Digital Commons Network^™

A Story Told, Carly Caldarella

Senior Honors Projects

How do we educate our future generations about topics that are difficult to discuss? Oftentimes, children ask us questions that make us think, "How do I respond to this?" It is essential for our young generations to understand the history of racism, its present manifestations, and solutions and methods of action in order for a bright and revolutionary future. It is not always a simple task for children to comprehend such intricate topics. However, through text and pictures in storybooks, children can better grasp the concepts of such subject matter. "A Story Told" shares the story of young children in …

The Journey To Reach Herd Immunity: The United State's Efforts Towards Controlling Sars-Cov-2, Natalina Mastroianni

Senior Honors Projects

COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which emerged in December of 2019 and has been the leading global health concern since. SARS-CoV-2 is a positive sense single-stranded RNA virus coated with viral spike proteins that has led to over 500,000 deaths in the United States and is approaching 3,000,000 deaths worldwide. As COVID-19 persists globally in such high numbers, the virus has been able to undergo mutations, leading to three prominent variants: the United Kingdom variant (B.1.1.7), the South Africa variant (B.1.351), and the Brazil variant (P.1). These variants are more transmissible, …

The Journey To Reach Herd Immunity: The United State's Efforts Towards Controlling Sars-Cov-2, Natalina Mastroianni

Senior Honors Projects

COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which emerged in December of 2019 and has been the leading global health concern since. SARS-CoV-2 is a positive sense single-stranded RNA virus coated with viral spike proteins that has led to over 500,000 deaths in the United States and is approaching 3,000,000 deaths worldwide. As COVID-19 persists globally in such high numbers, the virus has been able to undergo mutations, leading to three prominent variants: the United Kingdom variant (B.1.1.7), the South Africa variant (B.1.351), and the Brazil variant (P.1). These variants are more transmissible, …

Narrow And Brittle Or Broad And Nimble? Comparing Adaptive Capacity In Simplifying And Diversifying Farming Systems, Margiana Petersen-Rockney, Patrick Baur, Aidee Guzman, S. Franz Bender, Adam Calo, Federico Castillo, Kathryn De Master, Antoinette Dumont, Kenzo Esquivel, Claire Kremen, James Lachance, Maria Mooshammer, Joanna Ory, Mindy J. Price, Yvonne Socolar, Paige Stanley, Alastair Iles, Timothy Bowles

Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Sciences Faculty Publications

Humanity faces a triple threat of climate change, biodiversity loss, and global food insecurity. In response, increasing the general adaptive capacity of farming systems is essential. We identify two divergent strategies for building adaptive capacity. Simplifying processes seek to narrowly maximize production by shifting the basis of agricultural production toward centralized control of socially and ecologically homogenized systems. Diversifying processes cultivate social-ecological complexity in order to provide multiple ecosystem services, maintain management flexibility, and promote coordinated adaptation across levels. Through five primarily United States focused cases of distinct agricultural challenges—foodborne pathogens, drought, marginal lands, labor availability, and land access and …

Hidden Sugar And Its Bitter Obstacles For The Wellbeing Of Consumers, Ai Nhan Ngo

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This research paper explores issues pertaining to, and raises awareness about, high sugar intake among consumers, which causes several consequential health risks. The paper also points out various obstacles preventing consumers from reducing their high sugar consumption. These obstacles come from policymakers, policy influencers, the sugar industry, the food industry, and consumers themselves. For some obstacles, involvement of multiple parties was found. The research also discusses several possible solutions for improving a healthy consumption environment for consumer wellbeing.

The Complex Challenges Of Protecting Consumers, Deniz Atik, Nikhilesh Dholakia

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Maternal Blood Pressure In Relation To Prenatal Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplementation And Adverse Birth Outcomes In A Ghanaian Cohort: A Randomized Controlled Trial And Cohort Analysis, Alyssa Abreu, R. Young, Ashley L. Buchanan, Ingrid E. Lofgren, Harriet E T Okronipa, Anna Lartey, Per Ashorn, Seth Adu-Afarwuah, Kathryn G. Dewey, Brietta M. Oaks

Pharmacy Practice and Clinical Research Faculty Publications

Background: It is unknown whether prenatal lipid-based nutrient supplements (LNSs) affect blood pressure (BP). Associations between hypertension and birth outcomes using recently updated BP cutoffs are undetermined.

Objectives: We aimed to assess the impact of LNSs on maternal hypertension and associations between hypertension and birth outcomes.

