Digital Commons Network^™

Voldemort Tyrannos: Plato’S Tyrant In The Republic And The Wizarding World, Anne Collins Smith, Owen M. Smith

Faculty Publications

In the Harry Potter novel series, by J. K. Rowling, the character of Lord Voldemort is the dictatorial ruler of the Death Eaters and aspiring despot of the entire wizarding community. As such, he serves as an apt subject for the application of Plato’s portrait of the tyrant in Republic IX. The process of applying Plato to Voldemort, however, leads to an apparent anomaly, the resolution of which requires that we move beyond the Republic to the account of beauty presented by Plato in the Symposium. In doing so, we shall find that while Plato can help us to understand …

Tools For The Identification Of Bioactives Impacting The Metabolic Syndrome: Screening Of A Botanical Extract Library Using Subcutaneous And Visceral Human Adipose-Derived Stem Cell-Based Assays, Benjamin M. Buehrer, David J. Duffin, Y. Renee Lea-Currie, David Ribnicky, Ilya Raskin, Jacqueline M. Stephens, William T. Cefalu, Jeffrey M. Gimble

Faculty Publications

Plant extracts continue to represent an untapped source of renewable therapeutic compounds for the treatment and prevention of illnesses including chronic metabolic disorders. With the increase in worldwide obesity and its related morbidities, the need for identifying safe and effective treatments is also rising. As such, use of primary human adipose-derived stem cells represents a physiologically relevant cell system to screen for bioactive agents in the prevention and treatment of obesity and its related complications. By using these cells in a primary screen, the risk and cost of identifying artifacts due to interspecies variation and immortalized cell lines is eliminated. …

Vitronectin Inhibits Neutrophil Apoptosis Through Activation Of Integrin-Associated Signaling Pathways, Hong Beom Bae, Jaroslaw W. Zmijewski, Jessy S. Deshane, Degui Zhi, Lawrence C. Thompson, Cynthia B. Peterson, David D. Chaplin, Edward Abraham

Faculty Publications

Vitronectin is present in large concentrations in serum and the extracellular matrix. Although vitronectin is known to modulate neutrophil adhesion and chemotaxis, and to contribute to neutrophil-associated proinflammatory processes, a role in apoptosis has not been demonstrated. In thepresent studies,wefound that neutrophils demonstrated more rapid progression to spontaneous or TNF-related apoptosisinducing ligand-induced apoptosis when incubated under vitronectinfree conditions thanwhen vitronectinwas present. The ability of native vitronectin to delay neutrophil apoptosis was not recapitulated by the vitronectin somatomedin B domain. In contrast, inclusion of the cyclo[Arg-Gly-Asp-D-Phe-Val] peptide in cultures containing vitronectin resulted in enhanced neutrophil apoptosis, showing that the vitronectin RGD …

Food Deprivation Explains Effects Of Mouthbrooding On Ovaries And Steroid Hormones, But Not Brain Neuropeptide And Receptor Mrnas, In An African Cichlid Fish, Brian P. Grone, Russ E. Carpenter, Malinda Lee, Karen P. Maruska, Russell D. Fernald

Faculty Publications

Feeding behavior and reproduction are coordinately regulated by the brain via neurotransmitters, circulating hormones, and neuropeptides. Reduced feeding allows animals to engage in other behaviors important for fitness, including mating and parental care. Some fishes cease feeding for weeks at a time in order to provide care to their young by brooding them inside the male or female parent's mouth. Maternal mouthbrooding is known to impact circulating hormones and subsequent reproductive cycles, but neither the full effects of food deprivation nor the neural mechanisms are known. Here we ask what effects mouthbrooding has on several physiological processes including gonad and …

The Tegula Tango: A Coevolutionary Dance Of Interacting, Positively Selected Sperm And Egg Proteins, Michael E. Hellberg, Alice B. Dennis, Patricia Arbour-Reily, Jan E. Aagaard, Willie J. Swanson

Faculty Publications

Reproductive proteins commonly show signs of rapid divergence driven by positive selection. The mechanisms driving these changes have remained ambiguous in part because interacting male and female proteins have rarely been examined. We isolate an egg protein the vitelline envelope receptor for lysin (VERL) from Tegula, a genus of free-spawning marine snails. Like VERL from abalone, Tegula VERL is a major component of the VE surrounding the egg, includes a conserved zona pellucida (ZP) domain at its C-terminus, and possesses a unique, negatively charged domain of about 150 amino acids implicated in interactions with the positively charged lysin. Unlike for …

