Three Sisters Exchange: Building Alliances and Promoting Justice from The United States to Ecuador

This paper presents a proposal for a social justice and action-based study abroad program with foundations in the short-term reality tours of the education and human rights-based NGO, Global Exchange, a far-reaching non-profit with friendships built on solidarity against the spread of elite globalization. The program is called the Three Sisters Exchange to honor the sustainable design of indigenous crop planting prevalent around the world. The design comes at a time when international educators offer few programs with foci in social justice. The international education field needs more sustainable programs that take into account global systems. A propagation of such programs will help augment and justify internationalization within higher education by showing concern for the existence of elite globalization. The program’s focus on creating alliances in the struggle for global social justice presents a unique design that grounds the participant in the skills and knowledge needed for actionable change. Students in the program will study the workings and spread of elite globalization and its effects on human rights through an intentional program design. Each element of the program strives to uphold the commitment to people over profit with ample time spent in homestays, local communities, and with leaders with visions of a more just world. Global Exchange boasts of numerous connections compared to other existing and short-lived programs with similar goals. The design of the Three Sisters Exchange harnesses the connections to develop a design that provides opportunity for visible global change through cross-cultural solidarity, education, and lived experience. The program integrates the practice of a people’s globalization not only into the curriculum but also into the day-to-day operations and practice

The Development of the Creative Synergy Scale

This study developed a scale for teams to assess their behaviors related to creative synergy. Creative synergy is the interactions among team members where the collective creative results are greater than the sum of their individual efforts. When a team achieves creative synergy they have the potential to solve difficult problems with innovative solutions leading to positive impacts on our communities, societies, and even our world. This study looked at the internal-process variables of teams to determine what factors impact creative synergy. The research process involved two phases.In Phase 1, a survey was taken by 830 adults who were members of teams. The results were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis .A new scale was created that identified three factors teams need for creative synergy: team purpose, team dynamics, and team creative process. In Phase 2, the new scale was tested with three work teams to determine the perceived accuracy of the scale. The new Creative Synergy Scale will be a valuable tool for teams wanting to be more creative together. It will give them feedback on their level of team purpose, team dynamics, and team creative process.This dissertation is accompanied by two supplemental files:a video of the author’s introduction (MP4) and a correlation table showing the original 75 items considered for the Creative Synergy Scale (PDF). This dissertation is available in open-access at OhioLink ETD Center, etd.ohiolink.edu and AURA:Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu

Natural Products Center Scientist Honored for Cannabis Research

Suman Chandra wins Outstanding Scientist Awar

Development of Antiserum against the major basic protein isolated from the medium of peri-attachment porcine conceptus cultures

Studies were performed to isolate the major secretory protein produced by the peri-attachment porcine conceptus and produce antiserum against it. Gilts were surgically hysterectomized on day 16 +/- 1 post-breeding and, conceptuses flushed from uteri and cultured 3 for 24 hours in a minimum essential medium with either 3H-leucine or 35S-methionine. Proteins released into the incubation medium were subjected to carboxymethylcellulose ion exchange and Sephacryl-200 gel filtration chromatography to isolate the protein. Isolation of the protein (Mr 43000; pI 7.5-8.0) from other components of conceptus secretion was verified by non-equilibrium pH gradient electrophoresis and fluorography. A rabbit received an initial injection of 720 ug of the isolated protein in Freund\u27s complete adjuvant and was boosted with 160 ug protein in Freund\u27s incomplete adjuvant four weeks later. Using Ouchterlony immunodiffusion, antibody against the isolated conceptus protein was identified in the serum of the treated rabbit. Antiserum was characterized by Ouchterlony immunodiffusion, antigen-antibody immunoprecipitation, one dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and fluorography. The molecular weights of the labelled Ag-Ab complex and the peri-attachment conceptus protein in major production are approximately 43000. The antiserum did not crossreact with 1) uterine flushings from pseudopregnant gilts, 2) peripheral plasma from nonpregnant gilts, or 3) amnionic and allantoic fluid and media from cultures of endometrial, chorionic or amnionic tissue from late pregnant gilts. This antiserum will be used in future studies designed to examine the site of action and function of the major protein product of the peri-attachment porcine conceptus

Overcoming Pose Limitations of a Skin-Cued Histograms of Oriented Gradients Dismount Detector through Contextual Use of Skin Islands and Multiple Support Vector Machines

