Digital Commons Network^™

Encapsulation And Release Of Calcein From Herceptin-Conjugated Eliposomes, Mah Noor Zafar, William G. Pitt, Ghaleb A. Husseini

Faculty Publications

Achieving an optimal therapeutic level is crucial in effectively eradicating cancer cells during treatment. However, conventional chemotherapy-associated systemic administration of anticancer agents leads to many side effects. To achieve the desired control over the target site, active targeting of HER2-positive breast cancer cells can be achieved by conjugating liposomal vesicles with Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2 (HER2) and inducing release of the encapsulated drug using ultrasound. To further enhance the delivery efficiency, nanoemulsion droplets exhibiting responsiveness to low-frequency ultrasound are encapsulated within these lipid vesicles. In this study, we prepared four different liposomal formulations, namely pegylated liposomes …

Comparison Of Raw Accelerometry Data From Actigraph, Apple Watch, Garmin, And Fitbit Using A Mechanical Shaker Table, James W. White Iii, Olivia L. Finnegan, Nick Tindall, Srihari Nelakuditi, David E. Brown Iii, Russell R. Pate Ph.D., Gregory J. Welk, Massimiliano De Zambotti, Rahul Ghosal, Yuan Wang, Sarah Burkart, Elizabeth L. Adams, Mvs Chandrashekhar, Bridget Armstrong, Michael W. Beets, Robert Weaver Med, Phd

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the raw accelerometry output from research-grade and consumer wearable devices compared to accelerations produced by a mechanical shaker table. Raw accelerometry data from a total of 40 devices (i.e., n = 10 ActiGraph wGT3X-BT, n = 10 Apple Watch Series 7, n = 10 Garmin Vivoactive 4S, and n = 10 Fitbit Sense) were compared to reference accelerations produced by an orbital shaker table at speeds ranging from 0.6 Hz (4.4 milligravity-mg) to 3.2 Hz (124.7mg). Two-way random effects absolute intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) tested inter-device reliability. …

Now It’S Your Turn!: Eye Blink Rate In A Jenga Task Modulated By Interaction Of Task Wait Times, Effortful Control, And Internalizing Behaviors, Kelley E. Gunther

Faculty Publications

Dopamine is a versatile neurotransmitter with implications in many domains, including anxiety and effortful control. Where high levels of effortful control are often regarded as adaptive, other work suggests that high levels of effortful control may be a risk factor for anxiety. Dopamine signaling may be key in understanding these relations. Eye blink rate is a non-invasive proxy metric of midbrain dopamine activity. However, much work with eye blink rate has been constrained to screen-based tasks which lack in ecological validity. We tested whether changes in eye blink rate during a naturalistic effortful control task differ as a function of …

Is Insurance "Just A Contract" Or A "Just Contract"?, Chaim Saiman

Faculty Publications

Courts never tire of saying an insurance policy is “just a contract” and subject to ordinary rules of contract law. Contract here signals a plain language approach that strives for formal neutrality between the parties. Yet courts also frequently rely on a narrative that an insurance policy strives to be a “just contract” with special pro-policyholder rules that reach beyond the plain language.

How is insurance simultaneously “just a contract” and a “just contract?” Prior scholarship has noted the confusion, but this Article aims to reconcile the dueling narratives. When the issue relates to scope or breadth of coverage—whether a …

Effect Of Fabrication Parameters On The Ferroelectricity Of Hafnium Zirconium Oxide Films: A Statistical Study, Guillermo A. Salcedo, Ahmad E. Islam, Elizabeth Reichley, Michael Dietz, Christine M. Schubert Kabban, Kevin D. Leedy, Tyson C. Back, Weison Wang, Andrew Green, Timothy S. Wolfe, James M. Sattler

Faculty Publications

Ferroelectricity in hafnium zirconium oxide (Hf_1−xZr_xO₂) and the factors that impact it have been a popular research topic since its discovery in 2011. Although the general trends are known, the interactions between fabrication parameters and their effect on the ferroelectricity of Hf_1−xZr_xO₂ require further investigation. In this paper, we present a statistical study and a model that relates Zr concentration (x), film thickness (t_f), and annealing temperature (T_a) with the remanent polarization (P_r) in tungsten (W)-capped Hf_1−xZr_xO₂. …