Oil Impacts On Coastal Wetlands: Implications For The Mississippi River Delta Ecosystem After The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Irving A. Mendelssohn, Gary L. Andersen, Donald M. Baltz, Rex H. Caffey, Kevin R. Carman, John W. Fleeger, Samantha B. Joye, Qianxin Lin, Edward Maltby, Edward B. Overton, Lawrence P. Rozas

Faculty Publications

On 20 April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which released a US governmentestimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, was responsible for the death of 11 oil workers and, possibly, for an environmental disaster unparalleled in US history. For 87 consecutive days, the Macondo well continuously released crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Many kilometers of shoreline in the northern Gulf of Mexico were affected, including the fragile and ecologically important wetlands of Louisiana's Mississippi River Delta ecosystem. These wetlands are responsible for a third of the nation's fish production and, ironically, help to …

Concurrent Effects Of Resource Pulse Amount, Type, And Frequency On Community And Population Properties Of Consumers In Detritus-Based Systems, Donald A. Yee, Steven A. Juliano

Faculty Publications

Episodic resource inputs (i.e., pulses) can affect food web properties and community dynamics, but detailed mechanistic understanding of such effects remain elusive. Natural aquatic microsystems (e.g., tree holes, human-made containers) are colonized by invertebrates that form complex food webs dependent on episodic and sometimes sizeable inputs of allochthonous detritus from adjacent terrestrial environments. We investigated how variation in pulse frequency, amount, and resource type interacted to affect richness, abundance, composition, and population sizes of colonizing invertebrates in water-filled tires and tree hole analogs in a forest habitat. Different container types were used to assess the generality of effects across two …

High-Amylose Resistant Starch Increases Hormones And Improves Structure And Function Of The Gastrointestinal Tract: A Microarray Study, Michael J. Keenan, Roy J. Martin, Anne M. Raggio, Kathleen L. Mccutcheon, Ian L. Brown, Anne Birkett, Susan S. Newman, Jihad Skaf, Maren Hegsted, Richard T. Tulley, Eric Blair, June Zhou

Faculty Publications

Background/Aims: Type 2 resistant starch from high-amylose maize (HAM-RS2) is associated with increased fermentation, increased expression of proglucagon (gene for GLP-1) and peptide YY (PYY) genes in the large intestine, and improved health. To determine what other genes are up- or downregulated with feeding of HAM-RS2, a microarray was performed. Methods: Adult, male Sprague Dawley rats were fed one of the following three diets for a 4-week study period: cornstarch control (CC, 3.74 kcal/g), dietary energy density control (EC, 3.27 kcal/g), and 30% HAM-RS2 (RS, 3.27 kcal/g). Rat microarray with ∼27,000 genes and validation of 94 representative genes with multiple …

Cardiorespiratory Fitness Reduces The Risk Of Incident Hypertension Associated With A Parental History Of Hypertension, Robin P. Shook, Duck-Chul Lee, Xuemei Sui, Vivek Prasad, Steven P. Hooker, Timothy S. Church, Steven N. Blair

Faculty Publications

Family history of hypertension increases the risk of an individual to develop hypertension, whereas moderate-to-high cardiorespiratory fitness has the opposite effect. However, the joint association of each on the development of hypertension is not well understood. We studied fitness and incident hypertension in 6278 participants who were given a preventative medical examination. Thirty-three percent reported a parent with hypertension, and there were 1545 cases of incident hypertension after a mean of 4.7 years. The presence of parental hypertension was associated with a 28% higher risk of developing hypertension after adjustments for age, sex, and examination year. After further adjustments for …

Global Technology Initiative At San Jose State University: Results Of Seven Years Of An International Experience For Students, Belle Wei, Patricia Backer, Wenchiang Chung, Andrew Wood

Faculty Publications

For XXX students to thrive in the highly competitive global economy, it is critical to develop international perspectives and knowledge. The $1 million Global Technology Initiative (GTI), established in 2004, provides SJSU students with an opportunity to gain a global perspective of the world by learning about technology and business developments in the Asia Pacific region. GTI donors are high-tech business leaders with strong business ties in Silicon Valley and the Asia Pacific region. Given the current trend of engineering globalization in the global economy, particularly the trend of outsourcing Silicon Valley manufacturing, development, and design work to foreign countries, …

