Digital Commons Network^™

Aboveground Biomass Estimation For Three Common Woody Species In The Post Oak Savannah Of Texas, Brian P. Oswald, R R. Botting, Dean W. Coble, Ken W. Farrish

Faculty Publications

The Post Oak Savannah occupies about 3.4 million hectares of gently rolling to hilly lands in east central Texas. Large post oak (Quercus stellata Wangenh.) blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica Munchh.), Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana L.) and honey mesquite (Juniperus virginiana L.) usually form the overstory, often above thickets of yaupon (Ilex vomitoria), winged elm (Ulmus alata), gum bumelia (Sideroxylon lanuginosum Michx. Subsp. Oblongifolium (Nutt) T.D. Penn.), and live oak (Quercus virginiana Mill.). Historically limited to rocky hillsides …

Interaction Of Francisella Asiatica With Tilapia (Oreochromis Niloticus) Innate Immunity, Esteban Soto, Denise Fernandez, Ronald Thune, John P. Hawke

Faculty Publications

Members of the genus Francisella are facultative intracellular bacteria that cause important diseases in a wide variety of animals worldwide, including humans and fish. Several genes that are important for intramacrophage survival have been identified, including the iglC gene, which is found in the iglABCD operon in the Francisella sp. pathogenicity island (FPI). In the present study, we examined the interaction of wild-type Francisella asiatica and a ΔiglC mutant strain with fish serum and head kidney-derived macrophages (HKDM). Both the wild-type and the mutant strains were resistant to killing by normal and heat-inactivated sera. The wild-type F. asiatica is able …

Siamese Cooperates With The Cdh1-Like Protein Ccs52a1 To Establish Endoreplication In Arabidopsis Thaliana Trichomes, Remmy Kasili, Jason D. Walker, L. Alice Simmons, Jing Zhou, Lieven De Veylder, John C. Larkin

Faculty Publications

Endoreplication, also known as endoreduplication, is a phyogenetically widespread modified version of the cell cycle in which DNA replication is not followed by cell division. The SIAMESE (SIM) gene of Arabidopsis thaliana encodes the founding member of a novel class of plant-specific cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitors and is a key regulator of endoreplication during the development of trichomes (shoot epidermal hairs). Here, we have identified mutations in the CCS52A1 gene as genetic modifiers of the multicellular trichome phenotype of sim mutants. Loss-of-function ccs52A1 mutations dramatically enhance the multicellularity of sim mutants trichomes in double mutants, whereas overexpression of CCS52A1 completely …

Inheritance Of Traits Associated With Phosphorus Utilization Efficiency In Maize, Roberto Fritsche-Neto, Glauco Vieira Miranda, Rodrigo Oliveira Delima, Leandro Vagno De Souza, Jaeveson Da Silva

Faculty Publications

The objective of this work was to determine the genetic effects that control the inheritance of characters associated with the phosphorus utilization efficiency (PUE) in maize, and to determine the relationship among them. A diallel between six maize cultivars was performed and 15 hybrid combinations were obtained from it. These cultivars were evaluated in high and low phosphorus availability in the greenhouse and field. Plant response to nutrient availability (RU) and traits associated to utilization and translocation efficiency were measured. There were significant interactions between hybrid combinations and phosphorus availability for plant dry matter mass (MSP), P concentration in plants …

Desire In Marble: Vision, Classical Antiquity, And Homoerotic Spectacle In Melville's Travel Writing, David Greven

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Perimenopausal Obesity, Colleen Keller, Linda Larkey, Johanna K. Distefano, Edna Boehm-Smith, Kathie Records, Alyssa G. Robillard, Sharry Veres, Manal Al-Zadjali, Anne-Marie O'Brian

Faculty Publications

Obesity is recognized as one of the most important underlying risk factors for a wide variety of diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. Women are particularly prone to obesity, and approaches that address life transitions across the life span suggest that a number of factors may converge at passage points, such as menopause, that contribute to weight accumulation in the aging woman. The menopausal phase of a woman's life brings a number of changes that may trigger and maintain weight gain. Although the prevalence of overweight and obesity is attributable to each of these factors, it is most likely the …

Transnational Integration Regimes As Development Programs, Laszlo Bruszt, Gerald A. Mcdermott

Faculty Publications

In drawing on recent advances in international and comparative political economy, this paper argues that diverging paths of institutional development among emerging market democracies are driven by the Transnational Integration Regimes (TIRs), in which a country is embedded.

