Life Sciences Commons^™

Recent Decline Of Lowland Populations Of The Western Gray Squirrel In The Los Angeles Area Of Southern California, Daniel S. Cooper, Alan Muchlinski

Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences

We provide an overview of the distribution of lowland and otherwise isolated populations of the western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus) in the Los Angeles area of southern California, an area that has experienced a recent and ongoing invasion by the non-native eastern fox squirrel (Sciurus niger), an urban-adapted species introduced a century ago. Away from its strongholds in the western Santa Monica Mountains, San Gabriel Mountains, and Santa Ana Mountains, the western gray squirrel is resident locally in both the Santa Susana and the Verdugo Mountains, in Griffith Park, in low hills at the eastern periphery of the San Gabriel ...

Ghostly Glia, Maria Noterman

Synthesis: A Digital Journal of Student Science Communication

This article uses intriguing visuals of glial cells in the brain as an invitation for readers to consider the many crucial functions of these lesser-known partners of neurons.

Ask The Beasts Of The Southern Wild: Exploring Human Identity As Beast, Being And Beholder In Ask The Beasts: Darwin And The God Of Love And Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Stephanie Cherpak Clary

Journal of Religion & Film

Anthropocentrism and hierarchical dualism together encourage a dangerous anthropology where human primacy among creation and the prioritization of certain humans leads to destruction for all. During a time when suffering caused by climate change continues to intensify, it is increasingly important to find compelling ways to share the stories of those who suffer most. I will explore how Beasts of the Southern Wild (Zeitlin, 2012) contextualizes the ecofeminist theology found in Johnson’s Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (2014), specifically the idea of humans identifying as beasts, beings and beholders. Furthermore, I will discuss how the ...

An Examination Of The Death Penalty, Alexandra N. Kremer

The Downtown Review

The death penalty, or capital punishment, is the use of execution through hanging, beheading, drowning, gas chambers, lethal injection, and electrocution among others in response to a crime. This has spurred much debate on whether it should be used for reasons such as ethics, revenge, economics, effectiveness as a deterrent, and constitutionality. Capital punishment has roots that date back to the 18^th century B.C., but, as of 2016, has been abolished in law or practice by more than two thirds of the world’s countries and several states within the United States. Here, the arguments for and against ...

The Effects Of Inulin And Galactooligosaccharides On The Production Of Reuterin By Lactobacillus Reuteri, Micah Dwight Forshee

ELAIA

The microbiome is a dynamic community that can positively and negatively influence host health. Lactobacillus reuteri is a probiotic that has received much attention for its ability to inhibit pathogens such as Salmonella typhimurium, Escherichia coli, and Clostridium difficile. It does so by its unique ability to metabolize glycerol into the antimicrobial compound 3-HPA, which is commonly referred to as reuterin. The ability to secrete reuterin is dependent not only on glycerol availability but also the concentration of glucose. In fact, there appears to be a “goldilocks” ratio between glucose and glycerol as either too much or too little glucose ...

Elaia 2018, Stephen Case

ELAIA

Over the years, the Program has continued to grow and flourish, and the depth of its research continues to increase. This inaugural journal represents the fruits of that development, containing capstone research projects from the 2018 Honors Program senior class and their faculty mentors. The Table of Contents is diverse, and in that way it is a crystal clear reflection of our program’s community of scholars.

I, along with the members of the Honors Council, am gratified by the work of each student and faculty mentor printed within these pages. Congratulations, everyone!

- Stephen Lowe, Honors Program Director

Can A Global Fund Help Solve The Global Marine Plastic Debris Problem?, Karen Raubenheimer, Alistair Mcilgorm

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

The problem of marine plastic debris impacts all of the world’s oceans and requires all nations to respond. However, developing States require funds to improve waste management infrastructure and services in order to reduce marine debris at source. Plastics manufacturers and retailers globally must be incentivised to design products for the environment as well as for the collection and end-of-life treatment facilities available within the intended markets. Given the oceans are a global common, we investigate the option of developing a global fund mechanism to progress the necessary actions to reduce plastic waste entering the world’s oceans. This ...

