Digital Commons Network^™

Highly Toxic Aβ Begets More Aβ, Merc M. Kemeh, Noel Lazo

Chemistry

No abstract provided.

Hydrothermal Synthesis Of (C5h14n2)[Cocl4]⸳0.5h2o: Crystal Structure, Spectroscopic Characterization, Thermal Behavior, Magnetic Properties And Biological Evaluation, Sandra Walha, Noureddine Mhadhbi, Basem F. Ali, Abdellah Kaiba, Ahlem Guesmi, Wesam Abd El-Fattah, Naoufel Ben Hamadi, Mark M. Turnbull, Ferdinando Costantino, Houcine Naïli

Chemistry

The organic-inorganic compound (C₅H₁₄N₂)[CoCl₄]⸳0.5H₂O, I, was characterized by various physicochemical techniques. The X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the compound crystallizes in the centrosymmetric space group C2/c of the monoclinic system. The atomic arrangement the Co(II) complex is built from isolated [CoCl₄]^2– anions, 1-methylpiperazine-1,4-diium [C₅H₁₄N₂]²⁺ cations and free water molecules. The crystal structure study showed that the cohesion of I is assured through N–H···Cl and N–H···O hydrogen bonds giving birth to a 3-D architecture. Hirshfeld surface analysis revealed that Cl···H/H···Cl and …

Generative Ai In User-Generated Content, Yiqing Hua, Shuo Niu, Jie Cai, Lydia B. Chilton, Hendrick Heuer, Donghee Yvette Wohn

Computer Science

Generative AI (Gen-AI) is rapidly changing the landscape of User-Generated Content (UGC) on social media. AI tools for generating text, images, and videos, such as Large-Language Models (LLM), image generation AI, AI-powered video material tools, and deep fake technologies, are accelerating creators in obtaining content ideas, drafting outlines, and streamlining creative workflows. The capabilities of Gen-AI could introduce new opportunities to lower the bar and accelerate the pace of content creation for grassroots creators, thereby expanding the volume of AI-generated UGC on social media. However, we lack the necessary understanding of how the wide deployment of such technologies will impact …

Development Of Novel Immobilized Copper–Ligand Complex For Click Chemistry Of Biomolecules, Rene Kandler, Yomal Benaragama, Manoranjan Bera, Caroline Wang, Rasheda Aktar Samiha, W.M.C. Sameera, Samir Das, Arundhati Nag

Chemistry

Copper-catalyzed azide–alkyne cycloaddition click (CuAAC) reaction is widely used to synthesize drug candidates and other biomolecule classes. Homogeneous catalysts, which consist of copper coordinated to a ligand framework, have been optimized for high yield and specificity of the CuAAC reaction, but CuAAC reaction with these catalysts requires the addition of a reducing agent and basic conditions, which can complicate some of the desired syntheses. Additionally, removing copper from the synthesized CuAAC-containing biomolecule is necessary for biological applications but inconvenient and requires additional purification steps. We describe here the design and synthesis of a PNN-type pincer ligand complex with copper (I) …

A Copper-Selective Sensor And Its Inhibition Of Copper-Amyloid Beta Aggregation, Ngoc Kim Nguyen, Bella Poduska, Mia Franks, Manoranjan Bera, Ian Maccormack, Guoxing Lin, Alexander P. Petroff, Samir Das, Arundhati Nag

Chemistry

Copper is an essential trace metal for biological processes in humans and animals. A low level of copper detection at physiological pH using fluorescent probes is very important for in vitro applications, such as the detection of copper in water or urine, and in vivo applications, such as tracking the dynamic copper concentrations inside cells. Copper homeostasis is disrupted in neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, and copper forms aggregates with amyloid beta (Ab42) peptide, resulting in senile plaques in Alzheimer’s brains. Therefore, a selective copper detector probe that can detect amyloid beta peptide-copper aggregates and decrease the aggregate size has …

A Green New England? Regional Implementation Of Grant-Based Provisions Of The Inflation Reduction Act In The Northeastern U.S., Samuel Cooper

Sustainability and Social Justice

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has been described as “the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in the nation’s history,” totaling some $370 billion in tax credits and federal grants for everything from residential solar panels to urban forestry. As the first of its size in U.S. climate policy, the IRA has been a subject of study and debate since its introduction, but it is only in this past year that funding reporting data has become available. This thesis utilizes this federal data to produce a novel analysis of IRA implementation at the …

Climate Change And Voluntary Private Land Conservation: A Case Study Of Working Lands For Wildlife, Abigail Thompson

