Walking the Walk: Linking Teaching and Advocacy

Discusses the author\u27s journey from being a teacher to being a teacher for change

Social perception of faces and bodies: the relationships among motivational salience, social perception, and hormones

Social perception (i.e., the formation of impressions based on perceivable cues) of both faces and bodies is an integral part of social interaction and can influence and can be influenced by many variables, such as motivational salience (i.e., the amount of effort an individual will expend to continue viewing faces and bodies) and hormone levels of the perceiver. The first empirical chapter (i.e., Chapter 2) investigated social perception of faces and bodies using multiple trait ratings. First, participants rated face and body stimuli on the same 13 traits as those used in the seminal article on social perception of faces. Replicating previous work, I found that social perception of faces can be summarized by the two-component pattern of valence (i.e., intent to cause harm) and dominance (i.e., ability to cause harm). Social perception of bodies, though, can be summarized by one main component. Therefore, social perception of faces and bodies followed different, distinct patterns. The second empirical chapter (i.e., Chapter 3) investigated the relationship between the social perception components established in Chapter 2 and motivational salience. I assessed motivational salience using a standard key-press task in which participants could increase or decrease stimulus viewing time by pressing specified keys on the keyboard. Replicating previous work, valence and dominance positively and independently predicted the motivational salience of faces. Additionally, the one main social perception component of bodies positively predicted the motivational salience of bodies. The third empirical chapter (i.e., Chapter 4) investigated the relationship among the previously established social perception component of bodies, motivational salience of bodies, and hormone levels of the perceivers. I used the passive drool method of hormone measurement to determine exact hormone levels at five weekly test sessions. Similar to studies of faces, motivational salience of bodies was greater when testosterone was higher. While the one social perception component for bodies positively predicted motivational salience separately for male and female bodies, there was no interaction between testosterone and the social perception component, failing to conceptually replicate previous interactions between testosterone and stimulus valence. Overall, I first replicated the two-component social perception pattern of valence and dominance for faces before finding a different, one-component social perception pattern for bodies. In turn, each of these social perception components predicted motivational salience of faces and bodies. Additionally, motivational salience of bodies was greater when testosterone was high, but this effect was not qualified by the main social perception component for bodies. I conclude by discussing the similarities and differences between faces and bodies in this and other work on social perception and motivational salience

Potential past and future tree migration responses to climate change

Anthropogenic climate change is leading to dramatic fluctuations of essential climate dynamics and has become a major threat to modern ecosystem services and biodiversity because of its magnitude and rate of change. Climate is a well-known key constraint of species and ecosystem functions affecting distributions, extinction risk, altered disturbance regimes, biogeochemical cycling, and other ecological responses. Specifically, the ecological responses of forest and woodland vegetation to climate change are important to understand as they are important primary producers of many goods and services on which humans depend and provide supporting and regulating services for the environment. Tree species have already been found to have altered cover, biomass, density, carbon sink capabilities, fitness, extinction, invasion of non-native species, and diversity in response to modern climate change. Many conservation approaches aim to ameliorate the negative effects of environmental change within forest communities. However, conservation strategies assume the species composition of modern communities will exist with future climate change and rely on static protected area reserves. This may cause modern conservation practices to become obsolete with climate change because climate change is a dynamic process, unlike reserve practices, and species are known to respond to climate change independent of one another and their communities. Climate surface resolution has the potential to complicate predictions of the ecological impacts of climate change since climate varies from local to global scales and this spatial variation is reflected in climate data. In Chapter 1, I investigated this issue by downscaling Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and modern (1975-2005) 30-year averaged climate data to 60m resolution for the entire state of Alaska for 10 different climate variables, and then upsampled each variable to coarser resolutions (60m to 12km). Distributions of novel and disappeared climates were modeled to evaluate the locations and fractional area of novel and disappeared climates for each of my climate variables and resolutions. Novel and disappeared climates were primarily restricted to southern Alaska, although there were cases where some disappeared climates existed within coastal and interior Alaska. Novel and disappeared climates increased, decreased, or had no clear relationship of fractional area with the coarse climate data, however, the use of coarser climate data increased the fractional area of novel and disappeared climates due to the removal of environmental variability and climate extremes. Results from Chapter 1 reinforce the importance of downscaling coarse climate data and suggests that studies analyzing the effects of climate change on ecosystems may overestimate the effects of climate change when using coarse climate data. Once I demonstrated the importance of scale in understanding climate change, I next investigated whether high-resolution climate metrics, specifically climate velocity, were suitable predictors of a species migration response to climate change. Species have and will continue to shift their distributions in response to climate change, as species survival depends on the persistence of the suitability of a climatic niche space and their ability to keep pace with climatic changes in their realized niche. Many species are shifting their ranges in response to climate change. Climate velocity has become a commonly used index of the speeds and directions required for a species to keep pace with climate change. However, it is a simple measure of the rate at which climate is changing that disregards species-specific thresholds to their environment. In Chapter 2, using modern and LGM 60 m downscaled climate data for Alaska, I estimated the climate velocity for 8 different climate variables, as well as modeled LGM and modern distributions of white spruce using species distribution models. I then calculated the bioclimatic niche velocity of white spruce to estimate white spruce’s migration response and ability to keep pace with post-glacial climate change. Each climate velocity estimate was compared to all others, as well as to the bioclimatic niche velocity of white spruce to determine if climate velocity was a suitable predictor of a species’ migration response to climate change. I demonstrated that different climate variables yield different speeds and directions of climate, and that individual climate velocity estimates correlated poorly with the bioclimatic niche velocity as estimated for the Alaskan white spruce from the LGM to modern era. My results suggest that climate velocity alone does not provide suitable estimates of species migration responses to climate change due to climate velocity not accounting for species ecology and climatic tolerances that affect migration responses. In the previous chapter, I found evidence that bioclimatic niche velocity was a suitable approach to understanding high-resolution species migration pressures due to climate change. I then used these concepts to test if multiple species will migrate in the same direction, or independent of each other in response to climate change. Modern conservation strategies use static protected-area techniques to protect biodiversity from environmental change. However, static and stable assumptions of community dynamics assume that species will migrate with each other in response to climate change and form similar community assemblages in the future, even though it is well accepted that species respond to climate change independent of one another due to species-specific niche constraints. In Chapter 3, I calculated the bioclimatic niche direction for 72 of California’s native tree species derived from habitat suitability maps built using high-resolution downscaled climate data for the modern (1985-2015) and future (2070-2100) eras, and identified the directions of migration for each species in response to end of century climate change. Using each species’ modern habitat suitability maps, I identified and classified the different forest community types that occur throughout California during the modern era, and identified whether all the species of a community at a location displayed uniform (anisotropic) migration directions, or random (isotropic) migration directions in response to climate change. While in general, individual tree species of California displayed mean northward migration directions, a number of species were estimated to have alternative migration directions in response to climate change. A vast majority of California forest community types displayed isotropic species migration directions, indicating species will migrate independently of each other. Although all community types exhibited small amounts of anisotropic species migrations, locations where species migrate together were not clustered together throughout the community’s distributional range. My results indicated that the species that comprise California forest communities will migrate independently of each other, with the potential to create novel, no-analogue communities by the end of the 21st century. Additionally, my results suggested that current community conservation strategies should be revised and updated to reflect ecologists’ better understanding of climate change and the impact it has on species

