Digital Commons Network^™

Cancer Disparities And Black American Representation In Clinical Trials Leading To The Approval Of Oral Chemotherapy Drugs In The United States Between 2009 And 2019, Veronica Ajewole, Oyinkansola Akindele, Uzoamaka Abajue, Okwuoma Ndulue, Jazzmin J. Marshall, Yhenew T. Mossi

Faculty Publications

PURPOSE Over the past 10 years, oral chemotherapy made up about half (45.6%) of all US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved oncolytic and hematologic medications. Given the disparity in incidence and mortality rate because of certain cancers among Black Americans (BAs) in theUnited States, a review of BA's representation in the clinical trials that lead to the development and FDA approval of oral chemotherapy drugs becomes imperative. The objective of this study was to evaluate the reporting of race and inclusion of BA in clinical trials that led to the approval of oral chemotherapy medications by the FDA from 2009 …

Delivering Bad News: Crisis Communication Methods In Academic Libraries, Brittany O'Neill, Rebecca Kelley

Faculty Publications

This exploratory study analyzed the specific crisis communication methods of academic libraries. A survey was sent to library staff at Association of Research Libraries-member colleges and universities to describe if, who, when, and how they communicated bad news to their stakeholders for major, minor, and emerging crises. The findings show that respondents used multiple communication strategies, which varied based on the crisis. The data show that libraries communicated journal and database cancellations and health and safety emergencies more slowly than access issues and were more likely not to communicate those crises at all. Respondents also more frequently chose to communicate …

On The Cusp Of The Next Medical Malpractice Insurance Crisis, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

Medical malpractice claims are dwindling. Total payouts are far lower than during the 2002 crisis. Yet, insurance industry profits have been sinking for a decade and are nearly in the red. After a dozen years with a “soft” insurance market, we are now on the cusp of yet another malpractice insurance crisis.

How can profits be in peril if claims have dwindled and payouts are historically low?
Answering that question requires an understanding of the insurance cycle. The cycle periodically transforms gradual increases in costs and gradual decreases in revenue into explosive increases in premiums.

The industry’s financial statistics today …

Performance Measurements Within Asynchronous Task-Based Runtime Systems: A Double White Dwarf Merger As An Application, Patrick Diehl, Dominic Marcello, Parsa Amini, Hartmut Kaiser, Sagiv Shiber, Geoffrey C. Clayton, Juhan Frank, Gregor Dais, Dirk Pfluger, David Eder, Alice Koniges, Kevin Huck

Faculty Publications

Analyzing performance within asynchronous many-task-based runtime systems is challenging because millions of tasks are launched concurrently. Especially for long-term runs, the amount of data collected becomes overwhelming. We study HPX and its performance-counter framework and autonomic performance environment for Exascale to collect performance data and energy consumption. We added HPX application-specific performance counters to the Octo-Tiger full 3-D adaptive multigrid code astrophysics application. This enables the combined visualization of physical and performance data to highlight bottlenecks with respect to different solvers. We examine the overhead introduced by these measurements, which is around 1%, with respect to the overall application runtime. …

Citations Versus Expert Opinions: Citation Analysis Of Featured Reviews Of The American Mathematical Society, Lawrence Smolinsky, Daniel S. Sage, Aaron J. Lercher, Aaron Cao

Faculty Publications

Peer review and citation metrics are two means of gauging the value of scientific research, but the lack of publicly available peer review data makes the comparison of these methods difficult. Mathematics can serve as a useful laboratory for considering these questions because as an exact science, there is a narrow range of reasons for citations. In mathematics, virtually all published articles are post-publication reviewed by mathematicians in Mathematical Reviews (MathSciNet) and so the data set was essentially the Web of Science mathematics publications from 1993 to 2004. For a decade, especially important articles were singled out in Mathematical Reviews …

Heavy Metal-Resistant Filamentous Fungi As Potential Mercury Bioremediators, Cristina L. Văcar, Eniko Covaci, Somsubhra Chakraborty, Bin Li, David Weindorf, Tiberiu Frentiu, Marcel Pârvu, Dorina Podar

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Conceptus Metabolomic Profiling Reveals Stage-Specific Phenotypes Leading Up To Pregnancy Recognition In Cattle†, Constantine A. Simintiras, José M. Sánchez, Michael Mcdonald, Elena O'Callaghan, Ahmed A. Aburima, Patrick Lonergan

