Digital Commons Network^™

Topical Application Of An Irreversible Small Molecule Inhibitor Of Lysyl Oxidases Ameliorates Skin Scarring And Fibrosis, Nutan Chaudhari, Alison D. Findlay, Andrew W. Stevenson, Tristan D. Clemons, Yimin Yao, Amar Joshi, Sepidar Sayar, Gordon Wallace, Suzanne Rea, Priyanka Toshniwal, Zhenjun Deng, Philip E. Melton, Nicole Hortin, K. Swaminathan Iyer, Wolfgang Jarolimek, Fiona M. Wood, Mark W. Fear

Faculty Publications

Scarring is a lifelong consequence of skin injury, with scar stiffness and poor appearance presenting physical and psychological barriers to a return to normal life. Lysyl oxidases are a family of enzymes that play a critical role in scar formation and maintenance. Lysyl oxidases stabilize the main component of scar tissue, collagen, and drive scar stiffness and appearance. Here we describe the development and characterisation of an irreversible lysyl oxidase inhibitor, PXS-6302. PXS-6302 is ideally suited for skin treatment, readily penetrating the skin when applied as a cream and abolishing lysyl oxidase activity. In murine models of injury and fibrosis, …

Applications Of A Patient-Specific Whole-Body Ct-Mesh Hybrid Computational Phantom In Second Cancer Risk Prediction, Erika Kollitz, Moritz Roew, Haegin Han, Marco Pinto, Florian Kamp, Chan Hyeong Kim, Marco Schwarz, Claus Belka, Wayne Newhauser, Katia Parodi, George Dedes

Faculty Publications

Objective. CT-mesh hybrid phantoms (or ‘hybrid(s)’) made from integrated patient CT data and mesh-type reference computational phantoms (MRCPs) can be beneficial for patient-specific whole-body dose evaluation, but this benefit has yet to be evaluated for second cancer risk prediction. The purpose of this study is to compare the hybrid’s ability to predict risk throughout the body with a patient-scaled MRCP against ground truth whole-body CTs (WBCTs). Approach. Head and neck active scanning proton treatment plans were created for and simulated on seven hybrids and the corresponding scaled MRCPs and WBCTs. Equivalent dose throughout the body was calculated and input into …

Strong Margin Influence On The Arctic Ocean Barium Cycle Revealed By Pan‐Arctic Synthesis, Laura M. Whitmore, Alan M. Shiller, Tristan J. Horner, Yang Xiang, Maureen E. Auro, Dorothea Bauch, Frank Dehairs, Phoebe J. Lam, Jingxuan Li, Maria T. Maldonado, Chantal Mears, Robert Newton, Angelica Pasqualini, Hélène Planquette, Robert Rember, Helmuth Thomas

Faculty Publications

Laura M. Whitmore et al, 2022, Strong margin influence on the Arctic Ocean barium cycle revealed by Pan‐Arctic synthesis, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, Citation number, 10.1029/2021JC017417. To view the published open abstract, go to https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017417.

Neighborhood Characteristics And Dementia Symptomology Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults With Alzheimer’S Disease, Dana M. Alhasan, Matthew C. Lohman Ph.D., Jana A. Hirsch, Margaret Chandlee Miller Ms, Ph.D., Bo Cai Ph.D., Chandra L. Jackson

Faculty Publications

Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPSs) lead to myriad poor health outcomes among individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Prior studies have observed associations between the various aspects of the home environment and NPSs, but macro-level environmental stressors (e.g., neighborhood income) may also disrupt the neuronal microenvironment and exacerbate NPSs. Yet, to our knowledge, no studies have investigated the relationship between the neighborhood environment and NPSs.

