Digital Commons Network^™

Molecular Architecture Of Fungal Cell Walls Revealed By Solid-State Nmr, Xue Kang, Alex Kirui, Artur Muszyński, Malitha C.Dickwella Widanage, Adrian Chen, Parastoo Azadi, Ping Wang, Frederic Mentink-Vigier, Tuo Wang

Faculty Publications

© 2018 The Author(s). The high mortality of invasive fungal infections, and the limited number and inefficacy of antifungals necessitate the development of new agents with novel mechanisms and targets. The fungal cell wall is a promising target as it contains polysaccharides absent in humans, however, its molecular structure remains elusive. Here we report the architecture of the cell walls in the pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus. Solid-state NMR spectroscopy, assisted by dynamic nuclear polarization and glycosyl linkage analysis, reveals that chitin and α-1,3-glucan build a hydrophobic scaffold that is surrounded by a hydrated matrix of diversely linked β-glucans and capped …

Large-Scale Computational Drug Repositioning To Find Treatments For Rare Diseases, Rajiv Gandhi Govindaraj, Misagh Naderi, Manali Singha, Jeffrey Lemoine, Michal Brylinski

Faculty Publications

© 2018, The Author(s). Rare, or orphan, diseases are conditions afflicting a small subset of people in a population. Although these disorders collectively pose significant health care problems, drug companies require government incentives to develop drugs for rare diseases due to extremely limited individual markets. Computer-aided drug repositioning, i.e., finding new indications for existing drugs, is a cheaper and faster alternative to traditional drug discovery offering a promising venue for orphan drug research. Structure-based matching of drug-binding pockets is among the most promising computational techniques to inform drug repositioning. In order to find new targets for known drugs ultimately leading …

Multidimensional Relationships Of Herbicides With Insect-Crop Food Webs, Anamika Sharma, Prashant Jha, Gadi V.P. Reddy

Faculty Publications

Controlling weeds is critical for improving the yield and quality of crops. Herbicides are the most commonly applied pesticides in agro-ecosystems. Herbicides affect insects directly as contact damage and indirectly by influencing food supplies. The innate susceptibility, life stages, and mode of feeding of insects can affect the herbicide–insect interaction. Interaction of herbicides with insect pest and beneficial insects is mainly indirect and absence of weeds either can reduce the insect population or causes switching of host plant and hence can also increase the population. The direct effect of herbicides depends on carrier or surfactant used. Presence of herbicides also …

Adoption Of Sustainable Agriculture Practices Among Farmers In Kentucky, Usa, Bijesh Mishra, Buddhi R. Gyawali, Krishna P. Paudel, Neelam C. Poudyal, Marion F. Simon, Siddhartha Dasgupta, George Antonious

Faculty Publications

© 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. Promoting the sustainable agricultural practices at an individual farm level is essential to ensure agricultural sustainability. This study analyzed whether and how various factors related to farm or farmers’ characteristics influence the adoption intensity of sustainable agriculture practices. We used a negative binomial regression model to fit the data collected from a mail survey of farmers in Kentucky, USA. Our results showed that the adoption intensity of sustainable agriculture practices varied significantly among agricultural districts in Kentucky. Farmers who grew row crops, had irrigation facilities, and were in favor of …

Dissolved Carbon Transport In A River-Lake Continuum: A Case Study In A Subtropical Watershed, Usa, Zhen Xu, Y. Jun Xu

Faculty Publications

Rivers and lakes have been traditionally studied as separate entities for carbon transport. However, there is a gap in our knowledge of the connectivity of dissolved carbon in a river-lake continuum. In this study, we analyzed dissolved carbon along the Little River-Catahoula Lake in subtropical Louisiana, United States to assess carbon biogeochemistry in such a river-lake continuum. Monthly in-situ measurements and water sample collections were made at four locations during April 2015 to February 2016 to determine riverine carbon transport into and out of the lake. Results show that much of the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in the river-lake continuum …

