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Jack Straton, Physics and University Studies faculty, had one of his photographs chosen to be part of the South Cobb Arts Alliance 31st Annual National Juried Art Exhibition, Aug. 11–Sept. 19, 2018, in Smyrna, Ga.

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Meg Merrick and Erna Gelles, Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies and Public Administration faculty, co-authored a chapter titled, “The Role of Collaboration to Encourage Civic Engagement Through the Arts: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications”, published in Opportunities and Challenges for Civic Engagement: A Global Investigation of Innovation Competitions.

The population in many cities all over the world is continuously growing and with this growing number of people infrastructural, health and location-related problems increase. It is assumed that these problems could be addressed by means of open government data which many governments publish on their web portals so that it can be further processed and transformed. Since the citizens themselves know best what they need, governments encourage them to participate in open data innovation competitions and to create value added services for their city. The reuse of open urban government data during hackathons or app competitions is a new trend in knowledge societies of how governments and citizens work together. But have these events still become practice in local governments and are they helpful means to foster government-to-citizen communication and collaboration? The authors analyze innovation competitions in 24 world cities to see how they are applied and whether they have the potential to make the city “smart”.

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Aaron Roussell, Sociology faculty, and graduate student Wynn Strange co-authored “Final Report to the Oregon Law Foundation on the Legal Needs of Impoverished Oregonians” for the Oregon Law Foundation, Oregon Bar Association.

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Christina J Sun and Janet S St. Lawrence, Psychology faculty, co-authored an article titled, “Association of Adolescent- and Parent-Reported Relationship Functioning with HIV Sexual Risk Among Adolescents in Botswana“ published in AIDS and Behavior.

Globally, adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa are the youth most affected by HIV. Parent-adolescent relationships can be protective in child and adolescent development and may be implicated in lowered adolescent HIV sexual risk. However, the importance of parental and adolescent perceptions of their relationship and assessing the implications of family functioning in adolescents' risk for HIV or other sexually transmitted infections are not well established in the research literature. This dyadic study simultaneously assessed both parents' and adolescents' perceptions of family functioning and their relationships with adolescent sexual behaviors in Botswana. Seventy-two parent-adolescent dyads completed audio computer-assisted self-interview surveys. Surveys, independently completed by parents and their adolescent, assessed multiple indicators of their relationship and is the first such study in Botswana to collect the perspectives of both the parents and their adolescents. The results highlight significantly discrepant views of their relationships and revealed that the magnitude of those discrepancies was associated with greater adolescent HIV sexual risk behavior across multiple measures of family relationships. Parents' inaccurate perceptions of their adolescents' sexual activity were also associated with greater adolescent sexual risk. These findings elucidate the importance of improving parent-adolescent communications and relationships, which may subsequently assist in lowering adolescents' sexual risk for HIV and other negative sexual health outcomes.

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Cassie Quinn, Speech and Hearing Sciences faculty, along with several graduate students, has published a series of continuing education videos, Supervision Training for SLPs, through Northern Speech Services. This series aids practicing speech-language pathologists in their supervision of graduate students. The videos can be found online.

This course includes all 10 modules of this course series and covers the following topics:

Understanding Roles & Communicating Expectations

Individualizing Styles & Levels Of Supervision

Communication & Interpersonal Skills

Giving Feedback & Conferences

Teaching Critical Thinking & Problem Solving

Observation & Data Collection In The Supervisory Process

Supervisor & Supervisee Accountability; Supervising Students With Disabilities

Supervision Across Settings and Case Studies: Application Of Supervisory Skills

Principles Guided Learning And Practice

Offered for 1.05 ASHA CEUs – 10.5 contact hours.