Facts Matter! Black Lives Matter! The Trauma of Racism

This report is a summary of select research on the blocked opportunities and oppressive burden that young men of color experience. The authors hope that these findings fuel action by our government leaders, policy makers, advocacy and provider organizations and communities. In addition, this report highlights select promising policy and programmatic interventions that could provide steps to address the serious inequities that appear to be fueling the accumulating number of young men of color whose lives are cut short by violence or diminished by lack of opportunities, resources and supports

Reductions in movement-associated fear are dependent upon graded exposure in chronic low back pain : an exploratory analysis of a modified 3-item fear hierarchy

Objective: To explore the effectiveness of a modified fear hierarchy on measuring improvements in movement-associated fear in chronic low back pain. Methods: A modified 3-item fear hierarchy was created and implemented based on principles of graded exposure. This study was an exploratory analysis of the modified 3-item fear hierarchy from a larger clinical trial data set. Both groups received pain education and exercise, either bodyweight or strength training. Both groups performed item one on the hierarchy, the squat. Only the strength training group performed item 2, the deadlift. Neither group performed item 3, the overhead press. Analysis of Covariance and stepwise linear regression were used to explore results. Results: Improvement in movement-associated fear was conditional upon graded exposure. Both groups improved in the squat movement (p ≤ 0.05), which both performed. Only the strength training group improved in the deadlift (p ≤ 0.01), and neither improved in the overhead press (p ≥ 0.05). Conclusion: Reductions in movement-associated fear are conditional upon graded exposure, based on the use of a novel modified 3-item fear hierarchy. Further research is needed to understand the utility of this tool in a patient-led approach to co-designing a graded exposure-based intervention

Trypanosoma brucei BRCA2 acts in a life cycle-specific genome stability process and dictates BRC repeat number-dependent RAD51 subnuclear dynamics

Trypanosoma brucei survives in mammals through antigenic variation, which is driven by RAD51-directed homologous recombination of Variant Surface Glycoproteins (VSG) genes, most of which reside in a subtelomeric repository of >1000 silent genes. A key regulator of RAD51 is BRCA2, which in T. brucei contains a dramatic expansion of a motif that mediates interaction with RAD51, termed the BRC repeats. BRCA2 mutants were made in both tsetse fly-derived and mammal-derived T. brucei, and we show that BRCA2 loss has less impact on the health of the former. In addition, we find that genome instability, a hallmark of BRCA2 loss in other organisms, is only seen in mammal-derived T. brucei. By generating cells expressing BRCA2 variants with altered BRC repeat numbers, we show that the BRC repeat expansion is crucial for RAD51 subnuclear dynamics after DNA damage. Finally, we document surprisingly limited co-localization of BRCA2 and RAD51 in the T. brucei nucleus, and we show that BRCA2 mutants display aberrant cell division, revealing a function distinct from BRC-mediated RAD51 interaction. We propose that BRCA2 acts to maintain the huge VSG repository of T. brucei, and this function has necessitated the evolution of extensive RAD51 interaction via the BRC repeats, allowing re-localization of the recombinase to general genome damage when needed

A data-driven study of Chinese participants' social judgments of Chinese faces

Social judgments of faces made by Western participants are thought to be underpinned by two dimensions: valence and dominance. Because some research suggests that Western and Eastern participants process faces differently, the two-dimensional model of face evaluation may not necessarily apply to judgments of faces by Eastern participants. Here we used a data-driven approach to investigate the components underlying social judgments of Chinese faces by Chinese participants. Analyses showed that social judgments of Chinese faces by Chinese participants are partly underpinned by a general approachability dimension similar to the valence dimension previously found to underpin Western participants’ evaluations of White faces. However, we found that a general capability dimension, rather than a dominance dimension, contributed to Chinese participants’ evaluations of Chinese faces. Thus, our findings present evidence for both cultural similarities and cultural differences in social evaluations of faces. Importantly, the dimension that explained most of the variance in Chinese participants’ social judgments of faces was strikingly similar to the valence dimension previously reported for Western participants