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Educational Policies Committee Minutes, January 9, 2014, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Approval of the minutes from Dec 5 2013
• Subcommittee Reports
• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Academic Standards Subcommittee
• General Education Subcommittee

Warming, Soil Moisture, And Loss Of Snow Increase Bromus Tectorum’S Population Growth Rate, Aldo Compagnoni, Peter B. Adler

Green Canyon Environmental Research Area, Logan Utah

Climate change threatens to exacerbate the impacts of invasive species. In temperate ecosystems, direct effects of warming may be compounded by dramatic reductions in winter snow cover. Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) is arguably the most destructive biological invader in basins of the North American Intermountain West, and warming could increase its performance through direct effects on demographic rates or through indirect effects mediated by loss of snow. We conducted a two-year experimental manipulation of temperature and snow pack to test whether 1) warming increases cheatgrass population growth rate and 2) reduced snow cover contributes to cheatgrass’ positive response to …

The Utah Statesman, January 7, 2014, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Faculty Senate Agenda, January 6, 2014, Utah State University

Faculty Senate & Faculty Senate Executive Committee

• Council on Teacher Education Annual Report -Francine Johnson
• EPC Items for December –Larry Smith
• Code Revision Process, Policy Manual 202
• Updates of code revision to 405.12 Post-Tenure Review Process
• PRPC Section 402.4.3 changes to wording in FS meeting order of business(Second Reading) - Stephen Bialkowski
• PRPC Section 405.6.1 changes to wording in role statement and role assignment(Second Reading) - Stephen Bialkowski
• PRPC word changes from ASUSU to USUSA to 400 all sections(Second Reading) - Stephen Bialkowski
• PRPC Section 402.12.5(1) addition of sentence referring to policies in Section 202(First Reading) - Stephen Bialkowski

Utah State Magazine, Winter 2014, Utah State University

Utah State Magazine

The quarterly magazine for friends and alumni of Utah State University.

Weber River Watershed Plan, The Weber River Partnership

All In-stream Flows Material

Our watershed is defined by the people that live, work, and play within its boundaries, as well as the social, ecological, financial and societal benefits that it provides. The Weber River Watershed has experienced a long history of human-influenced changes and alterations in order to enhance human well-being. Many of these actions have enhanced water transportation and delivery, developed sources of hydropower, reduced flood hazards, and provided agricultural, municipal and industrial water supplies (National Research Council 1992), all of which are essential to our survival and quality of life. At the same time, some of those enhancements have had unforeseen …

Prologemena To An Future Rhetoric Of Shadows, Shades And Silhouettes, Gene Washington

English Faculty Publications

In this essay, following the implications of "prolegomena" (Greek: "to say before"), i describe what a rhetoric constructed of textual shadows (the word "shadow" in a text) would look like. Specifically, what would be the various motives and rhetorical intentions, for a writer (of all genres) to employ the word "shadow" or a member of its semantic "family."

Producing Spider Silk Fibers, Cameron G. Copeland, Chad Christensen, Brianne Bell

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Spider Silk For Future Scaffolds, Heidi Bringhurst, R. Decker, S. Frisby, C Tucker

Biology Posters

Spider silk, an ancient biomaterial, has many qualities worth replicating. With the use of genetic modification, relatively large amounts of the spider silk protein have been produced through goat milk. With access to this protein we have worked to create spider silk films and hydrogels. Through chemical and mechanical means, we are discovering treatments that maximize cell growth and cell attachment on spider silk films and hydrogels.

