Digital Commons Network^™

Landscape-Scale Analysis Of Wetland Sediment Deposition From Four Tropical Cyclone Events, A W. Tweel, R. Eugene Turner

Faculty Publications

Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike deposited large quantities of sediment on coastal wetlands after making landfall in the northern Gulf of Mexico. We sampled sediments deposited on the wetland surface throughout the entire Louisiana and Texas depositional surfaces of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and the Louisiana portion of Hurricane Ike. We used spatial interpolation to model the total amount and spatial distribution of inorganic sediment deposition from each storm. The sediment deposition on coastal wetlands was an estimated 68, 48, and 21 million metric tons from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Gustav, respectively. The spatial distribution decreased in a similar …

Atmospheric Correction And Vicarious Calibration Of Oceansat-1 Ocean Color Monitor (Ocm) Data In Coastal Case 2 Waters, P. Dash, N. Walker, D. Mishra, E. D'Sa, S. Ladner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Phytoplankton Light Absorption Of Cultures And Natural Samples: Comparisons Using Two Spectrophotometers, P. Naik, E.J. D'Sa

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Histological Analysis Reveals Larger Size At Maturity For Southern Flounder With Implications For Biological Reference Points, Stephen Midway

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Short Conduction Delays Cause Inhibition Rather Than Excitation To Favor Synchrony In Hybrid Neuronal Networks Of The Entorhinal Cortex., Wang S, Chandrasekaran L, Fernandez Fr, White Ja, Canavier Cc

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Membrane Properties And The Balance Between Excitation And Inhibition Control Gamma-Frequency Oscillations Arising From Feedback Inhibition., Economo Mn, White Ja

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

On The Formation, Ventilation, And Erosion Of Mode Waters In The North Atlantic And Southern Oceans, D.S. Trossman, L. Thompson, S. Mecking, M.J. Warner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Separation, Deportation, Termination, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug

Faculty Publications

There is a growing practice of separating immigrant children from their deportable parents. Parental fitness is no longer the standard with regard to undocumented immigrant parents. Increasingly, fit undocumented parents must convince courts and welfare agencies that continuing or resuming parental custody is in their child’s best interest. This requirement is unique to immigrant parents and can have a disastrous impact on their ability to retain custody of their children. Best interest decisions are highly subjective and courts and agencies increasingly base their custody determinations on subjective criteria such as negative perceptions regarding undocumented immigrants and their countries of origin, …

The Drugs Stop Here: A Public Health Framework To Address The Drug Shortage Crisis, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Drug shortages are emerging as a major public health threat. Grave concern has been expressed by the medical community and government officials, and the crisis has been highlighted in recent media stories. Nevertheless, little has been written to date in the legal literature about the drug shortage crisis, and this timely article begins to fill this gap. It provides a thorough analysis of the origins and implications of the drug shortage problem and formulates a multi-layered approach to addressing it. The article argues that drug shortages result from a combination of market failures and regulatory constraints. It proposes a blend …

All For One And One For All: Informed Consent And Public Health, Jessica Wilen Berg

Faculty Publications

The concept of informed consent is well established in the field of bioethics, but its application is unclear in the area of public health. The increasing prevalence of public health interventions creates a need to analyze the scope of government power as it relates to individual choice. This Article explores three different types of public health measures in which individual choice has been limited: (1) environmental interventions; (2) classic public health interventions to prevent contagious disease; and (3) public health information reporting or use. The reasons for limiting informed consent vary depending on the context, and the implications for the …

The 2009 Nas Forensic Science Report: A Literature Review, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

In February 29, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released its report on forensic science: Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (29). The popular press immediately trumpeted the report’s release, with headlines such as (1) “Report Urges Overhaul of Crime Lab System,” (2) “Real-life Police Forensics Don’t Resemble ‘CSI’: Reliability is ‘Low or Non-existent,’ Report Finds” and (3) “Science Found Wanting in Nation’s Crime Labs.”

