Digital Commons Network^™

Meat, The Future: The Role Of Regulators In The Lab-Grown Revolution, Joseph B. Davault, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

The United States is one of the largest consumers of meat globally. The production of meat contributes substantially to climate change due to the levels of greenhouse gasses emitted and the amount of land, water, feed, and other natural resources required to raise animals used for meat. Traditional meat production is another major source for the emergence of zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens. Nevertheless, Americans consume more meat now than at any time in the nation’s history.

Advocates for policy change aimed at addressing the risks associated with meat production have typically focused on reducing meat consumption, alternatives to meat, …

Student Ethnographic Research Experiences At The University Of Puget Sound, Andrew M. Gardner

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This brief essay describes programming at the University

of Puget Sound that allows undergraduate students to pursue

independent ethnographic research projects. This programming

undergirds all three of the subsequent student essays included in this

issue. The mission of this programming is to encourage “experiential

learning”—an objective that is aligned (and perhaps derivative)

of the methodological toolkit long deployed by anthropological

ethnographers. The essay describes the pedagogic goals that I

have been able to integrate into the supervision of this experiential

programming, and also discusses how we have sought to balance

independently-derived student research interests with the broader

research agendas codified …

I’M Not Lovin’ It: Re-Thinking Fast Food Advertising, Brody Shea, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

In 1971, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) agreed to prevent injury and deception to the consumer in advertising, detailing their respective roles in a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”).¹ The MOU proscribes that the FTC regulates truth in advertising relating to foods, drugs, devices and cosmetics while the FDA controls labeling and the misbranding of foods, drugs, devices, and cosmetics shipped in interstate commerce.² The MOU has been amended and an addendum added since 1971, but the material provisions have remained consistent for over a half-century.³

Importantly, the FDA and the …

Borrelia Burgdorferi Plza Is A Cyclic-Di-Gmp Dependent Dna And Rna Binding Protein, Nerina Jusufovic, Andrew C. Krusenstjerna, Christina R. Savage, Timothy C. Saylor, Catherine A. Brissette, Wolfram R. Zückert, Paula Schlax, Md A. Motaleb, Brian Stevenson

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The PilZ domain-containing protein, PlzA, is the only known cyclic di-GMP binding protein encoded by all Lyme disease spirochetes. PlzA has been implicated in the regulation of many borrelial processes, but the effector mechanism of PlzA was not previously known. Here, we report that PlzA can bind DNA and RNA and that nucleic acid binding requires c-di-GMP, with the affinity of PlzA for nucleic acids increasing as concentrations of c-di-GMP were increased. A mutant PlzA that is incapable of binding c-di-GMP did not bind to any tested nucleic acids. We also determined that PlzA interacts predominantly with the major groove …

Unpatenting Product Hops, Michael S. Sinha

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On July 9, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden signed Executive Order 14036 (“Promoting Competition in the American Economy”), which directed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to collaborate on new approaches to increasing competition and lowering prices in the pharmaceutical marketplace. In response, the USPTO outlined several new initiatives, among them an intent to improve the robustness and reliability of issued patents.

A major impetus for the Executive Order was the pervasive nature of pharmaceutical product hopping, which occurs when manufacturers introduce new follow-on versions of lucrative pharmaceutical products to the …

Reproductive Rights And Medico-Legal Education Post-Dobbs: A Fireside Chat, Michael S. Sinha, Anna Krotinger, Maya A. Phan, Louise P. King

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The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a pivotal moment that reshaped the landscape of abortion policy and delivery of abortion care in the United States. To create a space for critical reflection on the implications of Dobbs for the teaching and learning of abortion care in both medical and legal education, the authors engage in a dialogue highlighting the varied perspectives of professionals and professionals-in-training in both the medical and legal professions. As new attacks on reproductive autonomy continue at both state and federal levels, we foreshadow a tumultuous landscape for abortion policy …

Ai Renaissance: Pharmaceuticals And Diagnostic Medicine, Ty J. Feeney, Michael S. Sinha

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The explosive growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the modern era has led to significant advancements in the world of medicine. In drug discovery, AI technology is used to classify proteins as drug targets or non-targets for specific diseases, more accurately interpret and describe pharmacology in a quantitative fashion, and predict protein structures based on only a protein sequence for input. AI methods are used in drug development to generate predictive models for drug screening purposes, refine and modify candidate structures of drugs to optimize compounds, and predict a drug’s physiochemical properties, bioactivity, and toxicity. For medical devices, the advancement …

Navigating Export Control Laws In Animal Research: Key Considerations, Rani Muthukrishnan

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No abstract provided.