Faculty Publications

Reproductive efficiency in livestock is a major driver of sustainable food production. The poorly understood process of ruminant conceptus elongation (a) prerequisites maternal pregnancy recognition, (b) is essential to successful pregnancy establishment, and (c) coincides with a period of significant conceptus mortality. Conceptuses at five key developmental stages between Days 8-16 were recovered and cultured in vitro for 6 h prior to conditioned media analysis by untargeted ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectroscopy. This global temporal biochemical interrogation of the ex situ bovine conceptus unearths two antithetical stage-specific metabolic phenotypes during tubular (metabolically retentive) vs. filamentous (secretory) development. Moreover, the …

Heat Flux From A Vapor-Dominated Hydrothermal Field Beneath Yellowstone Lake, Julia E. Favorito, Robert N. Harris, Robert A. Sohn, Shaul Hurwitz, Karen M. Luttrell

Faculty Publications

We report results from 149 heat flux measurements made over n ∼2-year interval at sites in and around a vapor-dominated geothermal field located at water depths of ∼100–120 m in Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming. Measurements of both in situ temperature and thermal conductivity as a function of depth were made with a 1 m probe via a remotely operated vehicle, and are combined to compute the vertical conductive heat flux. Inside the ∼55.5 × 10³ m² bathymetric depression demarcating the vapor-dominated field, the median conductive flux is 13 W m⁻², with a conductive output of 0.72 MW. …

Restoring Trust In Truth-Seekers: Effects Of Op/Eds Defending Journalism And Justice, Raymond J. Pingree, Martina Santia, Kirill Bryanov, Brian K. Watson

Faculty Publications

A healthy democracy requires trust that people can be impartial in important truth-seeking institutions including journalism, justice, and science. Recently some U.S. elites have adopted alarmingly extreme rhetoric against truth-seekers, denouncing mainstream journalism as fake news, criminal investigations as partisan witch-hunts, climate science as a hoax, and career civil servants as a deep state conspiracy. In response, some news organizations have taken the unusual step of publishing op/eds defending these institutions. Two experiments tested effects of such op/eds. In study 1, participants spent twelve days using a purpose-built news portal containing real, timely news with random assignment to the availability …

Speech Sound Disorders Syllabus And Unit Plan: Mini-Unit, Basic Ssd Assessment., Jenica Joseph

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

“Did Emmett Till Die In Vain? Organized Labor Says No!”: The United Packinghouse Workers And Civil Rights Unionism In The Mid-1950s, Matthew Nichter

Faculty Publications

Emmett Till’s mangled face is seared into our collective memory, a tragic epitome of the brutal violence that upheld white supremacy in the Jim Crow South. But Till's murder was more than just a tragedy: it also inspired an outpouring of determined protest, in which labor unions played a prominent role. The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) campaigned energetically on behalf of Emmett Till, from the stockyards of Chicago to the sugar refineries of Louisiana. Packinghouse workers petitioned, marched, and rallied to demand justice; the UPWA organized the first mass meeting addressed by Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley; and an …

Building Resilience In Children And Youth, Alina M. Baltazar, Gary L. Hopkins

Faculty Publications

No one is immune to life’s challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has made that clear to any doubters and raised the issue of “resilience” into the top tiers of popular news topics. Resilience is the capacity to maintain competent functioning in the face of major life stressors. Since social problems are not going away, how do we create a culture in which children can do well in spite of adverse life experiences? Resilience is not a personality trait that someone is born with, but rather a capacity that develops over time. Think of resilience as a balance with negative life experiences …

“I Think I’M The Bridge”: Exploring Mentored Undergraduate Research Experiences In Critical Multicultural Education, Eric Ruiz Bybee, Erin Feinauer Whiting, Ramona Maile Cutri

Faculty Publications

Although mentored undergraduate research has been shown to deepen student engagement across various disciplines, this type of extended learning opportunity is not a prominent feature of research and practice in teacher education. Our article addresses this gap by analyzing the experiences and growth of a group of five preservice teachers engaged in a mentored undergraduate research experience in introductory critical multicultural education courses. Specifically, we examined how pre-service teachers’ personal, academic, and professional engagement with critical multicultural education is impacted when they are positioned as researchers and receive additional training outside the traditional class format. Our findings indicate that their …