As development programs, TIRs differ in their effectiveness not simply in terms of their incentives and largess and more in terms of their emphasis on building institutional capacities, empowering a variety of domestic state and non-state actors via multiplex methods of assistance and monitoring, and their ability to merge monitoring and learning at both the national and supra-national levels. We develop a …

The Holocene Depositional History Of Thousand Acre Marsh (Georgetown County, Sc, Usa) From Correlation Of Ground Penetrating Radar With Subsurface Stratigraphy, A L. Springer, Camelia C. Knapp, Paul T. Gayes, Leonard R. Gardiner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Cardiorespiratory Fitness On Lung Cancer Mortality, Xuemei Sui, Duck-Chul Lee, Charles E. Matthews, Swann Arp Adams, James R. Hébert, Timothy S. Church, Chong-Do Lee, Steven N. Blair

Faculty Publications

Purpose—Previous studies have suggested that higher levels of physical activity may lower lung cancer risk; however, few prospective studies have evaluated lung cancer mortality in relation to cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), an objective marker of recent physical activity habits. Methods—Thirty-eight thousand men, aged 20 to 84 years without history of cancer, received a preventive medical examination at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, TX, between 1974 and 2002. CRF was quantified as maximal treadmill exercise test duration and was grouped for analysis as low (lowest 20% of exercise duration), moderate (middle 40%), and high (upper 40%). Results—A total of 232 lung cancer …

Steroid Receptor Expression In The Fish Inner Earvaries With Sex, Social Status, And Reproductive State, Karen P. Maruska, Russell D. Fernald

Faculty Publications

Background: Gonadal and stress-related steroid hormones are known to influence auditory function across vertebrates but the cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for steroid-mediated auditory plasticity at the level of the inner ear remain unknown. The presence of steroid receptors in the ear suggests a direct pathway for hormones to act on the peripheral auditory system, but little is known about which receptors are expressed in the ear or whether their expression levels change with internal physiological state or external social cues. We used qRT-PCR to measure mRNA expression levels of multiple steroid receptor subtypes (estrogen receptors: ERα, ERβa, ERβb; androgen …

Evaluation Study Of C.A.R.E., The National Education Association's Culture, Abilities, Resilience, And Effort Professional Development Training, Noni Reis, Denise Alston, Linda Bacon, Brooke Whiting, Sheila Simmons

Faculty Publications

This was an evaluation study of C.A.R.E., National Education Association's Culture, Abilities, Resilience and Effort (C.A.R.E.): Strategies for Closing Achievement Gaps. The training is based on culturally relevant pedagogy and on the Center for Research on Educational Diversity and Excellence standards. The research questions for the study were: 1.Did the training lead to changes in instructional practices? 2.Were the tools and materials provided by the C.A.R.E. guide used? 3.Did the strategies lead to changes in student behavior and school practices Participants (n-275) completed an on-line survey and/or a telephone interview. Two-thirds (66%) of the participants noticed improvements in student achievement, …

Transcriptional Factors That Promote Formation Of White Adipose Tissue, Ursula A. White, Jacqueline M. Stephens

Faculty Publications

Adipocytes are highly specialized cells that play a major role in energy homeostasis in vertebrate organisms. Excess adipocyte size or number is a hallmark of obesity, which is currently a global epidemic. Obesity is a major risk factor for the development of type II diabetes (T2DM), cardiovascular disease, and hypertension. Obesity and its related disorders result in dysregulation of the mechanisms that control the expression of metabolic and endocrine related genes in adipocytes. Therefore, understanding adipocyte differentiation is relevant not only for gaining insight into the pathogenesis of metabolic diseases, but also for identifying proteins or pathways which might be …

Fine Mapping Of The Association With Obesity At The Fto Locus In African-Derived Populations, Mohamed T. Hassanein, Helen N. Lyon, Thutrang T. Nguyen, Ermeg L. Akylbekova, Kevin Waters, Guillaume Lettre, Bamidele Tayo, Terrence Forrester, Daniel F. Sarpong, Dan O. Stram, Johannah L. Butler, Rainford Wilks, Jiankang Liu, Loic Le Marchand, Laurence N. Kolonel, Xiaofeng Zhu, Brian Henderson, Richard Cooper, Colin Mckenzie, Herman A. Taylor, Christopher A. Haiman, Joel N. Hirschhorn