Indigenous Practice And Community-Led Climate Change Solutions: The Relevance Of Traditional Cosmic Knowledge Systems, Rani Muthukrishnan, Ranjan Datta

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This book centers Indigenous knowledge and practice in community-led climate change solutions.

This book will be one of the first academic books to use the consciousness framework to examine and explain humans' situatedness and role in maintaining ecosystems' health. Drawing on teachings from the Indigenous Adi-Shaiva community, the authors present up-to-date research on meanings and implications of South Asian traditional cosmic knowledge, which focuses on relationality and spirituality connected to climate change. This knowledge can create innovative climate change solutions in areas including land, water, traditional management, sustainability goals and expectations, and state development projects. Overall, this book provides an …

Political Polarization And The Dynamics Between Actual Income And Perceived Income Inequality In The United States, 1987 To 2021, Cary Wu, Kriti Sharma, Edward Haddon, Francesco Duina

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The rich often perceive lower levels of inequality than the poor. In recent decades, however, notions regarding the equality or inequality of our society have progressively taken on a more political nature. Consequently, people’s perceptions of income inequality may be less associated with their actual income status and more with their political ideology. The authors visualize this “political turn” using data from the U.S. General Social Survey (1987–2021). The analysis shows that historically actual income and perceived inequality had an inverse relationship, independent of political alignment. Yet since 2000, this has changed: whereas Republicans show a deepening inverse correlation after …

Trauma As Cultural Capital: A Critical Feminist Theory Of Trauma Discourse, Lucy Britt, Wilson H. Hammett

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This essay theorizes a problem for feminism posed by a particular form of trauma discourse. Feminists have played an important role in developing cultural and clinical conceptions of trauma, but one result of the destigmatization of trauma has been that trauma discourse is sometimes used as a form of cultural capital to reinforce existing hierarchies. In a novel application of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of distinction, we show how, when instrumentalized as cultural capital, trauma discourse can be used to reinforce patriarchy and other systems of oppression. We trace a critical feminist history of the struggle to understand and treat trauma. …

Are You Talking To Me? How Ideological And Gender Characteristics Moderate The Effect Of Legitimizing Rhetoric On Scotus Legitimacy, Ryan J. Williams

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Possessing neither purse nor sword, the unelected US Supreme Court relies on sustained public confidence in its institutional credibility to give force to its decisions. Previous research shows that Supreme Court justices are increasingly making public appearances to engage in a course of institutional maintenance to preserve its legitimacy. Amid a potential legitimacy crisis, justices seek to shore up the Court’s public support in these public appearances by emphasizing the apolitical nature of the Court and its decision making. The question for a growing body of literature is whether these attempts at institutional maintenance do, in fact, lead to higher …

Sustained Beneficial Infections: Priority Effects, Competition, And Specialization Drive Patterns Of Association In Intracellular Mutualisms, Malcolm Hill, Barry Lawson, John W. Cain, Nasheya Rahman, Shiv Toolsidass, Tongyu Wang, Sara Geraghty, Eberardo Raymundo, April Hill

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Intracellular symbioses provide a useful system for exploring evolutionary and ecological forces that shape mutualistic partnerships. Within- and among-host competitiveness driven by different strategies that symbionts adopt as they transfer materials to the host across a sub-cellular membrane might explain patterns of host:symbiont association observed in natural systems. We tested the hypothesis that different translocation strategies employed by symbionts affect their ability to occupy host habitats using two distinct modeling approaches. The first involved constructing a deterministic, Lotka-Volterra-type model with two symbiont species competing for access to a single host. The model recovered expected behaviors of co-occupancy/coinfection as well as …

The Relationship Between Balance Confidence And Center Of Pressure In Lower-Limb Prosthesis Users, Gary Guerra, John Smith, Eun-Jung Yoon