Healthy Eating In Low-Income Rural Louisiana Parishes: Formative Research For Future Social Marketing Campaigns, Linda Fergus, Richie Roberts, Denise Holston

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Psychiatric Symptoms, Risk, And Protective Factors Among University Students In Quarantine During The Covid-19 Pandemic In China (Vol 17, 15, 2021), Shufang Sun, Simon B. Goldberg, Danhua Lin, Shan Qiao, Don Operario

Faculty Publications

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has made unprecedented impact on the psychological health of university students, a population vulnerable to distress and mental health disorders. This study investigated psychiatric symptoms (anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress) during state-enforced quarantine among university students in China (N = 1912) through a cross-sectional survey during March and April 2020.

Results

Psychiatric symptoms were alarmingly prevalent: 67.05% reported traumatic stress, 46.55% had depressive symptoms, and 34.73% reported anxiety symptoms. Further, 19.56% endorsed suicidal ideation. We explored risk and protective factors of psychological health, including demographic variables, two known protective factors for mental health (mindfulness, perceived …

Meta-Heuristic Optimization Methods For Quaternion-Valued Neural Networks, Jeremiah Bill, Lance E. Champagne, Bruce Cox, Trevor J. Bihl

Faculty Publications

In recent years, real-valued neural networks have demonstrated promising, and often striking, results across a broad range of domains. This has driven a surge of applications utilizing high-dimensional datasets. While many techniques exist to alleviate issues of high-dimensionality, they all induce a cost in terms of network size or computational runtime. This work examines the use of quaternions, a form of hypercomplex numbers, in neural networks. The constructed networks demonstrate the ability of quaternions to encode high-dimensional data in an efficient neural network structure, showing that hypercomplex neural networks reduce the number of total trainable parameters compared to their real-valued …

The Benefit Of Gratitude: Trait Gratitude Is Associated With Effective Economic Decision-Making In The Ultimatum Game, Gewnhi Park, Charlotte Vanoyen-Witvliet, Jorge A. Barraza, Benjamin U. Marsh

Faculty Publications

The current research investigated the role of gratitude in economic decisions about offers that vary in fairness yet benefit both parties if accepted. Participants completed a trait/dispositional gratitude measure and then were randomly assigned to recall either an event that made them feel grateful (i.e., induced gratitude condition) or the events of a typical day (i.e., neutral condition). After the gratitude induction task, participants played the ultimatum game (UG), deciding whether to accept or reject fair offers (i.e., proposer: responder ratio $5:5) and unfair offers (i.e., proposer: responder ratios of $9:1, $8:2, or $7:3) from different proposers. Results showed that …

A Theoretical Calculation Of Stacking Fault Energy Of Ni Alloys: The Effects Of Temperature And Composition, Mohammad S. Dodaran, Shengmin Guo, Michael M. Khonsari, Nima Shamsaei, Shuai Shao

Faculty Publications

Combining cluster expansion (CE) method with one dimensional axial Ising model, this work investigated the effects of alloying elements and configurational variations due to temperature on the stacking fault energy (SFE) of FCC Ni binary alloys. Ensembles of large numbers of atomistic structures, each with more than ~400 atoms, were generated to consider sufficient long-range chemical disorder and temperature effects due to configurational entropy. A Monte Carlo Metropolis algorithm was used to generate these structures, whose energies were then evaluated based on the effective cluster interactions obtained from CE. As a baseline, this work had shown the SFE of pure …

Trichoderma Asperellum Inoculation As A Tool For Attenuating Drought Stress In Sugarcane, Daniele Scudeletti, Carlos Alexandre Costa Crusciol, João William Bossolani, Luiz Gustavo Moretti, Letusa Momesso, Brenda Servaz Tubaña, Sérgio Gustavo Quassi De Castro, Elisa Fidêncio De Oliveira, Mariangela Hungria