Reassignment Of A Junior Synonym Of Lepisosteus Oculatus Winchell 1864 To L. Platostomus Rafinesque 1820, Daniel Sinopoli, Thomas J. Near, Solomon R. David, Prosanta Chakrabarty

Faculty Publications

The foundation for the current taxonomy of Lepisosteidae (gars) was laid by Suttkus (1963) and Wiley (1976); these authors recognized only two extant genera as valid, Lepisosteus and Atractosteus. These authors also only recognized seven living species of gars and assigned several previously recognized species as junior synonyms. One of these, Lepisosteus oculatus Winchell 1864 possesses five junior synonyms: Cylindrosteus latirostris Girard 1858, Cylindrosteus productus Cope 1865, Cylindrosteus agassizii Duméril 1870, Cylindrosteus zadockii Duméril 1870 and Cylindrosteus bartonii Duméril 1870. Cylindrosteus zadockii was described from two syntypes collected from the “Upper Mississippi River” (MHNH 5799, 5800; Figure 1), and was …

Study Protocol: Identifying Transcriptional Regulatory Alterations Of Chronic Effects Of Blast And Disturbed Sleep In United States Veterans, Molly J. Sullan, Kelly A. Stearns-Yoder, Zhaoyu Wang, Andrew J. Hoisington, Adam D. Brenoweth, Walter Carr, Yongchao Ge, Hanga Galfalvy, Fatemah Haghighi, Lisa A. Brenner

Faculty Publications

Injury related to blast exposure dramatically rose during post-911 era military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is among the most common injuries following blast, an exposure that may not result in a definitive physiologic marker (e.g., loss of consciousness). Recent research suggests that exposure to low level blasts and, more specifically repetitive blast exposure (RBE), which may be subconcussive in nature, may also impact long term physiologic and psychological outcomes, though findings have been mixed. For military personnel, blast-related injuries often occur in chaotic settings (e.g., combat), which create challenges in the immediate assessment of …

A First Responder To The World, Julia F. Irwin

Faculty Publications

In the twenty-first century, providing humanitarian assistance to other nations forms an essential part of the U.S. military's mission. Designed to “relieve or reduce endemic conditions such as human suffering, disease, hunger, [and] privation,” the military's humanitarian tasks include such activities as assisting refugees, delivering food and medical equipment to partner nations, and removing unexploded landmines. But among the most recognized—and best publicized—of the U.S. Armed Forces’ humanitarian activities are its foreign disaster relief operations. In response to such recent catastrophes as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the 2011 tsunami in Japan, 2019's Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, and the 2023 …

Dissociating Reading And Auditory Comprehension In Persons With Aphasia, Rachel M. Harrington, Sigfus Kristinsson, Janina Wilmskoetter, Natalie Busby, Dirk Den Ouden, Chris Rorden, Julius Fridriksson Ph.D., Leonardo Bonilha

Faculty Publications

Language comprehension is often affected in individuals with post-stroke aphasia. However, deficits in auditory comprehension are not fully correlated with deficits in reading comprehension and the mechanisms underlying this dissociation remain unclear. This distinction is important for understanding language mechanisms, predicting long-term impairments and future development of treatment interventions. Using comprehensive auditory and reading measures from a large cohort of individuals with aphasia, we evaluated the relationship between aphasia type and reading comprehension impairments, the relationship between auditory versus reading comprehension deficits and the crucial neuroanatomy supporting the dissociation between post-stroke reading and auditory deficits. Scores from the Western Aphasia …

Coping With California’S Deficit, Part 2: Permissible Borrowing, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Faculty Publications

In this installment of Academic Perspectives on SALT, Shanske and Gamage examine California’s projected budget deficit and possible solutions. California has a large budget deficit that is predicted to last for several years. In this two-part series, we will place California’s situation in context and propose solutions.

