Digital Commons Network^™

Canopy Arthropod Responses To Repeated Canopy Opening In A Wet Tropical Forest, Manoj Pandey, Timothy D. Schowalter

Faculty Publications

With predictions of increased frequency of intense hurricanes, it is increasingly crucial to understand how biotic and abiotic components of forests will be affected. This study describes canopy arthropod responses to repeated experimental and natural canopy opening at the Luquillo Experimental Forest Long-term Ecological Research Site (LTER) in Puerto Rico. The canopy trimming experiment (CTE1) treatments were started in 2004, and a second trimming (CTE2) was conducted in 2014, to study effects of increased hurricane frequency at the site. Paired disturbed plots with canopy trimmed (trim) and undisturbed plots with no trimming (no trim) were replicated in three experimental blocks. …

Relational Turbulence And Social Network Engagement During The Summer Of Covid-19: A Repeated Measures, Dyadic Analysis, Kellie S. Brisini, Denise H. Solomon

Faculty Publications

Background/Purpose: Relational turbulence theory suggests that changes in and around relationships create the potential for relational turbulence when everyday routines and scripts are upended and communication becomes polarized. In turn, perceptions of a romantic relationship as chaotic or tumultuous can influence a person’s engagement with their social network. Alternately, previous research also suggests that engagement with friends and family has the potential to influence married partner’s relationship quality. Research Design: This study examined these propositions among a sample of married couples (N = 64, 128 individuals) whose daily experiences and relationship dynamics changed during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Results/Conclusions: Based …

The Need For A Framework Addressing The Temporal Aspects Of Fish Sperm Motility Leading To Community-Level Standardization, Harvey Blackburn, Leticia Torres, Yue Liu, Terrence R. Tiersch

Faculty Publications

Motility is a widely available parameter that can be used to assess sperm quality of aquatic species. Sperm from fishes with external fertilization usually undergo a dynamic and short-lived period of motility after activation. The common practice of assigning a single value at an arbitrary peak of motility presents challenges for reproducibility, community-level standardization, and comparisons across studies. This study aimed to explore statistical approaches to standardize motility reporting, and to develop an initial framework for community-level standards. Sperm samples from 14 zebrafish (Danio rerio) with a total of 21,705 cells were analyzed by use of computer-assisted sperm analysis with …

Density Of States And Delocalization For Discrete Magnetic Random Schrödinger Operators, Simon Becker, Rui Han

Faculty Publications

We study discrete magnetic random Schrödinger operators on the square and honeycomb lattice. For the non-random magnetic operator on the hexagonal lattice with any rational magnetic flux, we show that the middle two dispersion surfaces exhibit Dirac cones. We then derive an asymptotic expansion for the density of states on the honeycomb lattice for oscillations of arbitrary rational magnetic flux. This allows us, as a corollary, to rigorously study the quantum Hall effect and conclude dynamical delocalization close to the conical point under disorder. We obtain similar results for the discrete random Schrödinger operator on the Z²-lattice with …

Interviewing For Residency Positions While Completing A Graduate Degree: Considerations For Graduate Students, Mentors, And Program Directors, Wayne Newhauser, Garrett Pitcher, Christine Swanson, Samuel G. Armato, Hania Al-Hallaq

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Alteration Of Biomolecular Conformation By Aluminum-Implications For Protein Misfolding Disease, Yuhai Zhao, Aileen I. Pogue, Peter N. Alexandrov, Leslie G. Butler, Wenhong Li, Vivian R. Jaber, Walter J. Lukiw

Faculty Publications

The natural element aluminum possesses a number of unique biochemical and biophysical properties that make this highly neurotoxic species deleterious towards the structural integrity, conformation, reactivity and stability of several important biomolecules. These include aluminum’s (i) small ionic size and highly electrophilic nature, having the highest charge density of any metallic cation with a Z²/r of 18 (ionic charge +3, radius 0.5 nm); (ii) inclination to form extremely stable electrostatic bonds with a tendency towards covalency; (iii) ability to interact irreversibly and/or significantly slow down the exchange-rates of complex aluminum–biomolecular interactions; (iv) extremely dense electropositive charge with one …

The Curve Not Taken: Effects Of Covid-19 International Comparison News, Seon Woo Kim, Martina Santia, Raymond J. Pingree, Ayla Oden, Kirill Bryanov, Jessica Wyers

