Digital Commons Network^™

Use Of Cryopreserved Sperm Of Grass Carp (Ctenopharyngodon Idella) For Seed Production At The Hatchery Level Of Bangladesh—A Need For Development Of Germplasm Repositories, Shajjad Hossian, Md Faijan Reza, Mohammad Matiur Rahman, Mariom, Mohammed Jahangir Alam, Md Abdur Razzak, Md Fazlul Awal Mollah, Terrence R. Tiersch, Md Rafiqul Islam Sarder

Faculty Publications

Grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella), a freshwater nonnative fish species, is a potential aquaculture candidate in Bangladesh. The seed of the species is produced in the hatcheries by hypophysation, but the quality of seedstock of grass carp is deteriorated due to inbreeding, negative selection, and interspecific introgression among fishes. To increase the availability of quality seed and best genetic traits of grass carp, this study dealt with finding suitable conditions of sperm cryopreservation protocols and evaluated the effectiveness of cryopreserved sperm through breeding trials of C. idella. A broodstock population was developed from fingerlings imported from China by the Bangladesh Department …

Voice: A Interdisciplinary Field And A Field Unto Itself, Rockford Sansom

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Beeswax Edible Film On Preservation Of Naem Product Quality During Storage, Duyen Bui, Wannee Tangkham, Frederick Lemieux, Oanh Vuong, Witoon Prinyawiwatkul, Zhimin Xu

Faculty Publications

Importance of the work: Beeswax (BW) could be a natural ingredient applied in edible packing film to effectively extend the shelf-life of Thai fermented sausage (‘Naem’). Objective: To evaluate the capability of edible films made from beeswax in extending the shelf-life of Naem. Materials & Methods: Naem samples were wrapped using one of four different film groups: polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or 0%, 1% or 3% BW. Changes were determined and compared in the pH, moisture content, color (L*, a* and b*), lipid oxidation and aerobic plate count (APC) and growth rates of lactic acid bacteria, Escherichia coli, Enterobacteriaceae, Staphylococcus spp. …

Algebraic And Geometric Properties Of A Family Of Rational Curves, J. William Hoffman, Haohao Wang

Faculty Publications

This paper consists of two components - an application part and a theoretical part, where the former targets the applications of computer aided geometric designs in generating parametric curves, and the latter focuses on the algebraic analysis of rational space curves. At the application level, we construct a family of rational space curves via quaternion products of two generating curves. At the theoretical level, we use algebraic methods to extract a µ-basis for this family of curves, and describe a basis for a special submodule of the syzygy module in terms of a µ-basis for the syzygy module of this …

The African Light Source: History, Context And Future, Simon H. Connell, Kathleen Dollman, Gihan Kamel, Sameen A. Khan, Edward Mitchell, Sekazi K. Mtingwa, Marcus C. Newton, Prosper Ngabonziza, Emmanuel Nji, Lawrence Norris, Michele Zema

Faculty Publications

The African Light Source (AfLS) project is now almost eight years old. This article assesses the history, current context and future of the project. There is by now considerable momentum in building the user community, including deep training, facilitating access to current facilities, growing the scientific output, scientific networks and growing the local laboratory-scale research infrastructure. The Conceptual Design Report for the AfLS is in its final editing stages. This document specifies the socio-economic and scientific rationales and the technical aspects amongst others. The AfLS is supported by many national and Pan-African scientific professional bodies and voluntary associates across many …

Oxphos Capacity Is Diminished And The Phosphorylation System Inhibited During Diapause In An Extremophile, Embryos Of Artemia Franciscana, Yuvraj N. Patil, Erich Gnaiger, Alexander P. Landry, Zachary J. Leno, Steven C. Hand

Faculty Publications

Diapause exhibited by embryos of Artemia franciscana is accompanied by severe arrest of respiration. A large fraction of this depression is attributable to downregulation of trehalose catabolism that ultimately restricts fuel to mitochondria. This study now extends knowledge on the mechanism by revealing metabolic depression is heightened by inhibitions within mitochondria. Compared with that in embryo lysates during post-diapause, oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) capacity P is depressed during diapause when either NADH-linked substrates (pyruvate and malate) for electron transfer (electron transfer capacity, E) through respiratory Complex I or the Complex II substrate succinate are used. When pyruvate, malate and succinate were …

Phosphatidic Acid Produced By Phospholipase Dα1 And Dδ Is Incorporated Into The Internal Membranes But Not Involved In The Gene Expression Of Rd29a In The Abscisic Acid Signaling Network In Arabidopsis Thaliana, Ruth Ndathe, Naohiro Kato

