Digital Commons Network^™

Advancing Evidence Synthesis From Effectiveness To Implementation: Integration Of Implementation Measures Into Evidence Reviews, Aaron Tierney, Marie Haverfield, Mark Mcgovern, Donna Zulman

Faculty Publications

BackgroundIn order to close the gap between discoveries that could improve health, and widespread impact on routine health care practice, there is a need for greater attention to the factors that influence dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices. Evidence synthesis projects (e.g., systematic reviews) could contribute to this effort by collecting and synthesizing data relevant to dissemination and implementation. Such an advance would facilitate the spread of high-value, effective, and sustainable interventions.ObjectiveThe objective of this paper is to evaluate the feasibility of extracting factors related to implementation during evidence synthesis in order to enhance the replicability of successes of studies …

Anomalous Oceanic Conditions In The Central And Eastern North Pacific Ocean During The 2014 Hurricane Season And Relationships To Three Major Hurricanes, Victoria L. Ford, Nan D. Walker, Iam Fei Pun

Faculty Publications

The 2014 Northeast Pacific hurricane season was highly active, with above-average intensity and frequency events, and a rare landfalling Hawaiian hurricane. We show that the anomalous northern extent of sea surface temperatures and anomalous vertical extent of upper ocean heat content above 26 °C throughout the Northeast and Central Pacific Ocean may have influenced three long-lived tropical cyclones in July and August. Using a variety of satellite-observed and-derived products, we assess genesis conditions, along-track intensity, and basin-wide anomalous upper ocean heat content during Hurricanes Genevieve, Iselle, and Julio. The anomalously northern surface position of the 26 °C isotherm beyond 30° …

Serving Our Student Veterans In Louisiana, Mitchell J. Fontenot, Rebecca Kelley

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Uniform Basis Rules And Terminating Interests In Trusts Early, F. Ladson Boyle, Howard M. Zaritsky, D. Ryan Wallace

Faculty Publications

The resolution of income tax issues that may arise for trust beneficiaries who dispose of temporal interests in trusts remains relatively obscure. Additional issues exist for subsequent interest holders; the methods that the Code and Regulations prescribe for establishing, maintaining, and potentially recovering basis for successor owners of interests in a trust are not well developed.

In some instances, the trust instrument creating a temporal interest will supply a suitable path for early termination and distribution of assets. In those cases, Sub-chapter J of the Code typically governs the transaction and provides that terminating the trust and distributing its assets …

State-Circuit Split: Reconciling Tennessee Damage Caps After Lindenberg And Mcclay, Bailey D. Barnes

Faculty Publications

A divided panel of jurists on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit invalidated Tennessee's caps on punitive damages in Lindenberg v. Jackson National Life Insurance Company on December 21, 2018. The Sixth Circuit, sitting en bane, denied an application to rehear the case. A year later, the United States Supreme Court denied the petitions for writs of certiorari of both Jackson National Life Insurance Company and the State of Tennessee. Meanwhile, the Tennessee Supreme Court heard a challenge, via certified question from the Middle District of Tennessee, to the Volunteer State's statutory limits on non-economic damages. …

Advances In The Neurophysiology Of Magnocellular Neuroendocrine Cells, Jeffrey G. Tasker, Masha Prager-Khoutorsky, Ryoichi Teruyama, José R. Lemos, William E. Amstrong

Faculty Publications

© 2020 British Society for Neuroendocrinology Hypothalamic magnocellular neuroendocrine cells have unique electrical properties and a remarkable capacity for morphological and synaptic plasticity. Their large somatic size, their relatively uniform and dense clustering in the supraoptic and paraventricular nuclei, and their large axon terminals in the neurohypophysis make them an attractive target for direct electrophysiological interrogation. Here, we provide a brief review of significant recent findings in the neuroplasticity and neurophysiological properties of these neurones that were presented at the symposium “Electrophysiology of Magnocellular Neurons” during the 13th World Congress on Neurohypophysial Hormones in Ein Gedi, Israel in April 2019. …

A One-Shot Learning Framework For Assessment Of Fibrillar Collagen From Second Harmonic Generation Images Of An Infarcted Myocardium, Qun Liu, Supratik Mukhopadhyay, Maria Ximena Bastidas Rodriguez, Xing Fu, Sushant Sahu, David Burk, Manas Gartia