This thesis provides a novel visualization method to analyze the impact that articulations in dismount pose and camera aspect angle have on histograms of oriented gradients (HOG) features and eventual detections. Insights from these relationships are used to identify limitations in a state of the art skin cued HOG dismount detector\u27s ability to detect poses not in a standard upright stances. Improvements to detector performance are made by further leveraging available skin information, reducing false detections by an additional order of magnitude. In addition, a method is outlined for training supplemental support vector machines (SVMs) from computer generated data, for detecting a wider range of poses and camera configurations. The multi-SVM structure yields a 7-fold increase detection probability when applied to challenging crouching poses. These dramatic improvements clearly demonstrate the viability of such an approach, which can be extended to include other pose configurations

A GENETIC APPROACH TO C. ELEGANS CHOLINERGIC SIGNALING

Genes that are involved in localization or modulation of neurotransmitter receptors are difficult to identify. We generated a C. elegans strain expressing a mutated, hyperactivitied acetylcholine receptor. These animals display a dramatic movement phenotype, as well as mislocalization of a related receptor. Our genetic screen for suppressors of the movement phenotype isolated 15 suppressors, many of which would not have been isolated using traditional methods. We believe that this strategy will find novel factors that play important roles in cholinergic signaling

The Development of the Creative Synergy Scale

This study developed a scale for teams to assess their behaviors related to creative synergy. Creative synergy is the interactions among team members where the collective creative results are greater than the sum of their individual efforts. When a team achieves creative synergy they have the potential to solve difficult problems with innovative solutions leading to positive impacts on our communities, societies, and even our world. This study looked at the internal-process variables of teams to determine what factors impact creative synergy. The research process involved two phases.In Phase 1, a survey was taken by 830 adults who were members of teams. The results were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis .A new scale was created that identified three factors teams need for creative synergy: team purpose, team dynamics, and team creative process. In Phase 2, the new scale was tested with three work teams to determine the perceived accuracy of the scale. The new Creative Synergy Scale will be a valuable tool for teams wanting to be more creative together. It will give them feedback on their level of team purpose, team dynamics, and team creative process.This dissertation is accompanied by two supplemental files:a video of the author’s introduction (MP4) and a correlation table showing the original 75 items considered for the Creative Synergy Scale (PDF). This dissertation is available in open-access at OhioLink ETD Center, etd.ohiolink.edu and AURA:Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu

Theta oscillations, timing and cholinergic modulation in the rodent hippocampal circuit

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) is crucial for episodic and spatial memory, and shows rhythmicity in the local field potential and neuronal spiking. Gamma oscillations (>40Hz) are mediatepd by local circuitry and interact with slower theta oscillations (6-10 Hz). Both oscillation frequencies are modulated by cholinergic input from the medial septum. Entorhinal grid cells fire when an animal visits particular locations in the environment arranged on the corners of tightly packed, equilateral triangles. Grid cells show phase precession, in which neurons fire at progressively earlier phases relative to theta oscillation as animals move through firing fields. This work focuses on the temporal organization of spiking and network rhythms, and their modulation by septal inputs, which are thought to be involved in MTL function. First, I recorded grid cells as rats explored open spaces and examined precession, previously only characterized on linear tracks, and compared it to predictions from models. I identified precession, including in conjunctive head-direction-by-grid cells and on passes that clipped the edge of the firing field. Secondly, I studied problems of measuring single neuron theta rhythmicity and developed an improved approach. Using the novel approach, I identified diverse modulation of rat medial entorhinal neurons’ rhythmic frequencies by running speed, independent from the modulation of firing rate by speed. Under pharmacological inactivation of the septum, rhythmic tuning was disrupted while rate tuning was enhanced. The approach also showed that available data is insufficient to prove that bat grid cells are arrhythmic due to low firing rates. In the final project, I optogenetically silenced cholinergic septal cells while recording from hippocampal area CA1. I identified changes in theta rhythmic currents and in theta-gamma coupling. This silencing disrupted performance when applied during the encoding phase of a delayed match to position task. These data support hypothetical roles of these rhythms in encoding and retrieval and suggest possible mechanisms for their modulation. Together, evidence from these projects suggests a role for theta in the function of spatial and episodic memory. These oscillations have important implications for communication and computation, and they can provide a substrate for efficient brain function