Methods: Using 2010 data among older adults with AD collected from a sample of the South Carolina Alzheimer’s Disease Registry, we estimated cross-sectional associations between neighborhood characteristics and NPSs in the overall population and by race/ethnicity. Neighborhood …

Wildfire Aerosol Deposition Likely Amplified A Summertime Arctic Phytoplankton Bloom, Mathieu Ardyna, Douglas S. Hamilton, Tristan Harmel, Léo Lacour, Diana N. Bernstein, Julien Laliberté, Christopher Horvat, Rémi Laxenaire, Matthew M. Mills, Gert Van Dijken, Igor Polyakov, Hervé Claustre, Natalie Mahowald, Kevin Robert Arrigo

Faculty Publications

Summertime wildfire activity is increasing in boreal forest and tundra ecosystems in the Northern Hemisphere. However, the impact of long range transport and deposition of wildfire aerosols on biogeochemical cycles in the Arctic Ocean is unknown. Here, we use satellite-based ocean color data, atmospheric modeling and back trajectory analysis to investigate the transport and fate of aerosols emitted from Siberian wildfires in summer 2014 and their potential impact on phytoplankton dynamics in the Arctic Ocean. We detect large phytoplankton blooms near the North Pole (up to 82°N in the eastern Eurasian Basin). Our analysis indicates that these blooms were induced …

Degumming Of Hemp Fibers Using Combined Microwave Energy And Deep Eutectic Solvent Treatment, Bulbul Ahmed, Qinglin Wu, Hai Lin, Jaegyoung Gwon, Ioan Negulescu, Bruce Cameron

Faculty Publications

Hemp bast fibers were degummed using combined microwave energy (MWE) and deep eutectic solvent (DES) to generate pure hemp cellulose fibers for potential textile applications. The properties of the degummed fibers were investigated and compared with those of the alkali-treated fibers using several analytical techniques. Results revealed that hemp fiber surface underwent dramatic structural disruption during the pretreatment, due to the removal of “gummy” compounds (i.e., pectin, oil, wax, etc.), lignin, and amorphous cellulose. The treated fibers had much enhanced thermal stability due to the removal of the gummy materials. The reduced enthalpy (171.34 J/g) of MWE-DES treated fibers at …

Is Three Company Or A Crowd? Comparing And Contrasting U.S. And European Clostridioidesdifficile Clinical Practice Guidelines, Jordan Jones, Aditya Pradhan, Morgan E. Pizzuti, Christopher M. Bland, P. Brandon Bookstaver

Faculty Publications

In 2021, the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG), the Infectious Diseases Society of America in conjunction with the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (IDSA/SHEA), and the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) published updated clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for the management of Clostridioides difficile infections. The differences, sometimes subtle, between these guideline recommendations have caused some debate among clinicians. This paper delves into select key recommendations from each respective CPG and analyzes the differences and evidence associated with each. One primary difference between the CPGs is the preference given to fidaxomicin over vancomycin for initial treatment …

Pest Population Dynamics Are Related To A Continental Overwintering Gradient, Douglas Lawton, Anders S. Huseth, George G. Kennedy, Amy C. Morey, William D. Hutchison, Dominic D. Reisig, Seth J. Dorman, De Shae Dillard, Robert C. Venette, Russell L. Groves, John J. Adamczyk, Izailda Barbosa Dos Santos, Tracey Baute, Sebe Brown, Eric Burkness, Ashley Dean, Galen P. Dively, Hélène B. Doughty, Shelby J. Fleischer, Jessica Green, Jeremy K. Greene, Krista Hamilton, Erin Hodgson, Thomas Hunt, David Kerns, Billy Rogers Leonard, Sean Malone, Fred Musser, David Owens, John C. Palumbo, Silvana Paula-Moraes, Julie A. Peterson, Ricardo Ramirez

Faculty Publications

Overwintering success is an important determinant of arthropod populations that must be considered as climate change continues to influence the spatiotemporal population dynamics of agricultural pests. Using a long-term monitoring database and biologically relevant overwintering zones, we modeled the annual and seasonal population dynamics of a common pest, Helicoverpa zea (Boddie), based on three overwintering suitability zones throughout North America using four decades of soil temperatures: the southern range (able to persist through winter), transitional zone (uncertain overwintering survivorship), and northern limits (unable to survive winter). Our model indicates H. zea population dynamics are hierarchically structured with continental-level effects that …