Reporting Characteristics In Sports Nutrition, Conrad P. Earnest, Brandon M. Roberts, Christopher R. Harnish, Jessica L. Kutz, Jason M. Cholewa, Neil M. Johannsen

Faculty Publications

Purpose: To examine data reporting characteristics in sports nutrition. Methods: We examined 236 papers from ten journals published in 2016. The primary outcome was statistical variance associated with treatment (SD (correct) vs. SEM or CI). Secondary outcomes included the reporting of: (a) effect sizes (Y/N); (b) outcome prioritization (Y/N; primary, secondary, etc.) and (c) statistical variance relative to change from baseline (CI (correct) vs. SD or SEM). As tertiary/exploratory outcome, we examined whether authors stated a directed hypothesis. Statistical evaluation was performed using chi-square analyses. Results: We observed significant trends for all analyses (p < 0.001) and between category comparisons (p < 0.002). For the primary outcome, 128 (59%) articles correctly used SD to denote treatment variance, while 79 (36%) and 11 (5%) used SEM and CI, respectively. For secondary outcomes, 63 articles (29%) reported effect sizes, while 155 (71%) did not. Additionally, 188 articles (86%) did not prioritize outcomes, 134 articles (61%) stated no hypotheses and 40 (19%, out of 100) articles used CI to denote change scores vs. SD (19%, n = 41) and SEM (n = 10, 5%). Eight articles (4%) reported no variance terms. Conclusions: Overall, there are gaps regarding reporting in sports nutrition. Editors, journal publishers, and the field of exercise science alike should consider these outcomes and provide editorial staff, reviewers and authors with more concrete guidelines.

Development Of Nanocomposite Adsorbents For Heavy Metal Removal From Wastewater, Bin Wang, Tingting Wu, Subramania Angaiah, Vignesh Murugadoss, Jong Eun Ryu, Evan K. Wujcik, Na Lu, David P. Young, Qiang Gao, Zhanhu Guo

Faculty Publications

Development of highly efficient, low cost adsorbents for heavy metal ion removal from wastewater is an enduring undertaking. Two major groups of nanocomposite adsorbents are reviewed here. The magnetic carbon family is first discussed including the preparation of such materials. Various carbon sources have been used in the preparation, and the structural characteristics have been analyzed. Cr(VI) removal studies unveil a wide range of performance. The second group adsorbents is polymer functionalized nanocomposites. One notable polymer is polyaniline which is a redox polymer. The redox nature allows the composite materials to facilitate Cr(VI) reduction to Cr(III) which is prone to …

Supplemental Nitrogen Applications On Corn In Lower Mississippi River Delta Alluvial Soils, Henry J. Mascagni, Brenda Tubana, Marilyn Dalen

Faculty Publications

Core Ideas: Corn optimal N rate on two alluvial soils ranged from 200 to 265 kg N ha−1. Supplemental N applied at early silk increases corn grain yield on two alluvial soils. Relative chlorophyll readings did not consistently diagnose need for supplemental N. Nitrogen deficiency may occur late in the corn (Zea mays L.) growing season due to N fertilizer loss, particularly on poorly drained clay soils, or increased plant demand. Results from field trials conducted from 2006 to 2014 at the Northeast Research Station, St. Joseph, LA, were summarized to evaluate the influence of supplemental N (SN) on corn …

Supporting Open Information Literacy Via Hybridised Design Experiments, Kristen Rebmann

Faculty Publications

This report discusses a project that forms connections between design experiment and informed learning approaches to designing learning activities supportive of open information literacy and scholarly communication among library and information science graduate students. Open information literacy is defined as information literacy relating specifically toward leveraging open access and open educational resources. Focus is placed on implications for research and practice by exploring one example of a hybridised, informed learning design experiment that fused subject content and open information practice. This project report represents an early step in thinking about the possibilities of infusing informed learning research structures and strategies …