Within three months of its publication, Justice Scalia cited the report in a Supreme Court decision, writing: “Forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation. . . Serious …

Breaking The Cycle Of ‘Unequal Treatment’ With Health Care Reform: Acknowledging And Addressing The Continuation Of Racial Bias, Ruqaiijah Yearby

Faculty Publications

Since the Civil War access to health care in the United States has been racially unequal. This racially unequal access to health care remains even after the passage of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VI") and the election of an African-American President. Both of these events held the promise of equality, yet the promise has never been fulfilled. Now, many hail the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act ("ACA") as the biggest governmental step in equalizing access to health care because it has the potential to increase minority access to health …

The Promise Principle And Contract Interpretation: A Suggested Approach For Maximizing Value, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Faculty Publications

The promise principle and its roots in a certain type of morality of individual obligation, which play the central role in Charles Fried’s vision of Contract law, have importantly contributed to rescuing Contract law from absorption into Tort law and from the imposition of externally imposed standards that are collective in origin. It makes a mammoth contribution to alerting us to the tyranny of interference with individual self-determination. However, this essay questions whether a promise centered system derived from a moral philosophy of promising (without an observable and testable foundation in reality) and geared to internal individual obligation and duty …

The Relation Between The Structure Of The First Solvation Shell And The Ir Spectra Of Aqueous Solutions, Revati Kumar, Tom Keyes

Faculty Publications

The spectroscopic signatures of solvated anions and cations, in the O-H stretch region of water, are studied using the POLIR potential. Shifts in the spectra are shown to correlate very well with the distribution of a particular hydrogen bond angle for the waters in the first solvation shell. The results indicate that the spectral shifts might be predicted from MD simulations in a computationally convenient fashion, avoiding an explicit calculation of the spectra, as first suggested by Sharp et al. (J Chem Phys 114(4):1791-1796, 2001). © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Retrotransposons As A Major Source Of Epigenetic Variations In The Mammalian Genome, Muhammad B. Ekram, Keunsoo Kang, Hana Kim, Joomyeong Kim

Faculty Publications

Transcription of retrotransposons is usually repressed by DNA methylation, but a few elements, such as intracisternal A-particles (IAPs) associated with the Agouti and Axin-fused loci, partially escape this repression mechanism. The levels of this repression are also variable among individuals with an identical genome sequence, generating epigenetically different states of loci or epialleles. In the current study, we tested the existence of additional retrotransposon-derived epialleles in the mouse genome. Using a series of bioinformatics approaches, 143 candidate epialleles were first identified from the mouse genome based on their promoter activity and association with active histone modification marks. Detailed analyses suggest …

Contextual Chemosensory Urine Signaling In An African Cichlid Fish, Karen P. Maruska, Russell D. Fernald

Faculty Publications

Chemosensory signaling is crucial for communication in many fish species, but little is known about how signalers modulate chemical output in response to sensory information and social context. Here, we tested the hypothesis that dominant male African cichlid fish (Astatotilapia burtoni) use urine signals during social interactions, and demonstrate that this signaling depends on social context (reproductive; territorial) and on available sensory information (visual cues; full interaction). We injected males with dye to visualize urine pulses and exposed them to full sensory information or visual cues alone of four types: (1) dominant male; (2) gravid (reproductively receptive) females; (3) mouth-brooding …

Mtbindingsim: Simulate Protein Binding To Microtubules, Julia T. Philip, Charles H. Pence, Holly V. Goodson

Faculty Publications

Summary: Many protein–protein interactions are more complex than can be accounted for by 1:1 binding models. However, biochemists have few tools available to help them recognize and predict the behaviors of these more complicated systems, making it difficult to design experiments that distinguish between possible binding models. MTBindingSim provides researchers with an environment in which they can rapidly compare different models of binding for a given scenario. It is written specifically with microtubule polymers in mind, but many of its models apply equally well to any polymer or any protein–protein interaction. MTBindingSim can thus both help in training intuition about …

The Oxford Handbook Of Slavery In The Americas, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Amino Acid Differences In Glycoproteins B (Gb), C (Gc), H (Gh) And L(Gl) Are Associated With Enhanced Herpes Simplex Virus Type-1 (Mckrae) Entry Via The Paired Immunoglobulin-Like Type-2 Receptor Α, Sona Chowdhury, Misagh Naderi, Vladimir N. Chouljenko, Jason D. Walker, Konstantin G. Kousoulas