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Background: Agreement between the activities-specific balance confidence scale (ABC) and center of pressure (CoP) in prosthesis users is still very much unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate the agreement between ABC and CoP in lower-limb prosthesis users. Methods: Twenty-one individuals with lower-limb prostheses were recruited. Participants were provided with the ABC scale and performed static balance tasks during eyes opened (EO) and eyes closed (EC) conditions whilst standing on a force platform. Pearson product moment coefficients between CoP displacements and ABC scores were performed. Participants were also stratified by those who had better (≥80 on ABC scale) …

Recognition Of Arabic Air-Written Letters: Machine Learning, Convolutional Neural Networks, And Optical Character Recognition (Ocr) Techniques, Khalid Nahar, Izzat Alsmadi, Rabia Emhamed Al Mamlook, Ahmad Nasayreh, Hasan Gharaibeh, Ali Saeed Almuflih, Fahad Alasim

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Air writing is one of the essential fields that the world is turning to, which can benefit from the world of the metaverse, as well as the ease of communication between humans and machines. The research literature on air writing and its applications shows significant work in English and Chinese, while little research is conducted in other languages, such as Arabic. To fill this gap, we propose a hybrid model that combines feature extraction with deep learning models and then uses machine learning (ML) and optical character recognition (OCR) methods and applies grid and random search optimization algorithms to obtain …

U2-Net: A Very-Deep Convolutional Neural Network For Detecting Distracted Drivers, Nawaf Alsrehin, Mohit Gupta, Izzat Alsmadi, Saif Addeen Alrababah

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In recent years, the number of deaths and injuries resulting from traffic accidents has been increasing dramatically all over the world due to distracted drivers. Thus, a key element in developing intelligent vehicles and safe roads is monitoring driver behaviors. In this paper, we modify and extend the U-net convolutional neural network so that it provides deep layers to represent image features and yields more precise classification results. It is the basis of a very deep convolution neural network, called U2-net, to detect distracted drivers. The U2-net model has two paths (contracting and expanding) in addition to a fully-connected dense …

The Slogans And Goals Of Antitrust Law, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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This is a comparative examination of the slogans and goals most advocated for antitrust law today – namely, that antitrust should be concerned with “bigness,” that it should intervene when actions undermine the “competitive process,” or that it should be concerned about promoting some conception of welfare. “Bigness” as an antitrust concern targets firms based on absolute size rather than share of a market, as antitrust traditionally has done. The bigness approach entails that antitrust cannot be concerned about low prices, or the welfare of consumers and labor. Nondominant firms could not sustain very high prices or cause significant reductions …

Peer Leader Perspectives From A Pltl Implementation In A Hispanic-Serving Institution, Madhavan Narayanan, Kasey Powers, Dhananjaya Premawardena, Davida S. Smyth, Et Al.

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Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is a pedagogical approach that has been shown to benefit all students, especially underrepresented minority students and peer leaders in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In this work, we present results from our study of the impact of PLTL on our peer leaders from a controlled implementation in general biology, general chemistry, and statistics courses at a Hispanic-serving, minority-serving institution. More specifically, we have measured our PLTL program’s impact on our peer leaders' skill development, engagement with the subject material, and sense of belonging as peer leaders. Weekly peer leader reflections analyzed using the …

Microgravity Facilities For Cold Atom Experiments, Matthias Raudonis, Albert Roura, Matthias Meister, Christoph Lotz, Ludger Overmeyer, Sven Herrmann, Andreas Gierse, Claus Lämmerzahl, Nicholas P. Bigelow, Maike Lachmann, Baptist Piest, Naceur Gaaloul, Ernst M. Rasel, Christian Schubert, Waldemar Herr, Christian Deppner, Holger Ahlers, Wolfgang Ertmer, Jason R Williams, Nathan Lundblad, Lisa Wörner

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Microgravity platforms enable cold atom research beyond experiments in typical laboratories by removing restrictions due to the gravitational acceleration or compensation techniques. While research in space allows for undisturbed experimentation, technological readiness, availability and accessibility present challenges for experimental operation. In this work we focus on the main capabilities and unique features of ground-based microgravity facilities for cold atom research. A selection of current and future scientific opportunities and their high demands on the microgravity environment are presented, and some relevant ground-based facilities are discussed and compared. Specifically, we point out the applicable free fall times, repetition rates, stability and …

