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razing Impacts of Rotifer Zooplankton in a Seasonally Cyanobacteria-Dominated Lake

Grazing Impacts of Rotifer Zooplankton in a Seasonally Cyanobacteria-Dominated Lake

Primary author: Kathryn Sweeney
Co-author(s): Gretchen Rollwagen-Bollens
Faculty sponsor: Dr. Gretchen Rollwagen-Bollens

Primary college/unit: Arts and Sciences
Campus: Vancouver

Abstract:

Vancouver Lake in western Washington is one of many lakes characterized by annual and often toxic cyanobacteria (harmful algae) blooms. Phytoplankton and cyanobacteria are the primary producers of lake systems, and the foundation on which zooplankton grazers, like copepods or rotifers, are able to survive. Thus, toxic blooms may be controlled top-down by these micrograzers, which is information relevant to resource managers and the public alike. Previous studies have shown copepod grazing to influence bloom formation, and bloom decline to be driven in part by microzooplankton community grazing. However, we don’t understand the individual roles of particular micrograzers such as rotifers. To address the role of rotifers, we are conducting feeding incubations with water collected from Vancouver Lake. Preliminary results show that rotifers have a mild grazing effect on phytoplankton and cyanobacteria only after the peak of a bloom, while the whole microzooplankton community has a large impact both before and after the peak. This seems to suggest that other non-rotifer microzooplankton such as ciliates or dinoflagellates may be responsible for the majority of bloom suppression in both spring and fall. Further microscopical analysis of samples will elucidate which plankton species were present in the lake during each experiment, and which phytoplankton taxa rotifers had been preferentially feeding on. Additionally, due to an unexpected shift in the timing of the 2019 bloom cycle, supplemental experiments will be performed during spring 2020 to complete our understanding of seasonal dynamics related to cyanobacteria blooms.

Raced, Sexed, and Erased, Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment

Raced, Sexed, and Erased, Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment

Primary author: Carol Siegel

Primary college/unit: Arts and Sciences
Campus: Vancouver

Abstract:

My project, “Raced, Sexed, and Erased, Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment,” is an intersectional study currently under peer review at Indiana University Press. The book rebuts the claim that Jews are now racially unmarked white people by providing a history of the intertwined racialization and sexualization of Jews through film and television narratives. The chapters are: One, “Sexual Perversity and the Jewish Therapist Figure,” which compares the films Nymphomaniac and A Dangerous Method; Two, “Imaginary Histories of Americanized Jews in Love,” which analyzes the impact of racialization and sexualization on Jewish efforts to assimilate into mainstream American culture in the films Hester Street, Once Upon a Time in America, Casino and Radio Days; Chapter Three, “Sex, Rage, and Revenge,” discusses films about World War II that eroticize Jewish resistance to fascism and focuses on Black Book and Inglourious Basterds; Chapter Four, “Not So Nice Jewish Girls,” compares the television series Transparent and Broad City; Chapter Five, “Holocaust Erasure and Jewish Identity Erasure,” explores the resemblance of the film Call Me By Your Name to the documentaries Crazy Love and Capturing the Friedmans and the fictional film The Last Embrace, all of which avoid any consideration of the Holocaust and its effects on the sexualities of Jews from WWII on; Chapter Six, “Monstrous Jewish Sexualities as Minoritarian Cinema,” responds to the frequently made accusation that the Coen brothers’ films are anti-Semitic by looking at their double-address narrative strategies. The conclusion suggests ways to combat the erasure of Jewish racialization in media.

