Permaculture Design to Address Coffee Leaf Rust and Climate Change on a Panamanian Coffee Farm

Coffee is an important crop to both producers and consumers. Unfortunately, the current epidemic of the Hemileia vastatrix or Coffee Leaf Rust, has been devastating coffee farms throughout Latin America. A highly argued explanation for the recent outbreak of the disease has been placed on the transition of coffee farms from traditional shaded systems to sun-grown monocultures, allowing for faster and easier spread of the disease. Climate change also encourages increased incidence of pests and diseases while stressing the growing conditions for coffee. Farmers, for a myriad of economic and ecological reasons, have practiced alternative methods for coffee management systems such as, shade grown, organic, bird-friendly, and fair trade management. Permaculture is another alternative practice that promotes holistic agricultural systems that are ecologically regenerative, economically viable, and socially just. This thesis project uses permaculture theory and practice to redesign a coffee management system for a 1.5ha plot located in Palmira, Boquete, Panama. The goals of the final design are to mitigate and contain the effects of coffee leaf rust. Strategies incorporated in the design include, an increase of shade trees and vegetative windbreaks; intercropping systems; vermicompost; the addition of a hostel; water and soil management technologies and understanding; and the use of farmer input

Neurocognitive therapeutics: from concept to application in the treatment of negative attention bias

There is growing interest in the use of neuroimaging for the direct treatment of mental illness. Here, we present a new framework for such treatment, neurocognitive therapeutics. What distinguishes neurocognitive therapeutics from prior approaches is the use of precise brain-decoding techniques within a real-time feedback system, in order to adapt treatment online and tailor feedback to individuals’ needs. We report an initial feasibility study that uses this framework to alter negative attention bias in a small number of patients experiencing significant mood symptoms. The results are consistent with the promise of neurocognitive therapeutics to improve mood symptoms and alter brain networks mediating attentional control. Future work should focus on optimizing the approach, validating its effectiveness, and expanding the scope of targeted disorders

Optimizing real time fMRI neurofeedback for therapeutic discovery and development

While reducing the burden of brain disorders remains a top priority of organizations like the World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health, the development of novel, safe and effective treatments for brain disorders has been slow. In this paper, we describe the state of the science for an emerging technology, real time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rtfMRI) neurofeedback, in clinical neurotherapeutics. We review the scientific potential of rtfMRI and outline research strategies to optimize the development and application of rtfMRI neurofeedback as a next generation therapeutic tool. We propose that rtfMRI can be used to address a broad range of clinical problems by improving our understanding of brain–behavior relationships in order to develop more specific and effective interventions for individuals with brain disorders. We focus on the use of rtfMRI neurofeedback as a clinical neurotherapeutic tool to drive plasticity in brain function, cognition, and behavior. Our overall goal is for rtfMRI to advance personalized assessment and intervention approaches to enhance resilience and reduce morbidity by correcting maladaptive patterns of brain function in those with brain disorders

Communication Research

Contains reports on nine research projects.Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporate

Two spatiotemporally distinct value systems shape reward-based learning in the human brain

Avoiding repeated mistakes and learning to reinforce rewarding decisions is critical for human survival and adaptive actions. Yet, the neural underpinnings of the value systems that encode different decision-outcomes remain elusive. Here coupling single-trial electroencephalography with simultaneously acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging, we uncover the spatiotemporal dynamics of two separate but interacting value systems encoding decision-outcomes. Consistent with a role in regulating alertness and switching behaviours, an early system is activated only by negative outcomes and engages arousal-related and motor-preparatory brain structures. Consistent with a role in reward-based learning, a later system differentially suppresses or activates regions of the human reward network in response to negative and positive outcomes, respectively. Following negative outcomes, the early system interacts and downregulates the late system, through a thalamic interaction with the ventral striatum. Critically, the strength of this coupling predicts participants’ switching behaviour and avoidance learning, directly implicating the thalamostriatal pathway in reward-based learning

Environmental influences on neural systems of relational complexity

Constructivist learning theory contends that we construct knowledge by experience and that environmental context influences learning. To explore this principle, we examined the cognitive process relational complexity (RC), defined as the number of visual dimensions considered during problem solving on a matrix reasoning task and a well-documented measure of mature reasoning capacity. We sought to determine how the visual environment influences RC by examining the influence of color and visual contrast on RC in a neuroimaging task. To specify the contributions of sensory demand and relational integration to reasoning, our participants performed a non-verbal matrix task comprised of color, no-color line, or black-white visual contrast conditions parametrically varied by complexity (relations 0, 1, 2). The use of matrix reasoning is ecologically valid for its psychometric relevance and for its potential to link the processing of psychophysically specific visual properties with various levels of RC during reasoning. The role of these elements is important because matrix tests assess intellectual aptitude based on these seemingly context-less exercises. This experiment is a first step toward examining the psychophysical underpinnings of performance on these types of problems. The importance of this is increased in light of recent evidence that intelligence can be linked to visual discrimination. We submit three main findings. First, color and black-white visual contrast (BWVC) add demand at a basic sensory level, but contributions from color and from BWVC are dissociable in cortex such that color engages a “reasoning heuristic” and BWVC engages a “sensory heuristic.” Second, color supports contextual sense-making by boosting salience resulting in faster problem solving. Lastly, when visual complexity reaches 2-relations, color and visual contrast relinquish salience to other dimensions of problem solving

Making planning more responsive to its users: the concept of metaplaning

Increasing the ability of planning to foster desired, real world events requires planners to consider explicitly the broad range of possible uses and users of their products and to adapt these products and the associated planning process to meet the needs of different users more directly. Metaplanning, a structured process for constructing both responsive as well as ethically sound approaches to planning, is described as an approach for accomplishing this. It is an ongoing activity which can be integrated into the planning function to increase its usefulness and viability. This notion is explored, a strategy for metaplanning is presented, and some of its implications are explored.