Grants

NYC Department of Cultural Affairs

Atlantic Theater Company

RADIX ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY CENTER

Atmojustice will deploy air quality monitors in the South End of Albany; collect and report data back to local residents. Radix's Ecojustice Associates youth employment program will participate in all aspects of the program.

RADIX ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY CENTER

Atmojustice will deploy air quality monitors in the South End of Albany; collect and report data back to local residents. Radix's Ecojustice Associates youth employment program will participate in all aspects of the program.

U.S. National Science Foundation

Atmosphere Cluster

U.S. National Science Foundation

Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships

NSF

The spawning grounds of the Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT) lie between the northwestern Australian coast and Indonesia. Waters from the Pacific flow through Island Southeast Asia as the Indonesian Through-Flow (ITF) and into the western Indian Ocean. Nutrient conditions in the ITF are insufficient to support optimum feeding and growth of SBT larvae, and numerous links between the nutrient cycles and food chain remain unknown. There are very few measurements of both major and trace nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron made in the region. These nutrients support phytoplankton that form the base of the food chain and affect higher trophic levels, including SBT. This work will investigate the potential sources of major and minor nutrients to the region, including island inputs, Australian dust, monsoon rains, and sedimentary fluxes which will help develop a “nutrient budget” and reveal which sources contribute the greatest to the success of early SBT life stages. This project is a US contribution to the 2nd International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE-2) that will advance understanding of biogeochemical and ecological dynamics in the poorly studied eastern Indian Ocean. The project will support an early career postdoctoral researcher and outreach activities will include participation in Open House events and REU summer program at home institution. The ITF can undergo potential changes to the distributions of major and trace nutrients during passage through the straits of southeast island Asia. Coastal currents can resuspend shelf sediments containing nutrients like Si and Fe, while the atmospheric deposition of both natural and anthropogenically derived material from Australia and southeastern Asia can supply N, P, Fe, and other trace metals. Monsoon rains also supply nutrients via wet deposition of aerosols and runoff. These inputs introduce nutrients to the surface ocean of the ITF, where phytoplankton can convert inorganic nutrients to biomass and in turn fuel the entire food chain. In this research aerosols and water column trace metals will be investigated, as a complementary component to another NSF-funded BLOOFINZ project which seeks to understand the N cycling and food-web dynamics of the southern bluefin tuna spawning grounds. The proposed research will address three hypotheses: (H1) The ITF receives inputs of bioactive trace elements from wet and dry atmospheric deposition and resuspended sediments, and (H2) transports these nutrients across the Indian Ocean via the South Equatorial Current (SEC). (H3) Inputs of Fe from atmospheric deposition of mineral and anthropogenic aerosols or continental shelves could help alleviate N limitation in the ITF. To investigate these hypotheses and understand the inputs, removals, and cycles of trace metals in the ITF, the concentrations, elemental ratios, and fluxes of material in aerosols and marine dissolved and particulate phases will be quantified and compared. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

This project supports the continued operation and management of the Atmospheric Science and Chemistry mEasurement NeTwork (ASCENT). The ASCENT network was developed with support from the NSF Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure program and is providing the first, comprehensive, high time resolution, long-term aerosol data across the United States. It consists of 12 sites in urban, rural, and remote areas that are equipped with a suite of advanced aerosol instrumentation for real-time measurements of fine mode aerosol chemical composition and properties. The ASCENT network fulfills the critical need for long-term, high time-resolution atmospheric aerosol chemistry measurements in the US. for informing science-based policy decisions on air quality related human health and environmental issues. The specific objectives of this project are to: (1) Continue to acquire high time-resolution, high-quality, long-term state-of-the-art measurements of aerosol chemical and physical properties at the 12 established ASCENT sites that are essential to advancing research in air quality, atmospheric science, environmental change, and public health; (2) Develop a database infrastructure for automated quality assurance/control, data upload and download, data discovery and visualization, and long-term data preservation; (3) Enhance training of students and current professionals engaged in science and engineering related to atmospheric air quality research; (4) Conduct research to advance fundamental understanding of urban air quality, biomass burning aerosols, and biogenic aerosol sources and processing which leverages the uniform network of comparable observations; and (5) Catalyze and support future development of an integrated, world-leading, long-term, atmospheric observation research infrastructure for aerosols and trace gases in the U.S. and strengthen collaborations with international atmospheric observation networks. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NEI - National Eye Institute

