Digital Commons Network^™

The Use Of Technology To Continue Learning In Palestine Disrupted With Covid-19, Khitam Shraim, Helen Crompton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This qualitative study examined how decision-makers and teachers have responded to offer education for all Palestinian students at the immediate onset of the COVID-19 outbreak and how technology is being used to continue education online. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 participants from parents, teachers and decision-makers in Palestine. Interview transcripts were coded using a grounded theory design with a constant comparative method. The findings show that participants identified that technologies such as mobile devices, social media and cloud computing would be useful for design and delivery of educational materials as well as raising safety awareness, and communication during the …

Accessscience, Rob Tench

Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

The article reviews the Web site AccessScience from publisher McGraw-Hill located at accessscience.com.

Semi-Supervised Adversarial Domain Adaptation For Seagrass Detection Using Multispectral Images In Coastal Areas, Kazi Aminul Islam, Victoria Hill, Blake Schaeffer, Richard Zimmerman, Jiang Li

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Seagrass form the basis for critically important marine ecosystems. Previously, we implemented a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) model to detect seagrass in multispectral satellite images of three coastal habitats in northern Florida. However, a deep CNN model trained at one location usually does not generalize to other locations due to data distribution shifts. In this paper, we developed a semi-supervised domain adaptation method to generalize a trained deep CNN model to other locations for seagrass detection. First, we utilized a generative adversarial network loss to align marginal data distribution between source domain and target domain using unlabeled data from …

Low Temperature Plasma Jets: Characterization And Biomedical Applications, Mounir Laroussi

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Efficacy Of Radiomics And Genomics In Predicting Tp53 Mutations In Diffuse Lower Grade Glioma, Zeina A. Shboul, Khan Iftekharuddin

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

An updated classification of diffuse lower-grade gliomas is established in the 2016 World Health Organization Classification of Tumors of the Central Nervous System based on their molecular mutations such as TP53 mutation. This study investigates machine learning methods for TP53 mutation status prediction and classification using radiomics and genomics features, respectively. Radiomics features represent patients' age and imaging features that are extracted from conventional MRI. Genomics feature is represented by patients’ gene expression using RNA sequencing. This study uses a total of 105 LGG patients, where the patient dataset is divided into a training set (80 patients) and testing set …

Deep Learning With Context Encoding For Semantic Brain Tumor Segmentation And Patient Survival Prediction, Linmin Pei, Lasitha Vidyaratne, Md Monibor Rahman, Khan M. Iftekharuddin

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

One of the most challenging problems encountered in deep learning-based brain tumor segmentation models is the misclassification of tumor tissue classes due to the inherent imbalance in the class representation. Consequently, strong regularization methods are typically considered when training large-scale deep learning models for brain tumor segmentation to overcome undue bias towards representative tissue types. However, these regularization methods tend to be computationally exhaustive, and may not guarantee the learning of features representing all tumor tissue types that exist in the input MRI examples. Recent work in context encoding with deep CNN models have shown promise for semantic segmentation of …

Discovery Of Exosomes From Tick Saliva And Salivary Glands Reveals Therapeutic Roles For Cxcl12 And Il-8 In Wound Healing At The Tick-Human Skin Interface, Wenshuo Zhou, Faizan Tahir, Joseph Che-Yen Wang, Michael Woodson, Michael B. Sherman, Shahid Karim, Girish Neelakanta, Hameeda Sultana

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Ticks secrete various anti-coagulatory, anti-vasoconstrictory, anti-inflammatory, and anti-platelet aggregation factors in their saliva at the bite site during feeding to evade host immunological surveillance and responses. For the first time, we report successful isolation of exosomes (small membrane-bound extracellular signaling vesicles) from saliva and salivary glands of partially fed or unfed ixodid ticks. Our data showed a novel role of these in vivo exosomes in the inhibition of wound healing via downregulation of C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 12 (CXCL12) and upregulation of interleukin-8 (IL-8). Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) analysis revealed that tick saliva and salivary glands are composed of heterogeneous populations …

Ecosystem Services And Disservices Of Mangrove Forests And Salt Marshes, Daniel A. Friess, Erik S. Yando, Jahson B. Alemu I, Lynn-Wei Wong, Sasha D. Soto, Natasha Bhatia, S. J. Hawkins (Ed.), A. L. Allcock (Ed.), A. E. Bates (Ed.), A.J. Evans (Ed.), L. B. Firth (Ed.), C. D. Mcquaid (Ed.), B. D. Russell (Ed.), I. P. Smith (Ed.), S. E. Swearer (Ed.), P. A. Todd (Ed.)