Faculty Publications

© 2020 IEEE. Myocardial infarction (MI) is a scientific term that refers to heart attack. In this study, we infer highly relevant second harmonic generation (SHG) cues from collagen fibers exhibiting highly non-centrosymmetric assembly together with two-photon excited cellular autofluorescence in infarcted mouse heart to quantitatively probe fibrosis, especially targeted at an early stage after MI. We present a robust one-shot machine learning algorithm that enables determination of 2D assembly of collagen with high spatial resolution along with its structural arrangement in heart tissues post - MI with spectral specificity and sensitivity. Detection, evaluation, and precise quantification of fibrosis extent …

Testing For Complete Pass-Through Of Ex Ass-Through Of Exchange Ra Ange Rate Without Trade Barriers, Tengfei Zhang, Tianxiang Li, Tomas Baležentis

Faculty Publications

The objective of this paper is to test whether the complete pass-through of exchange rate exists when there are almost no transaction costs and in the environment of competitive market. In general, the literature claims that the pass-through of exchange rate is incomplete due to imperfect market, i.e. the presence of transaction costs and imperfect competition. The quasi-experimental case of the food import to Hong Kong from Mainland China is considered in the analysis. The results show that the pass-through of the exchange rate of Chinese RMB against to US dollar to Hong Kong's food import price is complete in …

Food Safety Risk Information-Seeking Intention Of Wechat Users In China, Zhaohui Yang, Krishna P. Paudel, Xiaowei Wen, Sangluo Sun, Yong Wang

Faculty Publications

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Consumers’ food safety risk information-seeking behavior plays a vital role in improving their food quality and safety awareness and preventing food safety risks. Based on the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model (RISP), this paper empirically analyzes the food safety risk information-seeking intention of consumers in WeChat and influencing factors under the impact of food safety incidents. We use data from 774 WeChat users and apply the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. We also conduct multigroup analysis with demographic characteristics as moderating variables. The results demonstrated that: (1) Risk perception (p …

Systematics, Biogeography, And Diversification Of Scytalopus Tapaculos (Rhinocryptidae), An Enigmatic Radiation Of Neotropical Montane Birds, Carlos Daniel Cadena, Andrés M. Cuervo, Laura N. Céspedes, Gustavo A. Bravo, Niels Krabbe, Thomas S. Schulenberg, Graham E. Derryberry, Luis Fabio Silveira, Elizabeth P. Derryberry, Robb T. Brumfield, Jon Fjeldså

Faculty Publications

Copyright © American Ornithological Society 2020. All rights reserved. For permissions, e-mail: [email protected]. We studied the phylogeny, biogeography, and diversification of suboscine passerines in the genus Scytalopus (Rhinocryptidae), a widespread, species-rich, and taxonomically challenging group of Neotropical birds. We analyzed nuclear (exons, regions flanking ultraconserved elements) and mitochondrial (ND2) DNA sequence data for a taxonomically and geographically comprehensive sample of specimens collected from Costa Rica to Patagonia and Brazil. We found that Scytalopus is a monophyletic group sister to Eugralla and consists of 3 main clades roughly distributed in (1) the Southern Andes, (2) eastern Brazil, and (3) the Tropical …

Addressing The Class Claim Conundrum With Online Dispute Resolution, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

Consumers with similar claims in the United States (U.S.) often join forces to launch representative, or "class", actions. This allows them to obtain remedies with little cost and effort and serves a "private attorney general" function by bringing light to purchase problems that public enforcement offices may not have the resources to address. This is especially important for lower dollar claims that are too costly for each consumer to pursue individually.

Nonetheless, some have criticized class actions in the U.S. for forcing settlements and padding the pockets of lawyers, while leaving consumers with minimal pay outs. At the same time, …

Nature-Based Municipal Flood Resilience: Land Conservation Strategies In New Hampshire’S Coastal Watershed, Michal Zahorik, Catherine M. Ashcraft

Faculty Publications

Land conservation is a nature-based approach to managing flood risks from fluvial flooding, coastal storm surge, and sea-level rise. This poster presents the design of ongoing research that aims to understand how New Hampshire’s (NH) coastal watershed municipalities implement land protection and conservation to reduce flood risk, the roles of local communities, land conservation organizations, and regional planning agencies in land conservation for flood risk management, how local decision-makers and stakeholders perceive flooding risks, and what institutional changes are needed to facilitate nature-based flood risk management. Research methods include (1) semi-structured interviews with individuals in New Hampshire representing a broad …

Renormalization-Group Approach To The Normal Phase Of Two-Dimensional Fermi Gases, S. Laalitya Uppalapati, Daniel E. Sheehy

Faculty Publications

We present results on the effect of short-range, attractive interactions on the properties of balanced tw-dimensional Fermi gases in the nonsuperfluid (normal) phase. Our approach combines the renormalization group (RG) with perturbation theory, yielding observables such as the equation of state and compressibility. We find good agreement with recent experiments that measured the equation of state in trapped gases in the balanced regime, showing that these results are consistent with logarithmic corrections in the equation of state.