Preparatory Assays For Development Of A Mouse Model For Adenovirus D1327, Spencer Skidmore

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Bartonella Prevalence In Fleas Isolated From Populations Of Uinta Ground Squirrels In Logan Canyon Utah, Raddison Veater, Lise M. Aubry, Susannah S. French, Laine Anderson, Scott A. Bernhardt

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Diurnal Arousal In Learning And Memory, Jacob Blotter, Mona Buhusi

Biology Posters

The brain’s ability to learn and remember is a topic of extensive debate and research. Mammals share many similarities, including the way in which information from the outside world is processed and stored. Mammalian circadian rhythms have long been thought to be essentially involved with these processes. This experiment is designed to explore the brain’s ability to process and store information at different times of the day. Changes in or the absence of circadian neurotransmitters lead to serious impairments correlated with sleep and wakefulness [1]. Orexin, one neurochemical that will be examined in this experiment, helps mediate arousal and has …

Effects Of Charge And Substituent On The S∙∙∙N Chalcogen Bond, U. Adhikari, Steve Scheiner

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Neutral complexes containing a S···N chalcogen bond are compared with similar systems in which a positive charge has been added to the S-containing electron acceptor, using high-level ab initio calculations. The effects on both XS···N and XS+···N bonds are evaluated for a range of different substituents X = CH3, CF3, NH2, NO2, OH, Cl, and F, using NH3 as the common electron donor. The binding energy of XMeS···NH3 varies between 2.3 and 4.3 kcal/mol, with the strongest interaction occurring for X = F. The binding is strengthened by a factor of 2–10 in charged XH2S+···NH3 complexes, reaching a maximum of …

Spider Silk Coatings, Danielle Gaztambide, Chauncey Tucker

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

1597 Polymorphism And Preterm Birth In African American Mothers, Christopher Peterson, Anthony Torres

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Corticosterone And Acth On The Unken Reflex In Rough- Skinned Newts (Taricha Granulosa), Sydney Greenfield

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Decreasing Bacterial Biofilm Formation On Medical Implants Through Surface Modification, Eric Schmidt, Sydney Bone, Tyson Holverson

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Genome Editing Of Bombyx Mori (Silkworm) With The Cas9/Crispr System For Potential Host Of Synthetic Spider Silk Gene, Ryan Pack, Lijin Xia, Xiaoli Zhang

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Determining Relationships Among Meadowbrome Cultivated Varieties, Andrew D. Tucker, Lisa Michaels, B. Shaun Bushman, Kevin B. Jensen

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Giving The Honey Bear A New Home, Brianna Rhoads

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Transfection Of Cystic Fibrosis Sequence Into Host Cells, Richard Cromwell

Biology Posters

To better study the effects of Cystic Fibrosis on the human body, it is important to be able to effectively and efficiently recreate the disease in an appropriate mammalian model. New technology in transfection reagent, jetPRIME, hopes to allow us to efficiently transfer these Cystic Fibrosis sequences into sheep embryos to allow the traits to be expressed on a more reliable basis on the cloned sheep.

My research with this reagent was to test the reliability of jetPRIME to transfer our desired DNA sequences into cells at a more efficient rate then previously demonstrated by other reagents. Because of the …

Interactions Between Megaherbivores And Microherbivores: Elephant Browsing Reduces Host Plant Quality For Caterpillars, H. Hrabar, Johan T. Du Toit

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Direct effects of herbivory, and indirect effects through induced responses to herbivory, can both influence the susceptibility of plants to subsequent attacks by herbivores. There has, however, been very little research (if any) to investigate how the large-scale effects of browsing by megaherbivores (>1000 kg body mass) on woody plants might influence the subsequent use of those plants by phytophagous insects. We conducted a field study in Kruger National Park, South Africa, to investigate whether browsing by elephants (Loxodonta africana) on mopane trees (Colophospermum mopane) had any influence on the subsequent selection of those trees by ovipositing mopane moths …

General Catalog 2013-2014 (Spring 2014), Utah State University

University Catalogs

This catalog contains information on the Academic Departments and Programs as well as Course Descriptions for the above school year at Utah State University. To avoid large file downloads, the Academic Departments and Programs information is located in this file. The Course Description information is located in the secondary file.