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Coastal wetlands such as mangrove forests and salt marshes provide a range of important benefits to people, broadly defined as ecosystem services. These include provisioning services such as fuelwood and food, regulating services such as carbon sequestration and wave attenuation, and various tangible and intangible cultural services. However, strong negative perceptions of coastal wetlands also exist, often driven by the perceived or actual ecosystem disservices that they also produce. These can include odour, a sense of danger, and their real or perceived role in vector and disease transmission (e.g. malaria). This review provides an introduction to the ecosystem services and …

Can The Carbon And Nitrogen Isotope Values Of Offspring Be Used As A Proxy For Their Mother's Diet? Using Foetal Physiology To Interpret Bulk Tissue And Amino Acid Δ15N Values, Nico Lübcker, John P. Whiteman, Seth D. Newsome, Robert P. Millar, P.J. Nico De Bruyn

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The measurement of bulk tissue nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) and carbon isotope values (δ¹³C) chronologically along biologically inert tissues sampled from offspring can provide a longitudinal record of their mothers' foraging habits. This study tested the important assumption that mother-offspring stable isotope values are positively and linearly correlated. In addition, any change in the mother-offspring bulk tissues and individual amino acids that occurred during gestation was investigated. Whiskers sampled from southern elephant seal pups (Mirounga leonina) and temporally overlapping whiskers from their mothers were analyzed. This included n = 1895 chronologically subsampled whisker segments for bulk …

A Simple, Inexpensive Method For Mark-Recapture Of Ixodid Ticks, Alexis White, Robin Minch, Lindsey Bidder, Holly Gaff

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Mark-recapture techniques have been widely used and specialized to study organisms throughout the field of biology. To mark-recapture ticks (Ixodida), we have created a simple method to mark ticks using nail polish applied with an insect pin secured in a pencil that allows for a variety of questions to be answered. For measuring tick control efficacy, estimating population estimates, or measuring movement of ticks, this inexpensive mark-recapture method has been easily applied in the field and in the lab to provide useful data to answer a variety of questions about ticks.

Evolutionary Determinism And Convergence Associated With Water Column Transitions In Marine Fishes, Melissa Rincon-Sandoval, Emmanuelle Duarte-Ribeiro, Aaron M. Davis, Aintzane Santaquiteria, Lily C. Hughes, Carole C. Baldwin, Luisángely Soto-Torres, Arturo Acero P., H.J. Walker Jr, Kent E. Carpenter, Marcus Sheaves, Guillermo Orti, Dahiana Arcila, Ricardo Betancur-R.

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Repeatable, convergent outcomes are prima facie evidence for determinism in evolutionary processes. Among fishes, well-known examples include microevolutionary habitat transitions into the water column, where freshwater populations (e.g., sticklebacks, cichlids, and whitefishes) recurrently diverge toward slender-bodied pelagic forms and deep-bodied benthic forms. However, the consequences of such processes at deeper macroevolutionary scales in the marine environment are less clear. We applied a phylogenomics-based integrative, comparative approach to test hypotheses about the scope and strength of convergence in a marine fish clade with a worldwide distribution (snappers and fusiliers, family Lutjanidae) featuring multiple water-column transitions over the past 45 million years. …

Translating Globally Threatened Marine Species Information Into Regional Guidance For The Gulf Of Mexico, Kyle Strongin, Beth Polidoro, Christi Linardich, Gina Ralph, Kent Carpenter

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

A comprehensive understanding of the status of marine organisms in the Gulf of Mexico is critical to the conservation and improved management of marine biodiversity in the region. Threats and extinction risk, based on application of the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria at the global level, were analyzed for 1,300 Gulf of Mexico marine species. These species include all known marine mammals, sea birds, marine reptiles, cartilaginous fishes, bony shorefishes, corals, mangroves, seagrasses and complete clades of select invertebrates. Analyses showed that 6% of these species are threatened, 2% Near Threatened, 9% Data Deficient, and 83% Least Concern. However, …

