Digital Commons Network^™

Impact Of The 23andme Bankruptcy On Preserving The Public Benefit Of Scientific Data, Jonathan E. Lotempio Jr., Chistopher R. Donohue, Jonatahan D. Moreno, Ana Santos Rutschman, Joshua Sarnoff, Michael S. Sinha, Thomas Stoeger, Jorge L. Contreras

Faculty Publications

The bankruptcy of 23andMe was an inflection point for the direct-to-consumer genetics market. Although the privacy of consumer data has been highlighted by many as a concern, we discuss another key tension in this case: the corporate enclosure of scientific data that has considerable potential value for biomedical research and public health.

Introduction To The Special Issue, “Forgiveness Education Around The World: Considerations, Benefits, And Approaches”, Suzanne Freedman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Molecularly Imprinted Polymer For The Removal Of Nutrients From Water: Synthesis, Application, Performance And Limitation, Emmanuella Anang, Abolade Busari

Faculty Publications

Nutrient contamination is a major contributor to eutrophication and water quality degradation worldwide. Conventional treatment technologies often lack selectivity and efficiency in complex aquatic environments, highlighting the need for advanced materials with tailored recognition capabilities. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have emerged as promising adsorbents for nutrient remediation due to their high selectivity, stability and reusability. This review synthesizes recent progress on the synthesis strategies of MIPs. Applications of MIPs in removing phosphate, nitrate and ammonia from water are critically examined, with particular attention to adsorption performance under varying environmental conditions. The limitations of current systems, including modest adsorption capacities, incomplete …

Fabrication And Evaluation Of Large Alumina Crucibles By Vat Photopolymerization Additive Manufacturing For High-Temperature Actinide Chemistry, R. Joey Griffiths, Christy Santoyo, Jean-Baptise Forien, Bradley Childs, Andrew J. Swift, Andrew Cho, Alexander Wilson-Heid, George Ankrah, Devin Rappleye, Aiden A. Martin, Jason Jeffries, Kiel Holliday

Faculty Publications

Additive manufacturing (AM) offers opportunities to advance the design and function of ceramic tooling in high temperature actinide pyrochemistry. In technical ceramics such as alumina, conventional forming techniques often restrict design flexibility and can limit experimental progress. In this study, we investigate the use of vat photopolymerization (VP) with commercial resins to fabricate large-scale alumina crucibles, reaching dimensions up to 125 mm, which is significantly larger than typically reported for dense VP ceramics. Notably, these additively manufactured components are produced using consumer-grade hardware, which limits process control, but offers significant upside in scalability and accessibility. Using microscopy and X-ray computed …

The Influence Of Reactive Iron On Organic Carbon Preservation In Sediment Of The Mississippi River-Influenced Shelf, Manab Kumar Dutta, Neha A. Ghaisas, Kanchan Maiti

Faculty Publications

Reactive iron is a key driver of organic carbon preservation in marine sediments, but its participation in organic carbon remineralization complicates efforts to mechanistically constrain its role in preservation. To address this, we investigated the dual role of iron in the Mississippi River-influenced shelf sediment during low discharge (August 2016) and high discharge (May 2017). Duplicate sediment cores (30 cm depth) were collected from two stations; one core served as a natural reference, while the other was used for an incubation experiment. In the natural cores, reactive iron concentrations in the upper 9 cm were lower in August 2016 than …

Rapid Microbial Activity In Marine Sediments Significantly Enhances Silica Cycling Rates Compared To Abiotic Processes, Panagiotis Michalopoulos, Jeffrey W. Krause, Rebecca A. Pickering, Eleni Rousselaki, Kanchan Maiti, Martial Taillefert, Christophe Rabouille, Rudolph Corvaisier

Faculty Publications

Silicon, earth’s second most abundant element, cycles via biogeochemical processes in terrestrial and oceanic environments. The marine sediment-water interface is thought to divide biological-dominated (water) from abiotic-dominated (sediment) silica cycling processes. Studies indicate marine extremophile bacteria induce silica precipitation, but the quantitative importance of microorganisms in broader sediment silica cycling remains unexplored. We hypothesize that microorganisms significantly influence sediment silica cycling, challenging the prevailing divide of microbial importance. Within hours, sediment microbes expedited silica sequestration through rapid coupled dissolution/reprecipitation processes in marine deltaic sediment experiments. Using radiotracer silicon-32, we reveal that microbial mediation enhanced silica uptake, surpassing abiotic uptake by …