Pulse-Quality Metric For Nonstationary Partially Coherent Fields, Milo W. Hyde Iv, Olga Korotkova, Mark F. Spencer

Faculty Publications

This paper generalizes a pulse-quality metric referred to as P², i.e., the time analogue of Siegman’s beam quality factor M², to include pulsed (nonstationary) random fields of any state of coherence. The analysis begins with the derivation of a general P² relation, which we then specialize to the important cases of coherent and Schell-model pulsed beams. As examples, we derive the P² for two stochastic sources: (1) a cosine Gaussian-correlated Schell-model pulsed beam and (2) a nonuniformly correlated pulsed beam. For both of these sources, we generate (in simulation) random instances of each and …

The Emergence Of Psychoanalytical Electrochemistry: The Translation Of Mdd Biomarker Discovery To Diagnosis With Electrochemical Sensing, Priyanka M. Nadar, Mckenna A. Merrill, Katherine Austin, Stephen M. Strakowski, Jeffrey M. Halpern

Faculty Publications

The disease burden and healthcare costs of psychiatric diseases along with the pursuit to understand their underlying biochemical mechanisms have led to psychiatric biomarker investigations. Current advances in evaluating candidate biomarkers for psychiatric diseases, such as major depressive disorder (MDD), focus on determining a specific biomarker signature or profile. The origins of candidate biomarkers are heterogenous, ranging from genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, while incorporating associations with clinical characterization. Prior to clinical use, candidate biomarkers must be validated by large multi-site clinical studies, which can be used to determine the ideal MDD biomarker signature. Therefore, identifying valid biomarkers has been challenging, …

Genome-Wide Association Analyses Of Physical Activity And Sedentary Behavior Provide Insights Into Underlying Mechanisms And Roles In Disease Prevention, Zhe Wang, Andrew Emmerich, Nicolas J. Pillon, Tim Moore, Daiane Hemerich, Marilyn C. Cornelis, Eugenia Mazzaferro, Siacia Broos, Tarunveer S. Ahluwalia, Traci M. Bartz, Amy R. Bentley, Lawrence F. Bielak, Mike Chong, Audrey Y. Chu, Diane Berry, Rajkumar Dorajoo, Nicole D. Dueker, Elisa Kasbohm, Bjarke Feenstra, Mary F. Feitosa, Mark A. Sarzynski Ph.D., Faha, Facsm, Et. Al.

Faculty Publications

Although physical activity and sedentary behavior are moderately heritable, little is known about the mechanisms that influence these traits. Combining data for up to 703,901 individuals from 51 studies in a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies yields 99 loci that associate with self-reported moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity during leisure time (MVPA), leisure screen time (LST) and/or sedentary behavior at work. Loci associated with LST are enriched for genes whose expression in skeletal muscle is altered by resistance training. A missense variant in ACTN3 makes the alpha-actinin-3 filaments more flexible, resulting in lower maximal force in isolated type IIA muscle …

Processed Food As A Risk Factor For The Development And Perpetuation Of Crohn's Disease-The Enigma Study, Gina L. Trakman, Winnie Y.Y. Lin, Amy L. Hamilton, Amy L. Wilson-O'Brien, Annalise Stanley, Jessica Y. Ching, Jun Yu, Joyce W.Y. Mak, Yang Sun, Junkin Niu, Yinglei Miao, Xiaoqing Lin, Rui Feng, Minhu Chen, Nitin Shivappa Mbbs, Mph, Ph.D., James R. Hébert Scd, Mark Morrison, Siew C, Ng, Michael A. Kamm