The state should use short-term borrowing to cover at least some of the cyclical shortfall. That the real revenue cycle is unlikely to neatly unfold over one traditional fiscal year should not change this conclusion. To that end, we will show how California can operationalize this simple insight despite the impression some may …

Scriptblock Smuggling: Uncovering Stealthy Evasion Techniques In Powershell And .Net Environments, Anthony J. Rose, Scott R. Graham, Christine M. Schubert, Jacob Krasnov, Wayne C. Henry

Faculty Publications

The Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) plays a crucial role in detecting malware within Windows operating systems. This paper presents ScriptBlock Smuggling, a novel evasion and log spoofing technique exploiting PowerShell and .NET environments to circumvent the AMSI. By focusing on the manipulation of ScriptBlocks within the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST), this method creates dual AST representations, one for compiler execution and another for antivirus and log analysis, enabling the evasion of AMSI detection and challenging traditional memory patching bypass methods. This research provides a detailed analysis of PowerShell’s ScriptBlock creation and its inherent security features and pinpoints critical limitations in …

Developmental Differences In Reported Speech And Internal State Language In Preschoolers’ Personal Narratives, Megan E. Welliver, Alice J. Davidson, Alexandra Mccrary

Faculty Publications

The present study explored developmental differences in preschoolers’ use of reported speech and internal state language in personal narratives. Three-, four-, and five-year-olds attending a laboratory preschool shared 204 stories about ‘a time when you were happy/sad’. Stories were audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded for reported speech (direct, indirect, narrativized) and internal state language (cognitive states, total emotion terms, unique emotion terms). Personal narratives told by five-year-olds included more cognitive states and more narrativized speech than those told by three- and four-year-olds, even when accounting for children’s vocabulary skills, and that reported speech (narrativized, direct) were positively correlated with cognitive state …

Data Supporting Research On Personalized Learning Paths, Sean Mochocki, Mark Reith

Faculty Publications

Personalized Learning Paths (PLPs) are a key application of Artificial Intelligence in E-Learning. In contrast to regular Learning Paths, they return a unique sequence of learning materials identified as meeting the individual needs of the students. In the literature, PLPs are often created from knowledge graphs, which assist with ordering topics and their associated learning materials. Knowledge graphs are typically directed and acyclic, to capture prerequisite relationships between topics, though they can also have bidirectional edges when these prerequisite relationships are not necessary. This data package provides a primarily un-directed knowledge graph, with associated repository of open-source learning materials that …

The Impact Of Data Preparation And Model Complexity On The Natural Language Classification Of Chinese News Headlines, Torrey J. Wagner, Dennis Guhl, Brent T. Langhals

Faculty Publications

Given the emergence of China as a political and economic power in the 21st century, there is increased interest in analyzing Chinese news articles to better understand developing trends in China. Because of the volume of the material, automating the categorization of Chinese-language news articles by headline text or titles can be an effective way to sort the articles into categories for efficient review. A 383,000-headline dataset labeled with 15 categories from the Toutiao website was evaluated via natural language processing to predict topic categories. The influence of six data preparation variations on the predictive accuracy of four algorithms was …

Association Of Blast Exposure In Military Breaching With Intestinal Permeability Blood Biomarkers Associated With Leaky Gut, Qingkun Liu, Zhaoyu Wang, Shengnan Sun, Jeffrey Nemes, Lisa A. Brenner, Miciej Skotak, Christina R. Lavalle, Yongchao Ge, Walter Carr, Fatemeh Haghighi

Faculty Publications

Injuries and subclinical effects from exposure to blasts are of significant concern in military operational settings, including tactical training, and are associated with self-reported concussion-like symptomology and physiological changes such as increased intestinal permeability (IP), which was investigated in this study. Time-series gene expression and IP biomarker data were generated from “breachers” exposed to controlled, low-level explosive blast during training. Samples from 30 male participants at pre-, post-, and follow-up blast exposure the next day were assayed via RNA-seq and ELISA. A battery of symptom data was also collected at each of these time points that acutely showed elevated symptom …

Investigating Consumer Purchase Intention Of Athleisure Products: A Study Of Lululemon’S Sns Ad, Julia Prigl, Jiyeon Kim Ph.D., Karen Edwards J.D.