Complementary effects of adaptation and gain control on sound encoding in primary auditory cortex

Complementary effects of adaptation and gain control on sound encoding in primary auditory cortex

Primary author: Jacob Pennington
Co-author(s): Alexander Dimitrov; Stephen David
Faculty sponsor: Alexander Dimitrov

Primary college/unit: Arts and Sciences
Campus: Vancouver

Abstract:

A common model for the function of auditory cortical neurons is the linear-nonlinear spectro-temporal receptive field (LN STRF). However, while the LN model can account for many aspects of auditory coding, it fails to account for long-lasting effects of sensory context on sound-evoked activity. Two models have expanded on the LN STRF to account for these contextual effects, using short-term plasticity (STP) or contrast-dependent gain control (GC). Both models improve performance over the LN model, but they have never been compared directly. Thus, it is unclear whether they account for distinct processes or describe the same phenomenon in different ways. To address this question, we recorded activity of primary auditory cortical neurons in awake ferrets during presentation of natural sound stimuli. We fit models incorporating one nonlinear mechanism (GC or STP) or both (GC+STP) on this single dataset. We compared model performance according to prediction accuracy on a held-out dataset not used for fitting and found that the GC+STP model performed significantly better than either individual model. We also quantified equivalence between the STP and GC models by calculating the partial correlation between their predictions, relative to the LN model. We found only a modest degree of equivalence between them. We observed similar results for a smaller dataset collected in clean and noisy acoustic contexts. Together, the improved performance of the combined model and weak equivalence between STP and GC models suggest that they describe distinct processes. Therefore, models incorporating both mechanisms are necessary to fully describe auditory cortical coding.

Critical Perspectives on Gender and Colonialism

Critical Perspectives on Gender and Colonialism

Primary author: Pavithra Narayanan

Primary college/unit: Arts and Sciences
Campus: Vancouver

Abstract:

In a globalized world, heir to two centuries of unprecedented economic, social, political, environmental, and cultural transformation, few changes are as radical as anti-colonial and feminist challenges to patriarchal gender and sexuality conventions. Converging threads in the disciplines of History, English, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies to highlight the divergent effects of colonialism, anti-colonialism, and post-colonialism globally, WSU Vancouver and Pullman Humanities faculty organized a spring 2019 interdisciplinary Gender and Colonialism Humanities Symposium at the WSU Vancouver campus. This collaborative project was sponsored by the WSU Arts & Humanities Center.
The poster will highlight the innovative research of ten scholars from West Coast universities who were invited to participate in the symposium. The first panel on “decolonizing history/historiographies” examined how the academe privileges certain discourses while excluding others and reinterpreting gendered themes like motherhood and family from the perspectives of activism, agency, and desire. The second, on “dissonant/unruly bodies,” offered deeply nuanced interpretations of how enslaved Jamaican women perceived their own mothering practices; contemporary mythologies of orientalized bellydancing in Latin America; a memoir and investigation of queer/trans spaces in Los Angeles; and a historical investigation of healthy women assigned to do the laundry of people suffering from leprosy in Molakai. The final panel, “Gendered Spaces in Empire,” was historical and focused on ideologies of gender in Mexico, Okinawa, and India. The discussion that followed brought back the morning’s calls to “decolonization of the academe” to consider the political implications of the ways that some historical arguments framed their inquiries.

BAM!: Chicago’s Black Arts Movement

BAM!: Chicago’s Black Arts Movement

Primary author: Thabiti Lewis
Co-author(s): Pavithra Narayanan

Primary college/unit: Arts and Sciences
Campus: Vancouver

Abstract:

The film examines the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, which is an epicenter of the black diaspora. The film “BAM! Chicago’s Black Arts Movement” features interviews with Museum director Carol Adams, publisher and poet Haki Madhubuti, Safisha Madhubuti, Eugene Redmond, Mwata Bowden, Angela Jackson and many other artists and scholars. The film introduces viewers to the history of Chicago’s Black Arts Movement (BAM) and reflects on the extensive national and international impact of Chicago’s Black writers, musicians and community organizers and the organizations and institutions that they supported and founded including the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), Negro Digest/Black World, Ebony Talent Agency (ETA), the DuSable Museum, Third World Press, Johnson Publishing, Kuumba Theatre, and the South Side Community Arts Center.
The film explores the 1960s era of art and politics and why Chicago emerged as one of the most important cities and was able to be such an influential matrix for Black communities across the country seeking to duplicate Chicago’s institutional building and arts scene.
Preview of Film: https://vimeo.com/295695342
Runtime: 55 minutes