Faculty Publications

International news can inform people not only about what is happening in other countries, but also about how their own country could benefit from policies that have proved successful elsewhere. Specifically, international policy comparison news, or news that compares the policies of two or more countries on the same issue, is a potentially important but underutilized and understudied form of news content. We use an experiment to test effects of exposure to news comparing the COVID-19 pandemic policies of the U.S. versus South Korea, and find that this increases knowledge of policy differences between the two countries, support for adopting …

Mission Planning For Low Altitude Aerial Drones During Water Sampling, Michael E. Hodgson, Nikolaos I. Vitzilaios, Michael L. Myrick, Tammi L. Richardson, Matt Duggan, Kazi Ragib I. Sanim, Michail Kalaitzakis, Bhanuprakash Kosaraju, Caitlyn English, Zechariah Kitzhaber

Faculty Publications

Mission planning for small uncrewed aerial systems (sUAS) as a platform for remote sensors goes beyond the traditional issues of selecting a sensor, flying altitude/speed, spatial resolution, and the date/time of operation. Unlike purchasing or contracting imagery collections from traditional satellite or manned airborne systems, the sUAS operator must carefully select launching, landing, and flight paths that meet both the needs of the remote sensing collection and the regulatory requirements of federal, state, and local regulations. Mission planning for aerial drones must consider temporal and geographic changes in the environment, such as local weather conditions or changing tidal height. One …

Securing Information On A Web Application System To Facilitate Online Blood Donation Booking, Hrishitva Patel

Faculty Publications

Blood donation has saved many lives in the past. According to statistics presented by the American Red Cross, a patient is in need of a blood transfusion every two seconds. There are many benefits that arise from blood donation to both the donor and the blood recipients. With blood donation, cancer patients, people involved in accidents, or those battling diseases that require blood donation have access to enough blood to sustain their survival. There is a need to digitize the blood donation booking to facilitate blood donation across the United States, and ensure patients in need of blood, receive their …

Systematic Overexpression Of Genes Encoded By Mycobacteriophage Waterfoul Reveals Novel Inhibitors Of Mycobacterial Growth, Danielle Heller, Isabel Amaya, Aleem Mohamed, Ilzat Ali, Dmitri Mavrodi, Padraig Deighan, Viknesh Sivanathan

Faculty Publications

Bacteriophages represent an enormous reservoir of novel genes, many of which are unrelated to existing entries in public databases and cannot be assigned a predicted function. Characterization of these genes can provide important insights into the intricacies of phage–host interactions and may offer new strategies to manipulate bacterial growth and behavior. Overexpression is a useful tool in the study of gene-mediated effects, and we describe here the construction of a plasmid-based overexpression library of a complete set of genes for Waterfoul, a mycobacteriophage closely related to those infecting clinically important strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and/or Mycobacterium abscessus. The arrayed …

Fall Conference 2022 Panel Presentation, Ellen Amatangelo

Faculty Publications

This presentation was part of a panel discussing ways in which work done by employees at the Brigham Young University Library focuses on Christ. Collections and articles in BYU's institutional repository that focus on religious topics are highlighted.

Strategies To Maximize Academic Integrity In Online Education, Glynis Bradfield, Ray Mcallister

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mentoring: An Essential For Novice Teachers, Kathleen Forbis, Anneris Coria-Navia, Jimmy Kijai, Larry D. Burton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Applicability Of Blockchain Technology To The Normal Accounting Cycle, Williams Kwasi Peprah Ph.D., Reynaldo P. Abas Jr., Akwasi Ampofo

Faculty Publications

Blockchain technology is a distributed, unchangeable ledger that makes recording transactions and managing assets in a business network much easier and now a type of accounting software concerned with the transfer of asset ownership and the maintenance of an accurate financial ledger. Despite the numerous benefits of blockchain technology, there is no study on the applicability of blockchain technology to the normal accounting cycle in emerging economies in Africa. Thus, this paper provides general insights on how blockchain technology may be used in the normal accounting cycle in West Africa. The study adopted a qualitative research method and content analysis …

Student Retention And Persistence In University Certificate-First Programs, Troy Martin, Randall Davies

Faculty Publications

While access to higher education has grown over the past few years, significant barriers exist for nontraditional students attempting to prepare for and complete postsecondary education. For these students, the traditional methods for acknowledging student achievement do not always work. This research explored the impact of earning professional certificates on nontraditional students’ confidence, motivation, and persistence. Specifically, this study evaluated the matriculation rates between two cohorts of students who participated in the online PathwayConnect program. The mixed-method study found that matriculation rates for students who were encouraged to earn a certificate increased compared to those who followed a traditional path. …