A Genome-Wide Association Study Of Cocaine Use Disorder Accounting For Phenotypic Heterogeneity And Gene–Environment Interaction, Jiangwen Sun, Henry R. Kranzler, Joel Gelernter, Jinbo Bi

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: Phenotypic heterogeneity and complicated gene-environment interplay in etiology are among the primary factors that hinder the identification of genetic variants associated with cocaine use disorder. Methods: To detect novel genetic variants associated with cocaine use disorder, we derived disease traits with reduced phenotypic heterogeneity using cluster analysis of a study sample (n = 9965). We then used these traits in genome-wide association tests, performed separately for 2070 African Americans and 1570 European Americans, using a new mixed model that accounted for the moderating effects of 5 childhood environmental factors. We used an independent sample (918 African Americans, 1382 European …

Outlier Profiles Of Atomic Structures Derived From X-Ray Crystallography And From Cryo-Electron Microscopy, Lin Chen, Jing He, Angelo Facchiano

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: As more protein atomic structures are determined from cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) density maps, validation of such structures is an important task. Methods: We applied a histogram-based outlier score (HBOS) to six sets of cryo-EM atomic structures and five sets of X-ray atomic structures, including one derived from X-ray data with better than 1.5 Å resolution. Cryo-EM data sets contain structures released by December 2016 and those released between 2017 and 2019, derived from resolution ranges 0–4 Å and 4–6 Å respectively. Results: The distribution of HBOS values in five sets of X-ray structures show that HBOS is sensitive distinguishing …

Granulosa Cell Proliferation Is Inhibited By Pge2 In The Primate Ovulatory Follicle, Patric S. Lundberg, Gil J. Moskowitz, Carmel Bellacose, Esra Demirel, Heidi A. Trau, Diane M. Duffy

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) is a key paracrine mediator of ovulation. Few specific PGE2-regulated gene products have been identified, so we hypothesized that PGE2 may regulate the expression and/or activity of a network of proteins to promote ovulation. To test this concept, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) was used to predict PGE2-regulated functionalities in the primate ovulatory follicle. Cynomolgus macaques underwent ovarian stimulation. Follicular granulosa cells were obtained before (0 h) or 36 h after an ovulatory dose of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), with ovulation anticipated 37-40 h after hCG. Granulosa cells were obtained from additional monkeys 36 h after treatment with …

Acknowledgement Entity Recognition In Cord-19 Papers, Jian Wu, Pei Wang, Xin Wei, Sarah Rajtmajer, C. Lee Giles, Christopher Griffin

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Acknowledgements are ubiquitous in scholarly papers. Existing acknowledgement entity recognition methods assume all named entities are acknowledged. Here, we examine the nuances between acknowledged and named entities by analyzing sentence structure. We develop an acknowledgement extraction system, AckExtract based on open-source text mining software and evaluate our method using manually labeled data. AckExtract uses the PDF of a scholarly paper as input and outputs acknowledgement entities. Results show an overall performance of F₁=0.92. We built a supplementary database by linking CORD-19 papers with acknowledgement entities extracted by AckExtract including persons and organizations and find that only up to …

Opening Books And The National Corpus Of Graduate Research, William A. Ingram, Edward A. Fox, Jian Wu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Virginia Tech University Libraries, in collaboration with Virginia Tech Department of Computer Science and Old Dominion University Department of Computer Science, request $505,214 in grant funding for a 3-year project, the goal of which is to bring computational access to book-length documents, demonstrating that with Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). The project is motivated by the following library and community needs. (1) Despite huge volumes of book-length documents in digital libraries, there is a lack of models offering effective and efficient computational access to these long documents. (2) Nationwide open access services for ETDs generally function at the metadata level. …

Estimating Carbon Flux From Optically Recording Total Particle Volume At Depths Below The Primary Pycnocline, Alexander B. Bochdansky, Robert B. Dunbar, Dennis A. Hansell, Gerhard J. Herndl