School of Professional Studies

This case study examines the role, impact, and future of voluntary private land conservation (VPLC) programs, with a particular focus on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW) initiative. Climate change and population growth pose a significant threat to public land conservation, making alternative methods like WLFW increasingly important. WLFW is a relatively successful and well-received program, but it is still young and comparatively smaller than other VPLC programs operated by the government. Publications by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, WLFW partner organizations, and relevant scholarly articles were utilized in order to assess WLFW’s success independently and …

Optimal Selection And Investment-Allocation Decisions For Sustainable Supplier Development Practices, Chunguang Bai, Kannan Govindan, Dileep G. Dhavale

School of Business

Organization’s sustainability performance is influenced by its suppliers’ sustainability performance. This relationship makes sustainable supplier development a strategic competitive option for a buyer or focal organization. When considering sustainable supplier development practices (SSDPs) adoption, organizations have to balance and consider their limited financial resources and operational constraints. It becomes necessary to both select the best SSDPs set and investment allocation among the selected SSDP set such that the organization can maximize overall sustainability performance level. In this paper, an integrated formal modeling methodology using DEMATEL, the NK model, and multi-objective linear programming model is used support this objective. The proposed …

Trapping And Scattering Of A Multiflagellated Bacterium By A Hard Surface, Alexander P. Petroff, Schuyler Mcdonough

Physics

Thiovulum majus, which is one of the fastest known bacteria, swims using hundreds of flagella. Unlike typical pusher cells, which swim in circular paths over hard surfaces, T. majus localize near hard boundaries by turning their flagella to exert a net force normal to the surface. To probe the torques that stabilize this hydrodynamically bound state, the trajectories of several thousand collisions between a T. majus cell and a wall of a quasi-two-dimensional microfluidic chamber are analyzed. Measuring the fraction of cells escaping the wall either to the left or to the right of the point of contact - and …

Singular Cr Structures Of Constant Webster Curvature And Applications, Chiara Guidi, Ali Maalaoui, Vittorio Martino

Mathematics

We consider the sphere (Formula presented.) equipped with its standard contact form. In this paper, we construct explicit contact forms on (Formula presented.), which are conformal to the standard one and whose related Webster metrics have constant Webster curvature; in particular, it is positive if (Formula presented.). As main applications, we provide two perturbative results. In the first one, we prove the existence of infinitely many contact forms on (Formula presented.) conformal to the standard one and having constant Webster curvature, where (Formula presented.) is a small perturbation of (Formula presented.). In the second application, we show that there exist …

New Discoveries On Protein Recruitment And Regulation During The Early Stages Of The Dna Damage Response Pathways, Kelly Waters, Donald E. Spratt

Chemistry

Maintaining genomic stability and properly repairing damaged DNA is essential to staying healthy and preserving cellular homeostasis. The five major pathways involved in repairing eukaryotic DNA include base excision repair (BER), nucleotide excision repair (NER), mismatch repair (MMR), non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), and homologous recombination (HR). When these pathways do not properly repair damaged DNA, genomic stability is compromised and can contribute to diseases such as cancer. It is essential that the causes of DNA damage and the consequent repair pathways are fully understood, yet the initial recruitment and regulation of DNA damage response proteins remains unclear. In this review, …

Byzantine Consensus In Abstract Mac Layer, Lewis Tseng, Callie Sardina

Computer Science

This paper studies the design of Byzantine consensus algorithms in an asynchronous single-hop network equipped with the “abstract MAC layer” [DISC09], which captures core properties of modern wireless MAC protocols. Newport [PODC14], Newport and Robinson [DISC18], and Tseng and Zhang [PODC22] study crash-tolerant consensus in the model. In our setting, a Byzantine faulty node may behave arbitrarily, but it cannot break the guarantees provided by the underlying abstract MAC layer. To our knowledge, we are the first to study Byzantine faults in this model. We harness the power of the abstract MAC layer to develop a Byzantine approximate consensus algorithm …

Growing Up Sustainable? Politics Of Race And Youth In Urbanplan, Copenhagen, Max Ritts, Rebecca Rutt

Geography

This paper considers how racialized youth in Denmark negotiate sustainability amid contexts marked by intersecting forms of economic restructuring, progressive neoliberalism, white ethno-nationalism, and green urban planning. Urbanplan is a low-income, notoriously “troubled” Copenhagen neighborhood where we conducted fieldwork for 7 months (2019-2020) with fifteen male youth, aged 17-21. Using ethnography, policy reviews, and interviews with city social workers, we explore how intimate experiences of nature, group-identity, and place attachment here relate to and depart from the structural forces actively reshaping the neighborhood. Our analysis combines Cindi Katz's intersectional political economy approach with recent work on green gentrification, Critical Utopian …