Faculty Publications

Genome-wide association studies have identified many common genetic variants that are associated with polygenic traits, and have typically been performed with individuals of recent European ancestry. In these populations, many common variants are tightly correlated, with the perfect or near-perfect proxies for the functional or true variant showing equivalent evidence of association, considerably limiting the resolution of fine mapping. Populations with recent African ancestry often have less extensive and/or different patterns of linkage disequilibrium (LD), and have been proposed to be useful in fine-mapping studies. Here, we strongly replicate and fine map in populations of predominantly African ancestry the association …

Water Equivalent Thickness Values Of Materials Used In Beams Of Protons, Helium, Carbon And Iron Ions, Rui Zhang, Phillip J. Taddei, Markus M. Fitzek, Wayne D. Newhauser

Faculty Publications

Heavy charged particle beam radiotherapy for cancer is of increasing interest because it delivers a highly conformal radiation dose to the target volume. Accurate knowledge of the range of a heavy charged particle beam after it penetrates a patient's body or other materials in the beam line is very important and is usually stated in terms of the water equivalent thickness (WET). However, methods of calculating WET for heavy charged particle beams are lacking. Our objective was to test several simple analytical formulas previously developed for proton beams for their ability to calculate WET values for materials exposed to beams …

Hedgehog/Gli Supports Androgen Signaling In Androgen Deprived And Androgen Independent Prostate Cancer Cells, Mengqian Chen, Michael A. Feuerstein, Elina Levina, Prateek S. Baghel, Richard D. Carkner, Matthew J. Tanner, Michael Shtutman, Francis Vacherot, Stéphane Terry, Alexandre De La Taille, Ralph Buttyan

Faculty Publications

Background: Castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) develops as a consequence of hormone therapies used to deplete androgens in advanced prostate cancer patients. CRPC cells are able to grow in a low androgen environment and this is associated with anomalous activity of their endogenous androgen receptor (AR) despite the low systemic androgen levels in the patients. Therefore, the reactivated tumor cell androgen signaling pathway is thought to provide a target for control of CRPC. Previously, we reported that Hedgehog (Hh) signaling was conditionally activated by androgen deprivation in androgen sensitive prostate cancer cells and here we studied the potential for cross-talk …

The Synergistic Evolution Of Liberty And Equality In The Marriage Cases Brought By Same-Sex Couples In State Courts, Jean C. Love

Faculty Publications

Legal scholars have expressed varying views about the roles of liberty and equality in the area of lesbian and gay rights. Some have encouraged gay rights litigators to stress one form of argument over the other. At least one commentator, Pamela Karlan, has suggested that looking at the issue through the lenses of both the due process clause and the equal protection clause simultaneously can have synergistic effects, producing results that neither clause might reach by itself. This article examines selected marriage cases brought by same-sex couples in state courts in order to understand the role played by liberty and …

Development Of A ‘Universal’ Rubric For Assessing Undergraduates’ Scientific Reasoning Skills Using Scientific Writing, Briana Eileen Timmerman, Denise Strickland, Robert L. Johnson, John R. Payne

Faculty Publications

We developed a rubric for measuring students’ ability to reason and write scientifically. The Rubric for Science Writing (Rubric) was tested in a variety of undergraduate biology laboratory courses (total n = 142 laboratory reports) using science graduate students (teaching assistants) as raters. Generalisability analysis indicates that the Rubric provides a reliable measure of students’ abilities (g = 0.85) in these conditions. Comparison of student performance in various biology classes indicated that some scientific skills are more challenging for students to develop than others and identified a number of previously unappreciated gaps in the curriculum. Our findings suggest that use …

Research Associations Between Sport And Screen-Entertainment With Mental Health Problems In 5-Year-Old Children, Lucy J. Griffiths, Marsha Dowda, Carol Dezateux, Russell R. Pate

Faculty Publications

Background: Few studies have examined the benefits of regular physical activity, and risks of sedentary behaviour, in young children. This study investigated associations between participation in sports and screen-entertainment (as components of physical activity and sedentary behaviour), and emotional and behavioural problems in this population.

Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of data from 13470 children (50.9% boys) participating in the nationally representative UK Millennium Cohort Study. Time spent participating in sports clubs outside of school, and using screen-entertainment, was reported by the child's mother at child age 5 years, when mental health was also measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire.