Methods: Pregnant Ghanaian women at ≤20 weeks of gestation (n = 1320) were randomly assigned to receive daily 1) iron and folic acid (IFA), 2) multiple micronutrients (MMN), or 3) LNSs until delivery. BP was measured at enrollment and 36 weeks of gestation. We analyzed the effect of LNSs on BP using ANOVA and …

Study Protocol Of A Randomized Controlled Trial Evaluating The Prime Time Sister Circles (Ptsc) Program's Impact On Hypertension Among Midlife African American Women, Chidinma A. Ibe, Danielle R. Haywood, Ciana Creighton, Yidan Cao, Angel Gabriel, Hossein Zare, Wehmah Jones, Manshu Yang, Michele Balamani, Marilyn Gaston, Gayle Porter, Denise L. Woods, Darrell J. Gaskin

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background

The Prime-Time Sister Circles® (PTSC) program is a multifaceted, community-based peer support intervention targeting African American women who are 40 to 75 years of age. It aims to reduce hypertension disparities observed among African American women by promoting adherence to antihypertensive therapies, including lifestyle modification and therapeutic regimens.

Methods

The PTSC randomized controlled trial will evaluate the effectiveness of the PTSC Program on improved blood pressure control, healthcare utilization attributed to cardiovascular events, and healthcare costs. The study began in 2016 and will end in 2022. African American women who are 40–75 years old, have been diagnosed with hypertension, …

Assisted Reproductive Technologies And Health-Related Issues Among Women And Children: A Research Review, Laura Maria Corradi

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

From their first use in the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) gave rise to serious concerns by feminists internationally. Their questions ranged from asking about health risks to ethical and political problems inherent in these technologies. However, over the last 25 years, interest in women’s health which used to be central to feminist theory and politics, progressively decreased and with it concerns about ART. Today, while the medical literature about health risks in ART is increasing, the topic of women’s health in relation to reproductive technologies remains marginal in feminist discourse, social sciences, and the mainstream …

Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes February 18, 2021, University Of Rhode Island Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

Usage Statistics: Project Counter R5 Tr_J1 Report Fy2020 - Journal Requests (Excluding Oa_Gold) By Title, Andrée Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Project COUNTER R5 Report TR_J1 for the University of Rhode Island for the period from July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020. The TR_J1 report is defined as "Journal Requests (Excluding OA_Gold)." This report presents an annual total only of e-journal usage by title.

File for download is Excel spreadsheet generated by Alma Analytics.

Results:

• Total Item Requests - 846,964
• Unique Item Requests - 620,899

Usage Statistics: Project Counter R5 Tr_B1 Report Fy2020 - Book Requests (Excluding Oa_Gold) By Title, Andrée Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Project COUNTER R5 Report TR_B1 for the University of Rhode Island for the period from July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020. The TR_B1 report is defined as "Book Requests (Excluding OA_Gold)." This report presents an annual total only of e-book usage by title.

File for download is Excel spreadsheet generated by Alma Analytics.

Results:

• Total Item Requests - 70,859
• Unique Title Requests - 31,282

Effect Of Personalized Incentives On Dietary Quality Of Groceries Purchased A Randomized Crossover Trial, Maya Vadiveloo, Xintong Guan, Haley W. Parker, Elie Perraud, Ashley L. Buchanan, Stephen A. Atlas, Anne N. Thorndike

Nutrition Faculty Publications

Importance Many factors are associated with food choice. Personalized interventions could help improve dietary intake by using individual purchasing preferences to promote healthier grocery purchases.

Objective To test whether a healthy food incentive intervention using an algorithm incorporating customer preferences, purchase history, and baseline diet quality improves grocery purchase dietary quality and spending on healthy foods.

Design, Setting, and Participants This was a 9-month randomized clinical crossover trial (AB–BA) with a 2- to 4-week washout period between 3-month intervention periods. Participants included 224 loyalty program members at an independent Rhode Island supermarket who completed baseline questionnaires and were randomized from …

Behavioral And Demographic Responses Of Mule Deer To Energy Development On Winter Range, Joseph M. Northrup, Charles R. Anderson Jr, Brian D. Gerber, George Wittemyer

Natural Resources Science Faculty Publications

Anthropogenic habitat modification is a major driver of global biodiversity loss. In North America, one of the primary sources of habitat modification over the last 2 decades has been exploration for and production of oil and natural gas (hydrocarbon development), which has led to demographic and behavioral impacts to numerous wildlife species. Developing effective measures to mitigate these impacts has become a critical task for wildlife managers and conservation practitioners. However, this task has been hindered by the difficulties involved in identifying and isolating factors driving population responses. Current research on responses of wildlife to development predominantly quantifies behavior, but …