Project Summary Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) send visual information from the retina to the brain via the optic nerve. Their degeneration underlies several major eye diseases affecting vision, including glaucoma, hereditary optic neuropathies, and ischemic optic neuropathies. Normally, RGCs do not regenerate; thus, RGC loss in these diseases is not reversible. One potential strategy for replenishing lost RGCs in patients is to reprogram stem cells and/or glial cells to functional RGCs. Knowledge about how RGCs are generated during embryonic development will greatly facilitate such efforts. During development, RGCs originate from naïve proliferating retinal progenitor cells (RPCs). Key transcription factors functioning at the different stages of RGC differentiation have been identified, and the mechanisms by which these transcription factors interact with enhancers to regulate target genes and promote RGC formation are being unraveled. These transcription factors likely interact with other factors to carry out their functions, but this is a much understudied area. The current proposal focuses on the factors that interact with Atoh7 to promote RGC formation. Atoh7 is a bHLH proneural transcription factor that is specifically required for RGC genesis. Atoh7 activates downstream genes by binding to E-box sequences in the target gene enhancers. However, multiple proneural bHLH transcription factors are expressed in the developing retina, and they are all capable of binding to similar if not identical E-boxes, yet only Atoh7 is capable of efficiently promoting RGC genesis. Using both ex vivo and in vivo assays, we have now shown that the differences between Atoh7 and other related bHLH transcription factors such as Neurod1 in promoting RGC formation lie within the bHLH domain. We have further narrowed down the responsible differences between Atoh7 and Neurod1 to six amino acid (a.a) residues. The locations of these six a.a. residues suggest that they likely provide interfaces for interaction with additional protein patterners, indicating a likely mechanism for Atoh7 to promote RGC differentiation. Our current proposal aims to identify these interacting proteins and characterize their functions. We will achieve our aims using proximity biotin labeling with our newly generated knock-in Atoh7 allele that expresses a fusion protein of Atoh7 and the biotin ligase BioID2. Our preliminary results demonstrate that this is a very feasible approach. Our specific Aims are: 1) To identify proteins interacting with Atoh7 in the developing retina and to characterize the specificity of the interactions. 2). To investigate the function of Atoh7 interacting proteins in RGC genesis. The proteins we will identify that are associated with Atoh7 will provide new research directions regarding how RGC specific gene regulation is achieved and how the RGC lineage is established. The findings will be significant not only for understanding the fundamental process of retinal cell differentiation but also for guiding efforts to regenerate RGCs to treat related retinal diseases.