OES Faculty Publications

Optical instruments can rapidly determine numbers and characteristics of water column particles with high sensitivity. Here we show the usefulness of optically assessed total particle volume below the main pycnocline to estimate carbon export in two systems: the open subarctic North Atlantic and the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Both regions exhibit seasonally high phytoplankton production and efficient export (i.e., a strong biological pump). Total particle volumes in the mesopelagic (200-300 m) were significantly correlated with those in the overlying surface mixed layer (50-60 m), indicating that most particles at depth reflect export from the surface. This connectivity, however, is modulated by …

Illuminator, Volume 3, Issue 4, Batten College Of Engineering & Technology, Old Dominion University

College of Engineering & Technology Newsletter

December 2019 issue of Illuminator, a monthly publication of ODU's Batten College of Engineering and Technology

The Pulse: College Of Health Sciences E-Newsletter, Irvin B. Harrell (Editor)

Ellmer College of Health Sciences Newsletters

Special Holiday Edition December 2019 issue of Old Dominion University's College of Health Sciences Newsletter.

Electropermeabilization Does Not Correlate With Plasma Membrane Lipid Oxidation, Olga Michel, Andrei G. Pakhomov, Maura Casciola, Jolanta Saczko, Julita Kulbacka, Olga N. Pakhomova

Bioelectrics Publications

The permeabilized condition of the cell membrane after electroporation can last minutes but the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Previous studies suggest that lipid peroxidation could be responsible for the lasting leaky state of the membrane. The present study aims to link oxidation within the plasma membrane of live cells to permeabilization by electric pulses. We have introduced a method for the detection of oxidation by ratiometric fluorescence measurements of BODIPY-C11 dye using total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy, limiting the signal to the cell membrane. CHO-K1 cells were cultured on glass coverslips coated with an electroconductive indium tin oxide (ITO) …

The Influence Of Neural Reward Processing On Memory In Depression, Nathan M. Hager

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Theories and research suggest that depression involves impaired reward sensitivity and a deficit in memory for rewarding stimuli. Some researchers propose that this memory deficit may result from reduced neural reward sensitivity, which impairs the encoding of reward-related memories, but few studies have directly probed this connection. Such research may benefit from examining the reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential (ERP) previously linked to reduced reward sensitivity in depression. Undergraduates with high or low self-reported depression completed a task in which they chose one of three doors, revealing a neutral word written in a color which indicated an outcome of …

Synthesis, Characterization, And Drug Delivery Applications Of Carbohydrate Based Low Molecular Weight Gelators, Kristen Elizabeth Bashaw

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses & Dissertations

The main aim of the research focuses on the study of self-assembly and gelation by several classes of simple sugar derivatives and the potential applications of them as drug delivery vehicles. Since carbohydrates are naturally abundant renewable resources and are therefore readily available and many of them are inexpensive compared to other raw materials. They are also biocompatible which makes them suitable for a wide variety of applications. Combining the use of carbohydrates with low molecular weight gelators (LMWGs) we can introduce a new class of soft materials that are able to self-assemble into spheres, fibers, sheets, and micelles in …

Growth Phase Proteomics Of The Heterotrophic Marine Bacterium Ruegeria Pomeroyi, Dasha Krayushkina, Emma Timmins-Schiffman, Jessica Faux, Damon H. May, Michael Riffle, H. Rodger Harvey, Brook L. Nunn

OES Faculty Publications

The heterotrophic marine bacterium, Ruegeria pomeroyi, was experimentally cultured under environmentally realistic carbon conditions and with a tracer-level addition of ¹³C-labeled leucine to track bacterial protein biosynthesis through growth phases. A combination of methods allowed observation of real-time bacterial protein production to understand metabolic priorities through the different growth phases. Over 2000 proteins were identified in each experimental culture from exponential and stationary growth phases. Within two hours of the ¹³C-labeled leucine addition, R. pomeroyi significantly assimilated the newly encountered substrate into new proteins. This dataset provides a fundamental baseline for understanding growth phase differences in molecular …