Strengthening Causal Inference From Randomised Controlled Trials Of Complex Interventions, Jef L. Leroy, Edward A. Frongillo Jr. Ph.D., Bezawit E. Kase, Silvia Alonso, Mario Chen, Ian Dohoo, Lieven Huybregts, Suneetha Kadiyala, Naomi M. Saville

Faculty Publications

Researchers conducting randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of complex interventions face design and analytical challenges that are not fully addressed in existing guidelines. Further guidance is needed to help ensure that these trials of complex interventions are conducted to the highest scientific standards while maximising the evidence that can be extracted from each trial. The key challenge is how to manage the multiplicity of outcomes required for the trial while minimising false positive and false negative findings. To address this challenge, we formulate three principles to conduct RCTs: (1) outcomes chosen should be driven by the intent and programme theory of …

Bias In Measurement Of Autism Symptoms By Spoken Language Level And Non-Verbal Mental Age In Minimally Verbal Children With Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Shuting Zheng, Aaron Kaat, Cristan Farmer, Audrey Thurm, Catherine A. Burrows, Stephen Kanne, Stelios Georgiades, Amy Esler, Catherine Lord, Nicole Takashashi, Kerri P. Nowell, Elizabeth A. Will Ph.D., Jane E. Roberts, Somer L. Bishop

Faculty Publications

Increasing numbers of children with known genetic conditions and/or intellectual disability are referred for evaluation of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), highlighting the need to refine autism symptom measures to facilitate differential diagnoses in children with cognitive and language impairments. Previous studies have reported decreased specificity of ASD screening and diagnostic measures in children with intellectual disability. However, little is known about how cognitive and language abilities impact the measurement of specific ASD symptoms in this group. We aggregated a large sample of young children (N = 1196; aged 31-119 months) to examine measurement invariance of ASD symptoms among minimally verbal …

Effects Of Doping, Hydrostatic Pressure, And Thermal Quenching On The Phase Transitions And Magnetocaloric Properties In Mn1- X Cox Nige, Tej Poudel Chhetri, Jing Han Chen, Anthony T. Grant, David P. Young, Igor Dubenko, Saikat Talapatra, Naushad Ali, Shane Stadler

Faculty Publications

The effects of doping, hydrostatic pressure, and thermal quenching on the phase transitions and magnetocaloric properties of the Mn1-xCoxNiGe system have been investigated. Cobalt doping on the Mn site shifted the martensitic structural transition toward lower temperature until it was ultimately absent, leaving only a magnetic transition from a ferromagnetic (FM) to a paramagnetic (PM) state in the high-temperature hexagonal phase. Co-occurrence of the magnetic and structural transitions to form a first-order magnetostructural transition (MST) from the FM orthorhombic to the PM hexagonal phase was observed in samples with 0.05 < x < 0.20. An additional antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic-like transition was observed in the martensite phase for 0.05 < x < 0.10, which gradually vanished with increasing Co concentration (x > 0.10) or magnetic field (H > 0.5 T). The application of …

Social Life Of Females With Persistent Covid-19 Symptoms: A Qualitative Study, Atefeh Aghaei, Ran Zhang, Slone Taylor, Cheuk-Chi Tam, Chih-Hsiang Yang, Xiaoming Li Ph.D., Shan Qiao Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Persistent COVID-19 symptoms (long COVID) may bring challenges to long haulers' social lives. Females may endure more profound impacts given their special social roles and existing structural inequality. This study explores the effects of long COVID on the social life of female long haulers. We conducted semi-structured interviews via Zoom between April and June 2021 with 15 female long haulers in the United States, purposely recruited from Facebook and Slack groups and organization websites related to long COVID. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim with consent. The interview data were managed using MAXQDA and examined by thematic analysis. Long COVID …

School And Community Drivers Of Child Diets In Two Arab Cities: The Scale Protocol And Innovative Tools To Assess Children's Food Environments, Hala Ghattas Ph.D., Zeina Jamaluddine, Aline Semaan, Nehmat El-Helou, Gloria Safadi, Tatiana Elghossain, Christelle Akl, Shady Elbassuoni, Ali Chalak, Jalila El Ati