Faculty Publications

© 2012 Chowdhury et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. Background: Herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1) enters into cells via membrane fusion of the viral envelope with plasma or endosomal membranes mediated by viral glycoproteins. HSV-1 virions attach to cell surfaces by binding of viral glycoproteins gC, gD and gB to specific cellular receptors. Here we show that the human ocular and highly neurovirulent HSV-1 strain McKrae enters substantially more efficiently into cells via the gB-specific human paired immunoglobulin-like type-2 receptor-a (hPILR-α). Comparison of the predicted amino acid sequences between HSV-1(F) and McKrae strains indicates that amino acid changes within gB, …

A Herpes Simplex Virus 1 (Mckrae) Mutant Lacking The Glycoprotein K Gene Is Unable To Infect Via Neuronal Axons And Egress From Neuronal Cell Bodies, Andrew T. David, Ahmad Saied, Anu Charles, Ramesh Subramanian, Vladimir N. Chouljenko, Konstantin G. Kousoulas

Faculty Publications

We have shown that the herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) gK gene is essential for efficient replication and spread in the corneal epithelium and trigeminal ganglion neuroinvasion in mice (A. T. David, A. Baghian, T. P. Foster, V. N. Chouljenko, and K. G. Kousoulas, Curr. Eye Res. 33:455-467, 2008). To further investigate the role of gK in neuronal infection, we utilized a microfluidic chamber system separating neuronal cell bodies and axonal termini. HSV-1 (McKrae) engineered virus constitutively expressing enhanced green fluorescence protein (GFP) was efficiently transmitted in both a retrograde and an anterograde manner. These results were corroborated by expression …

Perspectives In Ornithology: Inferring The Origins Of Lowland Neotropical Birds, Robb T. Brumfield

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Next-Generation Sequencing Reveals Phylogeographic Structure And A Species Tree For Recent Bird Divergences, John E. Mccormack, James M. Maley, Sarah M. Hird, Elizabeth P. Derryberry, Gary R. Graves, Robb T. Brumfield

Faculty Publications

Next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies are revolutionizing many biological disciplines but have been slow to take root in phylogeography. This is partly due to the difficulty of using NGS to sequence orthologous DNA fragments for many individuals at low cost. We explore cases of recent divergence in four phylogenetically diverse avian systems using a method for quick and cost-effective generation of primary DNA sequence data using pyrosequencing. NGS data were processed using an analytical pipeline that reduces many reads into two called alleles per locus per individual. Using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) mined from the loci, we detected population differentiation …

Establishing A Foundation For Automated Human Credibility Screening, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr, Judee K. Burgoon, Nathan W. Twyman, Jeffrey Gainer Proudfoot, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Justin Scott Giboney

Faculty Publications

Automated human credibility screening is an emerging research area that has potential for high impact in fields as diverse as homeland security and accounting fraud detection. Systems that conduct interviews and make credibility judgments can provide objectivity, improved accuracy, and greater reliability to credibility assessment practices, need to be built. This study establishes a foundation for developing automated systems for human credibility screening

Gaba Is Excitatory In Adult Vasopressinergic Neuroendocrine Cells, Juhee Haam, Ion R. Popescu, Linda A. Morton, Katalin C. Halmos, Ryoichi Teruyama, Yoichi Ueta, Jeffrey G. Tasker

Faculty Publications

Neuronal excitability in the adult brain is controlled by a balance between synaptic excitation and inhibition mediated by glutamate and GABA, respectively. While generally inhibitory in the adult brain, GABAA receptor activation is excitatory under certain conditions in which the GABA reversal potential is shifted positive due to intracellular Cl-accumulation, such as during early postnatal development and brain injury. However, the conditions under which GABA is excitatory are generally either transitory or pathological. Here, we reveal GABAergic synaptic inputs to be uniformly excitatory in vasopressin (VP)-secreting magnocellular neurons in the adult hypothalamus under normal conditions. The GABA reversal potential (EGABA) …

Identification Of An Oxygenic Reaction Center Psbadc Operon In The Cyanobacterium Gloeobacter Violaceus Pcc 7421, Tuan A. Nguyen, Jasmina Brescic, David J. Vinyard, Thenappan Chandrasekar, G. Charles Dismukes

