The Scorpio

A traditional prom dress can generally be worn only once; therefore, the purpose of the design was to create a prom dress that is versatile and suitable enough to be worn to various special occasions. The design represents the astrological Scorpio sign. She is unafraid and filled with passion. Since leather was selected for making the dress, the cutting and stitching of the leather patterns were the challenges of the design

Bourbon Street

New Orleans has a unique identity influenced as much by its Creole culture as by the land it occupies. Bordered by the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain, Wetlands, and Bayou Savage, its distinct wildlife and climate shaped its demography as colonizers from France and Spain began to explore the area. My purpose was to create a cohesive image of New Orleans from the crudity of the bayou to intricacy of the French Quarter. New Orleans has an excess of alligator skins with imperfections including cuts, scale slips, and subcutaneous blemishes. Though these skins are deemed undesirable, I wanted to portray their beauty—imperfections included. Thus, I designed a cocktail dress with a zero-waste mindset so every part of the alligator could be showcased. My design was composed of alligator skin, metal hardware, and cotton Ponte knit. I juxtaposed these different materials so their contrast can exemplify their individual essences

Urbane Rebel

The wrapping of gifts is such a way that a two-dimensional plane may be folded into a threedimensional figure, particularly the rectangular prism, acted as the main inspiration to create a women’s winter cape. Flat, arbitrary shapes, including half circles and zigzags, were incorporated into the design to further the idea of geometry and to operate as functional details

Cast On Cast Off

Knitting is an old and often taken for granted art form, but to me, it is a brand new concept I have yet to to fully discover. As a fashion designer, I typically begin the construction of my garments with fabric. However, I wanted to understand how yarn becomes fabric and to explore the full processes of design and construction. I traveled to Fu Jen Catholic University to research machine knitting techniques. Using the pieces I knitted, I created a dress that features black accordion pleats at front as a focal point and black ribs on the back connected by a blue all knit strip. Blue cording was stitched at the hem and continuously run in the middle of the stole from one end to the other for texture and details. The dress can be worn with or without the spaghetti belt depending on personal preference and occasion

African American Male Achievement Initiative: A Deeper Look At African American Males In OUSD

This report provides further insights into the status of African American boys in Oakland Unified School Distric (OUSD) and aims to reverse the academic and social inequities they face in seven key areas: the achievement gap, graduation rates, literacy, suspensions, attendance, middle school holding power, and juvenile detention. A framework of three levels of well-being (on course, at risk of falling off course, and off course) was used to understand how African American male students are faring in these areas

African American Male Achievement Initiative: A Closer Look At Attendance Of African American Males In OUSD

This report examines data, best practices, and policies related to attendance and chronic absence and offers recommendations for reducing the levels of chromic absence for African American males in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). It analyzes one year of attendance data (2010-2011) for African American males in OUSD, looking at chronic absence by grade level, types of absence, and reasons given for absence, as well as comparing rates of chronic absence to other males groups in OUSD

African American Male Achievement Initiative: A Closer Look At Suspensions Of African American Males In OUSD

This report examines the data, literature, and policy around suspensions of African American male students to uncover and better understand the disparities between this group and all other ethnic and gender groups. This report analyzes one year of suspension data from the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD, 2010-11), looking at suspensions by demographics, grade level, school level, and types of offenses

Outerwear—inner musings: A theoretical framework application for creative scholarship

Scholarship in design, namely clothing and textiles, is based in practice and research. Dire concerns and consequences face academics deciding to undertake creative production as a scholarship track, namely promotion and tenure. With a profession centered on creative practice, efforts to better define and document methodological rigor for creative scholarship must be made, in order to increase knowledge dissemination across the discipline. Studies in information systems design-science theory application indicate various guidelines for undertaking creative practice as design-science (Hevner et al., 2004)

Teaching design research through practice: a pilot study for collaborative exploration

As design educators, we experience tension between devoting the precious little time we have in class to educating our students in ways of making (i.e., skills in sewing and patternmaking) and ways of thinking (i.e. design ideation, creativity, etc.)

Kinesin-4 Functions in Vesicular Transport on Cortical Microtubules and Regulates Cell Wall Mechanics during Cell Elongation in Plants.

This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://www.cell.com/molecular-plant/abstract/S1674-2052%2815%2900091-X.In plants, anisotropic cell expansion depends on cortical microtubules that serve as tracks along which macromolecules and vesicles are transported by the motor kinesins of unknown identities. We used cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) fibers that underwent robust elongation to discover kinesins that are involved in cell elongation and found Gh KINESIN-4A expressed abundantly. The motor was detected by immunofluorescence on vesicle-like structures that were associated with cortical microtubules. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the orthologous motor At KINESIN-4A/FRA1, previously implicated in cellulose deposition during secondary growth in fiber cells, was examined by live-cell imaging in cells expressing the fluorescently tagged functional protein. The motor decorated vesicle-like particles that exhibit a linear movement along cortical microtubules with an average velocity of 0.89 μm/min, which was significantly different from those linked to cellulose biosynthesis. We also discovered that At KINESIN-4A/FRA1 and the related At KINESIN-4C play redundant roles in cell wall mechanics, cell elongation, and the axial growth of various vegetative and reproductive organs, as the loss of At KINESIN-4C greatly enhanced the defects caused by a null mutation at the KINESIN-4A/FRA1 locus. The double mutant displayed a lack of cell wall softening at normal stages of rapid cell elongation. Furthermore, enhanced deposition of arabinose-containing carbohydrate was detected in the kinesin-4 mutants. Our findings established a connection between the Kinesin-4-based transport of cargoes containing non-cellulosic components along cortical microtubules and cell wall mechanics and cell elongation in flowering plants.This report is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant MCB-1243959 (BL and YRJL), Physical Biosciences Program of the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy under the contracts DE-FG02-04ER15554 (BL) and DEFG02- 03ER15415 (Z-HY). SL is supported by the Center for LignoCellulose Structure and Formation, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy under the award DE-SC0001090 and SAB is supported by a Gatsby Foundation Fellowship