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Heejun Chang, Geography faculty, co-authored a paper titled "Dreams and Migration in South Korea’s Border Region: Landscape Change and Environmental Impacts," published in Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

The border region of South Korea has undergone dramatic social and environmental changes since the late 1990s with shifts in governmental regimes. Under the proliberal government (1997–2007) that enhanced economic ties between North and South Korea, the border region was open for introducing new people and industries. With a new conservative governmental regime in the past decade (2007–2017), social and environmental challenges emerged in the border region. Such challenges were not uniformly present throughout different areas, however. We examined the spatial transformation of the border region using sociodemography, economy, landscape fragmentation, and water quality data with a focus on two gateway regions (Paju and Goseong) as representative cases. Although these two regions are similar in size and served as central nodes of flow between the two Koreas, they experienced different trajectories under disparate national and regional policies. In Paju, a closer region to Seoul, the capital of South Korea, the landscape became more fragmented as a result of urban expansion, but different subcenters were formed to accommodate the growing population and industries that were less dependent on external shocks, contributing to the economic and environmental resilience of the region. In contrast, with continuous declining aging population, Goseong’s landscape became less fragmented with one remaining main urban center, but its economy, society, and environment became fragile after the closure of the Kumgangsan tour. These different patterns of regional resilience can be fully understood by considering various social, environmental, and institutional factors acting on multiple scales that helped shape the region’s stability. Key Words: border region, landscape fragmentation, resilience, scale, water quality.

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Jason Podrabsky, Biology faculty, co-authored an article titled, “Establishment and characterization of an anoxia-tolerant cell line, PSU-AL-WS40NE, derived from an embryo of the annual killifish Austrofundulus limnaeus”, published in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part B: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. 

Most animal cells rely on aerobic metabolism for survival and are damaged or die within minutes without oxygen. Embryos of the annual killifish Austrofundulus limnaeus, however, survive months without oxygen. Determining how their cells survive without oxygen has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the cellular mechanisms supporting vertebrate anoxia tolerance and the evolution of such tolerance. Therefore, we aimed to establish and characterize an anoxia-tolerant cell line from A. limnaeus for investigating mechanisms of vertebrate anoxia tolerance. The PSU-AL-WS40NE cell line of neuroepithelial identity was established from embryonic tissue of A. limnaeus using a tissue explant. The cells can survive for at least 49 d without oxygen or replenishment of growth medium, compared to only 3 d of anoxic survival for two mammalian cell lines. PSU-AL-WS40NE cells accumulate lactate during anoxia, indicating use of common metabolic pathways for anaerobic metabolism. Additionally, they express many of the same small noncoding RNAs that are stress-responsive in whole embryos of A. limnaeus and mammalian cells, as well as anoxia-responsive small noncoding RNAs derived from the mitochondrial genome (mitosRNAs). The establishment of the cell line provides a unique tool for investigating cellular mechanisms of vertebrate anoxia tolerance, and has the potential to transform our understanding of the role of oxidative metabolism in cell biology.

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Andrew Fountain, Geology faculty, co-authored an article titled, “Comparison of Microbial Communities in the Sediments and Water Columns of Frozen Cryoconite Holes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica“, published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

Although cryoconite holes, sediment-filled melt holes on glacier surfaces, appear small and homogenous, their microbial inhabitants may be spatially partitioned. This partitioning could be particularly important for maintaining biodiversity in holes that remain isolated for many years, such as in Antarctica. We hypothesized that cryoconite holes with greater species richness and biomass should exhibit greater partitioning between the sediments and water, promoting greater biodiversity through spatial niche partitioning. We tested this hypothesis by sampling frozen cryoconite holes along a gradient of biomass and biodiversity in the Taylor Valley, Antarctica, where ice-lidded cryoconite holes are a ubiquitous feature of glaciers. We extracted DNA and chlorophyll a from the sediments and water of these samples to describe biodiversity and quantify proxies for biomass. Contrary to our expectation, we found that cryoconite holes with greater richness and biomass showed less partitioning of phylotypes by the sediments versus the water, perhaps indicating that the probability of sediment microbes being mixed into the water is higher from richer sediments. Another explanation may be that organisms from the water were compressed by freezing down to the sediment layer, leaving primarily relic DNA of dead cells to be detected higher in the frozen water. Further evidence of this explanation is that the dominant sequences unique to water closely matched organisms that do not live in cryoconite holes or the Dry Valleys (e.g., vertebrates); so this cryptic biodiversity could represent unknown microbial animals or DNA from atmospheric deposition of dead biomass in the otherwise low-biomass water. Although we cannot rule out spatial niche partitioning occurring at finer scales or in melted cryoconite holes, we found no evidence of partitioning between the sediments and water in frozen holes. Future work should include more sampling of cryoconite holes at a finer spatial scale, and characterizing the communities of the sediments and water when cryoconite holes are melted and active.