Faculty Publications

Core protein components of the abscisic acid (ABA) signaling network, pyrabactin resistance (PYR), protein phosphatases 2C (PP2C), and SNF1-related protein kinase 2 (SnRK2) are involved in the regulation of stomatal closure and gene expression downstream responses in Arabidopsis thaliana. Phosphatidic acid (PA) produced by the phospholipases Dα1 and Dδ (PLDs) in the plasma membrane has been identified as a necessary molecule in ABA-inducible stomatal closure. On the other hand, the involvement of PA in ABA-inducible gene expression has been suggested but remains a question. In this study, the involvement of PA in the ABA-inducible gene expression was examined in the …

Transcriptomic Responses To Hypoxia In Two Populations Of Eastern Oyster With Differing Tolerance, Emma L. Crable, Heather Rodriguez, Rujuta V. Vaidya, Nicholas Coxe, Jerome F. La Peyre, Morgan W. Kelly

Faculty Publications

The eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, is a keystone species native to the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts of the United States and Canada. It provides habitat for other marine organisms and makes up the majority of oyster production in the United States. Despite its tolerance to hypoxic conditions, C. virginica is threatened by anthropogenic climate change, which is increasing both average temperature and the frequency and severity of hypoxic events. In this study, we explore the differences in hypoxia-transcriptional response between two populations of eastern oysters with known differences in hypoxia tolerance at three time points over the course …

Feature Engineering Of Environmental Covariates Improves Plant Genomic-Enabled Prediction, Osval A. Montesinos-López, Leonardo Crespo-Herrera, Carolina Saint Pierre, Bernabe Cano-Paez, Gloria Isabel Huerta-Prado, Brandon Alejandro Mosqueda-González, Sofia Ramos-Pulido, Guillermo Gerard, Khalid Alnowibet, Roberto Fritsche-Neto, Abelardo Montesinos-López, José Crossa

Faculty Publications

Introduction: Because Genomic selection (GS) is a predictive methodology, it needs to guarantee high-prediction accuracies for practical implementations. However, since many factors affect the prediction performance of this methodology, its practical implementation still needs to be improved in many breeding programs. For this reason, many strategies have been explored to improve the prediction performance of this methodology. Methods: When environmental covariates are incorporated as inputs in the genomic prediction models, this information only sometimes helps increase prediction performance. For this reason, this investigation explores the use of feature engineering on the environmental covariates to enhance the prediction performance of genomic …

Recent Advances In Chemistry And Antioxidant/Anticancer Biology Of Monoterpene And Meroterpenoid Natural Product, Benedict J. Barras, Taotao Ling, Fatima Rivas

Faculty Publications

Monoterpenes and meroterpenes are two large classes of isoprene-based molecules produced by terrestrial plants and unicellular organisms as diverse secondary metabolites. The global rising incidence of cancer has led to a renewed interest in natural products. These monoterpenes and meroterpenes represent a novel source of molecular scaffolds that can serve as medicinal chemistry platforms for the development of potential preclinical leads. Furthermore, some of these natural products are either abundant, or their synthetic strategies are scalable as it will be indicated here, facilitating their derivatization to expand their scope in drug discovery. This review is a collection of representative updates …

“The Good Shepherd Discourse As Persuasive Speech (John 9:39-10:21)”, Craig R. Koester

Faculty Publications

The contributors to this volume move beyond 'standard' soteriological issues, addressing often-neglected aspects of the soteriology of John and Paul. They demonstrate how themes like wisdom, volition, freedom, and the role of angels form an integral part of soteriology.

No-Poach Agreements: An Overview Of Us, Eu, And National Case Law, Donald J. Polden

Faculty Publications

The United States, European Union, and many other international jurisdictions have antitrust and competition laws that seek to prevent anticompetitive conduct concerning labor and employment relationships. However, for many years these prohibitions on restraints of trade in labor markets and employment relationships were not routinely and rigorously enforced by those jurisdictions. The lack of governmental attention to these labor market practices has changed in important ways in recent years. Across many jurisdictions, we are now seeing more intense attention to conduct that suppresses wages of workers and their freedom of job mobility to other comparable positions. From an international perspective, …

Psychology And The Legislative Future Of In Vitro Fertilization, Kerry L. Macintosh

Faculty Publications

In LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C.,¹ three couples that had undergone in vitro fertilization (hereinafter IVF) sued a fertility clinic and hospital after their stored embryos were lost in an accident.² The plaintiffs included claims under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act (hereinafter Act), which imposes liability for a wrongful act, omission, or negligence that causes the death of a “minor child.”³ The trial court dismissed the wrongful death claims, holding that the embryos were not children.⁴ The Alabama Supreme Court, however, reversed the dismissal, reasoning that the lost embryos qualified as unborn …