Checking Facts And Fighting Back: Why Journalists Should Defend Their Profession, Raymond J. Pingree, Brian Watson, Mingxiao Sui, Kathleen Searles, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Joshua P. Darr, Martina Santia, Kirill Bryanov

Faculty Publications

Bias accusations have eroded trust in journalism to impartially check facts. Traditionally journalists have avoided responding to such accusations, resulting in an imbalanced flow of arguments about the news media. This study tests what would happen if journalists spoke up more in defense of their profession, while simultaneously also testing effects of doing more fact checking. A five-day field experiment manipulated whether an online news portal included fact check stories and opinion pieces defending journalism. Fact checking was beneficial in terms of three democratically desirable outcomes–media trust, epistemic political efficacy, and future news use intent–only when defense of journalism stories …

Understanding Fear Of Zika: Personal, Interpersonal, And Media Influences, Chun Yang, James Price Dillard, Ruobing Li

Faculty Publications

Fear of infectious disease often motivates people to protect themselves. But, it can also produce negative bio-social-psychological effects whose severity is on par with those of the disease. The WHO declaration of Zika as a world health crisis presented an opportunity to study factors that bring about fear. Beginning nine days after the WHO announcement, data were gathered from women aged 18–35 living in the southern United States (N = 719). Respondents reported experiencing fear of Zika at levels akin to those reported following other significant crises/disasters (e.g., the terrorist attacks of 9/11). Fear increased as a function of (1) …

The Private Insurance Market: Not Very Big And Not Insuring Much, Either, Jacqueline R. Fox

Faculty Publications

Creating a single national health insurance pool is not likely to destabilize the economy by supplanting the private health insurance industry. This industry insures a relatively small percentage of the population and holds very little of the risk such insurance implies. In effect, insurance companies function as middlemen, bundling risk packages to distribute to other, larger companies and so serve a limited purpose. Were insurers to handle claims for a national pool as they do for the Medicare program, any destabilization to the economy more broadly would be further minimized.

Taxon-Specific Aerosolization Of Bacteria And Viruses In An Experimental Ocean-Atmosphere Mesocosm, Jennifer M. Michaud, Luke R. Thompson, Drishti Kaul, Josh L. Espinoza, R. Alexander Richter, Zhenjiang Zech Xu, Christopher Lee, Kevin M. Pham, Charlotte M. Beall, Francesca Malfatti, Farooq Azam, Rob Knight, Michael D. Burkart, Christopher L. Dupont, Kimberly A. Prather

Faculty Publications

Ocean-derived, airborne microbes play important roles in Earth’s climate system and human health, yet little is known about factors controlling their transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere. Here, we study microbiomes of isolated sea spray aerosol (SSA) collected in a unique ocean–atmosphere facility and demonstrate taxon-specific aerosolization of bacteria and viruses. These trends are conserved within taxonomic orders and classes, and temporal variation in aerosolization is similarly shared by related taxa. We observe enhanced transfer into SSA of Actinobacteria, certain Gammaproteobacteria, and lipid-enveloped viruses; conversely, Flavobacteriia, some Alphaproteobacteria, and Caudovirales are generally under-represented in SSA. Viruses do not transfer …

Multiple Environmental Stressors Induce Complex Transcriptomic Responses Indicative Of Phenotypic Outcomes In Western Fence Lizard, Kurt A. Gust, Vijender Chaitankar, Preetam Ghosh, Mitchell S. Wilbanks, Xianfeng Chen, Natalie D. Barker, Don Pham, Leona D. Scanlan, Arun Rawat, Larry G. Talent, Michael J. Quinn Jr., Christopher D. Vulpe, Mohamed O. Elasri, Mark S. Johnson, Edward J. Perkins, Craig A. Mcfarland

Faculty Publications

Background

The health and resilience of species in natural environments is increasingly challenged by complex anthropogenic stressor combinations including climate change, habitat encroachment, and chemical contamination. To better understand impacts of these stressors we examined the individual- and combined-stressor impacts of malaria infection, food limitation, and 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) exposures on gene expression in livers of Western fence lizards (WFL, Sceloporus occidentalis) using custom WFL transcriptome-based microarrays.