Faculty Publications

Background

In the context of the rapid nutrition transition experienced by middle-income countries of the Arab region, children and adolescent's food choices and dietary behaviors are early risk factors for the development of non-communicable diseases. Assessment of factors influencing food choices among this age group is challenging and is usually based on self-reported data, which are prone to information and recall bias. As the popularity of technologies and video gaming platforms increases, opportunities arise to use these tools to collect data on variables that affect food choice, dietary intake, and associated outcomes. This protocol paper describes the SCALE study (School …

Mhealth Video Gaming For Human Papillomavirus Vaccination Among College Men-Qualitative Inquiry For Development, Gabrielle Darville-Sanders, Charkarra Anderson-Lewis, Michael Stellefson, Yu Hao Lee, Jann Macinnes, R. Morgan Pigg, Rebeccah Mercado, Cheryl Gaddis

Faculty Publications

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Persistent infection with HPV can cause various cancers; however, HPV vaccination can prevent infections associated with high risk, cancerous strains of the virus. As it relates to HPV, college age men have been identified as one of the catch-up vaccination groups. Among college age men, gaming is an extremely popular extracurricular activity. Further, video games have emerged as a popular public health intervention tool. Therefore, this study aims to collect qualitative data on how to develop, implement and evaluate the effectiveness of a gaming …

School And Community Drivers Of Child Diets In Two Arab Cities: The Scale Protocol And Innovative Tools To Assess Children’S Food Environments, Hala Ghattas Ph.D., Zeina Jamaluddine, Aline Semaan, Nehmat El-Helou, Gloria Safadi, Tatiana Elghossain, Christelle Akl, Shady Elbassuoni, Ali Chalak, Jalila El Ati, The Scale Research Group

Faculty Publications

Background

In the context of the rapid nutrition transition experienced by middle-income countries of the Arab region, children and adolescent’s food choices and dietary behaviors are early risk factors for the development of non-communicable diseases. Assessment of factors influencing food choices among this age group is challenging and is usually based on self-reported data, which are prone to information and recall bias. As the popularity of technologies and video gaming platforms increases, opportunities arise to use these tools to collect data on variables that affect food choice, dietary intake, and associated outcomes. This protocol paper describes the SCALE study (School …

Parochial Altruism And Political Ideology, Marilynn B. Brewer, Nancy R. Buchan, Orgul D. Ozturk, Gianluca Grimalda

Faculty Publications

Parochial altruism refers to the propensity to direct prosocial behavior toward members of one's own ingroup to a greater extent than toward those outside one's group. Both theory and empirical research suggest that parochialism may be linked to political ideology, with conservatives more likely than liberals to exhibit ingroup bias in altruistic behavior. The present study, conducted in the United States and Italy, tested this relationship in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, assessing willingness to contribute money to charities at different levels of inclusiveness—local versus national versus international. Results indicated that conservatives contributed less money overall and were more …

The Effect Of Social Exclusion On Trust Among Youth Orphaned By Hiv/Aids: Evidence From An Event-Related Potentials Study, Jiaojiao Wan, Qi Zhao, Yafei Zhang, Lili Ji, Junfeng Zhao, Shan Qiao Ph.D., Xiaoming Li Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Grounded in a follow-up study among children who lost one or both parents to HIV in central China in the early 2000s, we conducted an event-related potentials (ERPs) experiment to explore the effect of social exclusion on trust and the corresponding neurophysiological mechanism among youth orphaned by HIV/AIDS (“AIDS orphans”). A sample of 31 AIDS orphans (26.16 ± 3.34 years old; 15 female) and 32 age and development status matched controls (25.02 ± 3.45 years old; 14 female) participated in the study. They were all assigned to play Cyberball, a virtual ball-tossing game that reliably induced social exclusion (15 orphans, …

Three Dimensions Of Covid-19 Risk Perceptions And Their Socioeconomic Correlates In The United States: A Social Media Analysis, Shan Qiao Ph.D., Zhenlong Li Ph.D., Chen Liang Ph.D., Xiaoming Li Ph.D., Caroline Rudisill Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Social media analysis provides an alternate approach to monitoring and understanding risk perceptions regarding COVID-19 over time. Our current understandings of risk perceptions regarding COVID-19 do not disentangle the three dimensions of risk perceptions (perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, and negative emotion) as the pandemic has evolved. Data are also limited regarding the impact of social determinants of health (SDOH) on COVID-19-related risk perceptions over time. To address these knowledge gaps, we extracted tweets regarding COVID-19-related risk perceptions and developed indicators for the three dimensions of risk perceptions based on over502 million geotagged tweets posted by over 4.9 million Twitter users …