Stereochemical Engineering Yields A Multifunctional Peptide Macrocycle Inhibitor Of Akt2 By Fine-Tuning Macrocycle-Cell Membrane Interactions, Arundhati Nag, Amirhossein Mafi, Samir Das, Mary Beth Yu, Belen Alvarez-Villalonga, Soo-Kyung Kim, Yapeng Su, William A. Goddard, James R. Heath

Chemistry

Macrocycle peptides are promising constructs for imaging and inhibiting extracellular, and cell membrane proteins, but their use for targeting intracellular proteins is typically limited by poor cell penetration. We report the development of a cell-penetrant high-affinity peptide ligand targeted to the phosphorylated Ser474 epitope of the (active) Akt2 kinase. This peptide can function as an allosteric inhibitor, an immunoprecipitation reagent, and a live cell immunohistochemical staining reagent. Two cell penetrant stereoisomers were prepared and shown to exhibit similar target binding affinities and hydrophobic character but 2-3-fold different rates of cell penetration. Experimental and computational studies resolved that the ligands’ difference …

Energy Extraction, Or Lack Thereof, Nishanth Gudapati

Mathematics

The problem of stability of rotating black holes is the subject of a long standing research program since the 1960s and remains an unresolved problem in general relativity. A major obstacle in the black hole stability problem is that the energy of waves propagating through rotating black holes spacetimes is not necessarily positive-definite, due to the so called ergo-region. This is a serious complication that limits the efficacy of most mathematical techniques. In this expository article, we report that, despite the ergo-region, there exists a positive-definite total energy for axisymmetric Maxwell, gravitational and electrovacuum perturbations of Kerr and Kerr–Newman black …

Cluster Scaling And Critical Points: A Cautionary Tale, W. Klein, Harvey Gould, Sakib Matin

Physics

Many systems in nature are conjectured to exist at a critical point, including the brain and earthquake faults. The primary reason for this conjecture is that the distribution of clusters (avalanches of firing neurons in the brain or regions of slip in earthquake faults) can be described by a power law. Because there are other mechanisms such as 1/f noise that can produce power laws, other criteria that the cluster critical exponents must satisfy can be used to conclude whether or not the observed power-law behavior indicates an underlying critical point rather than an alternate mechanism. We show how a …

Dynamics Of Magnetoelastic Robots In Water-Saturated Granular Beds, Animesh Biswas, Trinh Huynh, Balaram Desai, Max Moss, Arshad Kudrolli

Physics

We investigate the dynamics of a magnetoelastic robot with a dipolar magnetic head and a slender elastic body as it performs undulatory strokes and burrows through water-saturated granular beds. The robot is actuated by an oscillating magnetic field and moves forward when the stroke amplitude increases above a critical threshold. By visualizing the medium, we show that the undulating body fluidizes the bed, resulting in the appearance of a dynamic burrow, which rapidly closes in behind the moving robot as the medium loses energy. We investigate the applicability of Lighthill's elongated body theory of fish locomotion, and estimate the contribution …

Temperature Evolution Of Domains And Intradomain Chirality In 1t- Tas2, Boning Yu, Ghilles Ainouche, Manoj Singh, Bishnu Sharma, James Huber, Michael Boyer

Physics

We use scanning tunneling microscopy to study the temperature evolution of the atomic-scale properties of the nearly commensurate charge density wave (NC-CDW) state of the low-dimensional material 1T-TaS2. Our measurements at 203, 300, and 354 K, roughly spanning the temperature range of the NC-CDW state, show that while the average CDW periodicity is temperature independent, domaining and the local evolution of the CDW lattice within a domain are temperature dependent. Further, we characterize the temperature evolution of the displacement field associated with the recently discovered intradomain chirality of the NC-CDW state by calculating the local rotation vector. Intradomain chirality throughout …

Μ-1,6-Dioxo-1,6-Diphenylhexane-3,4-Diolato-Bis[(2,2′-Bipyridine)Chloridocopper(Ii)] Dihydrate A; B; A, Luke Nye, Shane G. Tefler, Mark M. Turnbull

Chemistry

The reaction of CuCl2 with 1,6-diphenyl-1,3,5,6-hexanetetrone and 2,2′-bipyridine (bipy) in ethanol gave crystals of the corresponding bimetallic complex, [Cu2(C18H12O4)Cl2(C10H8N2)2]·2H2O. The molecule is centrosymmetric with each CuII ion coordinated to two oxygen atoms from the tetronediate, two nitrogen atoms from a bipy ligand and one coordinated chloride ion. A water molecule of crystallization forms hydrogen bonds to the chloride ions, linking the molecules into a chain parallel to the bc-face diagonal. © 2023 The Author(s).