Loss Of Mhc And Neutral Variation In Peary Caribou: Genetic Drift Is Not Mitigated By Balancing Selection Or Exacerbated By Mhc Allele Distributions, Sabrina S. Taylor, Deborah A. Jenkins, Peter Arcese

Faculty Publications

Theory and empirical results suggest that the rate of loss of variation at Mhc and neutral microsatellite loci may differ because selection influences Mhc genes, and because a high proportion of rare alleles at Mhc loci may result in high rates of loss via drift. Most published studies compare Mhc and microsatellite variation in various contemporary populations to infer the effects of population size on genetic variation, even though different populations are likely to have different demographic histories that may also affect contemporary genetic variation. We directly compared loss of variation at Mhc and microsatellite loci in Peary caribou by …

On Vacation With God: A Guide To Spiritual And Physical Renewal, Gerald A. Klingbeil

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

New Technology - Old Law: Autonomous Vehicles And California's Insurance Framework, Robert Peterson

Faculty Publications

In 1988 California voters adopted Proposition 103. The Proposition moved California into the group of states that regulates and requires prior approval of all automotive rates. Had it done only this, insuring autonomous vehicles would present only modest challenges.

Proposition 103, however, did much more. It entrenched into California insurance law a number of requirements that are incompatible with autonomous vehicles and the rapidly advancing technology they embody. The Proposition mandates the use of some specific rating factors that determine a vehicle owner’s premium. This rating system makes little sense when applied to self-driving vehicles. The Proposition also mandates a …

The African Cichlid Fish Astatotilapia Burtoni Uses Acoustic Communication For Reproduction: Sound Production, Hearing, And Behavioral Significance, Karen P. Maruska, Uyhun S. Ung, Russell D. Fernald

Faculty Publications

Sexual reproduction in all animals depends on effective communication between signalers and receivers. Many fish species, especially the African cichlids, are well known for their bright coloration and the importance of visual signaling during courtship and mate choice, but little is known about what role acoustic communication plays during mating and how it contributes to sexual selection in this phenotypically diverse group of vertebrates. Here we examined acoustic communication during reproduction in the social cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni. We characterized the sounds and associated behaviors produced by dominant males during courtship, tested for differences in hearing ability associated with female …

Adrenergic Alpha-1 Pathway Is Associated With Hypertension Among Nigerians In A Pathway-Focused Analysis, Nicholas P. Reder, Bamidele O. Tayo, Babatunde Salako, Adesola Ogunniyi, Adebowale Adeyemo, Charles Rotimi, Richard S. Cooper

Faculty Publications

Background: The pathway-focused association approach offers a hypothesis driven alternative to the agnostic genome-wide association study. Here we apply the pathway-focused approach to an association study of hypertension, systolic blood pressure (SBP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) in 1614 Nigerians with genome-wide data. Methods and Results: Testing of 28 pathways with biological relevance to hypertension, selected a priori, containing a total of 101 unique genes and 4,349 unique single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) showed an association for the adrenergic alpha 1 (ADRA1) receptor pathway with hypertension (pp>10-5) SNPs offers a novel method for detecting the "missing heritability" of hypertension. These findings …

Rethinking Patent Disclosure, Colleen Chien

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Patterns Of Sodium And Potassium Excretion And Blood Pressure In The African Diaspora, B. O. Tayo, A. Luke, C. A. Mckenzie, H. Kramer, G. Cao, R. Durazo-Arvizu, T. Forrester, A. A. Adeyemo, R. S. Cooper

Faculty Publications

Habitual levels of dietary sodium and potassium are correlated with age-related increases in blood pressure (BP) and likely have a role in this phenomenon. Although extensive published evidence exists from randomized trials, relatively few large-scale community surveys with multiple 24-h urine collections have been reported. We obtained three 24-h samples from 2704 individuals from Nigeria, Jamaica and the United States to evaluate patterns of intake and within-person relationships with BP. The average (±s.d.) age and weight of the participants across all the three sites were 39.9±8.6 years and 76.1±21.2 kg, respectively, and 55% of the total participants were females. Sodium …

The Nation Before Taste: The Challenges Of American Culinary History, Andrew P. Haley

Faculty Publications

Food is material and familiar, and because it is, we are often overconfident about our ability to understand the culinary past. It is easy to believe that if we can discover the recipe for some forgotten dish, the history of the dish becomes intelligible. When it does not, it tempts those who consume culinary history to impose modern sensibilities on our predecessors. The Nation before Taste" argues that historians and museum curators must be especially vigilant when presenting the history of food. Reviewing a series of historical challenges that stemmed from studying the United States in the late nineteenth and …

