Autistic Authors\u27 Narratives of Trauma and Resilience: A Qualitative Analysis

This qualitative dissertation investigates current research gaps regarding autistic individuals’ experience of trauma and resilience in the face of adversity. Specifically, it conceptualizes trauma and resilience through a neurodiverse lens, through identifying themes in memoirs written by five autistic authors related to trauma, potentially traumatic events, resiliency, and posttraumatic growth. Through Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, I identified individual, interpersonal, and societal factors impacting the memoirists experiences of trauma, through the identification of 11 superordinate themes. Prominent themes at the individual level included self-acceptance and emotion regulation promoting resilience. At the contextual level, sensory processing and uncertainty coincided with experiences of trauma. At the interpersonal level, many memoirists describe interpersonal traumas, including mutual misunderstanding between themselves and others. Finally, at the societal level, themes across the memoirs point to the importance of mental health professional training and awareness regarding autism and expanding our understanding of traumatic experiences. Thus, I propose a sociocultural approach for conceptualizing how autism and trauma intersect. Based on this approach, I advocate for systemic-level changes, community, contextual, and individual interventions to support the resiliency of autistic individuals

The small but healthy hypothesis: Evidence of skeletal stress and adaptation in Himera, Sicily

Physical anthropologists are interested in the concept of health in skeletal populations because it helps interpret past human behavior and biological adaptations. Since health is difficult to assess, we use markers of physiological stress in skeletal remains as a proxy for health. Generally, skeletons with more markers of physiological stress (paleopathology) and shorter stature (stunted individuals) are interpreted as being less “healthy.” However, some argue that being shorter does not automatically imply poor health. This study will test the “small but healthy” hypothesis by analyzing a sample size of 14 individuals from Himera, Sicily (six females and eight males) that were measured for height and also observed for various pathologies including cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, periostitis, and linear enamel hypoplasia. All individuals, regardless of whether they were tall or short, showed evidence of at least one skeletal pathology. No clear differences were observed in skeletal pathology between tall and short individuals. The “small but healthy” hypothesis encourages researchers to look at short stature as a potential adaptation to environmental stressors. Shorter stature could mean that the individual would need less fuel to survive and the “small but healthy” hypothesis suggests that in areas with limited resources, an individual might be shorter to allow for a better chance of survival. We did not observe any statistically significant differences in level of skeletal pathology between tall and short individuals. Although this appears to support the small but healthy hypothesis, a larger sample size is needed to truly test this hypothesis

Responses of Pacific Fishers to Habitat Changes as a Result of Forestry Practices in Southwestern Oregon

The fisher (Pekania pennanti) is a medium-sized carnivore found in mature forest stands across much of the northern United States. Although historically abundant in the west, fisher populations declined rapidly after fur trapping, extensive logging, and urban development reduced their numbers. Currently, biologists are concerned about the effects timber harvest practices have on fisher tolerance and adaptability when faced with changes to high-quality habitat stands. Tree removal and thinning of understory vegetation are frequently used to alleviate the spread of wildfires in previously dense forest stands with a potential for large-scale habitat loss; yet, a deficit of large trees and important vegetation attributes could be detrimental to fisher survival. We explored the impacts of timber treatments on fisher behavior and habitat preferences in a watershed system near Ashland, Oregon between 2010 and 2017. In our study, we assessed where fishers were found in their home ranges before and after treatments occurred (i.e., measuring fisher distance to treatment units), as well as the habitat features they selected pre- and post-treatment. Our results indicated that although most fishers moved away from treated areas, they still used untreated portions of their home ranges. For habitat selection, fishers chose sites at lower elevations, with low to moderate rugged topography, and they selected moderately steep slopes. They also preferred canopy cover 60% or higher and vegetation types consisting of conifers and hardwoods. We concluded that fishers were able to tolerate ongoing treatments in their home ranges as long as adequate canopy cover and large structures remained for their use on the landscape

Implementing Appreciative Education in a First-Year Seminar

Appreciative Education involves intentionally designing educational approaches that are based on principles of positive psychology and appreciative inquiry. This paper presents findings from a study of the meaning that 15 first-year experience course instructors attributed to implementing positivity interventions in their courses at a large, Midwestern university. The study suggests that these interventions, which fall under the umbrella of Appreciative Education, can disrupt conventional classroom expectations and dynamics. These disruptions can result in spaces of openness and vulnerability among instructors and students. Finally, the applications increase student engagement, support student success, and shape instructors’ thinking about teaching practices