NSF

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY Many technologies, including sensors, electronics, and energy systems, depend on the ability to control how material behavior is affected with changes in temperature and pressure. This project, supported by the Solid State and Materials Chemistry Program in the Division of Materials Research, enables Prof. Koski and her research group at the University of California Davis to grow new layered materials, use chemistry strategies to add and remove atoms inside of these new materials (a process called “intercalation”), and to explore how to tailor these unique materials to control the behavior at high pressure and low and high temperatures. New methods for chemical intercalation are developed that will transform our abilities to manipulate thermodynamics on a molecular level. These investigations address an outstanding need of using chemistry to control 2D layered materials to access new phases and functional behavior. A method called “Brillouin spectroscopy” can study the mechanical behavior of tiny volumes of material without damaging them; the researchers use this to precisely measure new phase changes and extract physical information about the materials. This project is uniquely situated to achieve the goal of controlling thermodynamics in a 2D layered material using intercalation strategies, establishing systematic patterns for rational design of materials with desired properties. Additionally, undergraduate students receive training for careers in science and engineering. This research is open to all individuals; military veterans are recruited for participation in this research. Online resources are created in conjunction with this work, enhancing the knowledge base available for the community and the broader public. TECHNICAL SUMMARY Controlling thermodynamic phase behavior in a 2D layered material using intercalation has been highlighted as a unique strategy to achieve novel material phases and access heretofore unknown functional behaviors. There are two competing or synergistic components of an intercalation layered material that can undergo a phase change, namely the guest intercalant and the host crystal. An intercalant can undergo polytypic phase transitions or disorder-order transitions, many of which can give rise to emergent confined quantum phases. A host can have pressure or temperature driven phase transitions that can be modified by intercalation, including inducing amorphization or stabilization of phases which would not normally occur. With support from the Solid State and Materials Chemistry Program in the Division of Materials Research, this project uses a general set of chemical methods for intercalating high densities of zero-valent elements from across the periodic table, atomic intercalation in 2D layered materials as a route to chemically tune thermodynamic phase behavior. This effort is three-fold and intertwines solid-state chemistry, spectroscopy, and high pressure/variable temperature. Specific objectives are to (i) devise new chemical methods to synthesize 2D layered materials, (ii) develop chemical intercalation strategies to intercalate and deintercalate zero-valent metals in 2D layered materials, and (iii) investigate thermodynamic properties of intercalated 2D layered materials using high pressure generated in a diamond anvil cell and variable temperature techniques. Core to this work is measurement of the acoustic phonons using Brillouin light scattering, which is central to understanding mechanical properties, thermodynamics, and phase states in a material and that can catch phase transformations that X-ray diffraction alone might miss, especially when considering closely related phases. This effort lays the foundation for accessing chemically tunable phase transitions in 2D layered materials using atomic intercalation and is crucial for accessing new functional behaviors, new materials, and understanding of material stability – all which is critical for future applied device performance. Educational and broader outreach goals include training undergraduate students for careers in science and engineering. Military Veterans are recruited for participation in research through the UC Davis Veteran Success Center. This work creates, develops and expands online tools including an online recipe guide for intercalation of metals in layered materials. It enhances and expands an online Brillouin spectroscopy database complementing similarly available databases providing the community with a unique consolidated resource for Brillouin spectroscopy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

Laser based micro- and nano-manufacturing is a key component for the resurgence of American manufacturing. To achieve this goal requires laser manufacturing to have higher processing speed and higher patterning resolution over large areas. A recently discovered phenomenon that has the potential to transform femtosecond laser manufacturing is explored in this research. By overlaying a dielectric substrate with a single atomic layer of graphene, MoS2, or hBN as a sensitizer, a femtosecond pulse can ablate sapphire, glass, or quartz 10-25 times faster. This project seeks to generate fundamental knowledge of this process, determine its applicability and limitations for laser manufacturing, and develop strategies to mitigate these limitations. The knowledge gained from this project will advance the understanding of light-matter interaction in the extreme limit where an atomic-thick hot dense plasma could play a vital role. This new process can have direct impacts on laser manufacturing in high-precision surface texturing with higher throughput. Combined with recent advances in transferring large-area atomic layer materials, this process can enable large scale super-resolution patterning on flat or curved substrates. This project also supports the future workforce in this emerging area of advanced manufacturing through student training. This project will address the following scientific questions: What is the mechanism for such a significant rate enhancement with only one atomic layer? Can this enhancement break the diffraction limit in far-field patterning? Is this process universal in that it can be applied to other atomic layer materials and beyond transparent dielectrics? Is this process self-terminating as the solid sensitizer vanishes and how can this be mitigated? Motivated by the necessity to address these unresolved scientific issues and the potentially transformative opportunities offered by this process, this project will execute a comprehensive study plan and generate transferable fundamental knowledge to advance this new field. Firstly, this project will investigate the interaction between substrate atoms and an atomic layer warm dense matter. This knowledge will enable controlling the ablation rate using the laser pulse width and the number of atomic layers. Secondly, this project will demonstrate ablated features with acceptable sidewall angles. Combined with atomic layer materials with sub-wavelength features, this knowledge will enable super-resolution patterning in the far field and in air. Thirdly, this project will extend this process to a wide range of substrates and sensitizers, enabling other researchers to adopt this new process. Lastly, this project will demonstrate that this process is self-terminating and could be mitigated by a flat-top-shaped laser beam and/or a renewable sensitizer based on nanolayer water. This knowledge will enable this process to ablate deeper holes, lines, and areas, which are building blocks for surface texturing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIH

Attention deficits (AD) frequently co-occur with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The presence of AD is associated with greater PTSD clinical severity and poorer clinical outcomes. Knowledge regarding the mechanism underlying this association is limited, though the emerging evidence has indicated that executive function deficit (EFD) is strongly correlated with AD and PTSD symptoms. While treatments developed for PTSD have existed for years, a substantial portion of individuals do not fully respond to conventional treatment. Accumulating evidence suggest that attention deficit (AD) and EFD may be a driving force for PTSD treatment resistance. However, treatment of executive impairment in PTSD is very limited. As a result, untreated co- occurring AD and EFD in PTSD poses severe negative impacts on patients’ functional recovery, treatment outcomes, and quality of life (QoL). Given that up to 50% of patients do not respond well to the first-line pharmacological PTSD treatments, it is imperative to seek novel treatment strategies to improve EF that may improve both standard treatment response and QoL, social function. The proposed study directly addresses this knowledge gap by testing the efficacy of atomoxetine (ATX) in improving EF and attention among Veterans with PTSD, which will further improve Veterans’ QoL and social function. ATX represents a promising novel candidate pharmacotherapy for individuals with PTSD. ATX is a non-stimulant selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI), approved by the FDA for the treatment of ADHD. Studies suggest that ATX, unlike stimulants, lacks addictive properties and shows efficacy in the treatment of comorbid depression and anxiety, which is ideal in the treatment of PTSD. Data from our preliminary study provides encouraging support for the therapeutic potential of ATX in improving EF in Veterans with comorbid PTSD/ADHD. Our recent research uncovered a higher rate of ADHD among veterans with PTSD, and the comorbid AD symptoms were correlated with PTSD severity and poorer treatment outcomes. Treatment with ATX showed significant symptoms reduction in ADHD and improvement in inhibitory function in Veterans with ADHD/PTSD. In the proposed study, we will focus on ATX in improvement of EF and attention, and further psycho-social life function and QoL. We will (1) employ a randomized, double-blind design that will consist of 12 weeks of treatment with ATX or placebo medication; (2) use standardized, repeated dependent measures to rigorously assess AD and EFD symptomatology; (3) measure impairment in associated mental and behavioral health problems (e.g., attention deficit, depression, anxiety, suicidality, QoL, family/social functioning); and (4) use response inhibition task GoNogo, working memory and attention tests Digit Span and Trail Making to investigate the underlying pathophysiology of PTSD and prognostic indicators of treatment outcome. To achieve these goals, we have assembled a multidisciplinary team of investigators with expertise in PTSD, ADHD clinical trials, and human laboratory paradigms who have successfully collaborated in the past and are uniquely qualified to implement this type of investigation. The proposed project is directly responsive to the mission of the VA-RRD “to maximize Veterans’ functional independence, quality of life and participation in their lives and community.” Successful completion of this study will provide a platform for a large multi-center trial to further confirm the important role of EF in PTSD treatment outcomes. The findings from this study will provide critically needed evidence to help inform clinical practice guidelines on the treatment of PTSD. The outcome of the proposed research will be significant, because it provides a knowledge base to allow for development of new PTSD intervention strategies. More importantly, this clinical trial may immediately benefit Veterans by enhancing their cognitive function, reducing AD related disability, and further improving quality of life for veterans who suffer from PTSD.