Results

Computational analysis including annotation enrichment and correlation analysis identified putative functional mechanisms linking transcript expression and toxicological phenotypes. TNT exposure increased transcript expression for genes involved in erythropoiesis, potentially in response to …

Vibration Control In Wind Turbines To Achieve Desired System-Level Performance Under Single And Multiple Hazard Loadings, Milad Rezaee, Aly Mousaad Aly

Faculty Publications

The increased demand in energy and the need for sustainable and renewable sources of electricity in hazardous environments with significantly growing population yields the installation of more wind turbines in these areas. In addition, the technological development in material and construction methods has led to the building of taller and more flexible turbines, with inherent low structural damping. Installing modern wind turbines in offshore harsh environments or seismic prone areas can cause an increment in the probability of failure due to excessive vibrations. The current study evaluates the performance of onshore and offshore wind turbines under multihazard loads, including wind, …

Susceptibility And Resilience To Cyber Threat: Findings From A Scenario Decision Program To Measure Secure And Insecure Computing Behavior, Carl F. Weems, Irfan Ahmed, Golden G. Richard, Justin D. Russell, Erin L. Neill

Faculty Publications

Interest in the individual differences underlying end user computer security behavior has led to the development of a multidisciplinary field of research known as behavioral information security. An important gap in knowledge and the motivation for this research is the development of ways to measure secure and insecure cyber behavior for research and eventually practice. Here we report a study designed to develop a technique for assessing secure and insecure cyber behavior for broad research use. The Susceptibility and Resilience to Cyber Threat (SRCT) is an immersive scenario decision program. The SRCT measures susceptibility to cyber threat and malicious behavior …

Halted Innovation: The Expansion Of Federal Jurisdiction Over Medicine And The Human Body, Myrisha S. Lewis

Faculty Publications

Modern medical innovations are blurring the line between medical practice and medical devices and drugs. Historically, many techniques have been developed in medicine, without any interference from the federal government, as medical practice is (and has historically been) an area of state jurisdiction. Over the past two decades, however, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been exerting jurisdiction over the human body and the practice of medicine by targeting new medical techniques for oversight and subjecting the continued use of those treatments to onerous and legally questionable regulatory requirements that hinder the use of those treatments in practice. …

Analyzing Large Workers’ Compensation Claims Using Generalized Linear Models And Monte Carlo Simulation, Fatemeh Davoudi Kakhki, Steven Freeman, Gretchen Mosher

Faculty Publications

Insurance practitioners rely on statistical models to predict future claims in order to provide financial protection. Proper predictive statistical modeling is more challenging when analyzing claims with lower frequency, but high costs. The paper investigated the use of predictive generalized linear models (GLMs) to address this challenge. Workers’ compensation claims with costs equal to or more than US$100,000 were analyzed in agribusiness industries in the Midwest of the USA from 2008 to 2016. Predictive GLMs were built with gamma, Weibull, and lognormal distributions using the lasso penalization method. Monte Carlo simulation models were developed to check the performance of predictive …

“For Lack Of Knowledge, Our People Will Perish”: Using Focus Group Methodology To Explore African-American Communities’ Perceptions Of Breast Cancer And The Environment, Kaleea Lewis, Shibani Kulkarni, Swann Arp Adams, Heather M. Brandt, Jamie R. Lead, John R. Ureda, Delores Fedrick, Chris Mathews, Daniela B. Friedman

Faculty Publications

Among women living in the United States, breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death. Disproportionate racial disparities in breast cancer exist, with African American (AA) women consistently having the highest rates of breast cancer related mortality despite lower incidence. This study attends to the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) call to action recommending the identification of effective strategies for communicating accurate and reliable breast cancer risk information to diverse audiences. Using focus group methodology, this study explores how AAs perceive and decipher information related to breast cancer and its relationship to their environment. Six focus groups were conducted. …

