Human induced pluripotent stem cells have revolutionized the medical world. These cells come from adult somatic cells and have the ability to differentiate into the three germs layers of development: mesoderm, ectoderm, and endoderm. To better understand the nature of these cells this project attempted to provide insight into the morphology through the use of scanning electron microscopy.

My research project is the implementation of a music listening library at the Humboldt Senior Resource Center for participants of the Alzheimer's Day Program. I will be providing the Center with 4 Ipods with playlists accompanied by 4 picture album books highlighting the musicians in the playlists.

Throughout the Spring 2017 semester, I conducted my service learning at the Sunny Brae Middle School afterschool program. Using my experience from the Environmental Studies program, I led an environmental art class where students learned the importance of frameworks by looking giving a critical look at photographers work and also putting what they learned to practice by taking photos of their own. I hope that knowing how frameworks operate will allow the students to be critical about the produced world around them.

This research explores popular discourse regarding the “opiate epidemic” and deconstructs the ways in which popular conceptions of addiction and addicts shapes the care that that people recieve. By looking at the systemic causes of addiction, this research also examines the links between addiction, environmental justice, rurality, and the many facets of systemic oppression.

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are not only an environmental hazard, they are hazardous to the animals confined in them and neighboring communities. In this project, I researched the consequential effects of CAFOs on the entire biotic community. The main effects discussed include but are not limited to: waste concentration, water quality, air quality, and public health. The interdisciplinarity of the issue at hand is brought to light by analyzing these detrimental effects through an Environmental Justice and Ecofeminist lens. Proposed areas of further research and community inclusion/empowerment are provided upon conclusion.

Glufosinate is an important agricultural herbicide, and in this project we attempt to use computational chemistry to better understand how modifications to its structure impact the properties of a nucleophilic functional group important to its mechanism of action. Though ultimately the uncertainty of these calculations proved too large to draw useful conclusions about the mechanism, we were able to establish a reasonable range for the functional group pKa that excluded older conflicting literature values and to provide insight into how steric factors may cause the substitutions to behave differently within the active site than they do in solution.

A common practice through the waves of environmental movements is for grassroots organizations to eventually form a non-profit that continues to support the environment. This was clearly observed at the Environmental Protection Information Center in Arcata, California. The study of this nonprofit and others like it have painted a clearer picture about how environmental nonprofits organize and mobilize. EPIC follows the patterns of other organizations, being a 45 year old environmental nonprofit, it has seen a lot of changes from its original grassroots mobilization. The focus is now on how to best fulfill its mission statement and maintain a complex membership based business.

This poster describes an exploratory study that was completed this semester to explore the question of whether or not there is a need for an indoor field on the North Coast that would provide a solution that allows organized field sports to continue activities during adverse weather conditions in the low-income areas of Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Gathering data for research was carried out by talking to local individuals involved in recreational facilities development and members of sports associations. It was written to raise awareness of the need for such a space and in the hope of getting the community a step closer to figuring out how to provide such a recreation facility.

In June 2016, the water column abundance and vertical flux profile of microfibers was examined using Niskin bottle collection and a vertical array of surface-tethered sediment traps at the continental shelf break south of Rhode Island. Fibers were extracted and analyzed on a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer to determine the type of materials present. Sinking rates of the fibers were estimated through three independent approaches: theoretical, field-based, and lab-based. In general, the field-based approach indicated roughly 8x slower sinking speeds than those observed in the lab or predicted by theory.

My research has two components. The first component explores field research techniques involving the integration of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS), with mobile mapping tools and geospatial analysis, to generate layers of data for a target study area. The layers include georeferenced orthophotographs, digital elevation models (DEMs), 3D models, common GIS raster transformations, supervised classifications, and false-color composites. The second component explores the use of information technology to develop effective methods for displaying and communicating scientific information to a broader audience.