Faculty Publications

Drought stress is an important concern worldwide which reduces crop yield and quality. To alleviate this problem, Trichoderma asperellum has been used as a plant growth-promoting fungus capable of inducing plant tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Here, we examined the effect of T. asperellum inoculation on sugarcane plant above and belowground development under drought stress and investigated the role of this fungus on inducing tolerance to drought at physiological and biochemical levels. The experiment was performed in pots under greenhouse conditions, with four treatments and four replicates. The treatments consisted of sugarcane plants inoculated or not with T. asperellum …

The Msaabcr Operon Regulates Persister Formation By Modulating Energy Metabolism In Staphylococcus Aureus, Shanti Pandey, Gyan S. Sahukhal, Mohamed O. Elasri

Faculty Publications

Staphylococcus aureus is a major human pathogen that causes chronic, systemic infections, and the recalcitrance of these infections is mainly due to the presence of persister cells, which are a bacterial subpopulation that exhibits extreme, yet transient, antibiotic tolerance accompanied by a transient halt in growth. However, upon cessation of antibiotic treatment, a resumption in growth of persister cells causes recurrence of infections and treatment failure. Previously, we reported the involvement of msaABCR in several important staphylococcal phenotypes, including the formation of persister cells. Additionally, observations of the regulation of several metabolic genes by the msaABCR operon in transcriptomics and …

Capture And Metabolomic Analysis Of The Human Endometrial Epithelial Organoid Secretome, Constantine A. Simintiras, Pramod Dhakal, Chaman Ranjit, Harriet C. Fitzgerald, Ahmed Z. Balboula, Thomas E. Spencer

Faculty Publications

Suboptimal uterine fluid (UF) composition can lead to pregnancy loss and likely contributes to offspring susceptibility to chronic adult-onset disorders. However, our understanding of the biochemical composition and mechanisms underpinning UF formation and regulation remain elusive, particularly in humans. To address this challenge, we developed a high-throughput method for intraorganoid fluid (IOF) isolation from human endometrial epithelial organoids. The IOF is biochemically distinct to the extraorganoid fluid (EOF) and cell culture medium as evidenced by the exclusive presence of 17 metabolites in IOF. Similarly, 69 metabolites were unique to EOF, showing asymmetrical apical and basolateral secretion by the in vitro …

Spatial-Temporal Relationship Between Population Mobility And Covid-19 Outbreaks In South Carolina: Time Series Forecasting Analysis, Chengbo Zeng, Jiajia Zhang Ph.D., Zhenlong Li Ph.D., Xiaowen Sun, Bankole Olatosi Ph.D., Sharon Weissman, Xiaoming Li Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Background: Population mobility is closely associated with COVID-19 transmission, and it could be used as a proximal indicator to predict future outbreaks, which could inform proactive nonpharmaceutical interventions for disease control. South Carolina is one of the US states that reopened early, following which it experienced a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases.

Objective: The aims of this study are to examine the spatial-temporal relationship between population mobility and COVID-19 outbreaks and use population mobility data to predict daily new cases at both the state and county level in South Carolina.

Methods: This longitudinal study used disease surveillance …

Gastrointestinal Microenvironment And The Gut-Lung Axis In The Immune Responses Of Severe Covid-19, Yun Yang, Weishan Huang, Yubo Fan, Guo-Qiang Chen

Faculty Publications

The global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is an unprecedented threat to the human health. A close association of the digestive tract is implied by the high frequency of gastrointestinal syndromes among COVID-19 patients. A better understanding of the role of intestinal microenvironment in COVID-19 immunopathology will be helpful to improve the control of COVID-19 associated morbidity and mortality. This review summarizes the immune responses associated with the severity of COVID-19, the current evidence of SARS-CoV-2 intestinal tropism, and the potential involvement of gut microenvironment in COVID-19 severity. Additionally, we …

Covid-19: Insights Into Virus-Receptor Interactions, Azadeh Sepahvandi, Maryann Ghaffari, Amir Hossein Bahmanpour, Fathollah Moztarzadeh, Payam Zarrintaj, Hasan Uludağ, Masoud Mozafari

Faculty Publications

The recent outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) calls for rapid mobilization of scientists to probe and explore solutions to this deadly disease. A limited understanding of the high transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) relative to other coronavirus strains guides a deeper investigation into the virus/receptor interactions. The cutting-edge studies in thermodynamic and kinetic properties of interactions such as protein-protein interplays have been reviewed in many modeling and analysis studies. Highlighting the thermodynamic assessments of biological interactions and emphasizing the boosted transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 despite its high similarity in structure and sequence with other coronavirus strains …

