Culturally-Informed Interventions for Self-Harm in Indian Country

Elizabeth Caplan, Nursing Undergraduate Student

College of Professional Studies

The suicide rate for young Indigenous men is 2x-4x higher than for other demographic groups. Causes include cultural disruption, historical trauma, grief, and health and social inequities. Prevention of self-harm is a core responsibility of healthcare. A rural clinic serving Indigenous people will implement a Zero Suicide Framework with input from local tribal members. Community members will help develop risk assessments, quality of life surveys, and the facilitation of participation in traditional cultural activities. This will protect by strengthening of belonging, connection, strong spirituality and physical health, and relationship within the community and with the natural world.

Depressive Symptomology Mediates the Relationship Between Self-stigma and Mental Health Help-seeking Intention

Carrie Aigner, Psychology Faculty

College of Professional Studies

Undergraduate students (N=712) completed an online survey about help-seeking, stigma, and depression symptomatology. Mental health self-stigma was found to partially mediate the relationship between depression and help-seeking intentions, controlling for gender. This study suggests that the nature of depression itself may present a barrier to help-seeking, adding important context to outreach efforts on campuses.

Do bears know when trash pickup day is?

Amber Elving, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

This project aimed to answer whether or not bears frequented homes more often on trash pickup day. I placed 20 trail cameras around Humboldt County and was able to capture thousands of photos. Through the collaborative efforts with homeowners and myself, I was able to capture seventy photos of bears, of which 42 were independent events and 48% of the bears were actively foraging on trash.

Do bumblebees pollinate when they are scared? The Effect of Simulated Danger on Bumblebee Foraging Habits

Audrey Fowler , Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

A study looking at how bees perceive danger, and if it affects their foraging behaviors. This was determined by the use of simulated dangers, in this case artificial black capped chickadees. These dangers were placed in bushes and the number of bumblebees that visited each bush (either with or without dangers) was counted. The research finds that the presence of danger is significant to bees when choosing which flowers or bushes to forage.

Does cleft palate repair surgery restore normal neural processing for infant faces?

Francesca Messina, Psychology Graduate Student

College of Professional Studies

Infant faces readily capture our attention and elicit enhanced neural processing, likely due to their importance in facilitating bonds with caregivers. Cues of poor health are associated with a lower degree of parental investment and facial malformations have been shown to negatively impact early infant-caregiver interactions, possibly due to altered perceptual processing of these faces compared to unaffected infant faces. The current study used eye tracking and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate responses to infant faces before and after cleft palate repair surgery.

Does Handedness Affect Lateralization of Facial Emotion Processing

Shairy Jimenez Delgado, Psychology Graduate Student

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

Behavioral and neuroimaging work on the visual processing of facial stimuli has consistently demonstrated a right hemisphere bias in face perception generally as well as in emotion perception. Research on lateralization of other cognitive functions such as language has found differential patterns of lateralization between right-handed and left-handed individuals. Several neuroimaging studies found evidence between handedness and degree of lateralization for face processing. The current study seeks to extend previous work by investigating the relationship between degree of handedness and degree of hemispheric lateralization for the processing of faces displaying positive and negative affect.

Does the Thatcher Effect extend to infant faces?

Adnan Alyan, Psychology Graduate Student

College of Professional Studies

You will spend more time looking at faces than any other type of object in your lifetime. Because faces are such an important social signal, humans have developed a perceptual expertise for faces. Decades of research on the mechanisms of face processing have demonstrated that although faces contain both featural and configural information humans rely more heavily on configural processing strategies when viewing faces. However, this work has been done using almost exclusively adult facial stimuli. The current study uses a well-established configural disruption known as the Thatcher Effect (TE) to investigate the use of configural processing for infant faces.

Don't get caught with a CAUTI

Jill Williams, Nursing Undergraduate Student

College of Professional Studies

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the 5th most common healthcare-associated infection. Of hospital-acquired UTIs, 75% are associated with urinary catheters. 12-16% of people hospitalized require a urinary catheter. There is a 3-7% increased risk of a UTI each day the catheter is in. The negative effects of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) are pain and discomfort, as well as longer hospital stays, increased cost, complications like secondary infections and mortality (estimated 13,000 deaths/year). The proposed outcomes of are after 1 year, there will be a 50% reduction in CAUTI rates and after 1 year, there will be a 2-day reduction in length of hospital stay.

Drug Decriminalization

James Brother, Social Work Graduate Student

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

I've been conducting research regarding drug decriminalization because of the harmful effects on people's future, the disproportionate impacts on people of color, and the opportunities to develop other forms of restorative justice and recovery.

Eelgrass beds impact on juvenile Dungeness crab in Humboldt Bay, CA.

Jillian Hodge, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

The Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) is a pivotal decapod species along the Pacific coast, playing a significant role both economically and ecologically. This study aimed to investigate the influence of common eelgrass (Zostera marina) beds on juvenile Dungeness crab populations within Humboldt Bay, California. Utilizing crab hoop traps deployed across 30 sites at four distinct beach locations, the research sought to identify habitat preferences and better understand the ecological dynamics shaping juvenile Dungeness crab distributions.