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Angela Strecker, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Management, co-authored an article titled, “Nutrients mediate the effects of temperature on methylmercury concentrations in freshwater zooplankton”, published in Science of the Total Environment in 2019.

Methylmercury (MeHg) bioaccumulation in freshwater aquatic systems is impacted by anthropogenic stressors, including climate change and nutrient enrichment. The goal of this study was to determine how warmer water temperatures and excess nutrients would alter zooplankton communities and phytoplankton concentrations, and whether those changes would in turn increase or decrease MeHg concentrations in freshwater zooplankton. To test this, we employed a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design with nutrient and temperature treatments. Mesocosms were filled with ambient water and plankton from Cottage Grove Reservoir, Oregon, U.S.A., a waterbody that has experienced decades of elevated MeHg concentrations and corresponding fish consumption advisories due to run-off from Black Butte Mine tailings, located within the watershed. Treatment combinations of warmer temperature (increased by 0.7 °C) and nutrient addition (a single pulse of 10× ambient concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorous), control, and a combination of temperature and nutrients were applied to mesocosms. The individual treatments altered phytoplankton densities and community structure, but alone the effects on MeHg concentrations were muted. Importantly, we found a significant interactive effect of nutrients and temperature: the nutrient addition appeared to buffer against increased MeHg concentrations associated with elevated temperature. However, there was variability in this response, which seems to be related to the abundance of Daphnia and edible phytoplankton. Nutrients at low temperature were associated with marginal increases (1.1×) in zooplankton MeHg. Our findings suggest that global change drivers that influence community composition and ecosystem energetics of both zooplankton and phytoplankton can alter MeHg pathways through food webs.

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Behzad Ahmadi, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty, co-authored an article titled, “Revisiting Hydrological Drought Propagation and Recovery Considering Water Quantity and Quality”, published in Hydrological Processes.

Climate extremes, in particular droughts, are significant driving forces towards riverine ecosystem disturbance. Drought impacts on stream ecosystems include losses that can either be direct (e.g. destruction of habitat for aquatic species) or indirect (e.g. deterioration of water quality, soil quality, and increased chance of wildfires). This paper combines hydrologic drought and water quality changes during droughts and represents a multi‐stage framework to detect and characterize hydrological droughts while considering water quality parameters. This method is applied to 52 streamflow stations in the state of California, USA over the study period of 1950‐2010. The framework is assessed and validated based on two drought events declared by the state in 2002 and 2008. Results show there are two opposite drought propagation patterns in northern and southern California. In general, northern California indicates more frequent droughts with shorter time to recover. Chronology of drought shows that stations located in southern California have not followed a specific pattern but they experienced longer drought episodes with prolonged drought recovery. When considering water quality, results show that droughts either deteriorate or enhance water systems, depending on the parameter of interest. Undesirable changes (e.g., increased temperature and decreased dissolved oxygen) are observed during droughts. In contrast, decreased turbidity is detected in rivers during drought episodes, which is desirable in water systems. Nevertheless, water quality deteriorates during drought recovery, even after drought termination. Depending on climatic and streamflow characteristics of the watersheds, it was found that it would take nearly 2 months on average for water quality to recover after drought termination.

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Pianist Kerry Politzer Receives RACC Grant to Explore the Music of Brazilian Composer Durval Ferreira

PORTLAND, February 26, 2019 – Kerry Politzer, a pianist on the adjunct jazz faculty at Portland State University, has received a Regional Arts & Culture Council grant for her work related to an upcoming concert: “Bebop Meets Bossa Nova: The Music of Durval Ferreira.” The pianist will partner with Sounds of Brazil PDX to present the concert, which will feature an octet of musicians.