Variability In Salt Tolerance Of Sorghum Bicolor L., Youping Sun, Genhua Niu, Pedro Osuna, Lijuan Zhao, Girisha Ganjehunte, Gary Peterson, Jose R. Peralta-Videa, Jorge L. Gardea-Torresdey

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Salt tolerance of ten sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) varieties (‘1790E’, ‘BTx642’, ‘Desert Maize’, ‘Macia’, ‘RTx430’, ‘Schrock’, ‘Shallu’, ‘Tx2783’, ‘Tx7078’, and ‘Wheatland’) was evaluated in two greenhouse experiments. In the first experiment, sorghum were sown in substrates moistened with either nutrient solution (no addition of salts, control) at electrical conductivity (EC) of 1.2 dS·m-1 or salt solution at EC 5, 10 or 17 dS·m-1. Seedling emergence percentage decreased in all varieties only at EC of 17 dS·m-1 compared to the control. Seedling emergence percentage of sorghum ‘Macia’ and ‘1790E’ irrigated with salt solution at EC of 17 dS·m-1 decreased by …

Competition Between Lone Pair-Π, Halogen Bond, And Hydrogen Bond In Adducts Of Water With Perhalogenated Alkenes C2clnf4-N (N = 0-4), U. Adhikari, Steve Scheiner

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

A thorough search of the potential energy surface is carried out for heterodimers of water with C2ClnF4−n. Three different types of interactions are observed. Structures dominated by a lone pair–π interaction have the highest binding energies, and are stabilized by charge transfer from O lone pairs of H2O to the Csingle bondC π* antibonding orbital of the alkene. Halogen-bonded O⋯Cl complexes are slightly less strongly bound, followed by OH⋯X hydrogen bonds. The replacements of Cl by F atoms have only small effects upon binding energies. Inclusion of vibrational and entropic effects removes the clear energetic superiority of lp–π binding energies. …

Quaking Aspen In The Residential-Wildland Interface: Elk Herbivory Hinders Forest Conservation, Paul C. Rogers, Allison Jones, James C. Catlin, James Shuler, Arthur Morris, Michael R. Kuhns

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) forests are experiencing numerous impediments across North America. In the West, recent drought, fire suppression, insects, diseases, climate trends, inappropriate management, and ungulate herbivory are impacting these high biodiversity forests. Additionally, ecological tension zones are sometimes created where the above factors intermingle with jurisdictional boundaries. The public-private land interface may result in stress to natural areas where game species find refuge and plentiful forage at the expense of ecosystem function. We examined putative herbivore impacts to aspen forests at Wolf Creek Ranch (WCR), a large residential landscape in northern Utah. Forty-three ha-1 monitoring plots were …

Large Scale Production And Purification Of Chimeric Spider Silks In Eschrichia Coli, Jordan M. Wanlass, R. Chase Spencer, Sreevidhya T. Krishnaji, Paula F. Olivera

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Developing A Portable System For Measuring Human Motor Learning: A Work-In-Progress, Karen E. Tew

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Synthetic Spider Silk Production In Alfalfa, Cameron L. Brock, Michaela R. Hugie, Randolph V. Lewis

Biology Posters

No abstract provided.

Stress, Schizophrenia, And Latent Inhibition: What's The Connection?, Bret Guercio, Daniel Obray, Catalin V. Buhusi

Biology Posters

Latent inhibition is an attentional phenomenon under which conditioning to a given stimulus is retarded upon repeated stimulus presentation [1]. Interestingly, latent inhibition is impaired in individuals with schizophrenia as compared with individuals without schizophrenia. The close homolog to L1 (CHL1) gene has been linked to the genetic predisposition to f schizophrenia [2]. Mutations in the CHL1 gene are known to affect brain development, particularly neuronal migration and development of neuronal connections, as well as cellular signaling pathways [3,4,5]. In this experiment CHL1 knockout (KO) and wild type (WT) mice received six weeks of chronic mild stress (CMS). We hypothesized …