Elucidating The Role Of Marine Benthic Carbon In A Changing World, Cristina Schultz, Jessica Y. Luo, Damian C. Brady, Robinson W. Fulweiler, Matthew H. Long, Colleen M. Petrik, Jeremy M. Testa, Heather M. Benway, David Burdige, Marta M. Cecchetto, Isa Elegbede, Natalya Evans, Alexandra Frenzel, Kayla Gillen, Lisa C. Herbert, Heidi K. Hirsh, Gennadi Lessin, Lisa Levin, Kanchan Maiti, Sairah Malkin, Sarah L. Mincks, Stanley Nmor, Anh Pham, James Pinckney, Christophe Rabouille, Shaily Rahman, Subhadeep Rakshit, Nicholas E. Ray, Dalton K. Sasaki, Samantha A. Siedlecki, Christopher Somes, Aron Stubbins, Olivier Sulpis

Faculty Publications

The ocean plays a major role in controlling atmospheric carbon at decadal to millennial timescales, with benthic carbon representing the only geologic-scale storage of oceanic carbon. Despite its importance, detailed benthic ocean observations are limited and representation of the benthic carbon cycle in ocean and Earth system models (ESMs) is mostly empirical with little prognostic capacity, which hinders our ability to properly understand the long-term evolution of the carbon cycle and climate change-related feedbacks. The Benthic Ecosystem and Carbon Synthesis (BECS) working group, with the support of the US Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry Program (OCB), identified key challenges limiting our …

Integrating Human And Natural Systems From A Global Systems Perspective, John W. Day, William H. Conner, Katherine C. Ewel, Rachael Hunter, G. Paul Kemp, Robert Lane, Jay Martin, William Mitsch, Victor H. Rivera-Monroy, John Rybczyk

Faculty Publications

During his long career, Howard Odum focused on both conceptual and theoretical issues such as maximum power and the development of energy circuit language as well as ecosystem-level studies of natural systems and human interactions with these systems. He and colleagues carried out large macrocosm studies on a variety of ecosystems. We review here studies initiated by Howard Odum as well as whole system studies carried out by a number of post docs, his students and their students. We focus on studies involving John Day, Katherine Ewel, and William Mitsch. Ewel and Mitsch worked on fertilized cypress systems in Florida. …

Hurricanes And Human Health In Louisiana: Insights From Hurricanes Laura, Delta, And Ida, Shobha Kumari Yadav, Robert V. Rohli, M. E. Betsy Garrison, Elisabeth Ponce-Garcia, Nazla Bushra, Charleen Mcneill

Faculty Publications

Louisiana is one of the most disaster-prone states, with hurricanes ranking among the most destructive hazards. Hurricanes impede sustainability by straining hospital infrastructure, overwhelming emergency departments, and disrupting continuity of care. Louisiana’s healthcare system, characterized by high uninsured rates, limited rural access, and notable racial and socioeconomic disparities, is particularly vulnerable during disasters. This research explores trends of mental and respiratory health in Louisiana surrounding Hurricanes Laura (2020), Delta (2020), and Ida (2021). Analysis reveals a substantial increase in admissions after landfall of all three storms, with mental health conditions showing a larger surge than respiratory ones in already-vulnerable communities. …

Dissimilar Global Record-Breaking Heatwave Exposure Driven By Divergent Population Projections Within Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, Leibin Wang, Robert V. Rohli, Qigen Lin, Yanzhao Zhou, Siyan Dong, Shikai Song, Qiang Liu, Xiaodong Yan

Faculty Publications

Exposure to record-breaking heatwaves represents a significant and growing challenge for human health and societal well-being in a changing climate. Comprehending the risks of future exposure to record-breaking heatwaves is vital for devising effective mitigation strategies. However, population data, a key determinant in projecting future exposure risks, has rarely been scrutinized for the uncertainty it introduces into these projections. This study investigates population exposure risks to record-breaking heatwaves from 2020 to 2 100 using four population datasets (ECNU, Lund, NASA SEDAC, and Tsinghua) under various IPCC AR6 shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs: 1–2.6, 2–4.5, 3–7.0, and 5–8.5). Results indicate that by …

