Digital Commons Network^™

Contextual Chemosensory Urine Signaling In An African Cichlid Fish, Karen P. Maruska, Russell D. Fernald

Faculty Publications

Chemosensory signaling is crucial for communication in many fish species, but little is known about how signalers modulate chemical output in response to sensory information and social context. Here, we tested the hypothesis that dominant male African cichlid fish (Astatotilapia burtoni) use urine signals during social interactions, and demonstrate that this signaling depends on social context (reproductive; territorial) and on available sensory information (visual cues; full interaction). We injected males with dye to visualize urine pulses and exposed them to full sensory information or visual cues alone of four types: (1) dominant male; (2) gravid (reproductively receptive) females; (3) mouth-brooding …

Barbuda: A Caribbean Island In Transition, Andrew Sluyter, Amy E. Potter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Blacks In Establishing Cattle Ranching In Louisiana In The Eighteenth Century, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

A longstanding assumption posits that white ranchers from the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, provided the knowledge to establish the first cattle ranches in Louisiana in the mid-eighteenth century, that blacks merely provided the labor, and that the herding ecology involved was the same as that of the Acadian ranchers who followed. Reconstruction of the locations of the first major ranches and the backgrounds of their owners and slaves, however, reveals that none of them came to Louisiana from Saint-Domingue and that the ranches occupied the western margin of the Atchafalaya basin, an environment quite different than the …

A Herpes Simplex Virus 1 (Mckrae) Mutant Lacking The Glycoprotein K Gene Is Unable To Infect Via Neuronal Axons And Egress From Neuronal Cell Bodies, Andrew T. David, Ahmad Saied, Anu Charles, Ramesh Subramanian, Vladimir N. Chouljenko, Konstantin G. Kousoulas

Faculty Publications

We have shown that the herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) gK gene is essential for efficient replication and spread in the corneal epithelium and trigeminal ganglion neuroinvasion in mice (A. T. David, A. Baghian, T. P. Foster, V. N. Chouljenko, and K. G. Kousoulas, Curr. Eye Res. 33:455-467, 2008). To further investigate the role of gK in neuronal infection, we utilized a microfluidic chamber system separating neuronal cell bodies and axonal termini. HSV-1 (McKrae) engineered virus constitutively expressing enhanced green fluorescence protein (GFP) was efficiently transmitted in both a retrograde and an anterograde manner. These results were corroborated by expression …

Perspectives In Ornithology: Inferring The Origins Of Lowland Neotropical Birds, Robb T. Brumfield

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Player Safety In Youth Sports: Sportsmanship And Respect As An Injury Prevention Strategy, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Preventing avoidable injury is the first obligation of adults who conduct and supervise youth sports events. The law plays only a limited role because lawsuits occur only after the injury. As the behavior of many parents and coaches has deteriorated, national youth sports governing bodies have produced materials that cast adults as role models and urge them to teach and practice sportsmanship and respect. These bodies should now recast these useful citizenship-based adult-education materials to stress also that adherence to sportsmanship and respect helps prevent injuries that can occur when adults acting irresponsibly neutralize national safety standards. Protective equipment is …

Bringing Mindfulness Into The Law School Classroom: A Personal Journey, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

This autobiographical essay discusses how the author used the techniques and benefits associated with mindfulness to improve his law school classroom teaching. Mindfulness is a state of non-judgmental present moment awareness that is often cultivated through meditation practice but also carried forward into everyday life. The essay discusses how this stance of mindfulness helped the author achieve a greater connection with his students in a variety of both doctrinal and non-traditional classes by fostering more openness, receptivity, and responsiveness to where students are at in the classroom moment, as well as the greater clarity, courage, and compassion that can be …

Not A Free Press Court?, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

The last decade has been tumultuous for print and broadcast media. Daily newspaper circulation continues to fall precipitously, magazines struggle to survive, and network television audiences keep shrinking. In the meanwhile, cable news is prospering, mobile devices are contributing to increased news consumption, and many new media outlets appear to be thriving. Despite the dynamism in the media industry, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has taken up relatively few First Amendment cases directly involving the media. The Court has addressed a number of important free speech cases since 2005, but thus far the only Roberts Court decisions …