Faculty Publications

This study investigated how SNS advertising by Lululemon affected consumer purchase intention from the brand. The influence of specific ad traits such as informativeness, creativity, and emotional appeal, on attitude towards the advertisement, the influence of attitude towards the advertisement on willingness to engage with the brand and the influence of willingness to engage with the brand on purchase intention. A moderating effect of a sedentary or active lifestyle is tested. Also, the influence of perceived behavior of others on subjective norm, and the influence of subjective norm on willingness to engage with the brand were investigated. This study contributes …

Coping With California’S Deficit, Part 1: Borrowing And Taxes, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Faculty Publications

In this installment of Academic Perspectives on SALT, Shanske and Gamage examine California’s projected budget deficit and possible solutions. California has a large budget deficit that is predicted to last for several years. In this two-part series, we will place California’s situation in context and propose solutions.

The state should use short-term borrowing to cover at least some of the cyclical shortfall. That the real revenue cycle is unlikely to neatly unfold over one traditional fiscal year should not change this conclusion. To that end, we will show how California can operationalize this simple insight despite the impression some may …

Escalating Uncertainties Require Institutional Transformation To Support Epistemological Pluralism, Jennifer F. Brewer, Holly M. Hapke

Faculty Publications

As marine conservation challenges intensify with accelerating anthropogenic change, informing public deliberation about difficult trade-offs requires commitment to epistemological pluralism. Robust integration of social sciences can improve the realism of policy debates by explicating a range of potential social-ecological outcomes. Funders have long incentivized interdisciplinarity, yet progress is insufficient and embedded in a political economy of knowledge production. Failure to substantively address inequities can stymie collaboration. Institutional expectations for promotion and tenure rarely recognize the extent to which deep engagement transforms epistemological norms and scholarly outputs. Several organizations and programs offer relevant experience and resources. Senior scholars can use their …

Escalating Uncertainties Require Institutional Transformation To Support Epistemological Pluralism, Jennifer F. Brewer, Holly M. Hapke

Faculty Publications

As marine conservation challenges intensify with accelerating anthropogenic change, informing public deliberation about difficult trade-offs requires commitment to epistemological pluralism. Robust integration of social sciences can improve the realism of policy debates by explicating a range of potential social-ecological outcomes. Funders have long incentivized interdisciplinarity, yet progress is insufficient and embedded in a political economy of knowledge production. Failure to substantively address inequities can stymie collaboration. Institutional expectations for promotion and tenure rarely recognize the extent to which deep engagement transforms epistemological norms and scholarly outputs. Several organizations and programs offer relevant experience and resources. Senior scholars can use their …

Sortase-Encoding Genes, Srta And Srtc, Mediate Enterococcus Faecalis Og1rf Persistence In The Helicoverpa Zea Gastrointestinal Tract, Jerreme J. Jackson, Samantha Heyer, Geneva Bell

Faculty Publications

Enterococcus faecalis is a commensal and opportunistic pathogen in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract of mammals and insects. To investigate mechanisms of bacterial persistence in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT), we developed a non-destructive sampling model using Helicoverpa zea, a destructive agricultural pest, as host to study the role of bacterial sortase enzymes in mitigating persistence in the gastrointestinal tract. E. faecalis OG1RF ΔsrtA and E. faecalis OG1RF ΔsrtC, isogenic E. faecalis OG1RF sortase mutants grew similarly under planktonic growth conditions relative to a streptomycin-resistant E. faecalis OG1RFS WT in vitro but displayed impaired biofilm formation under, both, physiological and alkaline conditions. …

Balancing Best Practice And Reality In Behavioral Intervention Development: A Survey Of Principal Investigators Funded By The National Institutes Of Health, Lauren Von Klinggraeff, Sarah Burkart, Christopher D. Pfledderer, Alexander Mclain, Bridget Armstrong Ph.D., Robert Glenn Weaver Med, Phd, Michael Beets Med, Mph, Phd