Faculty Publications

(1) Background: Developing countries have experienced a rapid recent rise in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) incidence and emerging evidence suggests processed foods and food additives may predispose one to the development and perpetuation of Crohn’s disease (CD). The aim of this study was to evaluate processed food and food additive intake in CD patients and controls, in Australia (high CD incidence), Hong Kong (intermediate incidence) and mainland China (emerging incidence). (2) Methods: In 274 CD patients (CD), 82 first-degree relatives (FDR), 83 household members (HM) and 92 healthy unrelated controls (HC) from Australia (n = 180), Hong Kong (HK) (n …

References To Robert Frost's Poetry In Advocacy And Judicial Opinions, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This article concerns courts whose written opinions have recently cited and quoted Frost and his poetry. By profiling Frost’s enduring influence, the article fortifies a theme I have presented in earlier “Writing It Right” articles. The theme begins in the courts, which in recent years often accent their opinions’ substantive or procedural rulings by quoting or citing well-known cultural markers from literature, sports, or popular entertainment.

Comparative Efficacy Of A Fungal Entomopathogen With A Broad Host Range Against Two Human-Associated Pests, Aaron R. Ashbrook, Aram Mikaelyan, Coby Schal

Faculty Publications

The ability of a fungal entomopathogen to infect an insect depends on a variety of factors, including strain, host, and environmental conditions. Similarly, an insect’s ability to prevent fungal infection is dependent on its biology, environment, and evolutionary history. Synanthropic pests have adapted to thrive in the indoor environment, yet they arose from divergent evolutionary lineages and occupy different feeding guilds. The hematophagous bed bug (Cimex lectularius) and omnivorous German cockroach (Blattella germanica) are highly successful indoors, but have evolved different physiological and behavioral adaptations to cope with the human-built environment, some of which also reduce the efficacy of fungal …

Sci: A Bayesian Adaptive Phase I/Ii Dose-Finding Design Accounting For Semi-Competing Risks Outcomes For Immunotherapy Trials, Yifei Zhang, Beibei Guo, Sha Cao, Chi Zhang, Yong Zang

Faculty Publications

An immunotherapy trial often uses the phase I/II design to identify the optimal biological dose, which monitors the efficacy and toxicity outcomes simultaneously in a single trial. The progression-free survival rate is often used as the efficacy outcome in phase I/II immunotherapy trials. As a result, patients developing disease progression in phase I/II immunotherapy trials are generally seriously ill and are often treated off the trial for ethical consideration. Consequently, the happening of disease progression will terminate the toxicity event but not vice versa, so the issue of the semi-competing risks arises. Moreover, this issue can become more intractable with …

Redox-Engineering Enhances Maize Thermotolerance And Grain Yield In The Field, Stuart A. Sprague, Tej Man Tamang, Trevor Steiner, Qingyu Wu, Ying Hu, Tayebeh Kakeshpour, Jungeun Park, Jian Yang, Zhao Peng, Blake Bergkamp, Impa Somayanda, Morgan Peterson, Ely Oliveira Garcia, Yangfan Hao, Paul St. Amand, Guihua Bai, Paul A. Nakata, Ivo Rieu, David P. Jackson, Ninghui Cheng, Barbara Valent, Kendal D. Hirschi, Sv Krishna Jagadish, Sanzhen Liu, Frank F. White, Sunghun Park

Faculty Publications

Increasing populations and temperatures are expected to escalate food demands beyond production capacities, and the development of maize lines with better performance under heat stress is desirable. Here, we report that constitutive ectopic expression of a heterologous glutaredoxin S17 from Arabidopsis thaliana (AtGRXS17) can provide thermotolerance in maize through enhanced chaperone activity and modulation of heat stress-associated gene expression. The thermotolerant maize lines had increased protection against protein damage and yielded a sixfold increase in grain production in comparison to the non-transgenic counterparts under heat stress field conditions. The maize lines also displayed thermotolerance in the reproductive stages, resulting in …

Effect Of Two Strains Of Beauveria Bassiana On The Fecundity Of Nezara Viridula L. (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae), Maribel Portilla, Gadi V.P. Reddy, Moukaram Tertuliano