NSF

The Chemistry of Life Processes Program in the Chemistry Division is funding Dr. Mary Kay Pflum from Wayne State University to determine how the addition of phosphate groups to histidine amino acids in proteins affects their biological functions in mammalian cells. Dr. Pflum is developing analogs of adenosine 5’-triphosphate (ATP) as chemical tools to identify proteins that are phosphorylated at their histidines, in contrast to the more commonly studied phosphorylated amino acids, by kinase enzymes found in human cells. Kinases are associated with a wide variety of cellular events, including cell communication and adaption, and are often overactive in disease states. Thus, the study of kinases and protein phosphorylation impacts the understanding of normal and disease-related biology. This NSF award also encourages a future generation of scientists by exposing middle and high school students to protein structure and function through hands-on outreach activities at local schools. A toolkit of ATP analogs was developed for kinase-catalyzed labeling of protein substrates, which focused in prior work by the PI on serine, threonine, and tyrosine phosphorylation. Given the paucity of chemical tools to study phosphohistidine-mediated mammalian cell biology, the overall goal of this NSF award is to apply kinase-catalyzed labeling with ATP analogs to investigate histidine phosphorylation. Kinase-catalyzed labeling was established with the two known human histidine kinases, NME1 and NME2, using an ATP-biotin analog. Building on kinase-catalyzed labeling, this award focuses on developing several novel chemical tools to study phosphohistidine-containing proteins and substrates for the NME1 and NME2 kinases. Using these chemical tools, critical evidence will be generated to show how histidine phosphorylation influences biological events in mammalian systems. These studies represent essential steps towards our long-term objective to characterize phosphohistidine and histidine kinases in mammalian cellular processes, which is challenging or impossible with available technologies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIAMS - National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases

Abstract Selectively targeting IgG recycling at the maternal-fetal interface to reduce pathogenic IgG by inhibition of the fetal neonatal Fc gamma receptor (FcRn) and acceleration of IgG destruction, carries the potential to eradicate autoantibody mediated diseases affirming the prediction “no antibody, no disease.” The nearly invariant finding of high titer autoantibodies reactive with SSA/Ro52kD and 60kD ribonucleoproteins in pregnancies complicated by cardiac neonatal lupus (cardiac-NL), strongly implicates these autoantibodies as required for the development of disease. Maternal IgG accessibility to the fetal circulation is mediated by binding to syncytiotrophoblast expressed FcRn. Importantly, we recently demonstrated anti-SSA/Ro52kD and 60kD in cord blood and serosal cavities from 3 midtrimester fetuses dying with cardiac-NL, proving very early transplacental passage. The signature cardiac disease, detected in the midtrimester, is irreversible 3° atrioventricular block with extensive endocardial fibroelastosis, valvular dysfunction, and cardiomyopathy in some cases. Cardiac-NL is fatal in nearly 20%, requires life-long pacing in survivors, and can result in cardiac dysfunction by early adulthood in 30%. The risk in fetuses exposed to high titer anti-SSA/Ro autoantibodies with no prior affected siblings approaches 4% as supported by the ongoing Surveillance and Treatment tO Prevent AV Block Likely to Occur Quickly (STOP BLOQ) trial. Our group has shown that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) reduces cardiac-NL recurrence from an historic benchmark of 18% to 8%. Accordingly, the development of monoclonal antibodies that block FcRn, recently shown safe and effective in fetal hemolytic disease, presents an unprecedented preventative strategy. Driven by the rationale that cardiac-NL will be thwarted by a dual mechanism of action, lowering maternal anti- SSA/Ro autoantibodies and blocking placental transport, we propose AVERT (Atrioventricular block Elimination by Rozanolixizumab Treatment) led by STOP BLOQ mPIs, Jill Buyon (rheumatologist, immunologist) and Bettina Cuneo (fetal cardiologist) complemented by Justin Brandt (maternal fetal medicine). Rozanolixizumab (roza) is an FcRn blocker FDA approved for myasthenia gravis. In Aim 1, an open label prospective single arm study of pregnant subjects with high titer anti-SSA/Ro and a previous cardiac-NL offspring will address whether roza 10mg/kg weekly from 14-25 weeks plus HCQ will significantly reduce the recurrence rate. Limiting study drug to before and during the vulnerable period for cardiac-NL should decrease the need for maternal or neonatal IVIG rescue. A very low recurrence rate of 2% is expected and will be compared to 8% (HCQ alone) with 80% power, Type I error rate of 5%. The first stage of this Simon’s 2 stage design will enroll 35 patients with termination due to inefficacy if ≥ 2 cardiac-NL occur out of 35. Stage 2 will recruit 54 additional patients; the drug will be considered efficacious if < 4/89 develop cardiac-NL. In Aim 2, timing and durability of anti-SSA/Ro52kD and 60kD will be evaluated following treatment with roza. Aim 3 will determine fetal, neonatal and maternal safety of roza. Positive results may set precedent for universal anti-SSA/Ro testing in pregnancy.