True Colors: Crime, Race And Colorblindness Revisited, Itay Ravid

Faculty Publications

TRUE COLORS: CRIME, RACE AND COLORBLINDNESS REVISITED Itay Ravid* The violent, racially motivated events of the Charlottesville rally unleashed demons that many Americans believed were long buried. Old Jim Crow-inspired racism came straight through the front door. Yet critics of colorblind policies were not surprised. For them, such an eruption of racial hatred manifested what they had repeatedly argued: colorblind policies neither alter racial predispositions nor affect the unequal treatment of minorities in the United States. In fact, colorblindness has given rise to a modern, latent type of racism. This Article empirically investigates this claim in an unexplored context—the media’s …

Forensic Nursing: Overview Of A Growing Profession, Julie L. Valentine

Faculty Publications

IN THE CURRENT ERA of the #MeToo movement and prominent sexual assault disclosures, these types of crimes are finally receiving the attention they deserve. Our society is acknowledging what research has been telling us for years about the high incidence of sexual violence in the United States. According to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, more than 36% of women have experienced contact sexual violence in their lifetime and 19% have experienced attempted or completed rape. Men also report high rates of sexual violence; more than 17% have experienced some form of contact sexual violence in …

Same But Different: Characters With Developmental Disabilities In Current Juvenile Literature, Tina Taylor, Kellie Egan, Kimberly T. Moss, Hannah P. Grow, Sharon Black, Mary Anne Prater

Faculty Publications

As many children first encounter individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) through characters in children’s literature, these individuals must be depicted authentically. Using descriptive analyses, we evaluated 38 books written for children and adolescents (11 picture books, 17 chapter books) for their portrayals of characters with developmental disabilities, comparing the portrayals against those published in three previous studies. All books considered were eligible for the 2018 Dolly Gray Children’s Literature Award. Data were analyzed regarding personal portrayal, social interactions, and exemplary practices. Results indicated that most characters portrayed have ASD (80%) and the majority are male (65%). Generally, characters with DD …

Transfer Learning With Deep Recurrent Neural Networks For Remaining Useful Life Estimation, Ansi Zhang, Honglei Wang, Shaobo Li, Yuxin Cui, Guanci Yang, Jianjun Hu

Faculty Publications

Prognostics, such as remaining useful life (RUL) prediction, is a crucial task in condition-based maintenance. A major challenge in data-driven prognostics is the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient number of samples of failure progression. However, for traditional machine learning methods and deep neural networks, enough training data is a prerequisite to train good prediction models. In this work, we proposed a transfer learning algorithm based on Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (BLSTM) recurrent neural networks for RUL estimation, in which the models can be first trained on different but related datasets and then fine-tuned by the target dataset. Extensive experimental results …

Walkable Urban Design Attributes And Japanese Older Adults' Body Mass Index: Mediation Effects Of Physical Activity And Sedentary Behavior, Mohammad Javad Koohsari, Andrew T. Kaczynski, Tomoki Nakaya, Ai Shibata, Kaori Ishii, Akitomo Yasunaga, Ellen W. Stowe, Tomoya Hanibuchi, Koichiro Oka

Faculty Publications

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to examine associations between objectively measured walkable urban design attributes with Japanese older adults’ body mass index (BMI) and to test whether objectively assessed physical activity and sedentary behavior mediated such associations.

Design: Cross-sectional.

Setting: Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan.

Participants: Participants were 297 older residents (aged 65-84 years) randomly selected from the registry of residential addresses.