Faculty Publications

Preliminary studies play a prominent role in the development of large-scale behavioral interventions. Though recommendations exist to guide the execution and interpretation of preliminary studies, these assume optimal scenarios which may clash with realities faced by researchers. The purpose of this study was to explore how principal investigators (PIs) balance expectations when conducting preliminary studies. We surveyed PIs funded by the National Institutes of Health to conduct preliminary behavioral interventions between 2000 and 2020. Four hundred thirty-one PIs (19% response rate) completed the survey (November 2021 to January 2022, 72% female, mean 21 years post-terminal degree). Most PIs were aware …

Coherent States Of The Laguerre–Gauss Modes, M. P. Morales Rodríguez, O. S. Magaña-Loaiza, B. Perez-Garcia, L. M. Nieto Calzada, F. Marroquín Gutiérrrez, B. M. Rodríguez-Lara

Faculty Publications

Large quantum photonic systems hold promise for surpassing classical computational limits, yet their state preparation remains a challenge. We propose an alternative approach to study multiparticle dynamics by mapping the excitation mode of these systems to physical properties of the Laguerre–Gauss modes. We construct coherent states establishing a direct link between excitation number dynamics and the evolution of the Laguerre–Gauss modes. This highlights the photon transverse spatial degree of freedom as a versatile platform for testing the fundamental aspects of quantum multiparticle systems.

Hydroxymethanesulfonate And Sulfur(Iv) In Fairbanks Winter During The Alpaca Study, Kayane Dingilian, Elliana Hebert, Michael Battaglia Jr., James R. Campbell, Meeta Cesler-Maloney, William Simpson, Jason M. St. Clair, Jack E. Dibb, Brice Temime-Roussel, Barbara D’Anna

Faculty Publications

Hydroxymethanesulfonate (HMS) in fine aerosol particles has been reported at significant concentrations along with sulfate under extreme cold conditions (-35 °C) in Fairbanks, Alaska, a high latitude city. HMS, a component of S(IV) and an adduct of formaldehyde and sulfur dioxide, forms in liquid water. Previous studies may have overestimated HMS concentrations by grouping it with other S(IV) species. In this work, we further investigate HMS and the speciation of S(IV) through the Alaskan Layered Pollution and Chemical Analysis (ALPACA) intensive study in Fairbanks. We developed a method utilizing hydrogen peroxide to isolate HMS and found that approximately 50% of …

Whole-Of-School Physical Activity Implementation In The Context Of The Dubai Fitness Challenge, Chris Mcmahon, Collin A. Webster, Robert Weaver, Christophe El Haber, Gönül Tekkurşun Demir, Zainab Mohamed Ismail, Syeda Zoha Fatima Naqvi, Mehnaz Ghani, Şevval Kepenek, Manel Kherraf, Thrisha Krishnakumar, Pranati Prakash, Yeowon Seo

Faculty Publications

Introduction

Physical activity (PA) promotion among school-aged youth is a global health priority. Recommendations for such promotion include implementing whole-of-school approaches that maximize resources across the school environment. This study examined schools’ participation in an annual, government-led, and emirate-wide initiative in Dubai, called the Dubai Fitness Challenge, in which the goal is to accrue 30 minutes of PA every day for 30 days (as such, the initiative is colloquially referred to as “Dubai 30x30”).