Loan To Own, Robert W. Miller

Faculty Publications

Convertible debtor-in-possession ("DIP") financing is symptomatic of a paradigm shift in the control of large bankruptcy cases. During the prior era of lender control, distressed investors used DIP financing to shape the trajectory of bankruptcy cases and extract monopolistic rents at the expense of other constituencies. Enter the original loan-to-own: a common strategy commenced with a DIP loan, continued with a stalking-horse bid, and culminated in an acquisition of the debtor's assets. More recently, private equity sponsors ("Sponsors") and other sophisticated insiders are usurping control of bankruptcy cases. Convertible DIP financing (Loan-to-Own 2.0) is a byproduct. This Article situates convertible …

Everyone Is Talking About Bankruptcy Directors, Robert W. Miller

Faculty Publications

The proliferation of bankruptcy directors represents a controversial shift in the corporate governance landscape. Delegating corporate decision making to bankruptcy directors insulates conflicted transactions and claims from the elevated scrutiny provided by derivative standing and entire fairness. However, critics have questioned their independence and cleansing effect. Are bankruptcy directors really independent when their role includes negotiation with and/or investigation into the same parties who appoint them? Should their decisions be given deference when their appointment is associated with lower recoveries for creditors? Bankruptcy directors' salience is best illustrated by the numerous proposals for determining whether they have cleansing effect, including …

Politicians The Founders Warned You About, Neil Fulton

Faculty Publications

Many articles have explored the Founders' intentions regarding the constitutional text. Much less attention has focused on the Founders' ideas regarding the traits needed of the leaders in a constitutional republic. The Constitution focuses on governing structures, many of which relate to the electoral process. The Constitution does not spell out the ideal traits of the leaders elected pursuant to those processes. Nonetheless, the Founders possessed clear views about the virtues and qualifications that ideal political leaders required. Indeed, the Founders issued warnings about certain archetypal political figures who, because of their flagrant disregard of the ideal virtues and qualifications, …

Do Universities Meet Their Democratic Obligations?, Neil Fulton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Assessing A Potential Deviation In The Legislative Process: The Use Of Vehicle Bills In South Dakota, Neil Fulton, Sarah Kammer, Patrick Garry

Faculty Publications

Vehicle bills are used by many state legislatures, including the South Dakota Legislature. These bills serve as empty shells to be amended with substantive text later in the legislative session. Critics charge that such vehicles allow legislators to meet the filing deadline with an essentially meaningless bill that gets amended late in the session, thereby depriving the public and opposition legislators from adequately investigating and debating the newly amended bill. This article examines how, and to what extent, the South Dakota Legislature has used vehicle bills over the past decade. In so doing, the article may provide some insight into …

Reinvigorating Congress's Role In The Administrative State: What The Major Questions Doctrine Suggests About Nondelegation, Patrick Garry, Sidney J. Hardy

Faculty Publications

In its recent decision in West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down administrative rules attempting to dramatically transform the electrical power generating industry. The Court's decision rested on its major questions doctrine, which states that on important enough matters the intent of Congress must be clearly expressed. This doctrine goes against the prevailing trend of deference toward the administrative state, as expressed through the permissive nondelegation and Chevron doctrines. While the major questions doctrine seeks to retain some congressional control over important issues, it nonetheless attracts much criticism on an array of grounds. This article proposes an …

Molecular And Cellular Programs Underlying The Development Of Bovine Pre-Implantation Embryos, Zongliang Jiang

Faculty Publications

Early embryonic mortality is a major cause of infertility in cattle, yet the underlying molecular causes remain a mystery. Over the past half century, assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation and somatic cell nuclear transfer have been used to improve cattle reproductive efficiency; however, reduced embryo developmental potential is seen compared to their in vivo counterparts. Recent years have seen exciting progress across bovine embryo research, including genomic profiling of embryogenesis, new methods for improving embryo competence, and experimenting on building bovine embryos from stem cell cultures. These advances are beginning to define bovine embryo molecular and cellular …

Th2 And Th17-Associated Immunopathology Following Sars-Cov-2 Breakthrough Infection In Spike-Vaccinated Ace2-Humanized Mice, Tianyi Zhang, Nicholas Magazine, Michael C. Mcgee, Mariano Carossino, Gianluca Veggiani, Konstantin G. Kousoulas, Avery August, Weishan Huang