Atrium Health Foundation

Atrium Health Foundation is an active grantmaking foundation based in Charlotte, NC. Focus: health. Contact the foundation directly for current funding opportunities.

City of Hood River

Attainable Housing

NIAAA - National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

PROJECT SUMMARY A family history (FH) of alcohol use disorder (AUD) increases one’s personal risk of AUD by 3-4 fold. Given the large proportion of the burden of AUD endured by these individuals and their families, the development of impactful prevention and treatment strategies should consider focused strategies for those individuals. A compelling approach to accomplish this goal is to augment brain resilience mechanisms to compensate for underlying vulnerabilities, which would have greatest efficacy in those at highest risk for poor outcomes. With this objective in mind, we previously identified candidate neurocognitive mechanisms of resilience to familial risk for AUD by comparing FH-positive young adults with versus those without AUD relative to controls. Using this resilience-centered framework, a well-powered, data-driven analysis identified self-reported attentional ability as the factor that most robustly predicted AUD resilience. We validated this finding in a large, independent sample, demonstrating that at-risk young adults with FH that do not binge drink report heightened attentional ability, not only relative to those that binge drink, but even relative to low-risk, non-binge-drinking young adults, supporting the notion that attentional processes support resilient outcomes to AUD and binge drinking. We now seek to advance these cross-sectional, self-report associations in a rigorous, systematic investigation to identify targetable cognitive processes and brain regions that promote AUD-related resilience. Currently, the mechanisms linking attentional ability to AUD resilience remain undetermined. The proposed studies seek to establish how attentional ability protects against the development of alcohol use disorder in at-risk individuals by combining both observational and experimental methods. In Aim 1, we will examine the role of facets of attention measured with fMRI, EEG, and behavior on alcohol use trajectories in 200 emerging adults, including those at risk (FH-positive) and those not at risk (FH-negative) for AUD. The neural correlates of the relationship between attentional ability and future alcohol use will be examined with computational analyses of fMRI and EEG data acquired during attention tasks. In Aim 2, we will test whether fMRI and EEG markers of attention attenuate neural responses to pictorial alcohol cues as a mechanism of AUD resilience. In these two longitudinal aims, we predict that greater “top-down” neurobehavioral indicators of attentional ability (Aim 1) will promote reduced “bottom up” cue reactivity (Aim 2), resulting in shallower alcohol use trajectories in FH-positive (vs. FH-negative) individuals. Aim 3 will include a subsample of 50 “non-resilient” subjects reporting problematic alcohol use. We will test causal relationships by examining effects of boosting attentional ability with methylphenidate on neural cue reactivity (as a proxy for addiction) in a placebo-controlled, within-subjects study. Successful completion of this project will substantially increase our understanding of the neuroscience of resilience related to addiction. This knowledge will support the development of treatment and preventive strategies that could significantly mitigate alcohol-related problems in the millions of individuals in the US with familial risk.

NSF

Humans perform visual search tasks many times throughout the day. Examples include searching for the perfect snack in a supermarket, looking for a misplaced phone in a cluttered room, or finding a friend in a busy restaurant. The efficiency with which humans perform these tasks has a significant impact on the quality of daily life. The current project uses behavior, eye-tracking, virtual reality, brain activity, and computational modeling to test the idea that the efficiency of visual search depends on two stages of processing with two different computational goals: 1) a first stage with “good enough” attentional guidance to select potential targets for closer inspection, and 2) a second stage involving a decision that emphasizes accuracy over speed. The overall goal is to understand organizing principles that make visual search efficient. In addition to the scientific work, this project supports the training and professional development of undergraduate students with activities that build scientific literacy, analytical skills, and emphasize links between classroom learning and the workforce. The project tests hypotheses that guidance and decisions in visual search rely on different types of information because they have different computational goals, not because they work on different feature types. One set of experiments tests the prediction that during visual search, attentional guidance prioritizes speed over accuracy, but that decisions prioritize accuracy over speed. To do this, simple stimulus arrays in which the precision and feature-dimension used for guidance and decisions are separately measured using eye-tracking data, electroencephalography/event-related potentials (EEG/ERPs), and drift-diffusion modeling (DDM). Another set of experiments, also using behavior, EEG, and DDMs, test the prediction that attentional guidance relies on non-target information such as prior knowledge about typical scenes because they act as rapidly detectable spatial cues for the target. Additionally, the project uses immersive virtual reality and DDMs to examine search efficiency in naturalistic contexts and test for hierarchical processes in which guidance prioritizes information and leads to reductions in the search space. Overall, the project aims to address important limitations of existing models of attention and aims to understand how visual search is efficient. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIMH - National Institute of Mental Health