Gaba Is Excitatory In Adult Vasopressinergic Neuroendocrine Cells, Juhee Haam, Ion R. Popescu, Linda A. Morton, Katalin C. Halmos, Ryoichi Teruyama, Yoichi Ueta, Jeffrey G. Tasker

Faculty Publications

Neuronal excitability in the adult brain is controlled by a balance between synaptic excitation and inhibition mediated by glutamate and GABA, respectively. While generally inhibitory in the adult brain, GABAA receptor activation is excitatory under certain conditions in which the GABA reversal potential is shifted positive due to intracellular Cl-accumulation, such as during early postnatal development and brain injury. However, the conditions under which GABA is excitatory are generally either transitory or pathological. Here, we reveal GABAergic synaptic inputs to be uniformly excitatory in vasopressin (VP)-secreting magnocellular neurons in the adult hypothalamus under normal conditions. The GABA reversal potential (EGABA) …

Subordinate Male Cichlids Retain Reproductive Competence During Social Suppression, Jacqueline M. Kustan, Karen P. Maruska, Russell D. Fernald

Faculty Publications

Subordinate males, which are excluded from reproduction often save energy by reducing their investment in sperm production. However, if their position in a dominance hierarchy changes suddenly they should also rapidly attain fertilization capability. Here, we asked how social suppression and ascension to dominance influences sperm quality, spermatogenesis and reproductive competence in the cichlid Astatotilapia burtoni, where reproduction is tightly coupled to social status. Dominant territorial (T) males are reproductively active while subordinate non-territorial (NT) males are suppressed, but given the opportunity, NT males will perform dominance behaviours within minutes and attain T male testes size within days. Using the …

Limited Potential For Adaptation To Climate Change In A Broadly Distributed Marine Crustacean, Morgan W. Kelly, Eric Sanford, Richard K. Grosberg

Faculty Publications

The extent to which acclimation and genetic adaptation might buffer natural populations against climate change is largely unknown. Most models predicting biological responses to environmental change assume that species' climatic envelopes are homogeneous both in space and time. Although recent discussions have questioned this assumption, few empirical studies have characterized intraspecific patterns of genetic variation in traits directly related to environmental tolerance limits. We test the extent of such variation in the broadly distributed tidepool copepod Tigriopus californicus using laboratory rearing and selection experiments to quantify thermal tolerance and scope for adaptation in eight populations spanning more than 178 of …

Recruitment And Biological Consequences Of Histone Modification Of H3k27me3 And H3k9me3., Joomyeong Kim, Hana Kim

Faculty Publications

Two histone marks, H3K27me3 and H3K9me3, are well known for their repressive roles in the genic and nongenic regions of metazoan genomes. Several protein complexes are known to be responsible for generating these marks, including polycomb repression complex 2 and several H3K9 methylases. Recent studies have shown that the targeting of these histone-modifying complexes within mammalian genomes may be mediated through several DNA-binding proteins, including AEBP2, JARID2, and YY1. In this review, we discuss the potential targeting mechanisms in light of the recent results that have been derived from genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing data and the in vivo functions of …

Workshop And Panel Discussion: High-Throughput Cryopreservation Of Germplasm As An Exchange Currency For Genetic Resources, Zoltán M. Varga, Terrence R. Tiersch

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Offspring Production With Cryopreserved Sperm From A Live-Bearing Fish Xiphophorus Maculatus And Implications For Female Fecundity, Huiping Yang, Markita G. Savage, Leona Hazlewood, Ronald B. Walter, Terrence R. Tiersch

Faculty Publications

Xiphophorus fishes are well-established models for biomedical research of spontaneous or induced tumors, and their use in research dates back to the 1930s. Currently, 58 well-pedigreed lines exist among 24 Xiphophorus species housed as live animals at the Xiphophorus Genetic Stock Center. The technique of sperm cryopreservation has been applied to preserve these valuable genetic resources, and production of offspring has been reported with cryopreserved sperm in two species (X. helleri and X. couchianus). The goal of this research was to establish protocols for sperm cryopreservation and artificial insemination that yield live young in X. maculatus, a widely used research …

Host Interferon-Γ Inducible Protein Contributes To Brucella Survival., Jennifer A. Ritchie, Adam Rupper, James A. Cardelli, Bryan H. Bellaire