The Connection Between Slavery And Prophecy As It Related To The American Nation In The Writings Of The Adventist Pioneers During The Antebellum Period, Trevor O'Reggio, Dojcin Zivadinovic

Faculty Publications

The period between 1850 and 1865 was a period of major social upheavals in American society; the major issue was the slavery. This period also witnessed the birth and organization of the Sabbatarian Adventism, a pre-millennial Christian movement distinguished by an emphasis on the Seventh-day Sabbath and a special understanding of Bible prophecies. Most Adventist pioneers vehemently opposed slavery, although not always on the same ground as their Christian counterparts. Aided by their peculiar understanding of Bible prophecy, the early Adventists identified America with apocalyptical end-time power, slavery being the key attribute of the “beast that looks like a lamb …

Quest Hierarchy For Hyperspectral Face Recognition, David M. Ryer, Trevor J. Bihl, Kenneth W. Bauer Jr., Steven K. Rogers

Faculty Publications

A qualia exploitation of sensor technology (QUEST) motivated architecture using algorithm fusion and adaptive feedback loops for face recognition for hyperspectral imagery (HSI) is presented. QUEST seeks to develop a general purpose computational intelligence system that captures the beneficial engineering aspects of qualia-based solutions. Qualia-based approaches are constructed from subjective representations and have the ability to detect, distinguish, and characterize entities in the environment Adaptive feedback loops are implemented that enhance performance by reducing candidate subjects in the gallery and by injecting additional probe images during the matching process. The architecture presented provides a framework for exploring more advanced integration …

Phthalocyanine-Peptide Conjugates For Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Targeting, Benson G. Ongarora, Krystal R. Fontenot, Xiaoke Hu, Inder Sehgal, Seetharama D. Satyanarayana-Jois, Dm Graça H. Vicente

Faculty Publications

Four phthalocyanine (Pc)-peptide conjugates designed to target the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) were synthesized and evaluated in vitro using four cell lines: human carcinoma A431 and HEp2, human colorectal HT-29, and kidney Vero (negative control) cells. Two peptide ligands for EGFR were investigated: EGFR-L1 and -L2, bearing 6 and 13 amino acid residues, respectively. The peptides and Pc-conjugates were shown to bind to EGFR using both theoretical (Autodock) and experimental (SPR) investigations. The Pc-EGFR-L1 conjugates 5a and 5b efficiently targeted EGFR and were internalized, in part due to their cationic charge, whereas the uncharged Pc-EGFR-L2 conjugates 4b and 6a …

One-Dimensional-Turbulence Simulation Of Flame Extinction And Reignition In Planar Ethylene Jet Flames, David O. Lignell, Devin Rappleye

Faculty Publications

A series of three simulations of temporally evolving, planar, nonpremixed ethylene jet flames are performed using the one-dimensional-turbulence (ODT) model. The simulations are performed at a fixed Reynolds number, but varying Damköhler numbers, under conditions that result in significant flame extinction and reignition. Results are compared to corresponding direct numerical simulations (DNSs), which exhibit 40, 70, and nearly 100% peak flame extinction among the three cases. The planar, temporal configuration is ideal for comparison and validation of the ODT model, and identical thermodynamic, transport, and kinetic models were used. The ODT model captures the jet evolution and heat …

Sustainability: More About The Toolmaker Than The Tools, R. Eugene Turner

Faculty Publications

A sustainable system is not necessarily a high-quality one, but it could be. We could, for example, “survive” on the desperate edge, as the remnants in a self-fouled and deteriorating environment. Why won’t a future sustainable system be just another industrial model of mass efficiency and throughput? Perhaps the incompatible outcomes are a choice between the sometimes nearly invisible civilizing aspects of culture nurturing respect, equality, and cooperation on one hand, and the greed and self-indulgences undermining social tolerance, empathy, and cooperation that ends up promoting violence and dehumanization. The human heritage is subtle, indestructible, and worth nurturing if we …

High Dispersal Ability Inhibits Speciation In A Continental Radiation Of Passerine Birds, Santiago Claramunt, Elizabeth P. Derryberry, Jr V. Remsen, Robb T. Brumfield