Three Dimensions Of Covid-19 Risk Perceptions And Their Socioeconomic Correlates In The United States: A Social Media Analysis, Shan Qiao, Zhenlong Li, Caroline Rudsill

Faculty Publications

Social media analysis provides an alternate approach to monitoring and understanding risk perceptions regarding COVID-19 over time. Our current understandings of risk perceptions regarding COVID-19 do not disentangle the three dimensions of risk perceptions (perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, and negative emotion) as the pandemic has evolved. Data are also limited regarding the impact of social determinants of health (SDOH) on COVID-19-related risk perceptions over time. To address these knowledge gaps, we extracted tweets regarding COVID-19-related risk perceptions and developed indicators for the three dimensions of risk perceptions based on over 502 million geotagged tweets posted by over 4.9 million Twitter …

Khsrp Loss Increases Neuronal Growth And Synaptic Transmission And Alters Memory Consolidation Through Rna Stabilization, Sarah L. Olguin, Priyanka Patel, Courtney N. Buchanan, Michela Dell'orco, Amy S. Gardiner, Robert Cole, Lauren S. Vaughn, Anitha Sundararajan, Joann Mudge, Andrea M. Allen, Pavel Ortinski, Jonathan L. Brigman, Jeffery L. Twiss, Nora L. Perrone-Bizzozero

Faculty Publications

KH-type splicing regulatory protein (KHSRP) regulates levels of several neuronal mRNAs linked to nervous system development and function.

The KH-type splicing regulatory protein (KHSRP) is an RNA-binding protein linked to decay of mRNAs with AU-rich elements. KHSRP was previously shown to destabilize Gap43 mRNA and decrease neurite growth in cultured embryonic neurons. Here, we have tested functions of KHSRP in vivo. We find upregulation of 1460 mRNAs in neocortex of adult Khsrp(-/-) mice, of which 527 bind to KHSRP with high specificity. These KHSRP targets are involved in pathways for neuronal morphology, axon guidance, neurotransmission and long-term memory. Khsrp(-/-) mice …

Structural Health Monitoring Of Fatigue Cracks For Steel Bridges With Wireless Large-Area Strain Sensors, Sdiq Anwar Taher, Jian Li, Jong-Hyun Jeong, Simon Laflamme, Hongki Jo, Caroline Bennett, William N. Collins, Austin Downey

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a field implementation of the structural health monitoring (SHM) of fatigue cracks for steel bridge structures. Steel bridges experience fatigue cracks under repetitive traffic loading, which pose great threats to their structural integrity and can lead to catastrophic failures. Currently, accurate and reliable fatigue crack monitoring for the safety assessment of bridges is still a difficult task. On the other hand, wireless smart sensors have achieved great success in global SHM by enabling long-term modal identifications of civil structures. However, long-term field monitoring of localized damage such as fatigue cracks has been limited due to the lack …

Circadiomics: Circadian Omic Web Portal, Muntaha Samad, Forest Agostinelli, Tomoki Sato, Kohei Shimaji, Pierre Baldi

Faculty Publications

Circadian rhythms are a foundational aspect of biology. These rhythms are found at the molecular level in every cell of every living organism and they play a fundamental role in homeostasis and a variety of physiological processes. As a result, biomedical research of circadian rhythms continues to expand at a rapid pace. To support this research, CircadiOmics (http://circadiomics.igb.uci.edu/) is the largest annotated repository and analytic web server for high-throughput omic (e.g. transcriptomic, metabolomic, proteomic) circadian time series experimental data. CircadiOmics contains over 290 experiments and over 100 million individual measurements, across >20 unique tissues/organs, and 11 different species. Users are …

Effect Of Behavioural Practice Targeted At The Motor Action Selection Network After Stroke, Jill C. Stewart, Jessica F. Baird, Stacy L. Fritz, Julius Fridriksson Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Motor action selection engages a network of frontal and parietal brain regions. After stroke, individuals activate a similar network, however, activation is higher, especially in the contralesional hemisphere. The current study examined the effect of practice on action selection performance and brain activation after stroke. Sixteen individuals with chronic stroke (Upper Extremity Fugl–Meyer motor score range: 18–61) moved a joystick with the more-impaired hand in two conditions: Select (externally cued choice; move right or left based on an abstract rule) and Execute (simple response; move same direction every trial). On Day 1, reaction time (RT) was longer in Select compared …