Nonlinear Proudman Resonance Under Moving Atmospheric System, Chunyan Li

Faculty Publications

A nonlinear theoretical model with an exact solution is developed to critically examine the Proudman resonance problem. In this framework, a moving atmospheric pressure system forces a wave governed by the square of the wave Froude number (n=F²). Proudman’s classical linear solution, although widely cited, diverges to infinity at resonance (n=1), limiting its physical realism. This work extends the linear regime into the nonlinear by solving the governing equations exactly. The resulting solution remains finite at resonance. The first-order approximation recovers Proudman’s solution, while the second-order approximation already yields a finite resonant response—providing a more accurate and physically …

Ocean–Atmosphere–Land Interactions And Their Roles In Climate Change, Biyun Guo, Chunyan Li

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

On The Calculation Of Carbon And Nutrient Transport To The Oceans, Chunyan Li, John R. White

Faculty Publications

Correct estimations of sediment, carbon, and nutrient fluxes are crucial for understanding the impacts of land use, environmental change, and climate change. However, limited measurements—often restricted to surface data or aliased data, i.e., data without repeated observations throughout a tidal cycle—can lead to significant errors in transport calculations, particularly when different water masses interact. To address this issue, our study employed repeated, cross-sectional (cross-channel and through the vertical) measurements of water velocity and concentrations of sediment, carbon, and nutrients over the course of a tidal cycle. We observed substantial intra-tidal, lateral, and vertical variations in concentrations and fluxes, spanning orders …

Enhanced Water Transport When A Tropical Storm Meets An Atmospheric Cold Front, Chunyan Li, Robert V. Rohli, Wei Huang, Jorge A. Kurczyn

Faculty Publications

Weather systems that interact with one another can enhance coastal water transport, facilitating the movement of waterborne materials. In this study, we examine the influence of such weather interactions on water transport within a tidal pass along the coast of the northern Gulf of Mexico, focusing on the event when Tropical Storm Lee (2011) made landfall and merged with an atmospheric cold front, which was a leading edge of an advancing continental polar air mass. We conducted continuous surveys using an unmanned surface craft to measure water transport through a tidal pass. The transport was analyzed by calculating a regression-based …

Short-Term Impacts Of Cold Front Passage On Coastal Water Quality And Material Transport, Ankita Katkar, Padmanava Dash, Chunyan Li, Abduselam Mohammed Nur, Sankar M. Sasidharan

Faculty Publications

Amid growing attention to climate change, most coastal oceanographic studies have focused on long-term trends, with comparatively less emphasis on the impacts of short-lived synoptic weather systems, such as cold fronts, on coastal water quality. These transient events can drive rapid shifts in biogeochemical processes with significant ecological consequences. This study investigated the short-term variability of water quality parameters in the Louisiana Continental Shelf in response to wind-driven changes in coastal currents following a cold front. A vessel-based survey conducted in March 2021 involved repeated high-frequency sampling along a 30 km transect over a 36-hour period. Measurements included salinity, temperature, …

Understanding Landowner Perceptions: Enhancing Conservation Easement Adoption In Missouri's Priority Landscapes, Mckenna N. Thompson, Jennah I. Klein, Robin M. Rotman, Sonja A. Wilhelm Stanis, Gus C. Raeker, Michele D. Baumer

Faculty Publications

Conservation of private lands is essential for protecting open space, supporting ecosystems and species, preserving resources, and facilitating outdoor recreation. One tool for private land conservation is a conservation easement – a voluntary legal agreement where a landowner surrenders certain rights to use or develop their property. This study explores landowner perceptions of perpetual conservation easements in areas of high conservation value in Missouri, focusing on landowners without existing easements. Through interviews, four themes emerge containing both motivations and constraints: prior knowledge, land protection, regulations, and finance. Many landowners were unfamiliar with conservation easements or had misconceptions or misunderstandings. The …

Lynk Labs: How The Least-Vetted Documents Destroy Issued Patents, Dennis D. Crouch

Faculty Publications

The Lynk Labs petition presents the Supreme Court with an opportunity to restore the temporal coherence that Congress built into § 311(b)'s evidentiary framework. By treating "printed publication" as synonymous with any reference that eventually becomes public, the Federal Circuit has transformed IPR into a forum where unexamined, abandoned patent applications can destroy patents that survived the very scrutiny those applications failed to complete. The Court should grant certiorari and hold that a printed publication must be printed and published before the critical date to serve as the basis for an IPR challenge.