Faculty Publications

The southern green stink bug (SGSB) Nezara viridula (L.) (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae), has become a significant pest of soybean and cotton in southern Central America and in the lower mid-southern U.S. A laboratory colony of SGSB was used to evaluate the effect of two isolates of Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo-Crivelli) Vuillemin (Hypocreales: Cordycipitaceae) including the commercial strain GHA and the Mississippi Delta native NI8 strain on the fecundity of this pest. Water control, Tween-80, and four concentrations of each strain (n × 104, 105, 106, and 107) were evaluated. Both native and commercial isolates with the highest concentrations were susceptible to the …

Susceptibility Of Different Life Stages Of Kudzu Bug Megacopta Cribraria (F.) (Hemiptera: Plataspidae) To Two Different Native Strains Of Beauveria Bassiana, James Paul Glover, Maribel Portilla, Katherine Parys, Clint Allen, Justin George, Gadi V.P. Reddy

Faculty Publications

This is the first study that examined and compared the survival, LC50, and RR50 estimates of Megacopta cribraria F. (Hemiptera: Plataspidae) nymphs and adults that were exposed to two native Beauveria bassiana isolates (Previously codified as NI8 and KUDSC strains) at four concentrations. The greatest reduction in survival and mortality was observed primarily on or after 10 d post-exposure to B. bassiana isolates. Survival of early instars (2nd, 3rd) were not affected by either strains or concentration at 3 d and 5 d post-exposure. Survival of later instars (5th) and adults was significantly reduced when exposed to the KUDSC strain …

Roosting Ecology Of Gould's Wild Turkeys In Southeastern Arizona, Nicholas W. Bakner, Nathan Fyffe, Brittany Oleson, Alex Smallwood, James R. Heffelfinger, Michael J. Chamberlain, Bret A. Collier

Faculty Publications

Availability of suitable roosting sites influences distribution of wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) across the landscape. In semi-arid environments, roosts are limited to riparian corridors capable of supporting trees large enough to provide suitable roost sites. Gould's wild turkeys (M. g. mexicana) are spatially restricted to mountainous semi-arid areas of southwestern United States and Mexico, and information on their distribution and habitat use is limited. We evaluated roost site selection and fidelity of Gould's wild turkeys relative to environmental gradients and forested land cover during 2016–2017 in southeastern Arizona, USA. We monitored 51 global positioning system (GPS)-tagged individuals and collected 7,954 …

Spatiotemporal Patterns Of Male And Female White-Tailed Deer On A Hunted Landscape, Dylan G. Stewart, William D. Gulsby, Stephen S. Ditchkoff, Bret A. Collier

Faculty Publications

Resource selection in sexually dimorphic ungulates is at least partially explained by sex-specific resource requirements and risk aversion strategies. Females generally spend more time in areas with less risk and abundant, high-quality forage due to their smaller body size. However, demographically variable responses to risk are context dependent, and few have concurrently quantified male and female behavior within areas with the same resource base. We captured 111 (54 males, 57 females) adult white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) from 2009 to 2018 on a site in South Carolina, USA, where hunters were the primary source of adult mortality. We fit each deer …

Climate Trends And Behavior Of A Model Amazonian Terrestrial Insectivore, Black-Faced Antthrush, Indicate Adjustment To Hot And Dry Conditions, Vitek Jirinec, Elisa C. Elizondo, Patricia F. Rodrigues, Philip C. Stouffer

Faculty Publications

Rainforest loss threatens terrestrial insectivorous birds throughout the world's tropics. Recent evidence suggests these birds are declining in undisturbed Amazonian rainforest, possibly due to climate change. Here, we first asked whether Amazonian terrestrial insectivorous birds were exposed to increasingly extreme ambient conditions using 38 years of climate data. We found long-term trends in temperature and precipitation at our study site, especially in the dry season, which was ~1.3°C hotter and 21% drier in 2019 than in 1981. Second, to test whether birds actively avoided hot and dry conditions, we used field sensors to identify periodic intervals of ambient extremes and …