Faculty Publications

Vaccines have demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in protecting against COVID-19; however, concerns regarding vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory diseases (VAERD) following breakthrough infections have emerged. Spike protein subunit vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 induce VAERD in hamsters, where aluminum adjuvants promote a Th2-biased immune response, leading to increased type 2 pulmonary inflammation in animals with breakthrough infections. To gain a deeper understanding of the potential risks and the underlying mechanisms of VAERD, we immunized ACE2-humanized mice with SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein adjuvanted with aluminum and CpG-ODN. Subsequently, we exposed them to increasing doses of SARS-CoV-2 to establish a breakthrough infection. The vaccine elicited robust neutralizing antibody …

Flooded Mangrove Landscapes Hide Ancient Maya Coastal Sites In Belize, Heather I. Mckillop

Faculty Publications

Evidence of ancient Maya exploitation of salt, other marine resources, settlement, and sea trade is hidden in flooded mangrove landscapes on the cays, mainland, and in shallow offshore locations on the south coast of Belize. This article includes a discussion of the coastal economy from the Middle Preclassic through the Postclassic periods (600 B.C.–A.D. 1500). Data from sites discovered and excavated since 1982 in the coastal area of the Port Honduras and Paynes Creek National Park support a model of coastal reliance on marine resources and tree crops. The need for a regular supply of coastal salt to inland cities …

Convolution-Transformer For Image Feature Extraction, Lirong Yin, Lei Wang, Siyu Lu, Ruiyang Wang, Youshuai Yang, Bo Yang, Shan Liu, Ahmed Alsanad, Salman A. Alqahtani, Zhengtong Yin, Xiaolu Li, Xiaobing Chen, Wenfeng Zheng

Faculty Publications

This study addresses the limitations of Transformer models in image feature extraction, particularly their lack of inductive bias for visual structures. Compared to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), the Transformers are more sensitive to different hyperparameters of optimizers, which leads to a lack of stability and slow convergence. To tackle these challenges, we propose the Convolution-based Efficient Transformer Image Feature Extraction Network (CEFormer) as an enhancement of the Transformer architecture. Our model incorporates E-Attention, depthwise separable convolution, and dilated convolution to introduce crucial inductive biases, such as translation invariance, locality, and scale invariance, into the Transformer framework. Additionally, we implement a …

Summer-Wet Hydrologic Cycle During The Middle Miocene Of The United States: New Evidence From Fossil Fungi, Jennifer M.K. O’Keefe, Matthew J. Pound, Ingrid C. Romero, Noelia B. Nuñez Otaño, Martha E. Gibson, Jessica Mccoy, Margaret E. Alden, C. Jolene Fairchild, Julia Fitzpatrick, Emily Hodgson, Taylor Horsfall, Savannah Jones, June E. Lennex-Stone, Christopher A. Marsh, Alyssa A. Patel, Tyler M. Spears, Laikin Tarlton, Liberty F. Smallwood, O. L. Vanderespt, Jeremyah R. Cabrera, Cortland F. Eble, William C. Rember, James E. Starnes, Mac H. Alford, Alyson Brink, Sophie Warny

Faculty Publications

Hydrologic reconstructions from North America are largely unknown for the Middle Miocene. Examination of fungal palynomorph assemblages coupled with traditional plant-based palynology permits delineation of local, as opposed to regional, climate signals and provides a baseline for study of ancient fungas. Here, the Fungi in a Warmer World project presents paleoecology and paleoclimatology of 351 fungal morphotypes from 3 sites in the United States: the Clarkia Konservat-Lagerstätte site (Idaho), the Alum Bluff site (Florida), and the Bouie River site (Mississippi). Of these, 83 fungi are identified as extant taxa and 41 are newly reported from the Miocene. Combining new plant-based …

Asynchronous Movement Patterns Between Breeding And Stopover Locations In A Long-Distance Migratory Songbird, Theodore Zenzal, Andrea Contina, Hannah Vander Zanden, Leanne Kuwahara, Daniel Allen, Kristen Covino

Faculty Publications

The species-specific migratory patterns and strategies of many songbirds remain unknown or understudied, as research in animal ecology is biased toward the breeding period, with the fewest studies on the migratory period across taxa. Identifying large-scale spatiotemporal migratory patterns is challenging, as individuals within a species may vary in their migratory behavior and strategies. The Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) is a Nearctic-Neotropical migrant that is relatively well studied during the breeding season, but its species-wide migratory patterns remain understudied. Our aim in studying Yellow Warbler movement ecology was to characterize temporal migration patterns during fall migration. We sought to determine …

