Goodnight Gorilla: How Do Second Language Learners’ American Sign Language Narrative Renditions Change after Viewing an ASL Model?

We investigated the effects of a single viewing of an American Sign Language (ASL) model on university second language learners’ ASL narrative renditions. Spoken English was the first language of all participants and they had varied lengths of signing experience, ranging from 1 to 26 years. Participants completed a receptive measure of ASL. Then they rendered a wordless picture book in ASL. Afterwards, they watched a native-signing adult model of the story in ASL, and then told the story again. We investigated their inclusion of specific details and how they expressed them, including their use of constructed action (CA), depicting constructions (DCs), blended CA+DC, and lexical signs. After one viewing of the model, participants significantly increased their inclusion of details and use of all constructs except lexical signs, although not to the level of the model. Their receptive ASL scores correlated with their use of CA within their narrative renditions at both time points. We present an analysis of their strengths and areas of need, as well as future research implications

Improved NOE fitting for flexible molecules based on molecular mechanics data – a case study with S-adenosylmethionine

The use of molecular dynamics (MD) calculations to derive relative populations of conformers is highly sensitive to both timescale and parameterisation of the MD. Where these calculations are coupled with NOE data to determine the dynamics of a molecular system, this can present issues if these populations are thus relied upon. We present an approach that refines the highly accurate PANIC NMR methodology combined with clustering approaches to generate conformers, but without restraining the simulations or considering the relative population distributions generated by MD. Combining this structural sampling with NOE fitting, we demonstrate, for S-adenosylmethionine (aqueous solution at pH 7.0), significant improvements are made to the fit of populations to the experimental data, revealing a strong overall preference for the syn conformation of the adenosyl group relative to the ribose ring, but with less discrimination for the conformation of the ribose ring itself

Differentiation of Caudal Interneuron Populations from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Interneurons, the most abundant neuronal class in the CNS, are critical to transducing synaptic information within and between neural networks for proper neurologic function. In the hindbrain and spinal cord, ventral interneurons are key components of pattern generators that control respiration and locomotion. Disruption of the interneurons by disease or injury can disrupt the pattern generators and lead to debilitation. Elucidating how these interneuron populations develop, as well as their roles in pattern generation, can lead to potential repair strategies for damaged circuits. While murine models have provided insight on interneuron development and circuitry, human populations may develop and function differently. Human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived neural populations provide a source to study human development and circuitry when alternative tissues are unavailable. This dissertation describes three studies that derive caudal interneuron populations from hPSCs. In the first study, V2a interneurons, a population involved in respiratory control and left-right coordination are differentiated from hPSCs. The V2a interneurons appropriately mature and survive to form long extensions following transplantation into an uninjured murine spinal cord. In the second study, multiple interneuron populations critical to respiratory control are specified from hPSCs. This study demonstrates the ability to describe multiple tissue-specific populations from one combination of signaling molecules. In the final study, a respiratory organoid is described that contains populations critical to respiratory control. This model provides a platform to probe how disruption of neural networks leads to respiratory distress. Together, this work is the first to describe multiple interneuron populations from hPSCs. These caudal interneurons can be used to study human development, test new drugs, and establish therapies to reconnect neural networks following injury or disease. Additionally, these studies provided a systematic approach to co-emerge multiple neural populations that could be broadly applied to describe other neural populations

Induction of V2a interneurons from Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

Mentor: Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert From the Washington University Undergraduate Research Digest: WUURD, Volume 7, Issue 2, Spring 2012. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research, Joy Zalis Kiefer Director of Undergraduate Research and Assistant Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences; Kristin Sobotka, Editor

A Novel Protocol for Differentiation of V2a Interneurons from Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

From the Washington University Senior Honors Thesis Abstracts (WUSHTA), Volume 5, Spring 2013. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research. Joy Zalis Kiefer, Director of Undergraduate Research / Assistant Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences; E. Holly Tasker, Editor; Kristin Sobotka, Undergraduate Research Coordinator. Mentor: Shelly Sakiyama-Elber

A Novel Protocol for Differentiation of V2a Interneurons from Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

Mentor: Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert From the Washington University Undergraduate Research Digest: WUURD, Volume 8, Issue 2, Spring 2013. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research, Joy Zalis Kiefer Director of Undergraduate Research and Assistant Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences; Kristin Sobotka, Editor

Cretaceous World TCN: Digitizing the Western Interior Seaway at the Yale Peabody Museum

Yale Peabody Museum (YPM) is a partner in the Western Interior Seaway Thematic Collections Network (TCN), along with the University of Kansas (lead) and seven other institutions (National Science Foundation Award # DBI-1601884). This project seeks to digitize the fossil organisms of the Western Interior Seaway, a shallow sea that covered inland North America from 100 to 65 million years ago. The resultant data will be a resource for K-16 education and will enable scientists to answer fundamental questions about the changing environment of a marine ecosystem during a key time in the history of life. The data generated will be ideal for use with an assortment of modern quantitative tools like paleoecological niche modeling (PaleoENM) and will help improve paleoclimate and paleoceanographic models. Less than two years into this three-year project, the YPM has digitized nearly 70,000 Cretaceous fossils from the seaway. Specimens are georeferenced and most have multiple images. To achieve project goals, we have overcome obstacles of digitizing multi-specimen concretions and foraminifera microslides by developing high-throughput digitization workflows that incorporate the open-source Inselect program and scripts to streamline image naming, image formatting, and uploading to our Axiell EMu collection management system. To facilitate use of the data in K-16 environments, an easy to use collections interface has been built using the iDigPaleo platform (idigpaleo.org). Cretaceous World (cretaceousworld.org) pulls data from iDigBio for all Cretaceous World TCN providers. Students can browse specimens using filters, rather than entering specific search terms. Navigation is simplified using common names harvested from the Encyclopedia of Life. Specimens are displayed as images accompanied by collection and locality data and plotted on a map. Registration provides access to tools supporting annotation, measurement, specimen record commenting, and social media sharing. Images can be curated as galleries and used for education. This includes sharing of galleries between students and teachers and PDF or PowerPoint exports. Fifty-eight 3D models of vertebrates and invertebrates have been placed on morphosource.org and will be made available via a 3D embedded viewer on cretaceousworld.org for use in K-16 education. Undergraduate students from Dartmouth, Oberlin, Southern Connecticut State University, and Yale, have participated in the project and served as mentors for high school interns. These interns, recruited from the Peabody EVOLUTIONS afterschool program, gained first-hand experience in collections-based research, digitization, and imaging techniques, while learning about the science of paleontology and the process of curating museum collections, and researching and reconstructing food webs in this fascinating ancient ecosystem