Kerry has often explored Brazilian jazz themes and rhythms in her five jazz albums as a leader. She is featured on saxophonist Laura Dreyer’s Brazilian jazz release “Free Flying Bird” (Sony Latin). In 2018, Kerry and her band Bossa PDX were featured at PDX Jazz’s Jazz in the Garden series, the Florence Wine & Jazz Festival, and the Oregon Coast Jazz Party in Newport. After the Newport performance, Kerry presented an educational clinic on bossa nova, which was funded by Just Jazz, Inc. Kerry recently received a professional development grant from Portland State University to present this clinic at the University of Kansas.

“Bebop Meets Bossa Nova” will take place at Classic Pianos (3003 SE Milwaukie Ave.) on May 4, 2019 at 7:30 pm. Tickets may be purchased at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4064770.

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Heejun Chang, Geography faculty, and graduate students Ashley Baker and Emma Brenneman authored a paper titled “Spatial Analysis of Landscape and Sociodemographic Factors Associated with Green Stormwater Infrastructure Distribution in Baltimore, Maryland and Portland, Oregon,” published in Science of the Total Environment. 

This study explores the spatial distribution of green stormwaterinfrastructure (GSI) relative to sociodemographic and landscape characteristics in Portland, OR, and Baltimore, MD, USA at census block group (CBG) and census tract scales. GSI density is clustered in Portland, while it is randomly distributed over space in Baltimore. Variables that exhibit relationships with GSI density are varied over space, as well as between cities. In Baltimore, GSI density is significantly associated with presence of green space (+), impervious surface coverage (+), and population density (−) at the CBG scale; though these relationships vary over space. At the census tract scale in Baltimore, a different combination of indicators explains GSI density, including elevation (+), population characteristics, and building characteristics. Spatial regression analysis in Portland indicates that GSI density at the CBG scale is associated with residents identifying as White (−) and well-draining hydrologic soil groups A and B (−). At both census tract and CBG scales, GSI density is associated with median income (−) and sewer pipe density (−). Hierarchical modelling of GSI density presents significant spatial dependence as well as group dependence implicit to Portland at the census tract scale. Significant results of this model retain income and sewer pipe density as explanatory variables, while introducing the relationship between GSI density and impervious surface coverage. Overall, this research offers decision-relevant information for urban resilience in multiple environments and could serve as a reminder for cities to consider who is inherently exposed to GSI benefits.

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Alida Cantor, Geography faculty, co-authored an article, "California Groundwater Management, Science-Policy Interfaces, and the Legacies of Artificial Legal Distinctions," published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, February 2019. The paper considers the trajectory of the (partial) integration of science, law and resource management policy. 

California water law has traditionally treated groundwater and surface water as separate resources. The 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) broke with this tradition by requiring groundwater managers to avoid significant and unreasonable adverse impacts to beneficial uses of surface water. This paper considers the trajectory of this partial integration of science, law, and resource management policy. Drawing on legal analysis and participatory workshops with subject area experts, we describe the challenges of reconciling the separate legal systems that grew out of an artificial legal distinction between different aspects of the same resource. Our analysis offers two main contributions. First, it demonstrates that laws that subdivide an interconnected resource can have legacy effects that linger long after lawmakers begin dismantling the artificial divides. Using SGMA as a case study, the article illustrates the complexities of reconciling law with science, showing that reconciliation is a process that does not end with updating statutes, or with any other single intervention. Second, we introduce a framework for evaluating the elements of an effort to reconcile law with scientific understanding, whether that reform effort involves groundwater or some other resource. Applying that framework helps reveal where lingering legacy effects still need to be addressed. More generally, it reveals the need for literature addressing science-policy interactions to devote more attention to the multifaceted nature of law and policy reform. Much of that literature describes policy-making in broad and undifferentiated terms, often referring simply to "the science-policy interface." But as the SGMA case study illustrates, the complex and multi-layered nature of policy-making means that a successful reform effort may need to address many science-policy interfaces.