The Liquid Argon In A Testbeam (Lariat) Experiment, R. Acciarri, C. Adams, J. A. Asaadi, M. Backfish, W. Badgett, B. Baller, O. Benevides Rodrigues, F. D.M. Blaszczyk, R. Bouabid, C. Bromberg, R. Carey, R. Castillo Fernandez, F. Cavanna, J. I. Cevallos Aleman, A. Chatterjee, P. Dedin, M. V. Dos Santos, D. Edmunds, M. Elkins, C. Escobar, J. Esquivel, J. Evans, A. Falcone, A. Farbin, W. Flanagan, B. T. Fleming, W. Foreman, D. Garcia-Gamez, D. Gastler, T. Ghosh, R. A. Gomes, E. Gramellini, R. Gran

Faculty Publications

The LArIAT liquid argon time projection chamber, placed in a tertiary beam of charged particles at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility, has collected large samples of pions, muons, electrons, protons, and kaons in the momentum range 0∼30-0140 MeV/c. This paper describes the main aspects of the detector and beamline, and also reports on calibrations performed for the detector and beamline components.

In-Situ Synchrotron X-Ray Diffraction Data For The Dynamic Reaction Processes Between Titanium And Air Under Laser Irradiation, Congyuan Zeng, Hao Wen, Hong Yao, P. T. Sprunger, S. M. Guo

Faculty Publications

This article presents data related to the research article entitled “Diffusion of oxygen and nitrogen into titanium under laser irradiation in air” [1]. When irradiated with varying laser parameters under ambient air, titanium surfaces are observed to exhibit differing colors. To better understand this phenomenon, the dynamic reaction steps between titanium and air under laser irradiation were investigated with in-situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction method. With a programmed laser profile, a set of diffraction patterns were collected by a 2D detector and then analyzed with the program FIT2D. Based on the data, the detailed high-temperature reactions between titanium and air during …

A 3-Year Sample Of Almost 1,600 Elves Recorded Above South America By The Pierre Auger Cosmic-Ray Observatory, A. Aab, P. Abreu, M. Aglietta, I. F.M. Albuquerque, J. M. Albury, I. Allekotte, A. Almela, J. Alvarez Castillo, J. Alvarez-Muñiz, G. A. Anastasi, L. Anchordoqui, B. Andrada, S. Andringa, C. Aramo, H. Asorey, P. Assis, G. Avila, A. M. Badescu, A. Bakalova, A. Balaceanu, F. Barbato, R. J. Barreira Luz, S. Baur, K. H. Becker, J. A. Bellido, C. Berat, M. E. Bertaina, X. Bertou, P. L. Biermann, J. Biteau, S. G. Blaess, A. Blanco, J. Blazek

Faculty Publications

Elves are a class of transient luminous events, with a radial extent typically greater than 250 km, that occur in the lower ionosphere above strong electrical storms. We report the observation of 1,598 elves, from 2014 to 2016, recorded with unprecedented time resolution (100 ns) using the fluorescence detector (FD) of the Pierre Auger Cosmic-Ray Observatory. The Auger Observatory is located in the Mendoza province of Argentina with a viewing footprint for elve observations of 3.106 km2, reaching areas above the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, as well as the Córdoba region, which is known for severe convective thunderstorms. Primarily designed …

A One-Shot Learning Framework For Assessment Of Fibrillar Collagen From Second Harmonic Generation Images Of An Infarcted Myocardium, Qun Liu, Supratik Mukhopadhyay, Maria Ximena Bastidas Rodriguez, Xing Fu, Sushant Sahu, David Burk, Manas Gartia

Faculty Publications

© 2020 IEEE. Myocardial infarction (MI) is a scientific term that refers to heart attack. In this study, we infer highly relevant second harmonic generation (SHG) cues from collagen fibers exhibiting highly non-centrosymmetric assembly together with two-photon excited cellular autofluorescence in infarcted mouse heart to quantitatively probe fibrosis, especially targeted at an early stage after MI. We present a robust one-shot machine learning algorithm that enables determination of 2D assembly of collagen with high spatial resolution along with its structural arrangement in heart tissues post - MI with spectral specificity and sensitivity. Detection, evaluation, and precise quantification of fibrosis extent …

