Sam Kalies, Senior Art Portfolio

This portfolio represents the works by Sam Kalies in the Senior Art Exhibition, exhibited in the Bush Art Center Galleries from April 8- May 3, 2019.https://digitalcommons.snc.edu/artportfolios/1039/thumbnail.jp

Fact Sheet: What Are the Consequences of Cutting Old Ponderosa Pine Trees? A Systematic Review

In ponderosa pine forests, restoration treatments (including thinning and prescribed burning) are being implemented to reduce the threat of stand-replacing fire and to restore ecosystem structure, composition, and function to within the natural range of variability. In implementing treatments, old trees (>150 years) are typically retained due to their relative rarity and as-sumed ecological importance, and because old trees take centuries to replace. The oldest ponderosa pine have unique morphological and presumably functional characteristics and can exceed 700 years in age (Huckaby et al. 2003). The morphology of such trees often includes large trunks and branches, deeply furrowed bark, deformities in crown structure, epicormic branching, big mistletoe brooms, or external fire scars (Harrington and Sackett 1992; Huckaby et al. 2003; Morgan et al. 2002; Swetnam and Brown 1992), and thus they may have different functions than younger trees related to these different structures. As treatments are implemented at increasingly larger scales, a wide variety of thinning treatments, including cutting old trees, have been proposed. We used systematic review methodology to specifically address the question: What are the consequences to ecosystem function of cutting old ponderosa pine trees; particularly, do old trees serve a different function than younger trees

Fact Sheet: Restoration Effects on Small Mammals and their Predators

Small mammals perform several important ecosystem functions, including increasing soil aeration, dispersing seeds and mycorrhizal fungi, regulating vegetation abundance and composition, and serving as prey for predators. While wildlife ecologists know that small mammal densities often fluctuate in response to disturbances in their environment, there is little understanding about disturbance impacts to the functional roles of these animals

Fact Sheet: Effects of Restoration on Wildlife Density and Populations

Ecological restoration treatments, including thinning and/or burning, expose wildlife species to short- and long-term alterations to their habitat. Restoration treatments are an effort to return forest structure and composition to within the range of natural variability, which should benefit native wildlife species. However, these treatments are being planned and implemented across thousands of acres of forest in the southwestern United States with only limited quantitative data about wildlife responses across multiple species or taxa

Mindfulness training and developing clinician\u27s perceived stress and self-compassion

Graduate students in the helping professions experience a large amount of stress due to their dual roles as clinicians and students, which may impact their ability to perform effectively. Due to these demands, many developing clinicians feel ill prepared to cope with these responsibilities, especially when self-care strategies are not included in their curriculum. Given research showing its association with more positive feeling states, increased self-compassion, decreased stress, and better quality of life, mindfulness training may be the missing link in graduate programs to aid students in developing more effective self-care and coping strategies to meet the demands of their clinical and academic workloads. In order to better understand the association between mindfulness engagement, stress, and self-compassion, a quantitative examination was conducted with fifteen master’s level graduate students in a clinical psychology master’s program. No significant difference was found when comparing stress and self-compassion scores before mindfulness training and after engagement in mindfulness training, which may have been due to limitations regarding data analysis, research design, and the selected sample. Notwithstanding, mean score results counter assumptions of high graduate student stress levels, and highlight the need for Self-Compassion Scale norms for this population. Recommendations for future directions include utilizing a control group, completing measures at various points within graduate programs, and exploring specific mindfulness practices’ impact on stress and self-compassion scores

Fact Sheet: Stand Structure and Breeding Birds: Implications for Restoring Ponderosa Pine Forests.

Fire-adapted forests in the western United States have dramatically departed from historical reference condi-tions over the past century due to fire suppression, logging, grazing and other management practices. As a result, they are now susceptible to stand-replacing crown fires and ensuing damage to watersheds, wildlife habitat, and communities. Restoration treatments using mechanical thinning and prescribed fire have become the dominant management paradigm in this forest type. While many studies have examined wildlife responses to restoration treatments, single-species information is difficult for managers to synthesize and incorporate into management decisions made at large scales. Our specific objectives in this study were to determine associations between forest structural attributes and occupancy rates of (1) individual bird species and (2) bird species richness (total number of species) in ponderosa pine forests, in order to help guide restoration treatment design

Fact sheet: Systematic reviews and the quality of evidence

Systematic reviews as a means of assessing the quality of evidence in scientific studie

Visualization and manipulation of repair and regeneration in biological systems using light

Tissue repair after an injury is a fundamental process in biomedicine. It can involve regeneration, which uses new growth to restore tissue function. The interest in repair and regeneration is motivated by the desire to treat injuries and diseases and has attracted researchers for centuries. In the last decades, it evolved in the field of regenerative medicine, which has the ultimate goal of providing strategies for regenerating human cells, tissues, or even organs, for instance, via engineering principles. Already since the first experiments on regeneration by Abraham Trembley, novel findings in biomedicine, repair, and regeneration have been enabled or accompanied by research in optics, for example, on the development of novel microscopy techniques. Nowadays, novel optical techniques are advancing, which allow to understand the role of single cells in tissue repair processes. Moreover, repair processes within cells can be visualized and manipulated. Ultimately, optics can provide enabling techniques for regenerative therapies. This habilitation thesis aims to present several of these advances. On a single cell level, femtosecond laser nanosurgery was used to target specific intracellular structures during concurrent imaging in vitro. The relation of femtosecond laser nanosurgery to the cell state and cellular staining was investigated. Manipulation of single Z-discs in cardiomyocytes using a femtosecond oscillator laser system was accomplished, which allows to better elucidate the role of a single Z-disc in cardiomyocyte function. In particular, measurements on cell survival, (calcium-) homeostasis, and morphology yielded only minor deviations from control cells after single Z-disc ablation. A reduction in force generation was elucidated via traction force microscopy and gene expression level changes, for instance, an upregulation of -actinin were examined. Additionally, light-based systems to influence single cells in their alignment or to trigger single cells, for example, to activate other cells via optogenetics were applied. On the tissue scale, imaging via confocal microscopy or multiphoton microscopy has been applied for various contexts of regenerative approaches. Furthermore, a fiber-based imaging approach, which could later be used for longitudinal imaging in vivo and builds upon a fluorescence microscope system and an imaging fiber bundle in combination with reconstruction via a neural network, was developed. As another imaging strategy, an abdominal imaging window served to image the mouse liver in vivo via multiphoton microscopy in successive imaging sessions. Manipulation in tissue was applied in colonoids, which resemble the structure of the colon on an in vitro scale, and revealed different cell dynamics dependent on the location of the damage. In particular, activation of the Wnt signaling pathway after crypt damage was observed. Cell ablation via a femtosecond laser amplifier system during concurrent two-photon microscopy was also established during in vivo liver imaging to study micro-regenerative processes. Furthermore, laser-based delivery processes with novel materials or in the context of genome editing using CRISPR/Cas9 technology were investigated as enabling technologies for regenerative medicine. In conclusion, this thesis addresses the question of how optics can help to illuminate future directions in research on tissue repair and regeneration, as well as, regenerative therapies by addressing (longitudinal) imaging in a complex environment, sophisticated cell-manipulation strategies, and the application of novel materials for laser-based delivery