Methods

A mixed-methods design was employed for this study. Three schools were recruited using convenience sampling. Participants were 18 physical education teachers, 20 classroom teachers, 2 …

Now It’S Your Turn!: Eye Blink Rate In A Jenga Task Modulated By Interaction Of Task Wait Times, Effortful Control, And Internalizing Behaviors, Kelley E. Gunther, Xiaoxue Fu Ph.D., Leigha A. Macneill, Morgan Jones, Briana Ermanni, Koraly Pérez-Edgar

Faculty Publications

Dopamine is a versatile neurotransmitter with implications in many domains, including anxiety and effortful control. Where high levels of effortful control are often regarded as adaptive, other work suggests that high levels of effortful control may be a risk factor for anxiety. Dopamine signaling may be key in understanding these relations. Eye blink rate is a non-invasive proxy metric of midbrain dopamine activity. However, much work with eye blink rate has been constrained to screen-based tasks which lack in ecological validity. We tested whether changes in eye blink rate during a naturalistic effortful control task differ as a function of …

The Staggered Retreat Of Grounded Ice In The Ross Sea, Antarctica, Since The Last Glacial Maximum (Lgm), Matthew A. Danielson, Philip J. Bart

Faculty Publications

The retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) in the Ross Sea after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was more significant than for any other Antarctic sector. Here we combined the available chronology of retreat with new mapping of seismically resolvable grounding zone wedges (GZWs). Mapping GZWs is important because they record the locations of former stillstands in the extent of grounded ice for individual ice streams during the overall retreat. Our analysis shows that the longest stillstands occurred early in the deglacial period and had millennial durations. Stillstands ended abruptly with retreat distances measured in the tens to …

Detecting Anomalies In Time Series Using Kernel Density Approaches, Robin Frehner, Kesheng Wu, Alexander Sim, Jinoh Kim

Faculty Publications

This paper introduces a novel anomaly detection approach tailored for time series data with exclusive reliance on normal events during training. Our key innovation lies in the application of kernel-density estimation (KDE) to scrutinize reconstruction errors, providing an empirically derived probability distribution for normal events post-reconstruction. This non-parametric density estimation technique offers a nuanced understanding of anomaly detection, differentiating it from prevalent threshold-based mechanisms in existing methodologies. In post-training, events are encoded, decoded, and evaluated against the estimated density, providing a comprehensive notion of normality. In addition, we propose a data augmentation strategy involving variational autoencoder-generated events and a smoothing …

Centrifugal Forces Impacting Urbanization In The Eastern Mediterranean During Roman And Early Islamic Times, Øystein S. Labianca

Faculty Publications

My goal with this essay is to make the existence of a distinctive Levantine cultural paradigm a lens through which to examine long-term patterns of urbanization and cultural change in the Eastern Mediterranean—focusing especially on present-day Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Inspired by the agenda and approach of global history, the essay is an attempt to highlight a number of salient features of societal formation processes in this region that set them apart from such processes in the heartlands of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The paradigm holds that societal formation dynamics in the Levant have been dominated more by …

Assessing Forage Research And Education Needs Of Organic Dairy Farms In The United States, Eric Hatungimana, Heather M. Darby, Kathy J. Soder, Sara E. Ziegler, Andre F. Brito, Lisa Kissing Kucek, Heathcliffe Riday, E Charles Brummer

Faculty Publications

The viability of organic dairy operations in the United States (US) relies on forage production. The objectives of this study were to (1) assess producer and farm information regarding current forage production practices and producer knowledge gaps and (2) identify forage research and educational needs of organic dairy producers across the US. A survey was distributed to 643 organic dairy producers across the US, with 165 respondents (26% response rate). A focus group consisting of extension professionals, university researchers and staff, consultants, dairy industry representatives and organic dairy producers was also consulted for forage research needs. Results showed that approximately …

Assessing Forage Research And Education Needs Of Organic Dairy Farms In The United States, Eric Hatungimana, Heather M. Darby, Kathy J. Soder, Sara E. Ziegler, Andre F. Brito, Lisa Kissing Kucek, Heathcliffe Riday, E Charles Brummer

Faculty Publications

The viability of organic dairy operations in the United States (US) relies on forage production. The objectives of this study were to (1) assess producer and farm information regarding current forage production practices and producer knowledge gaps and (2) identify forage research and educational needs of organic dairy producers across the US. A survey was distributed to 643 organic dairy producers across the US, with 165 respondents (26% response rate). A focus group consisting of extension professionals, university researchers and staff, consultants, dairy industry representatives and organic dairy producers was also consulted for forage research needs. Results showed that approximately …