Faculty Publications

Dispersal can stimulate speciation byfacilitating geographical expansion across barriers or inhibit speciation by maintaining gene flow among populations. Therefore, the relationship between dispersal ability and speciation rates can be positive or negative. Furthermore, an 'intermediate dispersal' model that combines positive and negative effects predicts a unimodal relationship between dispersal and diversification. Because both dispersal ability and speciation rates are difficult to quantify, empirical evidence for the relationship between dispersal and diversification remains scarce. Using a surrogate for flight performance and a species-level DNA-based phylogeny of a large South American bird radiation (the Furnariidae), we found that lineages with higher dispersal …

A Plant Virus Substrate Induces Early Upregulation Of Bmp2 For Rapid Bone Formation, Pongkwan Sitasuwan, L. Andrew Lee, Peng Bo, Erin N. Davis, Yuan Lin, Qian Wang

Faculty Publications

Many nanoscale materials have been developed to investigate the effects on stem cell differentiations via topographical and chemical cues for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The use of plant viruses as cell supporting substrates has been of particular interest due to the rapid induction of bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) towards osteogenic cells. In this study, the role of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and its early effects on osteoinduction with particular emphasis on the regulation of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP2) was examined. We observed that the cells on the virus substrate immediately aggregated and formed bone-like …

"Everyone Who Hears Will Laugh With Me": Humor And Telling God's Truth, Rolf A. Jacobson, Karl Jacobson

Faculty Publications

Since humor is an essential part of human nature, speaking the truth, including the biblical truth, seems to require the use of humor. Humor exposes our flaws and opens us to new vistas—or in theological terms, it preaches both law and gospel.

Using A Virtual World For Robot Planning, D. Paul Benjamin, John V. Monaco, Yixia Lin, Christopher Funk, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

We are building a robot cognitive architecture that constructs a real-time virtual copy of itself and its environment, including people, and uses the model to process perceptual information and to plan its movements. This paper describes the structure of this architecture. The software components of this architecture include PhysX for the virtual world, OpenCV and the Point Cloud Library for visual processing, and the Soar cognitive architecture that controls the perceptual processing and task planning. The RS (Robot Schemas) language is implemented in Soar, providing the ability to reason about concurrency and time. This Soar/RS component controls visual processing, deciding …

The Canon At The Water's Edge, Thomas B. Bennett

Faculty Publications

What motivates substantive presumptions about how to interpret statutes? Are they like statistical heuristics that aim to predict Congress's most likely behavior, or are they meant to protect certain underenforced values against inadvertent legislative encroachment? These two rationales, fact-based and value-based, are the extremes of a continuum. This Note uses the presumption against extraterritoriality to demonstrate this continuum and how a presumption can shift along it. The presumption operates to diminish the likelihood that a federal statute will be read to extend beyond the borders of the United States. The presumption has been remarkably stable for decades despite watershed changes …

Salinity- And Population-Dependent Genome Regulatory Response During Osmotic Acclimation In The Killifish (Fundulus Heteroclitus) Gill, Andrew Whitehead, Jennifer L. Roach, Shujun Zhang, Fernando Galvez

Faculty Publications

The killifish Fundulus heteroclitus is abundant in osmotically dynamic estuaries and it can quickly adjust to extremes in environmental salinity. We performed a comparative osmotic challenge experiment to track the transcriptomic and physiological responses to two salinities throughout a time course of acclimation, and to explore the genome regulatory mechanisms that enable extreme osmotic acclimation. One southern and one northern coastal population, known to differ in their tolerance to hypo-osmotic exposure, were used as our comparative model. Both populations could maintain osmotic homeostasis when transferred from 32 to 0.4 p.p.t., but diverged in their compensatory abilities when challenged down to …

Functional Hierarchy Of Herpes Simplex Virus 1 Viral Glycoproteins In Cytoplasmic Virion Envelopment And Egress, Dmitry V. Chouljenko, In Joong Kim, Vladimir N. Chouljenko, Ramesh Subramanian, Jason D. Walker, Konstantin G. Kousoulas

Faculty Publications

Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) viral glycoproteins gD (carboxyl terminus), gE, gK, and gM, the membrane protein UL20, and membrane-associated protein UL11 play important roles in cytoplasmic virion envelopment and egress from infected cells. We showed previously that a recombinant virus carrying a deletion of the carboxyl-terminal 29 amino acids of gD (gDΔct) and the entire gE gene (ΔgE) did not exhibit substantial defects in cytoplasmic virion envelopment and egress (H. C. Lee et al., J. Virol. 83:6115-6124, 2009). The recombinant virus ΔgM2, engineered not to express gM, produced a 3-to 4-fold decrease in viral titers and a 50% reduction …