From Tibetan monks to college students in the U.S., meditation is a practice that has transcended cultural barriers and has been in existence for thousands of years. In addition to waking, dreaming, and non-dreaming, Davidson (1976) describes the practice of transcendental meditation (TM) as a fourth state of consciousness (as cited in Kanellakos & Lukas, 1974). This is due to the studies with brain wave lengths and EEGs that show what areas of the mind are being activated during meditation. My study will be a literature review of: the physiological changes during meditation, brain activity during meditation, and current clinical applications.

At Humboldt State University, a group of undergraduate students and faculty have been investigating the effects of gravity at very short distances. Due to the need to measure very small amounts of motion during these experiments, a separate group of students and faculty have been designing an optical system to measure very small rotational movement, down to the sub-milliradian scale. This system, a modified Michelson interferometer, utilizes the optical path length difference of two branches of a split laser beam to measure almost imperceptible rotations of a mirror by observing constructive and destructive interference of the two branches.

When Oliphant v. Suquamish was passed it completely changed the paradigm in rape cases. It created a legal loophole for perpetrators to escape without punishment due to a jurisdictional power shift to federal governance. This allows more sexual assaults and abductions on reservations because there is not readily accessible or adequate repercussions for the behavior of rapists. The exploitation of mother earth’s resources can be related to the violation and objectification of Native American bodies as both were violated by the settler state.

Zinc is a metal that is found in trace amounts in seawater and acts as a micronutrient to marine phytoplankton. To detect and quantify trace amounts of zinc, a flow injection (FI) system was constructed using a flow-through fluorescence detector. The FI system was interfaced with a LabVIEW program which allows for the signals to be analyzed and quantifies time resolved peaks. Zinc, when bound to the organic ligand p-tosyl-8-aminoquinoline (p-taq), fluoresces when exposed to an excitation wavelength of 377 nm and emits light at 495 nm. The fully functioning FI system will be used in the analysis of zinc in Humboldt Bay and coastal waters.

Our research project consists of photographing animal remains and combining the photos to make digital 3D models which will later be used for student education for those who do not have direct hands-on access to these materials. To provide accurate models to be studied, photographs are taken of each bone 360 degrees around and stitched together using a program called STRATA 3D. The purpose of this project is to make our zooarchaeology collection available to the public while also ensuring that the remains will not be damaged. By incorporating the use of STRATA 3D, current and future students of Humboldt State University will be able to access this database for years to come.

Plants and their pathogens are often described as being in an "evolutionary arms race" that allows them to continue their survival. Effector molecules, which are what pathogens use to combat plant defenses, are encoded by genes that have often been observed to be located in more dense parts of the genome, providing a potential mechanism to accumulate more mutations than other genes. In this project, I used several statistical models to quantify the compartmentalization of effector genes. Understanding the genomes of some of the world's most devastating pathogens can inform the development of mitigation strategies that target stable characters which will not evolve rapidly.

Biodegradable composites were developed by incorporating quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Wild.) into polylactic acid (PLA), with varying ratios. The resulting films were characterized using melting points, bomb calorimetry, infrared (IR) spectroscopy, water uptake, water permeability, water contact angle, antioxidant assay and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The incorporation of differing quantities of quinoa fiber affected the properties of the composites. hese initial studies show quinoa/PLA composites have potential in the development of bio-renewable and biodegradable materials for active food packaging.

An organic photovoltaic (OPV) is a polymeric or small molecule device that accepts photons and generates a current. Donor-acceptor molecules are used to create a heterojunction where an electronic environment dissociates excitons, which are bound excited electron-hole pairs. Charge dissociation is facilitated at the heterojunction by the interaction of an exciton on the donor molecule with the electronic configuration of the acceptor molecule. Thiophene derivatives have proven to be promising candidates for high efficiency donor molecules. Rational design and attempted synthesis of bis(diaryl)-thienothiadiazole compounds with pyridyl and pyrimidyl groups are reported.

On college campuses, the topic of sexual consent has received much attention over the past 15 years. Consent is a multifaceted term, and can incorporate an internal state of willingness, an act of explicitly agreeing to something, and behavior that someone else interprets as consent (Muehlenhard et al., 2016). Despite the attention to sexual consent within higher education, it is unknown whether or not this trend is reflected in human sexuality textbooks. The current study involved a content analysis of how the construct of sexual consent is represented in five major human sexuality textbooks in terms of location, definition, scope, and context.

In Spring Semester 2017, we dove into a service learning project with Pacific Union School. We are contributing to the garden coordinator’s vision for an interdisciplinary, garden-based learning program that incorporates aspects of social and environmental justice. We have worked to create a reciprocal learning environment, such as described by authors in the Environmental Studies curriculum. We believe this is one step toward addressing the inequalities, environmental degradation, and corruption inherent in the global industrial food system. These injustices span issues such as race, class, gender, health, and the environment, which we have been exposed to throughout our journey at HSU.