Applied Medical Nutrition Therapy In Dietetics 2, Julia Lovett

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Applied Medical Nutrition Therapy In Dietetics 1, Julia Lovett

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Applied Foodservice Operations Nfs 574, Julia Lovett

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Applied Medical Nutrition Therapy In Dietetics 3, Julia Lovett

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Applied Specialization In Dietetics, Julia Lovett

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Applied Community Nutrition And Health Promotion Nfs 575, Julia Lovett

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Feasibility Study For Detection Of Retinal Amyloid In Clinical Trials: The Anti-Amyloid Treatment In Asymptomatic Alzheimer's Disease (A4) Trial, Jennifer Ngolab, Michael Donohue, Alison Belsha, Jennifer Salazar, Paula Cohen, Sandhya Jaiswal, Veasna Tan, Devon Gessert, Shaina Korouri, Neelum T. Aggarwal, Jessica Alber, Ken Johnson, Gregory Jicha, Christopher Van Dyck, James Lah, Stephen Salloway, Reisa A. Sperling, Paul S. Aisen, Michael S. Rafii, Robert A. Rissman

Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty Publications

Introduction: The retina and brain exhibit similar pathologies in patients diagnosed with neurodegenerative diseases. The ability to access the retina through imaging techniques opens the possibility for non-invasive evaluation of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. While retinal amyloid deposits are detected in individuals clinically diagnosed with AD, studies including preclinical individuals are lacking, limiting assessment of the feasibility of retinal imaging as a biomarker for early-stage AD risk detection.

Methods:

In this small cross-sectional study we compare retinal and cerebral amyloid in clinically normal individuals who screened positive for high amyloid levels through positron emission tomography (PET) from the Anti-Amyloid Treatment …

Community Orchards For Food Sovereignty, Human Health, And Climate Resilience: Indigenous Roots And Contemporary Applications, Sarah Taylor Lovell, Jann Hayman, Hannah Hemmelgarn, Andrea A. Hunter, John R. Taylor

Plant Sciences and Entomology Faculty Publications

Community orchards could play a valuable role as nature-based solutions to complex challenges we face today. In these unique plantings, a variety of nut- and fruit-producing trees and berry shrubs are often established together on public spaces to provide the community with healthy, fresh food. Interest in these plantings has been increasing in the United States, even more so since the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted vulnerabilities in our food systems. However, the roots of community orchards can be traced back to Indigenous foodways which have persisted for millennia. Then and now, community orchards support an array of functions, positioning them to …

Long-Term Observations Reveal Environmental Conditions And Food Supply Mechanisms At An Arctic Deep-Sea Sponge Ground, Ulrike Hanz, Emyr Martyn Roberts, Gerard Duineveld, Andrew J. Davies, Hans Van Haren, Hans Torre Rapp, Gert-Jan Reichart, Furu Mienis

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Deep-sea sponge grounds are hotspots of benthic biomass and diversity. To date, very limited data exist on the range of environmental conditions in areas containing deep-sea sponge grounds and which factors are driving their distribution and sustenance. We investigated oceanographic conditions at a deep-sea sponge ground located on an Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge seamount. Hydrodynamic measurements were performed along Conductivity-Temperature-Depth transects, and a lander was deployed within the sponge ground that recorded near-bottom physical properties as well as vertical fluxes of organic matter over an annual cycle. The data demonstrate that the sponge ground is found at water temperatures of −0.5°C …

Metabolomic Shifts Associated With Heat Stress In Coral Holobionts, Amanda Williams, Eric N. Chiles, Dennis A. Conetta, Jananan S. Pathmanathan, Phillip A. Cleves, Hollie M. Putnam, Xiaoyang Su, Debashish Bhattacharya

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Understanding the response of the coral holobiont to environmental change is crucial to inform conservation efforts. The most pressing problem is “coral bleaching,” usually precipitated by prolonged thermal stress. We used untargeted, polar metabolite profiling to investigate the physiological response of the coral species Montipora capitata and Pocillopora acuta to heat stress. Our goal was to identify diagnostic markers present early in the bleaching response. From the untargeted UHPLC-MS data, a variety of co-regulated dipeptides were found that have the highest differential accumulation in both species. The structures of four dipeptides were determined and showed differential accumulation in symbiotic and …