Faculty Publications

Brucella spp. are highly adapted intracellular pathogens of mammals that cause chronic infections while surving and replicating in host monocytes and macrophages. Although monocytes are normally susceptible to infection, pretreatment with pro-inflammatory cytokine interferon-γ (IFN-γ) activates cellular defense mechanisms that increase intracellular killing of Brucella and prevents bacterial replication. We examined the contribution of the IFN-γ inducible GTPase, LRG-47, to B. abortus 2308 infection in in vitro and in vivo murine models. Infecting non-activated macrophages from LRG-47(-/-) mice revealed that loss of this host protein negatively effected the intracellular survival and replication of IgG opsonized B. abortus. In contrast, survival …

The Origin And In Situ Identification Of Uncultured Gut Bacteria In Fourth-Instar Larvae Of The Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis Invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), Albert H. Lee, Linda Hooper-Bui

Faculty Publications

This study corroborated the findings of Lee et al. (2008) and relied on culture-independent techniques, particularly 16SrDNA sequencing. Results from the study demonstrated that ants in captivity completely change their gut bacterial diversity strongly supports the conclusion that fire ant gut bacteria are environmental in origin. Bacteria in the fourth-instar larvae were present because they were consumed with food sources. From molecular data, a differing list of bacteria from each colony with different branching and clustering among bacterial clades in the phylogenetic trees were found. Different bacterial diversity and evenness was found in all colonies, which provided evidence against the …

Deconstructing Events: The Neural Bases For Space, Time, And Causality, Alexander Kranjec, Eileen R. Cardillo, Gwenda L. Schmidt, Matthew Lehet, Anjan Chatterjee

Faculty Publications

Space, time, and causality provide a natural structure for organizing our experience. These abstract categories allow us to think relationally in the most basic sense; understanding simple events requires one to represent the spatial relations among objects, the relative durations of actions or movements, and the links between causes and effects. The present fMRI study investigates the extent to which the brain distinguishes between these fundamental conceptual domains. Participants performed a 1-back task with three conditions of interest (space, time, and causality). Each condition required comparing relations between events in a simple verbal narrative. Depending on the condition, participants were …

Effects Of Walnut Consumption On Cognitive Performance In Young Adults, Peter Pribis, Rudolph N. Bailey, Andrew A. Russell, Marcia A. Kilsby, Magaly Hernandez, Winston J. Craig, Tevni Grajales, David J. Shavlik, Joan Sabatè

Faculty Publications

Walnuts contain a number of potentially neuroprotective compounds like vitamin E, folate, melatonin, several antioxidative polyphenols and significant amounts of n-3 α-linolenic fatty acid. The present study sought to determine the effect of walnuts on verbal and non-verbal reasoning, memory and mood. A total of sixty-four college students were randomly assigned to two treatment sequences in a crossover fashion: walnuts-placebo or placebo-walnuts. Baseline data were collected for non-verbal reasoning, verbal reasoning, memory and mood states. Data were collected again after 8 weeks of intervention. After 6 weeks of washout, the intervention groups followed the diets in reverse order. Data were …

Homosexuality And The Bible: What Is At Stake In The Current Debate, Richard M. Davidson

Faculty Publications

The sexual distinction between male and female is fundamental to what it means to be human. Humankind-in-fellowship as male and female is fundamental to what it means to be in the image of God.

Two Sides To The Same Coin: Relational And Physical Aggression In The Media, Sarah M. Coyne, Laura Stockdale, David A. Nelson

Faculty Publications

Purpose - This review aims to examine how aggression is portrayed in the media and how it can influence behavior and attitudes regarding aggression.

Design/methodology/approach - The authors reviewed the relevant literature and examined both physical and relational forms of aggression in multiple media forms (television, film, video games, music, books).

Findings - Across media types, evidence is found that both physical and relational aggression are portrayed frequently and in ways that may contribute to subsequent aggression. Furthermore, though there are studies finding no effect of exposure to media aggression, evidence is found that watching physical and relational aggression in …

Indian Relations In Utah During The Civil War, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

A discussion of native American (Indian) relations in Utah Territory during the Civil War, including the differing policies of Mormon president Brigham Young and U.S. Army commander Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, the January 1863 Bear River Massacre (called the Battle of Bear River at that time), Indian superintendents, treaties, and reservations.