Faculty Publications

Gloeobacter violaceus, the earliest diverging oxyphotobacterium (cyanobacterium) on the 16S ribosomal RNA tree, has five copies of the photosystem II psbA gene encoding the D1 reaction center protein subunit. These copies are widely distributed throughout the 4.6 Mbp genome with only one copy colocalizing with other PSII subunits, in marked contrast to all other psbA genes in all publicly available sequenced genomes. A clustering of two other psb genes around psbA3 (glr2322) is unique to Gloeobacter. We provide experimental proof for the transcription of a psbA3DC operon, encoding three of the five reaction center core subunits (D1, D2, and CP43). …

Subordinate Male Cichlids Retain Reproductive Competence During Social Suppression, Jacqueline M. Kustan, Karen P. Maruska, Russell D. Fernald

Faculty Publications

Subordinate males, which are excluded from reproduction often save energy by reducing their investment in sperm production. However, if their position in a dominance hierarchy changes suddenly they should also rapidly attain fertilization capability. Here, we asked how social suppression and ascension to dominance influences sperm quality, spermatogenesis and reproductive competence in the cichlid Astatotilapia burtoni, where reproduction is tightly coupled to social status. Dominant territorial (T) males are reproductively active while subordinate non-territorial (NT) males are suppressed, but given the opportunity, NT males will perform dominance behaviours within minutes and attain T male testes size within days. Using the …

The Phylogenetic Distribution And Ecological Role Of Carbon Monoxide Oxidation In The Genus Burkholderia, Carolyn F. Weber, Gary M. King

Faculty Publications

Burkholderia is a physiologically and ecologically diverse genus that occurs commonly in assemblages of soil and rhizosphere bacteria. Although Burkholderia is known for its heterotrophic versatility, we demonstrate that 14 distinct environmental isolates oxidized carbon monoxide (CO) and possessed the gene encoding the catalytic subunit of form I CO dehydrogenase (coxL). DNA from a Burkholderia isolate obtained from a passalid beetle also contained coxL as do the genomic sequences of species H160 and Ch1-1. Isolates were able to consume CO at concentrations ranging from 100 ppm (vol/vol) to sub-ambient (< 60 ppb (vol/vol)). High concentrations of pyruvate inhibited CO uptake (> 2.5 mM), but mixotrophic consumption of CO and pyruvate occurred …

Limited Potential For Adaptation To Climate Change In A Broadly Distributed Marine Crustacean, Morgan W. Kelly, Eric Sanford, Richard K. Grosberg

Faculty Publications

The extent to which acclimation and genetic adaptation might buffer natural populations against climate change is largely unknown. Most models predicting biological responses to environmental change assume that species' climatic envelopes are homogeneous both in space and time. Although recent discussions have questioned this assumption, few empirical studies have characterized intraspecific patterns of genetic variation in traits directly related to environmental tolerance limits. We test the extent of such variation in the broadly distributed tidepool copepod Tigriopus californicus using laboratory rearing and selection experiments to quantify thermal tolerance and scope for adaptation in eight populations spanning more than 178 of …

Recruitment And Biological Consequences Of Histone Modification Of H3k27me3 And H3k9me3., Joomyeong Kim, Hana Kim

Faculty Publications

Two histone marks, H3K27me3 and H3K9me3, are well known for their repressive roles in the genic and nongenic regions of metazoan genomes. Several protein complexes are known to be responsible for generating these marks, including polycomb repression complex 2 and several H3K9 methylases. Recent studies have shown that the targeting of these histone-modifying complexes within mammalian genomes may be mediated through several DNA-binding proteins, including AEBP2, JARID2, and YY1. In this review, we discuss the potential targeting mechanisms in light of the recent results that have been derived from genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing data and the in vivo functions of …

Drop Deposition On Canopy And Chemical Control Of Phakopsora Pachyrhizi In Soybeans, Nédio R. Tormen, Felipe D.L. Da Silva, Mônica P. Debortoli, Juliano D. Uebel, Diego D. Fávera, Ricardo S. Balardin

Faculty Publications

Drop deposition on soybean canopy with three spray nozzles and chemical control programs of asian soybean rust were evaluated in two soybean cultivars, in a study carried out in Itaara, RS. The treatments were arranged under completely randomized block design with four replications, in a factorial design 2 × 3 × 3, utilizing two soybean cultivars, three spray nozzles and three chemical control programs. The fungicide applications were accomplished in R1 and R4 growth stages. Drop density, volumetric medium diameter (VMD), leaf area index (LAI), disease severity and grain yield were the variables measured. Based on the severity data of …