Measures: Walkable urban design attributes, including population density, availability of physical activity facilities, intersection density, and access to public transportation stations, were calculated using geographic information systems. Physical activity, sedentary behavior, and BMI were measured objectively. …

Remains Of The 19th Century: Deep Storage Of Contaminated Hydraulic Mining Sediment Along The Lower Yuba River, California, Tyler Nakamura, Michael Bliss Singer, Emmanuel Gabet

Faculty Publications

Since the onset of hydraulic gold mining in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills in 1852, the environmental damage caused by displacement and storage of hydraulic mining sediment (HMS) has been a significant ecological problem downstream. Large volumes of mercury-laden HMS from the Yuba River watershed were deposited within the river corridor, creating the anthropogenic Yuba Fan. However, there are outstanding uncertainties about how much HMS is still contained within this fan. To quantify the deep storage of HMS in the Yuba Fan, we analyzed mercury concentrations of sediment samples collected from borings and outcrops at multiple depths. The mercury concentrations served …

Sexually-Relevant Visual And Chemosensory Signals Induce Distinct Behaviors And Neural Activation Patterns In The Social African Cichlid, Astatotilapia Burtoni, Karen E. Field, Christopher T. Mcvicker, Karen P. Maruska

Faculty Publications

© 2018 Field, McVicker and Maruska. Across vertebrates, the use of multimodal (multiple sensory modalities) signals has evolved to convey important information to receivers. Information content of multimodal signals can be the same as or different from information in each unimodal signal, and are classified as redundant or non-redundant, respectively, based on receivers’ behavioral responses. Despite the prevalence and importance of multimodal signaling across taxa, relatively little is known about how and where these signals are processed in the brains of receivers. We used the social African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, to investigate how sexually-relevant visual and chemosensory uni- and …

A Sport-Specific Wearable Jump Monitor For Figure Skating, Dustin A. Bruening, Riley E. Reynolds, Chris W. Adair, Peter Zapalo, Sarah T. Ridge

Faculty Publications

Advancements in wearable technology have facilitated performance monitoring in a number of sports. Figure skating may also benefit from this technology, but the inherent movements present some unique challenges. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of using an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to monitor three aspects of figure skating jumping performance: jump count, jump height, and rotation speed. Seven competitive figure skaters, outfitted with a waist-mounted IMU, performed a total of 59 isolated multi-revolution jumps and their competition routines, which consisted of 41 multi-revolution jumps along with spins, footwork, and other skills. The isolated jumps were …

The Pornography Debate: Religiosity And Support For Censorship, Brian A. Droubay, Robert P. Butters, Kevin Shafer

Faculty Publications

Pornography has become an increasingly salient topic in public discourse. We sought to better understand the role of religiosity in shaping people’s support of policy stances against pornography, in the form of censorship, using nationally representative data from the 2014 General Social Survey (n = 1676). Results from logistic regression indicate that high religiosity significantly increases odds of supporting censorship. Holding control variables at their sample means, the least religious persons had a predicted probability of 0.09 of supporting censorship, compared to 0.57 for the most religious respondents. We discuss these findings within the context of the current public …

Social Interactions In College Physical Activity Classes: “Something Else Is Taking Place Here”, David C. Barney

Faculty Publications

Physical activity has been found to benefit a person in many ways. One of the benefits of being physically active is the social component. This deals with interacting with someone before, during or after the activity. The purpose of this study was to investigate social interactions effects on college-aged students during their physical activity class. For this study 408 college-aged students (272 males & 136 females) participated in this study. College-aged students were surveyed regarding their interactions during their physical activity class. The survey contained Likert scale questions and open-ended questions, requiring the students to respond with written answers. Briefly, …

Enantioselective Functionalization Of Enamides At The Β-Carbon Center With Indoles, Mirza A. Saputra, Binod Nepal, Nitin S. Dange, Pu Du, Frank R. Fronczek, Revati Kumar, Rendy Kartika

Faculty Publications

© 2018 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim We report an enantioconvergent approach for the functionalization of enamides at the β-carbon atom, which involves a chiral Brønsted acid induced tautomerization of 2-amidoallyl into 1-amidoallyl cations. These putative reactive intermediates were produced by ionization of racemic α-hydroxy enamides with a chiral Brønsted acid and captured with substituted indoles in a highly regio- and enantioselective manner.