Temporal And Spatial Scales Of Correlation In Marine Phytoplankton Communities, A. M. Kuhn, S. Dutkiewicz, O. Jahn, Sophie Clayton, T. A. Rynearson, M. R. Mazloff, A. D. Barton

OES Faculty Publications

Ocean circulation shapes marine phytoplankton communities by setting environmental conditions and dispersing organisms. In addition, processes acting on the water column (e.g., heat fluxes and mixing) affect the community structure by modulating environmental variables that determine in situ growth and loss rates. Understanding the scales over which phytoplankton communities vary in time and space is key to elucidate the relative contributions of local processes and ocean circulation on phytoplankton distributions. Using a global ocean ecosystem model, we quantify temporal and spatial correlation scales for phytoplankton phenotypes with diverse functional traits and cell sizes. Through this analysis, we address these questions: …

Deepep: A Deep Learning Framework For Identifying Essential Proteins, Min Zeng, Min Li, Fang-Xiang Wu, Yaohang Li, Yi Pan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: Essential proteins are crucial for cellular life and thus, identification of essential proteins is an important topic and a challenging problem for researchers. Recently lots of computational approaches have been proposed to handle this problem. However, traditional centrality methods cannot fully represent the topological features of biological networks. In addition, identifying essential proteins is an imbalanced learning problem; but few current shallow machine learning-based methods are designed to handle the imbalanced characteristics. Results: We develop DeepEP based on a deep learning framework that uses the node2vec technique, multi-scale convolutional neural networks and a sampling technique to identify essential proteins. …

Overlap Matrix Completion For Predicting Drug-Associated Indications, Menhyun Yang, Huimin Luo, Yaohang Li, Fang-Xiang Wu, Jianxin Wang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Identification of potential drug-associated indications is critical for either approved or novel drugs in drug repositioning. Current computational methods based on drug similarity and disease similarity have been developed to predict drug-disease associations. When more reliable drug- or disease-related information becomes available and is integrated, the prediction precision can be continuously improved. However, it is a challenging problem to effectively incorporate multiple types of prior information, representing different characteristics of drugs and diseases, to identify promising drug-disease associations. In this study, we propose an overlap matrix completion (OMC) for bilayer networks (OMC2) and tri-layer networks (OMC3) to predict potential drug-associated …

Choral Classics Concert, I. C. Norcom High School Concert Choir, Old Dominion University Russell Stanger String Quartet, Joe L. Harmon Iii (Conductor), F. Ludwig Diehn Chorale, Nancy K. Klein (Conductor), Rebecca Barclay, Bobbie Kesler-Corleto

Ensemble Performances

Sololists:

Ivin Bellamy, bass, will perform the Benedictus. He is a junior who participates in basketball, volleyball, track and field, orchestra and chorus. He plans to at-tend the University of North Carolina majoring in music.

Kiyah Bracy, soprano, performs as soloist on the Kyrie. She is a senior who par-ticipates in theatre and chorus. She plans on attending Georgia State University with a major in human biology, aspiring to be a pediatric surgeon.

Taniyah Colter, soprano, sings as soloist on the Gloria. She is a senior and is the vice president of the choral program. She hopes …

F. Ludwig Diehn Concert Series: Blue Heron, Blue Heron, Scott Metcalfe (Director), Owen Mcintosh, Jason Jason Mcstoots, Stefan Reed, Sumner Thompson, Margot Rood, Martin Near, Paul Guttry, Steven Hrycelak

Guest Performances

No abstract provided.

Permeation Of Ethoxy- And Butoxy- Ethanols Through A Disposable Nitrile Glove, Sean Banaee, Shane S. Que Hee

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to investigate the permeation of the glycol ethers, 2-ethoxyethanol (2-EE) and 2-butoxyethanol (2-BE) through disposable, nitrile exam gloves using a modified ASTM closed-loop module. The purple unsupported, unlined, powderless nitrile glove from Kimberly-Clark was challenged by the two pure glycol ethers. Their permeation parameters were measured with the aid of a 2.54 cm ASTM F739 closed-loop permeation cell using water collection at 35.0±0.5 ⁰C in a moving tray water bath, and capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for quantification. Each set of experiments consisted of four standard permeation cells with water as the collection solvent. …