Digital Commons Network^™

Family Of Ph (Low) Insertion Peptides For Tumor Targeting, Dhammika Weerakkody, Anna Moshnikova, Mak S. Thakur, Valentina Moshnikova, Jennifer Daniels, Donald Engelman, Oleg A. Andreev, Yana K. Reshetnyak

Physics Faculty Publications

Cancer is a complex disease with a range of genetic and biochemical markers within and among tumors, but a general tumor characteristic is extracellular acidity, which is associated with tumor growth and development. Acidosis could be a universal marker for cancer imaging and the delivery of therapeutic molecules, but its promise as a cancer biomarker has not been fully realized in the clinic. We have discovered a unique approach for the targeting of acidic tissue using the pH-sensitive folding and transmembrane insertion of pH (low) insertion peptide (pHLIP). The essence of the molecular mechanism has been elucidated, but the principles …

Electronic Journals Overlap Analysis, Michael A. Cerbo Ii

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Overlap analysis for the University of Rhode Island's electronic journals are complied alphabetically by database name. The report shows the number or titles that are exclusive to that database as compiled by Serials Solutions.

The table located under the report gives a brief explanation of the headings used in the analysis.

Efficient Delivery Of Cell Impermeable Phosphopeptides By A Cyclic Peptide Amphiphile Containing Tryptophan And Arginine, Amir Nasrolahi Shirazi, Rakesh Kumar Tiwari, Donghoon Oh, Antara Banarjee, Arpita Yadav, Keykavous Parang

Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty Publications

Phosphopeptides are valuable reagent probes for studying protein–protein and protein–ligand interactions. The cellular delivery of phosphopeptides is challenging because of the presence of the negatively charged phosphate group. The cellular uptake of a number of fluorescent-labeled phosphopeptides, including F′-GpYLPQTV, F′-NEpYTARQ, F′-AEEEIYGEFEAKKKK, F′-PEpYLGLD, F′-pYVNVQN-NH₂, and F′-GpYEEI (F′ = fluorescein), was evaluated in the presence or absence of a [WR]₄, a cyclic peptide containing alternative arginine (R) and tryptophan (W) residues, in human leukemia cells (CCRF-CEM) after 2 h incubation using flow cytometry. [WR]₄ improved significantly the cellular uptake of all phosphopeptides. PEpYLGLD is a sequence that …

Supplemental Feeding For Ecotourism Reverses Diel Activity And Alters Movement Patterns And Spatial Distribution Of The Southern Stingray, Dasyatis Americana, Mark J. Corcoran, Bradley M. Wetherbee, Mahmood S. Shivji, Matthew D. Potenski, Demian D. Chapman, Guy M. Harvey

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Southern stingrays, Dasyatis americana, have been provided supplemental food in ecotourism operations at Stingray City Sandbar (SCS), Grand Cayman since 1986, with this site becoming one of the world’s most famous and heavily visited marine wildlife interaction venues. Given expansion of marine wildlife interactive tourism worldwide, there are questions about the effects of such activities on the focal species and their ecosystems. We used a combination of acoustic telemetry and tag-recapture efforts to test the hypothesis that human-sourced supplemental feeding has altered stingray activity patterns and habitat use at SCS relative to wild animals at control sites. Secondarily, we …

Computational Vaccinology And The Icovax 2012 Workshop, Yongqun He, Zhiwei Cao, Anne S. De Groot, Vladimir Brusic, Christian Schönbach, Nikolai Petrovsky

Institute for Immunology and Informatics Faculty Publications

Computational vaccinology or vaccine informatics is an interdisciplinary field that addresses scientific and clinical questions in vaccinology using computational and informatics approaches. Computational vaccinology overlaps with many other fields such as immunoinformatics, reverse vaccinology, postlicensure vaccine research, vaccinomics, literature mining, and systems vaccinology. The second ISV Pre-conference Computational Vaccinology Workshop (ICoVax 2012) was held on October 13, 2013 in Shanghai, China. A number of topics were presented in the workshop, including allergen predictions, prediction of linear T cell epitopes and functional conformational epitopes, prediction of protein-ligand binding regions, vaccine design using reverse vaccinology, and case studies in computational vaccinology. Although …

Environmental Implications And Applications Of Engineered Nanomaterials: Fullerene And Magnetite Case Studies, John Fornter

Amgen Seminar Series in Chemical Engineering

Industrial scale production, coupled with unique material properties, underpin rising concerns of engineered, nanoscale materials inadvertently affecting the health and function of natural systems. Conversely, novel material properties may be utilized to uniquely address current environmental issues. Key to both sides of the ‘nano-envi’ paradigm is the fundamental understanding of the material(s) behavior and properties in both natural and engineered systems. I will discuss both sides of the issue using two model systems as examples:

First, nanoscale material implications will be discussed for carbon fullerenes. Fullerenes, C₆₀ in particular, have been proposed for a variety of applications and will …

The Good 5 Cent Cigar (3/6/2013), University Of Rhode Island

The Good 5 Cent Cigar (Student Newspaper Archives)

This is a digitized, downloadable version of the University of Rhode Island school newspaper.