Efficacy Of Entomopathogenic Nematodes Against The Sugarbeet Wireworm, Limonius Californicus (Mannerheim) (Coleoptera: Elateridae), Ramandeep Kaur Sandhi, David Shapiro-Ilan, Anamika Sharma, Gadi V.P. Reddy

Faculty Publications

Wireworms, the larval stage of click beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae), are economically important soil-dwelling pests that attack many field crops worldwide. Wireworms have become a serious threat to spring wheat in the Northern Great Plains because of lack of effective control measures, creating a need for alternative control methods such as biological control with entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs). A laboratory bioassay was used to test ten EPN strains and identify infective EPN strains against the sugarbeet wireworm, Limonius californicus (Mannerheim) (Coleoptera: Elateridae). Steinernema carpocapsae (Weiser) (All and Cxrd strains) and S. riobrave Cabanillas, Poinar, and Raulston (355 and 7–12 strains) killed 60–70% …

Review Of Red Dress In Black And White, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Surface Elevation And Sedimentation Dynamics In The Ganges-Brahmaputra Tidal Delta Plain, Bangladesh: Evidence For Mangrove Adaptation To Human-Induced Tidal Amplification, Edwin J. Bomer, Carol A. Wilson, Richard P. Hale, Abu Naser Mohsin Hossain, F. M.Arifur Rahman

Faculty Publications

In the Ganges-Brahmaputra (G-B) delta, periodic flooding of the land surface during the tidal cycle coupled with enormous sediment delivery during the monsoon promotes sediment accretion and surface elevation gain through time. However, over the past several decades, widespread embankment (“polder”) construction in the G-B tidal delta plain has led to numerous environmental disturbances, including channel siltation and tide range amplification. While previous research indicates that rates of sediment accretion are relatively high in the G-B tidal delta plain, it remains unclear if and how surface elevation is maintaining pace with relative sea-level rise (RSLR) in this region. In this …

Continuous Discrete Sequential Observers For Time-Varying Systems Under Sampling And Input Delays, Frederic Mazenc, Michael Malisoff

Faculty Publications

We provide continuous-discrete observers for a large class of time-varying linear systems where the inputs and outputs have sampling and delays, and where the systems and outputs contain uncertainties. We allow the delays in the output and input to differ and to be arbitrarily long. We use the observers to design controls that ensure input-to-state stability, under delays and sampling. The observers and controls have no distributed terms. We illustrate our work in a dc motor model.

Quantifying Streamflow Regulation Services Of Wetlands With An Emphasis On Quickflow And Baseflow Responses In The Upper Nenjiang River Basin, Northeast China, Yanfeng Wu, Guangxin Zhang, Alain N. Rousseau, Y. Jun Xu

Faculty Publications

Although the hydrological services of individual wetlands have been much acknowledged, their cumulative effect at the watershed scale has not been assessed as extensively. In this study, a distributed hydrological modeling platform, the PHYSITEL/HYDROTEL, was used to (i) investigate watershed hydrological processes with and without abundant wetlands, and (ii) quantify the effect of wetlands on streamflow, specifically baseflow and quickflow in the Upper Nenjiang River Basin (Northeast China). The modeling results showed that wetlands can strongly affect quickflow and baseflow, consequently modifying the watershed hydrograph. The study demonstrated the flow regulation services of wetlands at various temporal (i.e., daily, monthly, …

Assessing Field-Scale Variability Of Soil Hydraulic Conductivity At And Near Saturation, Xi Zhang, Ole Wendroth, Christopher Matocha, Junfeng Zhu, Javier Reyes

Faculty Publications

Saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) is a crucial hydraulic property for assessing soil water dynamics. Understanding the spatial variability of Ks in a field is important for site-specific resource management. However, direct measurement of hydraulic conductivity K as a function of soil water pressure head h [K(h)] is time consuming and laborious. Alternatively, pedotransfer functions (PTFs) have been developed to predict Ks indirectly based on more easily measurable soil properties. Although PTFs have been used for decades, their validity for estimating the field-scale spatial variability of Ks remains unclear. The objectives of this study were to characterize the spatial pattern of …

Effects Of Sea-Level Rise On Physiological Ecology Of Populations Of A Ground-Dwelling Ant, L. M. Hooper-Bùi, R. M. Strecker-Lau, D. M. Stewart, M. J. Landry, A. M. Papillion, S. N. Peterson, R. A. Daniel