Intra-Gendered Perceptions And Adoption Of Climate-Smart Agriculture: Evidence From Smallholder Farmers In The Upper East Region Of Ghana, Kwabena Antwi, Philip Antwi-Agyei

Student Publications

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) remains a key strategy for sustaining agricultural systems and achieving food security and nutrition. Despite this, uncertainty remains on how intra-gendered dynamics influence its adoption in dryland farming systems. This study implements both quantitative and qualitative approaches including household surveys, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions to explore how intra-gender dynamics shape the perceptions and adoption of climate-smart agriculture in three selected communities (Katanga, Dakio, and Zonno) in the Bolgatanga East District of the Upper East Region of Ghana. Specifically, the study answers the following research questions: (i) What is the degree of change in rainfall …

The Effect Of Energy Consumption, Income, And Population Growth On Co2 Emissions: Evidence From Nardl And Machine Learning Models, Mansoor Ahmed, Wen Huan, Nafees Ali, Ahsan Shafi, Muhsan Ehsan, Kamal Abdelrahman, Saiq Shakeel Abbasi, Anser Ali Khan, Mohammed S. Fnais

Student Publications

With population and income growth, the need for energy has increased in developing and emerging economies, which has inevitably led to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions (CO₂e). This paper investigates the impact of energy consumption on CO₂e influenced by population growth, energy consumption per capita, and income. In particular, this paper investigates whether or not an increase in energy consumption, energy intensity, energy consumption per capita, population growth, and income impacts CO₂e in China, India, and the USA. The study applied the non-linear Autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) and machine learning techniques. We found …

Face Readers: The Frontier Of Computer Vision And Math Learning, Beverly Woolf, Margrit Betke, Hao Yu, Sarah Adel Bargal, Ivan Arroyo, John J. Magee Iv, Danielle Allessio, William Rebelsky

Computer Science

The future of AI-assisted individualized learning includes computer vision to inform intelligent tutors and teachers about student affect, motivation and performance. Facial expression recognition is essential in recognizing subtle differences when students ask for hints or fail to solve problems. Facial features and classification labels enable intelligent tutors to predict students’ performance and recommend activities. Videos can capture students’ faces and model their effort and progress; machine learning classifiers can support intelligent tutors to provide interventions. One goal of this research is to support deep dives by teachers to identify students’ individual needs through facial expression and to provide immediate …

Computational Model Of Twisted Elastic Ribbons, Madelyn Leembruggen, Jovana Andrejevic, Arshad Kudrolli, Chris H. Rycroft

Physics

We develop an irregular lattice mass-spring model to simulate and study the deformation modes of a thin elastic ribbon as a function of applied end-to-end twist and tension. Our simulations reproduce all reported experimentally observed modes, including transitions from helicoids to longitudinal wrinkles, creased helicoids and loops with self-contact, and transverse wrinkles to accordion self-folds. Our simulations also show that the twist angles at which the primary longitudinal and transverse wrinkles appear are well described by various analyses of the Föppl-von Kármán equations, but the characteristic wavelength of the longitudinal wrinkles has a more complex relationship to applied tension than …

Density-Mediated Spin Correlations Drive Edge-To-Bulk Flow Transition In Active Chiral Matter, Alexander P. Petroff, Christopher Whittington, Arshad Kudrolli

Physics

We demonstrate that edge currents develop in active chiral matter due to boundary shielding over a wide range of densities corresponding to a gas, fluid, and crystal. The system is composed of spinning disk-shaped grains with chirally arranged tilted legs confined in a circular vibrating chamber. The edge currents are shown to increasingly drive circulating bulk flows with area fraction as percolating clusters develop due to increasing spin-coupling between neighbors mediated by frictional contacts. Edge currents are observed even in the dilute limit. While, at low area fraction, the average flux vanishes except within a distance that is of the …

Crystal Chemistry, Optic And Magnetic Characterizations Of A New Copper Based Material Templated By Hexahydrodiazepine, Mansoura Bourwina, Rawia Msalmi, Sandra Walha, Mark M. Turnbull, Thierry Roisnel, Ahlem Guesmi, Ammar Houas, Naoufel Ben Hamadi, Houcine Naïli