Migrating Successful Student Engagement Strategies Online: Opportunities And Challenges Using Jigsaw Groups And Problem-Based Learning, José A. Amador, Helen Mederer

Natural Resources Science Faculty Publications

Online courses may be criticized for failing to engage students. Faculty members teaching in the classroom often employ a number of strategies that capture the interest of students, but may find the migration to the online environment a daunting prospect. This paper describes the transitioning of two common strategies to engage students in the classroom – jigsaw groups and problem-based learning – from face-to-face to online courses in sociology and soil science, respectively. The paper discusses the challenges and opportunities that were found to be common to the implementation of both these strategies online, and provides suggestions for faculty considering …

Sex-Specific Correlations Of Individual Heterozygosity, Parasite Load, And Scalation Asymmetry In A Sexually Dichromatic Lizard, Pei-Jen L. Shaner, Ying-Ru Chen, Jhan-Wei Lin, Jason J. Kolbe, Si-Min Lin

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Heterozygosity-fitness correlations (HFCs) provide insights into the genetic bases of individual fitness variation in natural populations. However, despite decades of study, the biological significance of HFCs is still under debate. In this study, we investigated HFCs in a large population of the sexually dimorphic lizard Takydromus viridipunctatus (Lacertidae). Because of the high prevalence of parasitism from trombiculid mites in this lizard, we expect individual fitness (i.e., survival) to decrease with increasing parasite load. Furthermore, because morphological asymmetry is likely to influence individuals' mobility (i.e., limb asymmetry) and male biting ability during copulation (i.e., head asymmetry) in this species, we also …

An Open Access Policy For Uri: A Recommendation Of The Ad-Hoc Committee On Open Access, Andrée J. Rathemacher

Technical Services Faculty Presentations

Powerpoint presentation to the University of Rhode Island Faculty Senate on behalf of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Open Access, February 21, 2013.

A Cross-Sectional Study To Assess Hpv Knowledge And Hpv Vaccine Acceptability In Mali, Danielle N. Poole, J. Kathleen Tracy, Lauren Levitz, Mali Rochas, Kotou Sangare, Shahla Yekta, Karamoko Tounkara, Ben Aboubacar, Ousmane Koita, Mark Lurie, Anne S. De Groot

Institute for Immunology and Informatics Faculty Publications

Despite a high prevalence of oncogenic human papilloma virus (HPV) infection and cervical cancer mortality, HPV vaccination is not currently available in Mali. Knowledge of HPV and cervical cancer in Mali, and thereby vaccine readiness, may be limited. Research staff visited homes in a radial pattern from a central location to recruit adolescent females and males aged 12–17 years and men and women aged ≥18 years (N = 51) in a peri-urban village of Bamako, Mali. Participants took part in structured interviews assessing knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to HPV, cervical cancer, and HPV vaccination. We found low levels of …

Molecular Simulations Of "Real World" Systems, Michael Greenfield

Amgen Seminar Series in Chemical Engineering

Many molecular characteristics would be interesting to know but are not easy to access through experiments. What molecule arrangements are most effective for transmitting or damping applied forces? What configurations of a binding site enable or block substrate adsorption? Such questions can be investigated computationally through molecular simulations: large scale calculations that apply statistical mechanics toward quantifying the properties and mechanisms that occur in atomic and molecular systems.

Molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo methods provide large numbers of representative molecule configurations (an "ensemble"), and statistical weighting over an ensemble provides the desired results as a numerical average. Improvements in force …

The Good 5 Cent Cigar (2/6/2013), University Of Rhode Island

The Good 5 Cent Cigar (Student Newspaper Archives)

This is a digitized, downloadable version of the University of Rhode Island school newspaper.

Examination Of Ulva Bloom Species Richness And Relative Abundance Reveals Two Cryptically Co- Occurring Bloom Species In Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, Michele Guidone, Carol S. Thornber

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Blooms caused by the green macroalga Ulva pose a serious threat to coastal ecosystem 20 around the world. Despite numerous studies of the causes and consequences of these blooms, we still have a limited understanding of Ulva bloom species richness and abundance due to difficulties in identifying Ulva species using morphological features. Along the northeastern U.S. coastline, all blooms of distromatic Ulva blades were previously identified as U. lactuca. Recent molecular sequencing, however, discovered the presence of additional distromatic Ulva species. Therefore, in order to determine the relative abundance of Ulva species within blooms, we conducted monthly surveys at four …