Solving Professors' Dilemmas About Prohibiting Or Promoting Student Ai Use, John Lande

Faculty Publications

Faculty face difficult dilemmas as law students increasingly use generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT.  Should faculty prohibit student use of AI in course work, allow it within limits, or actively encourage it to build professional skills?  Because students already use AI tools, faculty must respond.  Doing nothing can undermine core educational goals.

This article offers practical strategies for addressing these dilemmas.  These strategies are designed to promote learning, uphold academic integrity, and prepare students for an evolving legal profession.  This article outlines two broad approaches:  restricting unauthorized AI use and promoting responsible, supervised use.  It provides concrete suggestions …

A Big Data Approach To Mitigating The Maup In Measuring Excess Commuting, Cehong Luo, Yujie Hu, Fahui Wang

Faculty Publications

Excess commuting, defined as the inefficiency resulting from spatial mismatches between residential and employment locations, poses significant challenges for urban planning and transportation systems. This study uses big data from individual vehicle trips collected in Tampa, Florida, to quantify excess commuting more accurately than traditional zonal approaches. Through the application of Linear Programming (LP) and Integer Linear Programming (ILP) models, this research measures minimum and actual commuting patterns across different spatial scales—census tract, block group, and individual trip levels. The findings reveal a clear scale effect associated with the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP), as smaller spatial units consistently yield …

Sexual Selection Creates Status-Seeking Males And Unsustainable Economic Growth, Brian Snyder

Faculty Publications

The Neolithic Transition altered the social ecology of humans. Prior to the Neolithic Transition, individual males could not defend territories, but in its aftermath, farming and land ownership allowed for the development of male territoriality. This, coupled with the ability to inherit land, increased wealth inequality, increasing the variance in males as potential mates. This may have altered sexual selection by increasing the fitness payoff of female mate choice (or arranged marriages) based on male status. Here, I hypothesize that female preferences for status created a selective pressure on males favoring greater territoriality, competitiveness, and resource extraction and that this …

Contrasting Climate Oscillations Impacts On Phytoplankton In The Western And Eastern Tropical Pacific, Lina An, Edward A. Laws, Xin Liu, Ruiying Chen, Shanlin Wang, Shijian Hu, Yuchen Zhang, Yibin Huang, Feipeng Xu, Fei Chai, Bangqin Huang

Faculty Publications

Climate oscillations like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation significantly impact marine ecosystems. Traditionally, warm events are thought to suppress nutrient availability, reduce phytoplankton biomass, and change community structure. However, using two decades of field observations, remote sensing, Copernicus reanalysis, and Earth system modeling, we find very different responses in the western tropical Pacific. During El Niño, chlorophyll concentrations and diatom contributions increase, while La Niña reverses that trend. The further amplification of these El Niño-Southern Oscillation-driven contrasts by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation can be attributed to its effects on regional circulation, including the enhancement of eddy activity …

Forecasting Coastal Hypoxia Using A Blend Of Mechanistic And Artificial Intelligence Models, Yanda Ou, Z. George Xue, Supratik Mukhopadhyay, Magesh Rajasekaran, Dylan Wichman

Faculty Publications

Daily fluctuations in coastal hypoxia significantly impact marine ecosystems, requiring forecasts that balance efficiency and accuracy. Statistical models are computationally efficient but often fall short in prediction performance, while mechanistic models are accurate yet resource-intensive. Here, we present a lightweight artificial intelligence (AI) model for daily hypoxia forecasting on the Louisiana–Texas shelf, trained and validated using a 14-year mechanistic ROMS hindcast. The AI model integrates observed riverine nutrient loads and 2-day hydrodynamic forecasts and achieves strong predictive performance: median (± 1 s.d.) accuracy of 0.85 ± 0.07 and F1 score of 0.72 ± 0.18 against the hindcast test set, and …