Results: …

Associations Between Sport And Screen-Entertainment With Mental Health Problems In 5-Year-Old Children, Lucy J. Griffiths, Marsha Dowda, Carol Dezateux, Russell R. Pate

Faculty Publications

Background: Few studies have examined the benefits of regular physical activity, and risks of sedentary behavior, in young children. This study investigated associations between participation in sports and screen-entertainment (as components of physical activity and sedentary behavior), and emotional and behavioral problems in this population.

Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of data from 13470 children (50.9% boys) participating in the nationally representative UK Millennium Cohort Study. Time spent participating in sports clubs outside of school, and using screen-entertainment, was reported by the child's mother at child age 5 years, when mental health was also measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire.

Results …

Past And Projected Future Changes In Snowpack And Soil Frost At The Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire, Usa, John L. Cambell, Scott V. Ollinger, Gerald N. Flerchinger, Haley Wicklein, Katharine Hayhoe, Amey S. Bailey

Faculty Publications

Long‐term data from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire show that air temperature has increased by about 1 °C over the last half century. The warmer climate has caused significant declines in snow depth, snow water equivalent and snow cover duration. Paradoxically, it has been suggested that warmer air temperatures may result in colder soils and more soil frost, as warming leads to a reduction in snow cover insulating soils during winter. Hubbard Brook has one of the longest records of direct field measurements of soil frost in the United States. Historical records show no long‐term trends in …

Q-DockLhm: Low-Resolution Refinement For Ligand Comparative Modeling, Michal Brylinski, Jeffrey Skolnick

Faculty Publications

The success of ligand docking calculations typically depends on the quality of the receptor structure. Given improvements in protein structure prediction approaches, approximate protein models now can be routinely obtained for the majority of gene products in a given proteome. Structure-based virtual screening of large combinatorial libraries of lead candidates against theoretically modeled receptor structures requires fast and reliable docking techniques capable of dealing with structural inaccuracies in protein models. Here, we present Q-DockLHM, a method for low-resolution refinement of binding poses provided by FINDSITELHM, a ligand homology modeling approach. We compare its performance to that of classical ligand docking …

"The Lord Is A God Of Justice" (Isaiah 30:18): The Prophetic Insistence On Justice In Social Context, Rolf A. Jacobson

Faculty Publications

The prophets insisted on economic justice because they understood the Lord to be “a God of justice.” If justice is part of the very character of God, God's people must also embody justice.

Biogeographic Breaks In Vanuatu, A Nascent Oceanic Archipelago, Alison M. Hamilton, Elaine R. Klein, Christopher C. Austin

Faculty Publications

The study of distinct biogeographic demarcations has played a pivotal role in our understanding processes responsible for patterns of species distributions and, importantly, the role of geologic processes in promoting biotic diversification. Biogeographic barriers such as Wallace's line have been shown to be the result of old geologic processes shaping ancient faunal or floral diversification events. Based on distributions of birds, bats, reptiles, plants, and invertebrates we identify a distinct biogeographic disjunction in Vanuatu, a geologically nascent oceanic archipelago. We discuss mechanisms contributing to this concordant pattern across these disparate taxonomic groups in light of geologic history, ocean currents, vegetation, …

The Genome Of A Songbird, Wesley C. Warren, David F. Clayton, Hans Ellegren, Arthur P. Arnold, Ladeana W. Hillier, Axel Künstner, Steve Searle, Simon White, Albert J. Vilella, Susan Fairley, Andreas Heger, Lesheng Kong, Chris P. Ponting, Erich D. Jarvis, Claudio V. Mello, Pat Minx, Peter Lovell, Tarciso A.F. Velho, Margaret Ferris, Christopher N. Balakrishnan, Saurabh Sinha, Charles Blatti, Sarah E. London, Yun Li, Ya Chi Lin, Julia George, Jonathan Sweedler, Bruce Southey, Preethi Gunaratne, Michael Watson, Kiwoong Nam, Niclas Backström, Linnea Smeds, Benoit Nabholz

Faculty Publications

The zebra finch is an important model organism in several fields with unique relevance to human neuroscience. Like other songbirds, the zebra finch communicates through learned vocalizations, an ability otherwise documented only in humans and a few other animals and lacking in the chickenthe only bird with a sequenced genome until now. Here we present a structural, functional and comparative analysis of the genome sequence of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), which is a songbird belonging to the large avian order Passeriformes. We find that the overall structures of the genomes are similar in zebra finch and chicken, but they …

