Systems Biology Commons^™

Effects Of Species, Water, And Nitrogen On Competition Among Three Prairie Grasses, Jerry L. Weatherford, Randall W. Myster

The Prairie Naturalist

We conducted an experiment to investigate effects of species, water (W), and nitrogen (N) on competition among little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula), and indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans). All biomass parameters and the root:shoot ratio of little bluestem were reduced by the presence off 1 of 2 other species, and its shoot biomass and total biomass were both increased by addition of N. Root and shoot biomass of sideoats grama were reduced by the presence of indiangrass and its total biomass was reduced by the presence of itself, whereas its shoot biomass was increased by addition of W at …

Habitat Selection By Female Swift Foxes (Vulpes Velox) During The Pup- Rearing Season, Indrani Sasmal, Jonathan A. Jenks, Troy W. Grovenburg, Shubham Datta, Greg. M. Schroeder, Robert W. Klaver, Kevin M. Honness

The Prairie Naturalist

The swift fox (Vulpes velox) was historically distributed in western South Dakota including the region surrounding Badlands National Park (BNP). The species declined during the mid-1800s, largely due to habitat loss and poisoning targeted at wolves (Canis lupis) and coyotes (C. latrans). Only a small population of swift foxes near Ardmore, South Dakota persisted. In 2003, an introduction program was initiated at BNP with swift foxes translocated from Colorado and Wyoming. We report on habitat use by female swift foxes during the pup-rearing season (May–July) in 2009. Analyses of location data from 13 radiomarked female foxes indicated disproportional use (P < 0.001) of some habitats relative to their availability within swift fox home ranges. Swift foxes used grassland (ŵ = 1.01), sparse vegetation (ŵ = 1.43) and prairie dog towns (ŵ = 1.18) in proportion to their availability, whereas they were less likely to use woodland (ŵ = 0.00), shrubland (ŵ = 0.14), pasture/agricultural-land (ŵ = 0.25) and development (ŵ = 0.16) relative to availability. Swift foxes typically are located in habitats that provide greater visibility, such as shortgrass prairie and areas with sparse vegetation; which allow detection of approaching coyotes (e.g., primary predator of swift foxes).

Multiple Bats Entangled On Cactus, Jon C. Pigage, Richard L. Bunn

The Prairie Naturalist

Accidental deaths of bats by entanglement on plants and barbed wire are common (McNicholl 1988, Norquay et al. 2010). It has been hypothesized these incidents involve miscalculations by bats on how close they fly to plants or barbed wire or when chasing insects highly concentrated around vegetation (Norquay et al. 2010). Once the bats hit the plants or barbed wire, they become entangled and or impaled while struggling to free themselves. The earliest reports involved little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) and unidentified bats entangled on burdock, Arctium sp. (Lyon 1925, Little 1925). Additional reports of bats becoming entangled in plants …

A Small Zinc Finger Thylakoid Protein Plays A Role In Maintenance Of Photosystem Ii In Arabidopsis Thaliana, Yan Lu, David Hall, Robert Last

Yan Lu

No abstract provided.

Adaptation And Stochasticity Of Natural Complex Systems, Roy David Dar

Doctoral Dissertations

The methods that fueled the microscale revolution (top-down design/fabrication, combined with application of forces large enough to overpower stochasticity) constitute an approach that will not scale down to nanoscale systems. In contrast, in nanotechnology, we strive to embrace nature’s quite different paradigms to create functional systems, such as self-assembly to create structures, exploiting stochasticity, rather than overwhelming it, in order to create deterministic, yet highly adaptable, behavior. Nature’s approach, through billions of years of evolutionary development, has achieved self-assembling, self-duplicating, self-healing, adaptive systems. Compared to microprocessors, nature’s approach has achieved eight orders of magnitude higher memory density and three orders …

Domainrbf: A Bayesian Regression Approach To The Prioritization Of Candidate Domains For Complex Diseases., Wangshu Zhang, Yong Chen, Fengzhu Sun, Rui Jiang

Faculty Scholarship for the College of Science & Mathematics

BACKGROUND: Domains are basic units of proteins, and thus exploring associations between protein domains and human inherited diseases will greatly improve our understanding of the pathogenesis of human complex diseases and further benefit the medical prevention, diagnosis and treatment of these diseases. Within a given domain-domain interaction network, we make the assumption that similarities of disease phenotypes can be explained using proximities of domains associated with such diseases. Based on this assumption, we propose a Bayesian regression approach named "domainRBF" (domain Rank with Bayes Factor) to prioritize candidate domains for human complex diseases.

RESULTS: Using a compiled dataset containing 1,614 …

Avian Community Ecology And The Shifting Baseline In Sugarcreek Metropark, Jennifer Lynne Hays, Thomas P. Rooney, Jeffrey L. Peters

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Abundance And Trends Of Woodpecker Populations In The Wright State Biology Preserve, Brittany Damron, Thomas P. Rooney

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Carbon Sequestration In Soils Of The Wright State University Biology Preserve, Laurie Wissler, Thomas P. Rooney

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide To Prairie Restoration In The Upper Midwest. By Daryl Smith, Dave Williams, Greg Houseal, And Kirk Henderson., Gerry Steinauer

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Tallgrass prairie restoration in the Upper Midwest is the focus of this guide. Its geographic area of coverage includes the eastern fifth of South Dakota and Nebraska and northeast Kansas, a region some ascribe to the eastern Great Plains. Two types of prairie restoration are dealt with: prairie reconstruction, which the authors define as creating prairie from scratch on sites where prairie plants no longer exist; and prairie remnant restoration, defined as upgrading degraded existing prairies. The book comprises five sections: "Reconstruction Planning," "Implementing Reconstruction," "Prairie Restoration and Management," "Special Cases," and "Native Seed Production." There are 16 chapters, each …

Chloroplast 2010: A Database For Large-Scale Phenotypic Screening Of Arabidopsis Mutants, Yan Lu, Linda Savage, Matthew Larson, Curtis Wilkerson, Robert Last

Yan Lu

No abstract provided.