Conning The Crypto Conman: End-To-End Analysis Of Cryptocurrency-Based Technical Support Scams, Bhupendra Acharya, Muhammad Saad, Antonio Emanuele Cinà, Lea Schönherr, Hoang Dai Nguyen, Adam Oest, Phani Vadrevu, Thorsten Holz

Faculty Publications

The mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies has led to a surge in wallet-related issues reported by ordinary users on social media platforms. In parallel, there is an increase in an emerging fraud trend called cryptocurrency-based technical support scam, in which fraudsters offer fake wallet recovery services and target users experiencing wallet-related issues.In this paper, we perform a comprehensive study of cryptocurrency-based technical support scams. We present an analysis apparatus called HoneyTweet to analyze this kind of scam. Through HoneyTweet, we lure over 9K scammers by posting 25K fake wallet support tweets (so-called honey tweets). We then deploy automated systems to interact …

International Society Of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Long-Chain Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids, Alex Leaf, Jeffrey A. Rothschild, Tim M. Sharpe, Stacy T. Sims, Chad J. Macias, Geoff G. Futch, Michael D. Roberts, Jeffrey R. Stout, Michael J. Ormsbee, Alan A. Aragon, Bill I. Campbell, Shawn M. Arent Ph.D., Cscs*D, Fissn, Facsm, Fnak, Dominic P. D’Agostino, Michelle T. Barrack, Chad M. Kerksick, Richard B. Kreider, Douglas S. Kalman, Jose Antonio

Faculty Publications

Position statement: The International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) provides an objective and critical review of the use of a ketogenic diet in healthy exercising adults, with a focus on exercise performance and body composition. However, this review does not address the use of exogenous ketone supplements. The following points summarize the position of the ISSN: 1. A ketogenic diet induces a state of nutritional ketosis, which is generally defined as serum ketone levels above 0.5 mM. While many factors can impact what amount of daily carbohydrate intake will result in these levels, a broad guideline is a daily dietary …

Common Questions And Misconceptions About Protein Supplementation: What Does The Scientific Evidence Really Show?, Jose Antonio, Cassandra Evans, Arny A. Ferrando, Jeffrey R. Stout, Brandi Antonio, Harry Cinteo, Patrick Harty, Shawn M. Arent Ph.D., Cscs*D, Fissn, Facsm, Fnak, Darren G. Candow, Scott C. Forbes, Chad M. Kerksick, Flavia Pereira, Drew Gonzalez, Richard B. Kreider

Faculty Publications

Protein supplementation often refers to increasing the intake of this particular macronutrient through dietary supplements in the form of powders, ready-to-drink shakes, and bars. The primary purpose of protein supplementation is to augment dietary protein intake, aiding individuals in meeting their protein requirements, especially when it may be challenging to do so through regular food (i.e. chicken, beef, fish, pork, etc.) sources alone. A large body of evidence shows that protein has an important role in exercising and sedentary individuals. A PubMed search of “protein and exercise performance” reveals thousands of publications. Despite the considerable volume of evidence, it is …

Ifn-𝜸 And Il-10 Immunosensor With Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotube Interdigitated Electrodes Toward Pen-Side Cattle Paratuberculosis Monitoring, Shaowei Ding, Benjamin J. Brownlee, Kshama Parate, Cicero C. Pola, Bolin Chen, Jesse M. Hostetter, Douglas Jones, John Jackman, Brian D. Iverson, Jonathan C. Claussen

Faculty Publications

Highly sensitive vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays (VANTAs) interdigitated electrode (IDE) arrays are developed for electrochemical biosensing of two cytokines (i.e., interleukin-10 (IL-10) and interferon-gamma (IFN-𝜸)) that are useful for early detection Johne’s disease (Bovine Paratuberculosis) in cattle. The high aspect ratio VANTA-IDEs (50–60 μm in height) are grown through a chemical vapor deposition process from an iron (Fe) catalyst that is lithographically patterned on a silicon wafer with equal finger width and inter-finger spacing of 25 μm. After functionalization with distinct antibodies the VANTA-IDEs are capable of selective detection of both IL-10 and IFN-𝜸 within an actual biological matrix …

Employers And The Privatization Of Public Health, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

This Article focuses on the role of employers in public health and argues that they constitute increasingly important actors in the U.S. public health arena. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of judicial decisions and newly enacted statutes enfeebled the public health powers of the federal and state governments. In a 2023 statement, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch clearly articulated his antagonism towards government-initiated COVID-19 interventions, describing them as “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” All too many share his views.

Employers may be highly motivated to safeguard their workers’ …