Hands Of The Future, Inc.: Connecting Children To Nature, Rebecca Busse

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Rebecca Busse is a graduate student in Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University. She will continue at Purdue as an administrative professional staff member working on the Nature of Teaching portal that provides K-5 teachers with standards-based lesson plans related to wildlife, food waste, and health and wellness. She has been volunteering with Hands of the Future, Inc. for three years. In this article, she describes the organization and her experiences with Hands of the Future.

Aspects Of The Reproductive Biology And Growth Of The Mississippi Silvery Minnow, Hybognathus Nuchalis (Agassiz, 1855) (Teleostei: Cyprinidae) From The Pearl River, Louisiana., Arely Ramírez-García, Kyle R. Piller

Southeastern Fishes Council Proceedings

The reproductive biology and growth of the Mississippi Silvery Minnow, Hybognathus nuchalis, is described from multiple sites in the Pearl River, Louisiana. Individuals were collected from August 2011 to August 2012. Ovarian weights, expressed as a percentage of body weights, peaked in December. Size structure ranged from 29.0 to 60.0 mm SL for females and 25.0 to 56.0 mm SL for males. Mature ova were found from November to January. Females reached first maturity (L50) at 37.0 mm SL and L50 for males is at 41.0 mm SL. Sex ratio (females:males) is biased ...

Multi-Metric Conservation Assessment For The Imperiled Clinch Dace, Michael James Moore, Donald J. Orth, Eric M. Hallerman

Southeastern Fishes Council Proceedings

Planning frameworks allow managers to spatially prioritize actions to promote species conservation. Traditional aquatic conservation planning frameworks are often organized at the ecological community or ecosystem level, which often neglect imperiled taxa occupying species-poor assemblages. In this study, we develop a multi-metric conservation assessment for the 15 geographically distinct candidate conservation areas (CCAs) occupied by the imperiled Clinch Dace (Chrosomus sp. cf. saylori). Clinch Dace habitat is threatened by anthropogenic landscape alterations, especially for coal mining and timber harvest. Our framework used four metrics to assess the conservation value of each subpopulation of Clinch Dace namely: “habitat condition”, “viability”, conservation ...

Impacts Of Urbanization On Costs Of Production And Land Use In The Central Southern Seaboard: A Farm-Level Analysis, Richard F. Nehring, Kenneth Erickson, James M. Harris, Charlie Hallahan, Ani Katchova, Flavius Badau

Journal of Applied Farm Economics

This study uses stochastic production frontier (SPF) and DEA frontier methods to estimate the impact of urban influence on the cost of production for traditional corn/soybeans farms in the Southern Seaboard (excepting Virginia and Alabama). We hypothesize that urban influence decreases the technical efficiency of these farms. Although states in this region are not entirely subject to urban influence, some parts of states in this region are highly urbanized. We find that farmers in urban-influenced locations are less technically efficient than farmers in rural locations in the region examined. During 2002-2014, stochastic production frontier and DEA frontier procedures indicate ...

Profitability Of Developing Beef Heifers On Stockpiled Winter Forages, Zachary David Mcfarlane, Chris Boyer, J. Travis Mulliniks

Journal of Applied Farm Economics

We estimate the profitability of developing heifers on one stockpiled cool-season grass and two stockpiled warm-season grasses during the winter months by comparing distributions of net present value (NPV) over an 11-year useful life. Furthermore, distributions of payback period and the break-even price for each calf over the heifer’s production life were generated for each forage species. These results are compared across forages as well as to a simulated drylot system for heifer development. Data comes from a grazing experiment in Tennessee, where heifers grazed big bluestem and Indian grass combination (BBIG), switchgrass (SW), or endophyte-infected tall fescue (TF ...

The Gut Microbiota Of Cornu Aspersum, Parker Neal Smith, Sarah M. Boomer, Michael Baltzley

PURE Insights

The “Brown Garden Snail,” Cornu aspersum is a widely distributed land snail, whose consumption of soil to acquire calcium results in soil microbes colonizing their gut. While previous work has utilized culture-based approaches to analyze the gut microbiota of C. aspersum, no previous studies have used high throughput DNA sequencing, or examined the changes in the gut microbiota over time in response to antibiotics exposure. In this study, we use 16S amplicon sequencing and fecal plating to characterize the gut microbiota of C. aspersum, and to monitor changes in their microbiota over time after a short penicillin treatment. We found ...