Competitor Avoidance Drives Within-Host Feeding Site Selection In A Passively-Dispersed Herbivore, Sara Gomez, Liahna Gonda-King, Colin M. Orians, Evan L. Preisser

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

1. Evolutionary theory predicts that ovipositing females that can actively disperse should select hosts that increase offspring performance. However, for organisms that are exclusively passively dispersed, feeding site selection is possible only at the within-host level. This is particularly important for their offspring, which have strong temporal and spatial dispersal constraints within a host. Such constraints are probably magnified by tissue quality heterogeneity caused by competing herbivores.
2. We investigated within-host feeding site selection of passively dispersed neonates of a sessile herbivore, the hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand), when it shares its eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis Carrière) host with …

Urinformed February 2013, Urinformed

URInformed: The URI Employees' Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Vibrio Cholerae Exploits Sub-Lethal Concentrations Of A Competitor-Produced Antibiotic To Avoid Toxic Interactions, Jason R. Graff, Stephanie Forschner-Dancause, Susanne Menden-Deuer, Richard A. Long, David C. Rowley

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Vibrio cholerae is a human pathogenic marine bacterium inhabiting coastal regions and is vectored into human food and water supplies via attachment to particles including detritus, phytoplankton, and zooplankton. Particle colonization by the pathogen is inhibited by an antagonistic interaction with the particle-associated Vibrionales bacterium SWAT3, a producer of the antibiotic andrimid. By analyzing the individual movement behaviors of V. cholerae exposed to a gradient of andrimid in a microfluidics device, we show that the pathogen has a concentration dependent avoidance response to sub-lethal concentrations of the pure antibiotic and to the metabolites produced by a growing colony of SWAT3-wild-type. …

Curricular Affairs Committee Minutes January 28, 2013, University Of Rhode Island Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Committee Reports and Appendices

No abstract provided.

Nutritional Basis For Colonization Resistance By Human Commensal Escherichia Coli Strains Hs And Nissle 1917 Against E. Coli O157:H7 In The Mouse Intestine, Rosalie Maltby, Mary P. Leatham-Jensen, Terri Gibson, Paul S. Cohen, Tyrrell Conway

Cell and Molecular Biology Faculty Publications

Escherichia coli is a single species consisting of many biotypes, some of which are commensal colonizers of mammals and others that cause disease. Humans are colonized on average with five commensal biotypes, and it is widely thought that the commensals serve as a barrier to infection by pathogens. Previous studies showed that a combination of three pre-colonized commensal E. coli strains prevents colonization of E. coli O157:H7 in a mouse model (Leatham, et al., 2010, Infect Immun 77: 2876–7886). The commensal biotypes included E. coli HS, which is known to successfully colonize humans at high doses with no adverse effects, …

Frequent In-Migration And Highly Focal Transmission Of Dengue Viruses Among Children In Kamphaeng Phet, Thailand, Maia A. Rabaa, Chonticha Klungthong, In-Kyu Yoon, Edward C. Holmes, Piyawan Chinnawirotpisan, Butsaya Thaisomboonsuk, Anon Srikiatkhachorn, Alan L. Rothman, Darunee Tannitisupawong, Jared Aldstadt, Ananda Nisalak, Mammen P. Mammen, Robert V. Gibbons, Timothy P. Endy, Thanyalak Fansiri, Thomas W. Scott, Richard G. Jarman

Institute for Immunology and Informatics Faculty Publications

Revealing the patterns and determinants of the spread of dengue virus (DENV) at local scales is central to understanding the epidemiology and evolution of this major human pathogen. We performed a phylogenetic analysis of the envelope (E) genes of DENV-1, -2, -3, and -4 isolates (involving 97, 23, 5, and 74 newly collected sequences, respectively) sampled from school-based cohort and village-based cluster studies in Kamphaeng Phet, Thailand, between 2004 and 2007. With these data, we sought to describe the spatial and temporal patterns of DENV spread within a rural population where a future vaccine efficacy trial is planned. Our analysis …

Swim Speed, Behavior, And Movement Of North Atlantic Right Whales (Eubalaena Glacialis) In Coastal Waters Of Northeastern Florida, Usa, James H.W. Hain, Joy D. Hampp, Shelia A. Mckenney, Julie A. Albert, Robert D. Kenney

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

In a portion of the coastal waters of northeastern Florida, North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) occur close to shore from December through March. These waters are included within the designated critical habitat for right whales. Data on swim speed, behavior, and direction of movement – with photo-identification of individual whales – were gathered by a volunteer sighting network working alongside experienced scientists and supplemented by aerial observations. In seven years (2001–2007), 109 tracking periods or “follows” were conducted on right whales during 600 hours of observation from shore-based observers. The whales were categorized as mother-calf pairs, singles …