Sustainability transitions in Los Angeles’ water system:the ambivalent role of incumbents in urban experimentation

Growing urban populations, climate change, drought, and ageing infrastructures increase pressure on water delivery. This prompts the search for innovations, with incumbents increasingly attempting to enable and steer ‘experimental’ approaches. Historically, incumbents were assumed to be largely resistant to potentially disruptive innovations. However, their strategic orientations may be changing due to the urgency of sustainability challenges leading to increased experimentation. This change raises a question about how incumbents influence experiments in particular directions while neglecting or discouraging others. This research centers on the ‘La Kretz Innovation Campus’, and three experiments therein, partly established by the incumbent water utility in Los Angeles. It explores how creating an internal ‘protective space’ for experimentation generates struggles over institutional changes necessary for such experiments to thrive. Conceptualizing ‘incumbent-enabled experimentation’ as a set of practices nested within novel institutional, organizational, and political arrangements reveals the internal tensions incumbents face when seeking more sustainable directions.</p

Sustainability transitions in Los Angeles’ water system: the ambivalent role of incumbents in urban experimentation

Growing urban populations, climate change, drought, and ageing infrastructures increase pressure on water delivery. This prompts the search for innovations, with incumbents increasingly attempting to enable and steer ‘experimental’ approaches. Historically, incumbents were assumed to be largely resistant to potentially disruptive innovations. However, their strategic orientations may be changing due to the urgency of sustainability challenges leading to increased experimentation. This change raises a question about how incumbents influence experiments in particular directions while neglecting or discouraging others. This research centers on the ‘La Kretz Innovation Campus’, and three experiments therein, partly established by the incumbent water utility in Los Angeles. It explores how creating an internal ‘protective space’ for experimentation generates struggles over institutional changes necessary for such experiments to thrive. Conceptualizing ‘incumbent-enabled experimentation’ as a set of practices nested within novel institutional, organizational, and political arrangements reveals the internal tensions incumbents face when seeking more sustainable directions

Mathematical Modeling Suggests Cooperation of Plant-Infecting Viruses

Viruses are major pathogens of agricultural crops. Viral infections often start after the virus enters the outer layer of a tissue, and many successful viruses, after local replication in the infected tissue, are able to spread systemically. Quantitative details of virus dynamics in plants, however, are poorly understood, in part, because of the lack of experimental methods which allow the accurate measurement of the degree of infection in individual plant tissues. Recently, a group of researchers followed the kinetics of infection of individual cells in leaves of Nicotiana tabacum plants using Tobacco etch virus (TEV) expressing either Venus or blue fluorescent protein (BFP). Assuming that viral spread occurs from lower to upper leaves, the authors fitted a simple mathematical model to the frequency of cellular infection by the two viral variants found using flow cytometry. While the original model could accurately describe the kinetics of viral spread locally and systemically, we found that many alternative versions of the model, for example, if viral spread starts at upper leaves and progresses to lower leaves or when virus dissemination is stopped due to an immune response, fit the data with reasonable quality, and yet with different parameter estimates. These results strongly suggest that experimental measurements of the virus infection in individual leaves may not be sufficient to identify the pathways of viral dissemination between different leaves and reasons for viral control. We propose experiments that may allow discrimination between the alternatives. By analyzing the kinetics of coinfection of individual cells by Venus and BFP strains of TEV we found a strong deviation from the random infection model, suggesting cooperation between the two strains when infecting plant cells. Importantly, we showed that many mathematical models on the kinetics of coinfection of cells with two strains could not adequately describe the data, and the best fit model needed to assume (i) different susceptibility of uninfected cells to infection by two viruses locally in the leaf vs. systemically from other leaves, and (ii) decrease in the infection rate depending on the fraction of uninfected cells which could be due to a systemic immune response. Our results thus demonstrate the difficulty in reaching definite conclusions from extensive and yet limited experimental data and provide evidence of potential cooperation between different viral variants infecting individual cells in plants