Project Summary/Abstract Decision making is a core cognitive process underlying myriad behaviors in day-to-day life. While great strides have been made in uncovering elements of the neural processes underlying decision making, key questions remain, especially related to the type of complex multi-attribute decisions that are common in the real world. Our novel task isolates each piece of information related to the value of options and requires subjects to view these attributes of options one at a time. Because of this design, we can monitor attention throughout and study the neural responses at each stage. This task also presents the distinct advantage of being viable for both human subjects and non-human primates. Already, we have gained key insights from recordings of neuronal activity in the pre-supplementary motor area (preSMA) of macaques performing the task. We found that preSMA neurons encode action value signals that accumulate information about the options. We also discovered that the focus of attention plays a key role in the value estimation process in these neurons. Attention both uniformly enhances the activity of neurons when the option in their preferred spatial position is attended and increases the gain of value representation in these neurons. With fundamentally the same task, we have collected data from patients undergoing intracranial recordings as part of their treatment for medically intractable focal epilepsy. With broad coverage of the brain across the population of patients, we have been able to identify a number of brain regions involved in different aspects of the task. Now, we can combine the advantages of both data sets to make additional progress. First, in Aim 1, I will implement a computational model for Attention Modulated Multi- Attribute Decisions (AM-MAD) consistent with the observed activity patterns in the preSMA data. This model will allow us to test the hypothesis that the observed forms of attentional modulation of value representation serve to prevent premature choices by allowing attended options to overcome inhibition. In Aim 2, broader networks for value estimation and option selection will be identified from the human sEEG data using a set of dimensionality reduction tools. This approach should reveal whether similar attentional modulation of value representation is present in corresponding areas in humans, as well as how these factors influence activity in other areas. Finally, in Aim 3, I will use new tools that have been developed for causal inference and are ideally suited to multi- channel intracranial recordings. This will allow us to study the flow of information through large-scale networks in the brain and test whether regions that show activity changes related to specific aspects of the task are directly interacting, e.g. whether activity in premotor areas is driven by both attention- and value-encoding frontal areas. With this additional information, the AM-MAD model will be refined with more detail about value and attention- related inputs. Together, this will serve to both advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms of attention in multi-attribute decision making and establish a set of tools that will be broadly applicable for studying cognitive processes across species and recording modalities.

City of Oakland

To produce the 3rd mural of the Oakland Super Heroes Mural Project. The Oakland Super Heroes Mural Project is West Oakland's first large scale mural revitalization and beautification project.

City of Oakland

Students receive high quality art instruction with teaching artists in various artistic mediums. ArtEsteem provides visual and performing art that includes fashion design, drumming, architecture and design and digital media in elementary, middle and high schools that have little to no funding for the arts.

Attleboro Scholarship Foundation

Attleboro Scholarship Foundation is an active grantmaking foundation based in Attleboro, MA. Focus: education. Contact the foundation directly for current funding opportunities.

Open Channels New York, Inc. dba Dixon Place

Attracting International GLBT Culture-Seekers to NYC

Au New You

The Women's Empowerment Luncheon, will be held on June 4, 2016 from 11:00am - 4:00pm at Rainier Beach Community Center, 8825 Rainier Avenue South. This luncheon will reach women to teach new avenues to improve mental & physical well being; improve ability to succeed in regards to family, parenting, overcoming challenges & negative affects that have impacted their lives. This seminar will leave participants with renewed confidence information to make positive contributions to the community.

NYC Department of Cultural Affairs

Aubin Pictures, Inc.