Faculty Publications

Introduction Sea-level rise is a consequence of climate change that can impact the ecological and physiological changes of coastal, ground-dwelling species. Sea-level rise has a potential to inundate birds, rodents, spiders, and insects that live on the ground in coastal areas. Yet, there is still much to be learned concerning the specifics of these impacts. The red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta (Buren) excavates soil for its home and is capable of surviving flooding. Because of their ground-dwelling life history and rapid reproduction, fire ants make an ideal model for discovery and prediction of changes that may be due to …

Nucleolar Stress In Drosophila Neuroblasts, A Model For Human Ribosomopathies, Sonu Shrestha Baral, Molly E. Lieux, Patrick J. Dimario

Faculty Publications

Different stem cells or progenitor cells display variable threshold requirements for functional ribosomes. This is particularly true for several human ribosomopathies in which select embryonic neural crest cells or adult bone marrow stem cells, but not others, show lethality due to failures in ribosome biogenesis or function (now known as nucleolar stress). To determine if various Drosophila neuroblasts display differential sensitivities to nucleolar stress, we used CRISPR-Cas9 to disrupt the Nopp140 gene that encodes two splice variant ribosome biogenesis factors (RBFs). Disruption of Nopp140 induced nucleolar stress that arrested larvae in the second instar stage. While the majority of larval …

A New Proposal For The M + A Methodology In Segregating Populations Of Cowpea, Renata Fernandes De Matos, Antônio Moreira Barroso Neto, Júlio César Dovale, Cândida Hermínia Campos De Magalhães Bertini, Roberto Fritsche-Neto

Faculty Publications

The evaluation of segregating populations in plant breeding programs is an onerous and time-consuming process. Early identification of populations with genetic potential can be done by m + a methodology. However, the possibility of a modification in the traditional methodology in order to make it more efficient, that is, faster and cheaper, was envisaged. Thus, the objective of this study was to compare the genetic gains obtained by both methodologies, the traditional one and the proposed modification. For this, ten segregating bean-cowpea populations were evaluated at two distinct levels of homozygous F3:4 and F3:5. Genetic values were predicted by two …

Lightning Strikes The Axis: Century Storm Boats During World War Ii, Geoffrey Reynolds

Faculty Publications

January 1941 dawned with most of the world at war with Germany, Italy, and Japan. At the 1941 National Boat Show in New York, many boat building companies were absent because they were focused on producing boats for Allied forces overseas or the defense of the United States. The Century Boat Company was the only company that displayed a small boat used for warfare alongside its pleasure craft line. This model and others would later be credited with helping win World War II.

Noise Resilience Of Variational Quantum Compiling, Kunal Sharma, Sumeet Khatri2, M. Cerezo, Patrick J. Coles

Faculty Publications

Variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithms (VHQCAs) are near-term algorithms that leverage classical optimization to minimize a cost function, which is efficiently evaluated on a quantum computer. Recently VHQCAs have been proposed for quantum compiling, where a target unitary U is compiled into a short-depth gate sequence V. In this work, we report on a surprising form of noise resilience for these algorithms. Namely, we find one often learns the correct gate sequence V (i.e. the correct variational parameters) despite various sources of incoherent noise acting during the cost-evaluation circuit. Our main results are rigorous theorems stating that the optimal variational parameters …

How Rare Was The August 2016 South-Central Louisiana Heavy Rainfall Event?, Vincent M. Brown, Barry D. Keim, William D. Kappel, Douglas M. Hultstrand, Ashton G. Peyrefitte, Alan W. Black, Kristi M. Steinhilber, Geoffrey A. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

This study examines the spatiotemporal characteristics of the historic 10-14 August 2016 south-central Louisiana precipitation event. The storm was the result of a moisture-rich, tropical low pressure system, also known as a tropical easterly wave, that slowly tracked westward along the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas. Once over south-central Louisiana, the storm was able to take advantage of anomalously high precipitable water, broad low-level instability, and continuous moisture inflow from the Gulf of Mexico to produce historic rainfall. Totals exceeded 254mm (10 in.) for much of southern Louisiana, while locations adjacent to Baton Rouge and Lafayette received upward of …

Decarbonization In Democracy, Shelley Welton

Faculty Publications

Conventional wisdom holds that democracy is structurally ill-equipped to confront climate change. As the story goes, because each of us tends to dismiss consequences that befall people in other places and in future times, “the people” cannot be trusted to craft adequate decarbonization policies, designed to reduce present-day, domestic carbon emissions. Accordingly, U.S. climate change policy has focused on technocratic fixes that operate predominantly through executive action to escape democratic politics — with vanishingly little to show for it after a change in presidential administration.

To help craft a more durable U.S. climate change strategy, this Article scrutinizes the purported …