Is A Common Goal A False Hope In Convergence Research?: Opportunities And Challenges Of International Convergence Research To Address Arctic Change, Jessica G. Ernakovich, N. Eklund, Ruth K. Varner, N. Kirchner, J. Jeuring, Katharine Duderstadt, A. Granebeck, E. Golubeva, Asiaq Participants

Faculty Publications

The Arctic faces multiple pressures including climate change, shifting demographics, human health risks, social justice imbalances, governance issues, and expanding resource extraction. A convergence of academic disciplines—such as natural and social sciences, engineering and technology, health and medicine—and international perspectives is required to meaningfully contribute to solving the challenges of Arctic peoples and ecosystems. However, successfully carrying out convergent, international research and education remains a challenge. Here, lessons from the planning phase of a convergence research project concerned with the health of Arctic waters developed by the Arctic Science IntegrAtion Quest (ASIAQ) are discussed. We discuss our perspective on the …

Latent Class Analysis Of K-12 Teachers’ Barriers To Implementing Oer, Hengtao Tang Ph.D., Yu Bao

Faculty Publications

Open educational resources (OER) are a cost-effective alternative to traditional textbooks for K-12 teachers to provide differentiated instruction at a much lower cost. However, teachers have to overcome barriers to implement OER in their classrooms, especially if cultural and economic factors are considered. To help each teacher overcome individual barriers, a person-centered approach to understand teachers’ barriers of implementing OER is needed yet absent. This research thus filled the gap by conducting a latent class analysis of teachers’ profiles in terms of their barriers in using OER. The findings identified three types of teacher profiles and revealed how different profiles …

Synthesis Of The Microbial Polysaccharide Gellan From Dairy And Plant-Based Processing Coproducts, Thomas P. West

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this review is to provide both background about the microbial polysaccharide gellan and, more specifically, to examine bacterial gellan synthesis on dairy and plant-based processing coproducts. The anionic heteropolysaccharide gellan is known to be synthesized by Sphingomonas elodea strain ATCC 31461 [1,2]. Although originally classified as Pseudomonas elodea, this strain was reclassified as a species of Sphingomonas [3,4]. Structurally, the water-soluble gum gellan exists as a tetrasaccharide composed of 20% glucuronic acid, 60% glucose and 20% rhamnose [5–7]. The native form of gellan has been shown to contain acetyl and L-glyceryl groups. These substituents need to be …

The Remains Of The Fray: Nascent Colonialism And Heterogeneous Hybridity, Charles R. Cobb, James B. Legg, Steven D. Smith, Chester B. Depratter, Brad R. Lieb, Edmond A. Boudreaux Iii

Faculty Publications

Investigations at the Native American site complex of Stark Farms in Mississippi, USA, have yielded numerous examples of metal artifacts of European origin. Our study suggests that they derive from contact between the AD 1540–1541 winter encampment of the Spanish Hernando de Soto expedition and the local Indigenous polity. The artifacts display a wide range of modifications, uses, and depositional contexts congruent with hybrid practices. We argue that the early colonial setting of Stark Farms requires a different perspective on cultural mixing than is often applied in studies of European colonialism. This is highlighted by the strongly improvisational nature of …

Maternal Pragmatic Language Difficulties In The Fmr1 Premutation And The Broad Autism Phenotype: Associations With Individual And Family Outcomes, Jessica Klusek, Angela John Thurman, Leonard Abbeduto

Faculty Publications

Broader phenotypes associated with genetic liability, including mild difficulties with pragmatic language skills, have been documented in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and mothers of children with fragile X syndrome (FXS). This study investigated the relationship between pragmatic difficulties and indicators of maternal well-being and family functioning. Pragmatic difficulty was associated with loneliness in mothers of children with ASD or FXS, and with depression, decreased life satisfaction, and poorer family relationship quality but only in mothers of children with FXS. Results suggest that subtle maternal pragmatic language difficulties are a risk factor that that may contribute to …

Getting Back On Track: Why Some Young Men Stay In The Church And Not Others, S. Joseph Kidder, Natalie Dorland

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.