The Trouble With Time Served, Kimberly Ferzan

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Every jurisdiction in the United States gives criminal defendants “credit” against their sentence for the time they spend detained pretrial. In a world of mass incarceration and overcriminalization that disproportionately impacts people of color, this practice appears to be a welcome mechanism for mercy and justice. In fact, however, crediting detainees for time served is perverse. It harms the innocent. A defendant who is found not guilty, or whose case is dismissed, gets nothing. Crediting time served also allows the state to avoid internalizing the full costs of pretrial detention, thereby making overinclusive detention standards less expensive. Finally, crediting time …

Self-Supervised Learning Application On Covid-19 Chest X- Ray Image Classification Using Masked Autoencoder, Xin Xing, Gongbo Liang, Chris Wang, Nathan Jacobs, Ai-Ling Lin

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The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgent need for rapid and accurate diagnosis facilitated by artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in computer-aided diagnosis using medical imag- ing. However, this context presents two notable challenges: high diagnostic accuracy demand and limited availability of medical data for training AI models. To address these issues, we proposed the implementation of a Masked AutoEncoder (MAE), an innovative self-supervised learning approach, for classifying 2D Chest X-ray images. Our approach involved performing imaging reconstruction using a Vision Transformer (ViT) model as the feature encoder, paired with a custom-defined decoder. Additionally, we fine-tuned the pretrained ViT encoder using …

Identification Of Unsuccessful Students In General Chemistry, G. Robert Shelton, Joseph M. Simpson, Diana Mason

All Faculty Scholarship

The Networking for Science Advancement (NSA) team collected data from multiple general chemistry courses at nine universities within a broad geographic setting in a majority-minority US state. Data include diagnostic scores on the Math-Up Skills Test (MUST), quantitative literacy/quantitative reasoning (QL/QR) quiz, along with student demographics, and overall course grades. From these data the team determined how automaticity skills in procedural arithmetic and quantitative literacy and reasoning can be used to predict success in lower-division chemistry courses. By expanding this dataset, we extended our investigations to discover what characterizes successful and unsuccessful students in general chemistry, first and second semesters …

Predictability Of The Must (Math-Up Skills Test), Diana Mason, G. Robert Shelton

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In the USA for the most part, completion of a first-semester general chemistry (Chem I) course lays the foundation deemed necessary for understanding second-semester general chemistry (Chem II) topics. Successful completion of Chem I and II gives students permission to progress to organic chemistry I (O-Chem). A series of studies undertaken by the NSA (Networking for Science Advancement) Texas team began in 2016. Texas is one of five majority-minority states in the USA and hosts a significant Hispanic population. The purpose of this research line is to evaluate the influence of basic arithmetic automaticity (what students can do without a …

Extending The Dynamic Range Of Galaxy Outflow Scaling Relations: Massive Compact Galaxies With Extreme Outflows, Julie D. Davis, Christy A. Tremonti, Cameren N. Swiggum, John Moustakas, Aleksandar M. Diamond-Stanic, Alison L. Coil, James E. Geach, Ryan C. Hickox, Serena Perrotta, Grayson C. Petter, Gregory H. Rudnick, David S.N. Rupke, Paul H. Sell, Kelly E. Whalen

All Faculty Scholarship

We investigate galactic winds in the HizEA galaxies, a collection of 46 late-stage galaxy mergers at z = 0.4-0.8, with stellar masses of log ( M * / M ⊙ ) = 10.4 - 11.5 , star formation rates (SFRs) of 20-500 M ⊙ yr−1, and ultra-compact (a few 100 pc) central star-forming regions. We measure their gas kinematics using the Mg ii λ λ 2796,2803 absorption lines in optical spectra from MMT, Magellan, and Keck. We find evidence of outflows in 90% of targets, with maximum outflow velocities of 550-3200 km s−1. We combine these data with ten samples …

Cyber Borders: Exercising State Sovereignty Online, Beth Simmons, Rachel Hulvey

All Faculty Scholarship

The internet brings challenges that threaten national identities and the foundations of what it means to be a state. Well-known challenges include difficulties maintaining important national values, competition threatening local economic plans, and even the inability to maintain a meaningful informational environment for self-governance. These influences are plausibly understood as challenges to some of the basic functions of a sovereign state. Despite these challenges, we identify the social practice of establishing control over mercurial mediums. States have responded by erecting cyberborders with a collection of laws, practices, and internet architecture designed to filter digital information within the territorial jurisdiction of …