Bacterial Abundance And Resistance In Ground Beef Varieties, Savannah Kumar, Sarah M. Boomer

PURE Insights

Raw ground beef purchased at supermarkets across America have one thing in common: they harbor bacteria, some of which are drug resistant and can be detrimental to public health. To understand the impact of farming and processing practices on the quantity of bacteria and drug resistance, organic and regular beef were assessed using MacConkey media. Bacterial colonies were sorted according to lactose utilization, with positive colonies representing fecal E. coli. Lactose negative colonies were further characterized into one of two groups (fecal Hafnia-like or soil Pseudomonas) using a variety of metabolic tests (oxidase, sulfur, indole). Advanced metabolic testing showed that ...

Profile Interview With Norman E. Fenn, Shannon L. Castek

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Shannon L. Castek is a fourth-generation Boilermaker and fourth-professional-year student in the Purdue University College of Pharmacy. Throughout her time in pharmacy school, Shannon has enjoyed supplementing her curricular work with service-learning activities, participating in health screenings and immunization events with the Purdue chapter of the American Pharmacists Association–Academy of Student Pharmacists. She plans to pursue a pharmacy residency following graduation to achieve her dream of becoming an ambulatory care pharmacist. In this article, Shannon highlights the service-learning endeavors of Dr. Norman Fenn in the College of Pharmacy.

Hands Of The Future, Inc.: Connecting Children To Nature, Rebecca Busse

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Rebecca Busse is the project coordinator for the Nature of Teaching Extension Program. This provides K–5 teachers with standards-based lesson plans related to wildlife, food waste, and health and wellness. She has been volunteering with Hands of the Future, Inc., for three years. In this article, she describes the organization and her experiences with it.

My Experience In Swaziland With Give Hope, Fight Poverty, Megan Kaser

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Megan Kaser, a recent 2017 alum in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Purdue University, describes her experience with Give Hope, Fight Poverty (GHFP)—a nonprofit organization in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in physician assistant studies. GHFP’s mission is “to foster philanthropy domestically by designing service-learning programs that engage U.S. college students with rural communities in Swaziland, Africa, and work together to educate, empower, and lift orphaned and vulnerable children—particularly those living in child-headed households— out of poverty” (Give Hope, Fight Poverty, n.d.). By incorporating college students in ...

The Pharmaceutical Industry: A Pharmacy Student's Guide, Christian Egly, Yaman Kaakeh

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Christian Egly is a fourth-year (P4) pharmacy student in the Purdue University College of Pharmacy. During his years at Purdue, he worked in labs performing bench research in clinical pharmacology and biochemistry. He plans to work in the pharmaceutical industry after graduation. During his fourth year, he completed rotations in business development at Kashiv Pharma, LLC, and was hired there for an internship in 2017. In the article, Christian describes his personal experiences at Kashiv Pharma, LLC, and how industry can positively affect patient communities.

Human Genetic Intervention: How Far Should We Go?, Lance Gregory A. Nunes

Mānoa Horizons

Since the beginning of time, man has treated illness and disease with natural remedies. With the advancement in knowledge and technology, new kinds of treatments have entered the realm of medicine—namely genetic intervention. This paper aims to help determine where we should take our development of this technology. In each branch of genetic intervention—whether it be gene therapy, prevention, remediation, or enhancement—issues of ethics, socio-economics, and religion have casted a cloud over the technology, hindering its progression. In contrary, the power to improve the quality and save the lives of individuals affected by genetic diseases does not ...

Gene Therapy: An Overview Of Approaches And Issues, Tony Head

Mānoa Horizons

For over 25 years, scientists have been researching and testing gene therapy techniques, but this work has only resulted in a single FDA-approved therapy: Kymriah™ from Novartis. Kymriah™ was approved in the U.S. in August 2017, and genetically modifies a patient’s own immune cells to seek out and destroy abnormal blood cells. Although clinical trials continue to test and refine different gene therapy approaches, understanding and evaluating the risks associated with treatment may be overwhelming to patients and caregivers alike. This article attempts to provide readers with an introduction to gene therapy so that anyone considering treatment or ...