Rising Seas, Stormy Skies, Margaret (Peg) A. Van_Patten Ms.

Wrack Lines

Rising seas and more intense storms will affect Connecticut and Long Island Sound if climate change continues at present rates.

Long Island Sound And Climate Change: What Is Going To Happen?, Juliana Barrett

Wrack Lines

Certain plants and animals can be used as "sentinels", to help us monitor the impacts of a changing climate and warming planet on the ecology and biodiversity of Long Island Sound.

Caffeine Metabolism And Cytochrome P450 Enzyme Mrna Expression Levels Of Genetically Diverse Inbred Mouse Strains, Neal Addicott, Michael Malfatti, Gabriela G. Loots

STAR Program Research Presentations

Cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes activate or eliminate medications and other xenobiotics, and Caffeine has been used as an indicator of activity for some CYPs. The natural genetic variation in the human population for caffeine metabolizing CYPs does not yet have an established animal model for comparison, but the natural variation in inbred mouse strains presents an attractive starting point. The project gave four different strains of mice a 40mg/kg dose of caffeine and sampled blood and liver tissue after 30 minutes. Samples were analyzed using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), reverse transcription PCR (rtPCR), and quantitative PCR (qPCR). The DBA/2J …

Computer Simulation Of A Hollow-Fiber Bioreactor: Heparan Regulated Growth Factors-Receptors Binding And Dissociation Analysis, Changjiang Zhang

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis demonstrates the use of numerical simulation in predicting the behavior of proteins in a flow environment.

A novel convection-diffusion-reaction computational model is first introduced to simulate fibroblast growth factor (FGF-2) binding to its receptor (FGFR) on cell surfaces and regulated by heparan sulfate proteoglycan (HSPG) under flow in a bioreactor. The model includes three parts: (1) the flow of medium using incompressible Navier-Stokes equations; (2) the mass transport of FGF-2 using convection-diffusion equations; and (3) the cell surface binding using chemical kinetics. The model consists of a set of coupled nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) for flow and …

The Stability Of The Extended Model Of Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (Hpa) Axis Examined By Stoichiometric Network Analysis, Zeljko D. Cupic

Zeljko D Cupic

No abstract provided.

Predictive Modeling Of The Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (Hpa) Axis Response To Acute And Chronic Stress, Zeljko D. Cupic

Zeljko D Cupic

No abstract provided.

Sheep Grazing Effect On Dryland Soil Carbon And Nitrogen In The Wheat-Fallow System, Andrew W. Lenssen, Upendra M. Sainju, Hayes B. Goosey, Erin Snyder, Patrick G. Hatfield

Andrew W. Lenssen

Weed control by sheep grazing during fallow periods in the dryland wheat-fallow system may influence soil C and N levels. The effects of fallow management for weed control and soil water conservation [sheep grazing (grazing), herbicide application (chemical), and tillage (mechanical)] and cropping sequence [continuous spring wheat (CSW), spring wheat-fallow (SW-F), and winter wheatfallow (WW-F)] on wheat biomass (stems + leaves) yield and soil organic C (SOC) and total N (STN) at the 0-120 cm depth was evaluated from 2004 to 2008 in western Montana. Annualized wheat biomass yield was greater in CSW than in SW-F and WW-F from 2004 …

Effects Of Xs® Energy Drink On Aerobic Exercise Capacity Of Athletes, Kevin M. Sheehan, Lynn K. Hartzler

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

A small increase in performance is often the difference between winning and losing for athletes, and energy supplements are marketed to give them a competitive edge. One such supplement is XS® Energy Drink which contains B vitamins, caffeine, taurine, and an herbal adaptogen blend. XS® Energy Drink is primarily designed and marketed as an alertness stimulus; however, it is also marketed to athletes as a performance enhancing supplement. The hypothesis of this investigation was that the consumption of XS® Energy Drink before exercise would increase aerobic capacity (an increase in Vo2max) and time to fatigue, and would decrease time for …

Integration Of Breast Cancer Gene Signatures Based On Graph Centrality, Jianxin Wang, Gang Chen, Min Li, Yi Pan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: Various gene-expression signatures for breast cancer are available for the prediction of clinical outcome. However due to small overlap between different signatures, it is challenging to integrate existing disjoint signatures to provide a unified insight on the association between gene expression and clinical outcome.

Results: In this paper, we propose a method to integrate different breast cancer gene signatures by using graph centrality in a context-constrained protein interaction network (PIN). The context-constrained PIN for breast cancer is built by integrating complete PIN and various gene signatures reported in literatures. Then, we use graph centralities to quantify the importance of …