Symbiosis In Subterranean Termites: A Review Of Insights From Molecular Studies, Claudia Husseneder

Faculty Publications

The symbiotic relationship of termites and their eukaryotic and prokaryotic gut microbiota is a focal point of research because of the important roles symbionts play in termite nutrition. The use of molecular methods has recently provided valuable insights into the species diversity and the roles of microorganisms in the guts of termites. This paper provides a review of the current knowledge of symbiont species inventories, genome analysis, and gene expression in the guts of subterranean termites. Particular emphasis is given to the termite genera Reticulitermes and Coptotermes (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae), because they contain pest species of global impact in their native …

Strict Lyapunov Function Constructions Under Lasalle Conditions With An Application To Lotka-Volterra Systems, Frédéric Mazenc, Michael Malisoff

Faculty Publications

We provide new techniques for building explicit global strict Lyapunov functions for broad classes of periodic time varying nonlinear systems satisfying LaSalle conditions. We illustrate our work using the Lotka-Volterra model, which plays a fundamental role in bioengineering. We use our strict Lyapunov constructions to prove robustness of the Lotka-Volterra tracking dynamics to uncertainty in the death rates. © 2006 IEEE.

Antibacterial Activity Of Chitosans With Different Degrees Of Deacetylation And Viscosities, Eun Ju Jung, Dal Kyoung Youn, Shin Ho Lee, Hong Kyoon No, Jong Gill Ha, Witoon Prinyawiwatkul

Faculty Publications

Antibacterial activities of six acid-soluble [two degrees of deacetylation (DD) × three viscosities] and two water-soluble chitosans (two DD with similar viscosities) were examined against eight gram-negative (Pseudomonas fluorescens, Proteus vulgaris, Erwinia carotovora, Serratia marcescens, Escherichia coli, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, V. vulnificus, and Salmonella Typhimurium) and six gram-positive bacteria (Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, B. cereus, Lactobacillus curvatus, and L. plantarum). Antibacterial activities of chitosans differed depending on the chitosan types and bacteria tested. Water-soluble chitosans inhibited bacterial growth by one to eight log cycles at 0.1% concentration; however, the effects were much lesser than those observed with 0.05% acid-soluble …

A Dynamic Physical Model For Soil Temperature And Water In Taylor Valley, Antarctica, H. W. Hunt, A. G. Fountain, P. T. Doran, H. Basagic

Faculty Publications

We developed a simulation model for terrestrial sites including sensible heat exchange between the atmosphere and ground surface, inter- and intra-layer heat conduction by rock and soil, and shortwave and longwave radiation. Water fluxes included snowmelt, freezing/thawing of soil water, soil capillary flow, and vapour flows among atmosphere, soil, and snow. The model accounted for 96-99% of variation in soil temperature data. No long-term temporal trends in soil temperature were apparent. Soil water vapour concentration in thawed surface soil in summer often was higher than in frozen deeper soils, leading to downward vapour fluxes. Katabatic winds caused a reversal of …

Fpga Acceleration Of The Phylogenetic Likelihood Function For Bayesian Mcmc Inference Methods, Stephanie Zierke, Jason D. Bakos

Faculty Publications

Background
Likelihood (ML)-based phylogenetic inference has become a popular method for estimating the evolutionary relationships among species based on genomic sequence data. This method is used in applications such as RAxML, GARLI, MrBayes, PAML, and PAUP. The Phylogenetic Likelihood Function (PLF) is an important kernel computation for this method. The PLF consists of a loop with no conditional behavior or dependencies between iterations. As such it contains a high potential for exploiting parallelism using micro-architectural techniques. In this paper, we describe a technique for mapping the PLF and supporting logic onto a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based co-processor. By leveraging …

Factors Affecting College Students’ Knowledge And Opinions Of Genetically Modified Foods, Chad Laux, Gretchen A. Mosher, Steven A. Freeman

Faculty Publications

The use of biotechnology in food and agricultural applications has increased greatly during the past decade and is considered by many to be a controversial topic. Drawing upon a previous national study, a new survey was conducted of U.S. and international college students at a large, land-grant, Research University to determine factors that may affect opinions about genetically modified (GM) food products. Factors examined included nationality, discipline area of study, perceptions of safety, and awareness and levels of acceptance regarding GM food. Results indicated students born outside the United States had more negative opinions about genetically modified foods than did …