Playful Mouth-To-Mouth Interactions Of Belugas (Delphinapterus Leucas) In Managed Care, Jackson R. Ham, Malin K. Lilley, Riley J. Winchenski, Jesus Miranda, Ángel G. Velarde Dediós, Katie Kolodziej, Sergio M. Pellis, Heather M. Manitzas Hill

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Belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) engage in many forms of play (e.g., object, water, locomotor), but no play is quite as curious as the unusual form of cooperative social play involving mouth-to-mouth interactions. These playful interactions are characterized by two belugas approaching each other head-to-head and interlocking their jaws, clasping one another, as if they were shaking hands. Observed in belugas both in the wild and in managed care, it is seemingly an important type of social play that offers a unique way of socializing with conspecifics. To describe this unusual behavior, a group of belugas in managed care was …

Law Without Order, Then Too Much Order, Then Not Enough?, Ronald Weich

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No abstract provided.

Promoting Rapid Vaccine Science Education At The Onset Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Davida S. Smyth, Trace Jordan, Robert Seiser, Et Al.

All Faculty Scholarship

At the onset of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, it was clear that we needed to support public education on the science of vaccines. This project was born of that need and led to the development of comprehensive educational materials that addressed the process of science, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 biology, vaccine development, and science communication and outreach. Called the “Online Vaccine Science Resources for COVID-19 Education,” the materials generated were designed to be implemented by educators and community groups in various contexts. They took the form of four modules and general audience informational videos available on …

Shedding New Light On Weak Emission-Line Quasars In The C Iv-H Β Parameter Space, Trung Ha, Cooper Dix, Brandon M. Matthews, Ohad Shemmer, Michael S. Brotherton, Adam D. Myers, Gordon T. Richards, Jaya Maithil, Scott F. Anderson, W. N. Brandt, Aleksandar M. Diamond-Stanic, Xiaohui Fan, S. C. Gallagher, Richard Green, Paulina Lira, Bin Luo, Hagai Netzer, Richard M. Plotkin, Jessie C. Runnoe, Donald P. Schneider, Michael A. Strauss, Benny Trakhtenbrot, Jianfeng Wu

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Weak emission-line quasars (WLQs) are a subset of type 1 quasars that exhibit extremely weak Lyα + N v λ1240 and/or C iv λ1549 emission lines. We investigate the relationship between emission-line properties and accretion rate for a sample of 230 "ordinary"type 1 quasars and 18 WLQs at z < 0.5 and 1.5 < z < 3.5 that have rest-frame ultraviolet and optical spectral measurements. We apply a correction to the Hβ-based black hole mass (M BH) estimates of these quasars using the strength of the optical Fe ii emission. We confirm previous findings that WLQs' M BH values are overestimated by up to an order of magnitude using the traditional broad-emission-line region size-luminosity relation. With this M BH correction, we find a significant correlation between Hβ-based Eddington luminosity ratios and a combination of the rest-frame C iv equivalent width and C iv blueshift with respect to the systemic redshift. This correlation holds for both ordinary quasars and WLQs, which suggests that the two-dimensional C iv parameter space can serve as an indicator of accretion rate in all type 1 quasars across a wide range of spectral properties.

Human Activities And Species Biological Traits Drive The Long-Term Persistence Of Old Trees In Human-Dominated Landscapes, Li Huang, Cheng Jin, Yingji Pan, Lihua Zhou, Siwei Hu, Yanpei Guo, Yuanyuan Meng, Kun Song, Mingyue Pang, Hong Li, Dunmei Lin, Xiaoting Xu, Jesse Minor, Chris Coggins, C. Y. Jim, Enrong Yan, Yongchuan Yang, Zhiyao Tang, David B. Lindenmayer

All Faculty Scholarship

Old trees have many ecological and socio-cultural values. However, knowledge of the factors influencing their long-term persistence in human-dominated landscapes is limited. Here, using an extensive database (nearly 1.8 million individual old trees belonging to 1,580 species) from China, we identified which species were most likely to persist as old trees in human-dominated landscapes and where they were most likely to occur. We found that species with greater potential height, smaller leaf size and diverse human utilization attributes had the highest probability of long-term persistence. The persistence probabilities of human-associated species (taxa with diverse human utilization attributes) were relatively high …