Estimating R0 From Early Exponential Growth: Parallels Between 1918 Influenza And 2020 Sars-Cov-2 Pandemics, Grant Foster, Bret D. Elderd, Robert L. Richards, Tad Dallas

Faculty Publications

The large spatial scale, geographical overlap, and similarities in transmission mode between the 1918 H1N1 influenza and 2020 SARS-CoV-2 pandemics together provide a novel opportunity to investigate relationships between transmission of two different diseases in the same location. To this end, we use initial exponential growth rates in a Bayesian hierarchical framework to estimate the basic reproductive number, R0, of both disease outbreaks in a common set of 43 cities in the United States. By leveraging multiple epidemic time series across a large spatial area, we are able to better characterize the variation in R0 across the United States. Additionally, …

Development And Validation Of An Optimized Marker Set For Genomic Selection In Southern U.S. Rice Breeding Programs, Tommaso Cerioli, Christopher O. Hernandez, Brijesh Angira, Susan R. Mccouch, Kelly R. Robbins, Adam N. Famoso

Faculty Publications

The potential of genomic selection (GS) to increase the efficiency of breeding programs has been clearly demonstrated; however, the implementation of GS in rice (Oryza sativa L.) breeding programs has been limited. In recent years, efforts have begun to work toward implementing GS into the Louisiana State University (LSU) Agricultural Center rice breeding program. One of the first steps for successful GS implementation is to establish a suitable marker set for the target germplasm and a reliable, cost-effective genotyping platform capable of providing informative marker data with an adequate turnaround time. The objective of this study was to develop a …

Validity Of An Abbreviated Individual Water Insecurity Experiences (Iwise-4) Scale For Measuring The Prevalence Of Water Insecurity In Low- And Middle-Income Countries, Hilary J. Bethanancourt, Edward A. Frongillo Jr. Ph.D., Sera L. Young

Faculty Publications

The 12-item Water Insecurity Experiences Scales provide high resolution, cross-context equivalent data on household and individual water insecurity. A 4-item, 1-minute version of the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE-4) Scale has proven useful for understanding the prevalence of household water insecurity experiences when limited resources preclude the use of the HWISE-12 Scale. Herein, we tested the validity of an analogous four-item version of the Individual Water Insecurity Experiences Scale (IWISE-4) for measuring the prevalence of individual water insecurity when limited resources prevent implementation of the IWISE-12 Scale. We used data from adults in 31 low- and middle-income countries (n …

Estimating R0 From Early Exponential Growth: Parallels Between 1918 Influenza And 2020 Sars-Cov-2 Pandemics, Grant Foster, Bret D. Elderd, Robert L. Richards, Tad Dallas

Faculty Publications

The large spatial scale, geographical overlap, and similarities in transmission mode between the 1918 H1N1 influenza and 2020 SARS-CoV-2 pandemics together provide a novel opportunity to investigate relationships between transmission of two different diseases in the same location. To this end, we use initial exponential growth rates in a Bayesian hierarchical framework to estimate the basic reproductive number, R₀, of both disease outbreaks in a common set of 43 cities in the United States. By leveraging multiple epidemic time series across a large spatial area, we are able to better characterize the variation in R₀ across the …

Rates Of Future Climate Change In The Gulf Of Mexico And The Caribbean Sea: Implications For Coral Reef Ecosystems, A. E. Lawman, S. G. Dee, K. L. Delong, A. M.S. Correa

Faculty Publications

Rising temperatures and ocean acidification due to anthropogenic climate change pose ominous threats to coral reef ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and the western Caribbean Sea. Unfortunately, the once structurally complex coral reefs in the GoM and Caribbean have dramatically declined since the 1970s; relatively few coral reefs still exhibit a mean live coral cover of >10%. Additional work is needed to characterize future climate stressors on coral reefs in the GoM and the Caribbean Sea. Here, we use climate model simulations spanning the period of 2015–2100 to partition and assess the individual impacts of climate stressors on …