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Alicia Starkey, Cynthia D Mohr, Robert R. Sinclair, Psychology faculty, and David Cadiz, Business faculty, co-authored an article titled, “Gratitude reception and physical health: Examining the mediating role of satisfaction with patient care in a sample of acute care nurses”, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, February 2019.

Literature examining well-being benefits of gratitude experiences is currently thriving in psychological science. However, evidence of the physical health benefits of gratitude remains limited. Research and theory in affective science suggests an indirect relationship between gratitude and physical health. This study examines how receiving expressions of gratitude predicts physical health outcomes in a sample of acute care nurses over time. Registered nurses (N = 146) practicing in Oregon completed weekly surveys over 12 consecutive weeks describing their positive and negative events, health, and work-related experiences. Multilevel mediation models revealed that being thanked more often at work was positively related to a nurse’s satisfaction with the care they provided within that week, which subsequently predicted sleep quality, sleep adequacy, headaches, and attempts to eat healthy. These findings contribute to literature demonstrating the health benefits of gratitude by indicating that benefactors may experience improvements in subjective physical health through positive domain-relative satisfaction.

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Jack Straton, Physics and University Studies faculty, had one of his photographs chosen to be part of Pushing Paper: Realizing the Potential of the Medium, an international juried joint show of 2D and 3D artists in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Aug. 11–Sept. 22, 2018.

Jack Straton is a photographer in Portland, Oregon, USA, whose "heritage" is the West Coast school, creating abstractions and landscapes with film cameras ranging form 8x10" to 35mm in color and black and white. His creative expressions also extend to quantum scattering theory, music, and anti-racist education. He earned a BFA in Photography from the U of O in 1977, worked as a professional Jazz drummer for three years, and in the 1980s earned a doctorate in Physics. He has been a community educator since 1985 when he founded Men Against Rape in Eugene, Oregon, and since 1998 has been an interracial dialogue group facilitator. Through all of this he has continued to devote about a quarter of his waking hours to photography.

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Talya Bauer, Business faculty, was quoted in the article “Government Shutdown May Sink Workplace Engagement, Hike Turnover,” published in TechTarget.

The impact of the partial federal government shutdown will likely extend long after it ends, and HR managers should expect a decline in workplace engagement and an increase in turnover. Experts point to millennial-aged workers as the most at risk for leaving.

The government annually measures the engagement of approximately 1.5 million civilian federal workers. It considers the findings an indicator of employee "dedication, persistence and effort." The dedication levels are high, according to this year's survey.

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Peter Moeck, Physics faculty, authored an article titled, “On classification approaches for crystallographic symmetries of noisy 2D periodic patterns”, in preprint in Cornell University, February 2019.

The classifications approaches for the crystallographic symmetries of patterns that are more or less periodic in two dimensions are critically reviewed and their relative performance qualitatively evaluated. The information theory based approach of the author utilizes digital images and turns out to be the only one that allows for fully objective classifications of the crystallographic symmetries, i.e. Bravais lattice type, Laue class, and plane symmetry group, of noisy real-world images. His information theory based crystallographic symmetry classifications utilize geometric bias-corrected sums of squared residuals, i.e. pertinent first order information, and enable the most meaningful crystallographic averaging in the spatial frequency domain, which suppresses generalized noise much more effectively than traditional Fourier filtering. Taking account of the fact that it is fundamentally unsound to assign an abstract mathematical concept such as a single symmetry type, class, or group with 100 % certainty to a more or less 2D periodic record of a noisy real-world imaging experiment that involved a real-world sample, the information theory based approach to crystallographic symmetry classifications delivers probabilistic classifications. Recent applications of deep convolutional neural networks to classifications of crystallographic translation symmetries in 2D and crystals in three dimensions are discussed as these machines deliver probabilistic classifications by non-analytical means.