells are responsible for the production of extracellular matrix and basement membrane components and play a role in tear secretion. These cells also contract to help expel secretory products from the acinar cells; this contraction is regulated by oxytocin. In chronic inflammatory diseases of the lacrimal gland, such as Sjögren’s syndrome, there is reduced production of tears leading to dry eye disease, which may be due to impaired function of myoepithelial cells. In this study, isolated myoepithelial cells from SMA-GFP mice were grown in culture and treated with or without interleukin-1 (IL-1), which is a pro-inflammatory cytokine, in order to study the effect of IL-1 on myoepithelial cells. Western blotting and immunofluorescent staining experiments were conducted in order to ascertain the presence and expression of the oxytocin receptor and the key contractile proteins of interest (SMA and calponin).Our study confirmed that myoepithelial cells can successfully be isolated and cultured from SMA-GFP mice, which would allow future experiments to be conducted with more ease as compared to studies in whole animals. Through these experiments, we also confirmed that these cells expressed oxytocin receptor, and that treatment with IL-1 leads to a significant decrease in expression of key contractile proteins of interest (SMA and calponin). Based on our findings, we can conclude that our data support the hypothesis that chronic inflammation of the lacrimal gland and increased levels of IL-1 leads to degradation of SMA and calponin, which overall impairs the contraction of myoepithelial cells and limits tear secretion