The Art Of Botany: The Effect Of Drought On Plant Anatomy, Amanda Wong

Mānoa Horizons

Plants are negatively affected by water deficiencies, and water stress is expected to increase due to more frequent and prolonged droughts from climate change. I investigated the effect of drought on the internal anatomy of the invasive Syzygium cumini plant. In the greenhouse, S. cumini plants were grown, such that half of the plants were watered daily, while the remaining number of plants did not receive any water for the entire experiment. After nine weeks, the base of the main stem was cut into thin disks, stained, and the center was viewed through a microscope for the pith cells that ...

Who Owns Our Genes?, Julia Fujisaka

Mānoa Horizons

In June of 2013, the United States Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others in a case arguing against the patentability of human genes. Critics of gene patenting had long suggested that instead of promoting innovation, human gene patents posed a significant roadblock to the development of important diagnostics and therapeutics, and had a negative impact on public health. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the opposing party, argued that the patenting of human genes encouraged researchers and scientists to try to find alternate paths to reach end goals. However, Myriad Genetics strictly defended patents ...

Lipofibroblast Specific Transcription Factor Required For Lung Alveolar Development, Ga Young (Sally) Park

Mānoa Horizons

Respiratory Distress Syndrome occurs in preterm births. Premature lungs lack pulmonary surfactant produced by alveolar type II (ATII) cells. Understanding signaling pathways that promote maturation of ATII cells could reduce time spent in neonatal care units. Tcf21, a bHLH transcription factor, is expressed during lung development, and loss of Tcf21 leads to respiratory failure and dysregulation of Wnt signaling. It is hypothesized that lipofibroblasts secrete Wnt ligands to induce ATII cell differentiation. Using genetically engineered mice that permit isolation of ribosomes from Tcf21 lineage cells, the profile of Wnt ligand RNA expressions were determined. To confirm whether Tcf21 is sufficient ...

Exposure To Herbicide Is Linked To Elevated Homocysteine And Folic Acid Deficiency, Tony Head, Julia Fujisaka, Jasmine Padamada, Steffanie Sobitz

Mānoa Horizons

SciFiToxin (SFT) is the active ingredient in a popular non-selective herbicide, RoundUpTM. Introduced in 2020, SFT obtained regulatory approval for general use and has since become the leading residential and agricultural herbicide, especially among farmers of genetically modified (GM) crops. Results from two recent studies indicate a rise in the average homocysteine level in humans worldwide and implicate SFT as a possible cause for this phenomenon as well as folic acid deficiency, due to SFT’s effect on key enzymes in the body. Elevated homocysteine levels in the blood may lead to a number of life-threatening conditions, and folic acid ...

The Right To Know: Should Gmo Labeling Be Mandatory In The U.S.?, Steffanie Sobitz

Mānoa Horizons

From the commercial release of the first successful genetically modified food to the current debate about the safety of GM foods, one issue has stayed on the forefront of consumers’ minds: the right to know what is in our food. While the history of genetically modified products is easy to follow, the arguments surrounding these high-tech consumables have become convoluted at best. One of the most prominent issues regarding GM foods is the argument that companies who produce, grow, market and sell genetically modified foodstuffs should be required to label them as such. Some iterate the right to know what ...

Virtual Reality And Visualization In Research And Cultural Preservation, Lynn Nguyen

Mānoa Horizons

There are purported links between central obesity and incidence of various cancers. Visceral fat, which includes both pancreatic and liver fat, wraps around major organs, while subcutaneous fat is surface level “belly fat.” The significance of this research is due to its potential to act as another method of measuring fat, as the only methods now are imaging by a CT scan, which is a cross-sectional X-ray of a body area, or an MRI scan, which is imaging done via magnetic resonance. Cross-sectional analyses of scaled MRI images from 228 subjects of Black, Hawaiian, Japanese, Latino, and White ethnicity in ...

Case Study: Robin Hood Or Criminal? The Case Of A Bank Loan Officer, Vincent Agnello, Joseph F. Winter, Hai Ta

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

Employees who deviate from established rules at work face suspension or termination from their employment. Yet, knowing these dire consequences employees may still find themselves walking on a different path of business policy. Most employee wrongful conduct is done with the specific intent of benefitting the employee. In some cases, the authorities are brought in to intervene and criminal charges are brought against the employee, as in the case of embezzlement. Some acts are done by employees who do not believe in their company’s rules and are willing to deviate from them, not for their own benefit, but rather ...

Usury And The Common Good, Jim Wishloff

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

No abstract provided.

Editors

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

No abstract provided.