Chemistry

Crystals of the new organic-inorganic material (DAP-H2)[CuBr₄] (1); (DAP = hexahydrodiazepine (C₅H₁₄N₂)) were successfully synthesized by slow evaporation and characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, thermal analysis, UV-Vis-NIR diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, and magnetic measurements. X-ray investigation demonstrates that 1 crystallizes in the monoclinic space group C2/c. The supramolecular crystal structure of 1 is guided by several types of hydrogen bonding which connect anions and cations together into a three-dimensional network. The optical band gap was determined by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy to be 1.78 eV for a direct allowed transition, implying that …

Quantum Phases Of Lattice Dipolar Bosons Coupled To A High-Finesse Cavity, Yaghmorassene Hebib, Chao Zhang, Jin Yang, Barbara Capogrosso-Sansone

Physics

Two types of long-range interactions, dipolar interaction and cavity-mediated interaction, lead to exotic quantum phases. Both interactions were realized and observed in optical lattice setups. Here, we study quantum phases of dipolar bosons trapped in optical lattices and coupled to a high-finesse cavity where both dipolar interaction and cavity-mediated interaction coexist. We perform quantum Monte Carlo simulations and find that the checkerboard solid is enhanced and the checkerboard supersolid phase can exist in a wide range of densities (e.g., 0.27≲n≲0.73). Our unbiased numerical results suggest that both solid and supersolid phases can be achieved experimentally with magnetic atoms coupled to …

Building Credibility, Trust, And Safety On Video-Sharing Platforms, Shuo Niu, Zhicong Lu, Amy X. Zhang, Jie Cai, Carla F. Griggio, Hendrick Heuer

Computer Science

Video-sharing platforms (VSPs) such as YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch attract millions of users and have become influential information sources, especially among the young generation. Video creators and live streamers make videos to engage viewers and form online communities. VSP celebrities obtain monetary benefits through monetization programs and affiliated markets. However, there is a growing concern that user-generated videos are becoming a vehicle for spreading misinformation and controversial content. Creators may make inappropriate content for attention and financial benefits. Some other creators also face harassment and attack. This workshop seeks to bring together a group of HCI scholars to brainstorm technical …

Superconductivity And Fermi Surface Studies Of Β″-(Bedt-Ttf)2[(H2o)(Nh4)2cr(C2o4)3]·18-Crown-6, Brett Laramee, Raju Ghimire, David Graf, Lee Martin, Toby J. Blundell, Charles Agosta

Physics

We report rf-penetration depth measurements of the quasi-2D organic superconductor (Formula presented.) -(BEDT-TTF) (Formula presented.) [(H (Formula presented.) O)(NH (Formula presented.)) (Formula presented.) Cr(C (Formula presented.) O (Formula presented.)) (Formula presented.)]·18-crown-6, which has the largest separation between consecutive conduction layers of any 2D organic metal with a single packing motif. Using a contactless tunnel diode oscillator measurement technique, we show the zero-field cooling dependence and field sweeps up to 28 T oriented at various angles with respect to the crystal conduction planes. When oriented parallel to the layers, the upper critical field, (Formula presented.) T, which is the calculated paramagnetic …

Prescribing The Q¯ ′ -Curvature On Pseudo-Einstein Cr 3-Manifolds, Ali Maalaoui

Mathematics

In this paper we study the problem of prescribing the Q ¯ ′ -curvature on embeddable pseudo-Einstein CR 3-manifolds. In the first stage we study the problem in the compact setting and we show that under natural assumptions, one can prescribe any positive (resp. negative) CR pluriharmonic function, if ∫ M Q ′ d v θ > 0 (resp. ∫ M Q ′ d v θ < 0 ). In the second stage, we study the problem in the non-compact setting of the Heisenberg group. Under mild assumptions on the prescribed function, we prove existence of a one parameter family of solutions. In fact, we show that one can find two kinds of solutions: normal ones that satisfy an isoperimetric inequality and non-normal ones that have a biharmonic leading term.

The available download on this page is the author manuscript accepted for publication. This version has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading …

Finsler Pp-Waves And The Penrose Limit, Amir Babak Aazami, Miguel Ángel Javaloyes, Marcus C. Werner

Mathematics

We extend the notion of a Lorentzian pp-wave to that of Finsler spacetimes by providing a coordinate-independent definition of a Finsler pp-wave with respect to the Chern connection; our definition also includes the special case of a plane wave. This treatment introduces suitable lightlike coordinates, in analogy with the Lorentzian case, and utilizes the anisotropic calculus recently developed by one of the authors. We then extend Penrose’s “plane wave limit” to the setting of Finsler spacetimes. New examples of such Finsler pp-waves are also presented. © 2023, The Author(s).