The Impact Of Vertical Public Health Initiatives On Gendered Familial Care Work: Public Health And Ethical Issues, Zahra Meghani

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Rigorous evaluations of the effects of vertical public health enterprises on the health systems of low-income countries usefully identify the public health and ethical costs of those initiatives. They reveal that such narrowly focused public health ventures undermine the efforts of those countries to establish and maintain adequately resourced and well-developed national health systems, including comprehensive primary care programs. This paper argues that the scope of assessments of vertical public health ventures should be broadened to include gender as an additional axis of analysis. When members of socio-economically marginalized populations are sick with conditions that are not covered by fragmented …

Ch. 27: There Is No Evolutionary "Obstetrical Dilemma", Holly M. Dunsworth

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Low-Investment, High-Impact Approach For Training Stronger And More Confident Graduate Student Science Writers, Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Nancy E. Karraker, Scott R. Mcwilliams, Al Scott, Jenna Morton-Aiken, Nedra Reynolds, Elaine Finan, Ingrid E. Lofgren

Natural Resources Science Faculty Publications

Scientists in applied fields, including conservation biology, face increasing expectations to communicate their research across multiple audiences. As environmental issues become more complex, the need for scientists to clearly communicate with other scientists, managers, stakeholders, tribes, the public, and policy makers becomes ever critical. Despite this need, students in graduate science programs receive limited direct instruction in writing and little training in writing for audiences outside of academia or in different genres. To that end, we developed an interdisciplinary program that incorporates rhetorical theory and writing intensive pedagogy to train graduate science students to write more effectively across genres. During …

Parent Involvement In Diet Or Physical Activity Interventions To Treat Or Prevent Childhood Obesity: An Umbrella Review, Emily J. Tomayko, Alison Tovar, Nurgul Fitzgerald, Carol L. Howe, Melanie D. Hingle, Michael P. Murphy, Henna Muzaffar, Scott B. Going, Laura Hubbs-Tait

Nutrition Faculty Publications

Parents substantially influence children’s diet and physical activity behaviors, which consequently impact childhood obesity risk. Given this influence of parents, the objective of this umbrella review was to synthesize evidence on effects of parent involvement in diet and physical activity treatment and prevention interventions on obesity risk among children aged 3–12 years old. Ovid/MEDLINE, Elsevier/Embase, Wiley/Cochrane Library, Clarivate/Web of Science, EBSCO/CINAHL, EBSCO/PsycInfo, and Epistemonikos.org were searched from their inception through January 2020. Abstract screening, full-text review, quality assessment, and data extraction were conducted independently by at least two authors. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of diet and physical activity interventions that …

Establishing Criterion Validity For The Revised Critical Nutrition Literacy Tool In U.S. College Students, Janette Bedoyan, Jade Mcnamara, Melissa D. Olfert, Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, Geoffrey Greene

Nutrition Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND:

Critical nutrition literacy (CNL) plays an important role in how college students make everyday decisions about nutrition choices. Increasing CNL is an aim of many introductory nutrition courses, but there are limited instruments measuring this construct. This study aimed to assess the changeability of CNL and the relationship between CNL and markers of diet quality in young adults.

DESIGN:

This was a two-phase research project consisting of a nonexperimental, pre–post study and a cross-sectional assessment from 2018 to 2019. Participants were U.S. college students, 18-24 years old, recruited from introductory-level courses from three participating universities, located in Rhode Island, …

Physical Activity Levels Among Preschool-Aged Children In Family Child Care Homes: A Comparison Between Hispanic And Non-Hispanic Children Using Accelerometry, Augustine W. Kang, Kim M. Gans, Tayla Von Ash, Danielle Castagneri, Laura Dionne, Alison Tovar, Patricia M. Risica

Nutrition Faculty Publications

Obesity prevalence among Hispanic children is twice that of non-Hispanic white children; Hispanic children may also engage in less physical activity (PA) compared to non-Hispanic white children. A large number of U.S. preschool-aged children are cared for in Family Child Care Homes (FCCH), yet few studies have examined PA levels and ethnicity differences in PA levels among these children. We examine baseline data from a cluster-randomized trial (Healthy Start/Comienzos Sanos) to improve food and PA environments in FCCHs. Children aged 2-to-5-years (n = 342) wore triaxial accelerometers for two days in FCCHs. Variables examined include percentage of time (%) …