Evidence Of Likely Autochthonous Chagas Disease In The Southwestern United States: A Case Series Of Trypanosoma Cruzi Seropositive Blood Donors, Mary K. Lynn, Kyndall C. Dye-Braumuller, Norman L. Beatty, Patricia L. Dorn, Stephen A. Klotz, Susan L. Stramer, Rebecca L. Townsend, Hany Kamel, Jacquelyn M. Vannoy, Patrick Sadler, Susan P. Montgomery, Hilda N. Rivera, Melissa Nolan Ph.D., Mph

Faculty Publications

Background Chagas disease is a parasitic infection that can insidiously cause non-ischemic cardiomyopathy. Given the largely silent nature of this progressive disease, asymptomatic blood donors pose potential blood transfusion risk. Blood donation screening has become an unintentional form of Chagas disease surveillance, with thousands of new cases identified since national surveillance was initiated in 2007.

Study Design and Methods We recruited T. cruzi-positive blood donors identified from California and Arizona blood centers for confirmatory blood screening and assessment of lifetime infection risk.

Results Among eight suspected cases, we identified four confirmed US autochthonous infections. The current manuscript details the …

The Role Of Booster Vaccination And Ongoing Viral Evolution In Seasonal Circulation Of Sars-Cov-2, A.N.M. Kraay, M.E. Gallagher, Y. Ge, P. Han, J.M. Baker, K. Koelle, A. Handel, B.A. Lopman

Faculty Publications

Periodic resurgences of COVID-19 in the coming years can be expected, while public health interventions may be able to reduce their intensity. We used a transmission model to assess how the use of booster doses and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) amid ongoing pathogen evolution might influence future transmission waves. We find that incidence is likely to increase as NPIs relax, with a second seasonally driven surge expected in autumn 2022. However, booster doses can greatly reduce the intensity of both waves and reduce cumulative deaths by 20% between 7 January 2022 and 7 January 2023. Reintroducing NPIs during the autumn as …

Trade-Offs Between Risks Of Predation And Starvation In Larvae Make The Shelf Break An Optimal Spawning Location For Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, Taylor A. Shropshire, Steven L. Morey, Eric P. Chassignet, Mandy Karnauskas, Victoria J. Coles, Estrella Malca, Raúl Laiz-Carrión, Øyvind Fiksen, Patricia Reglero, Akihiro Shiroza, José M. Quintanilla Hervas, Trika Gerard, John T. Lamkin, Michael R. Stukel

Faculty Publications

Atlantic bluefin tuna (ABT) (Thunnus thynnus) travel long distances to spawn in oligotrophic regions of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) which suggests these regions offer some unique benefit to offspring survival. To better understand how larval survival varies within the GoM a spatially explicit, Lagrangian, individual-based model was developed that simulates dispersal and mortality of ABT early life stages within realistic predator and prey fields during the spawning periods from 1993 to 2012. The model estimates that starvation is the largest cumulative source of mortality associated with an early critical period. However, elevated predation on older larvae is …

Long-Term Changes In Avian Biomass And Functional Diversity Within Disturbed And Undisturbed Amazonian Rainforest, David A. Luther, W. Justin Cooper, Vitek Jirinec, Jared D. Wolfe, Cameron L. Rutt, Richard O. Bierregaard, Thomas E. Lovejoy, Philip C. Stouffer

Faculty Publications

Recent long-term studies in protected areas have revealed the loss of biodiversity, yet the ramifications for ecosystem health and resilience remain unknown. Here, we investigate how the loss of understory birds, in the lowest stratum of the forest, affects avian biomass and functional diversity in the Amazon rainforest. Across approximately 30 years in the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, we used a historical baseline of avian communities to contrast the avian communities in today's primary forest with those in modern disturbed habitat. We found that in primary rainforest, the reduced abundance of insectivorous species led to reduced functional diversity, …