Revisiting The Work We Know So Little About: Race, Wealth, Privilege, And Social Justice, Stephanie M. Wildman, Beverly Moran, Margalynne J. Armstrong

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Who Owns An Avatar?: Copyright, Creativity, And Virtual Worlds, Tyler T. Ochoa

Faculty Publications

Today's massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) offer their users the ability to create or customize their own avatars with distinctive visual appearances. This Article contends that users who take advantage of that ability are exercising significant creative choices, such that they should be considered the "authors" and copyright owners of their own avatars. The Copyright Act envisions several types of collaborative authorship, including joint authorship, works made for hire, and collective works. None of these models provides a good fit for user-created avatars, because avatars meet some, but not all, of the elements for each model. Here, the two …

Tp53 Codon 72 Polymorphism Affects Accumulation Of Mtdna Damage In Human Cells, Serena Altilia, Aurelia Santoro, Davide Malagoli, Catia Lanzarini, Josué Adolfo Ballesteros Álvarez, Gianluca Galazzo, Donald Carl Porter, Paolina Crocco, Giuseppina Rose, Giuseppe Passarino, Igor Roninson, Claudio Franceschi, Stefano Salvioli

Faculty Publications

Human TP53 gene is characterised by a polymorphism at codon 72 leading to an Arginine-to-Proline (R/P) substitution. The two resulting p53 isoforms have a different subcellular localisation after stress (more nuclear or more mitochondrial for the P or R isoform, respectively). p53P72 variant is more efficient than p53R72 in inducing the expression of genes involved in nuclear DNA repair. Since p53 is involved also in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) maintenance, we wondered whether these p53 isoforms are associated with different accumulation of mtDNA damage. We observed that cells bearing p53R72 accumulate lower amount of mtDNA damage upon rotenone stress with respect …

Corporate Social Responsibility After Disaster, Susan S. Kuo, Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

In recent years, corporations have devoted substantial resources to disaster relief worldwide. For instance, Wal-Mart garnered favorable attention for its contributions in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. According to company press releases, Wal-Mart recently gave hundreds of thousands of dollars for disaster relief in Brazil following a flood, and it has pledged millions in support of Japan in the wake of the tsunami.

Large corporations have not only the economic resources, but also the logistical capacity and operational expertise to make a difference in the first terrible days after a disaster. However, commentators disagree about how …

Challenges To Terry For The Twenty-First Century, Richard E. Myers Ii

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Environmental Perceptions And Objective Walking Trail Audits Inform A Community-Based Participatory Research Walking Intervention, Jamie Zoellner, Jennie L. Hill, Karen Zynda, Alicia D. Sample, M. Kathleen Yadrick

Faculty Publications

Background: Given the documented physical activity disparities that exist among low-income minority communities and the increased focused on socio-ecological approaches to address physical inactivity, efforts aimed at understanding the built environment to support physical activity are needed. This community-based participatory research (CBPR) project investigates walking trails perceptions in a high minority southern community and objectively examines walking trails. The primary aim is to explore if perceived and objective audit variables predict meeting recommendations for walking and physical activity, MET/minutes/week of physical activity, and frequency of trail use. Methods: A proportional sampling plan was used to survey community residents in this …

Storytelling For Lawyers, Jonathan Van Patten

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Minimalist Ensemble Algorithms For Genome-Wide Protein Localization Prediction, J.-R. Lin, A. M. Mondal, R. Liu, Jianjun Hu

Faculty Publications

Background

Computational prediction of protein subcellular localization can greatly help to elucidate its functions. Despite the existence of dozens of protein localization prediction algorithms, the prediction accuracy and coverage are still low. Several ensemble algorithms have been proposed to improve the prediction performance, which usually include as many as 10 or more individual localization algorithms. However, their performance is still limited by the running complexity and redundancy among individual prediction algorithms.

Results

This paper proposed a novel method for rational design of minimalist ensemble algorithms for practical genome-wide protein subcellular localization prediction. The algorithm is based on combining a feature …

Modeling Micro-Economic Resilience And Restoration After A Large-Scale Catastrophe: An Analysis Of The Gulf Coast After Katrina, David L. Butler, Edward Sayre

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.