Ph (Low) Insertion Peptide (Phlip) Targets Ischemic Myocardium, Eugene A. Sosunov, Evgeny P. Anyukhovsky, Alexander A. Sosunov, Anna Moshnikova, Dayanjali Wijesinghe, Donald M. Engelman, Yana K. Reshetnyak, Oleg A. Andreev

Physics Faculty Publications

The pH (low) insertion peptide (pHLIP) family enables targeting of cells in tissues with low extracellular pH. Here, we show that ischemic myocardium is targeted, potentially opening a new route to diagnosis and therapy. The experiments were performed using two murine ischemia models: regional ischemia induced by coronary artery occlusion and global low-flow ischemia in isolated hearts. In both models, pH-sensitive pHLIPs [wild type (WT) and Var7] or WT-pHLIP–coated liposomes bind ischemic but not normal regions of myocardium, whereas pH-insensitive, kVar7, and liposomes coated with PEG showed no preference. pHLIP did not influence either the mechanical or the electrical activity …

Multiple Forms Of Vector Manipulation By A Plant-Infecting Virus: Bemisia Tabaci And Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus , Baiming Liu, Evan L. Preisser, Dong Chu, Huipend Pan, Wen Xie, Shaoli Wang, Qingjun Wu, Xuguo Zhou, Youjun Zhang

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

For many insect-vectored plant viruses, the relationship between feeding behavior and vector competence may prove integral to an understanding of the epidemiology of the resulting plant disease. While plant-infecting viruses are well known to change host plant physiology in a way that makes them more attractive to vectors, viral manipulation of the vectors themselves has only recently been reported. Previous research suggested that the rapid spread of Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) throughout China has been facilitated by its primary vector, the whitefly Bemisia tabaci. We conducted two experiments testing the impact of TYLCV infection of the host …

The Real Limits To Marine Life: A Further Critique Of The Respiration Index, Brad A. Seibel, J. J. Childress

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The recently proposed "Respiration Index" (RI = log PO₂/PCO₂) suggests that aerobic metabolism is limited by the ratio of reactants (oxygen) to products (carbon dioxide) according to the thermodynamics of cellular respiration. Here, we demonstrate further that, because of the large standard free energy change for organic carbon oxidation (ΔG° = −686 kcal mol⁻¹), carbon dioxide can never reach concentrations that would limit the thermodynamics of this reaction. A PCO₂ to PO₂ ratio of 10⁵⁰³ would be required to reach equilibrium (equilibrium constant, K …

Epigenetics: A Novel Therapeutic Approach For The Treatment Of Alzheimer's Disease, Lina Adwan, Nasser H. Zawia

Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty Publications

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia in the elderly. It is characterized by the deposition of two forms of aggregates within the brain, the amyloid β plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles. Currently, no disease-modifying agent is approved for the treatment of AD. Approved pharmacotherapies target the peripheral symptoms but they do not prevent or slow down the progression of the disease. Although several disease-modifying immunotherapeutic agents are in clinical development, many have failed due to the lack of efficacy or serious adverse events. Epigenetic changes including DNA methylation and histone modifications are involved in learning and …

Surfo Technical Report No. 13-03, Surfo

SURFO Technical Reports

The 2013 technical reports written by undergraduate students participating in the SURFO (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships in Oceanography) Program while at the University of Rhode Island.

The Motherhood Penalty: How Gender And Parental Status Influence Judgements Of Job-Related Competence And Organizational Commitment, Noël Burgess

Seminar Research Paper Series

The Motherhood Penalty is an ongoing problem in the United States as many women find themselves working full-time after becoming mothers. Women who become mothers are perceived as less competent, less committed, and thus less employable and/or promotable in the workplace. Unfortunately the status of “mother” has certain perceptions associated with it that are incompatible with the image of an “ideal worker.” Given this reality, the purpose of this research, which uses a literature review, is to examine the reasons for the Motherhood Penalty, the theory behind the negative perceptions of mothers, and how women and organizations can confront these …

Division Of Research And Economic Development Annual Report For Fy2013, Uri Division Of Research And Economic Development

Reports (Research and Economic Development)

Annual report for the Division of Research and Economic Development of the University of Rhode Island for the year 2012-2013.

Includes statistics of project proposals, expenditures, URI Foundation Awards, previous annual report summaries and awards received by individual academic and administrative departments.

Division Of Research And Economic Development Monthly Report For January 2013, Uri Division Of Research And Economic Development

Reports (Research and Economic Development)

The monthly reports include statistics for project proposals and awards received by individual academic and administrative departments at the University of Rhode Island.

Division Of Research And Economic Development Monthly Report For May 2013, Uri Division Of Research And Economic Development

Reports (Research and Economic Development)

The monthly reports include statistics for project proposals and awards received by individual academic and administrative departments at the University of Rhode Island.