Light Cues Drive Community-Wide Transcriptional Shifts In The Hypersaline South Bay Salt Works, Margaret M. Weng, Benjamin Klempay, Jeff S. Bowman, Luke Fisher, Cyprien Camplong, Peter T. Doran, Susan Rundell, Jennifer B. Glass, Avishek Dutta, Alexandra Pontefract, Douglas H. Bartlett, Britney Schmidt, Sarah Stewart Johnson

Faculty Publications

The transition from day to night brings sweeping change to both environments and the organisms within them. Diel shifts in gene expression have been documented across all domains of life but remain understudied in microbial communities, particularly those in extreme environments where small changes may have rippling effects on resource availability. In hypersaline environments, many prominent taxa are photoheterotrophs that rely on organic carbon for growth but can also generate significant ATP via light-powered rhodopsins. Previous research demonstrated a significant response to light intensity shifts in the model halophile Halobacterium salinarum, but these cycles have rarely been explored in situ. …

Bringing Weak Transitions To Light, Yu He, Xiao Min Tong, Shuyuan Hu, Gergana D. Borisova, Hao Liang, Maximilian Hartmann, Veit Stooß, Chunhai Lyu, Zoltán Harman, Christoph H. Keitel, Kenneth J. Schafer, Mette B. Gaarde, Christian Ott, Thomas Pfeifer

Faculty Publications

Weak transitions between quantum states are of fundamental importance for a broad range of phenomena from analytical biochemistry to precision physics, but generally challenge experimental detection. Due to their small cross sections scaling with the absolute square of their transition matrix elements, spectroscopic measurements often fail in particular in the presence of competing background processes. Here we introduce a general concept to break this scaling law and enhance the transition probability by exploiting a stronger laser-coupled pathway to the same excited state. We demonstrate the concept experimentally by attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy in helium atoms. The quasi-forbidden transitions from the …

Reducing Classical Communication Costs In Multiplexed Quantum Repeaters Using Hardware-Aware Quasi-Local Policies, Stav Haldar, Pratik J. Barge, Xiang Cheng, Kai Chi Chang, Brian T. Kirby, Sumeet Khatri, Chee Wei Wong, Hwang Lee

Faculty Publications

Future quantum networks will have nodes equipped with multiple quantum memories, allowing for multiplexing and entanglement distillation strategies for long-distance entanglement distribution. In this work, we focus on quasi-local policies for multiplexed quantum repeater chains. In fully-local policies, nodes use the knowledge of only their own states, whereas more efficient global policies use knowledge of the entire network state. The classical communication costs of using this knowledge have not been explored in existing literature. We show that quasi-local policies not only obtain improved performance over local policies, but also reduce classical communication costs considerably. Our policies also outperform the widely …

Activity Of The Mammalian Dna Transposon Piggybat From Myotis Lucifugus Is Restricted By Its Own Transposon Ends, Alison B. Hickman, Laurie Lannes, Christopher M. Furman, Christina Hong, Lidiya Franklin, Rodolfo Ghirlando, Arpita Ghosh, Wentian Luo, Parthena Konstantinidou, Hernán A. Lorenzi, Anne Grove, Astrid D. Haase, Matthew H. Wilson, Fred Dyda

Faculty Publications

Members of the piggyBac superfamily of DNA transposons are widely distributed in host genomes ranging from insects to mammals. The human genome has retained five piggyBac-derived genes as domesticated elements although they are no longer mobile. Here, we have investigated the transposition properties of piggyBat from Myotis lucifugus, the only known active mammalian DNA transposon, and show that its low activity in human cells is due to subterminal inhibitory DNA sequences. Activity can be dramatically improved by their removal, suggesting the existence of a mechanism for the suppression of transposon activity. The cryo-electron microscopy structure of the piggyBat transposase pre-synaptic …

Flux Crystal Growth Of A Series Of Calcium Rare Earth Silicate Chlorides Calnsio4Cl (Ln = Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, And Tb): Mixed Anion Materials With A Spodiosite-Type Structure, Maria Goncalves, Mark D. Smith, Hans Conrad Zur Loye

Faculty Publications

A series of calcium rare earth silicate chlorides, CaLnSiO4Cl (Ln = Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, and Tb), was obtained as single crystals from flux crystal growth. The structures were determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction and were found to be related to the spodiosite/Wagnerite mineral structure, Ca2PO4F. The obtained compositions are variations of the spodiosite structure that result from two simultaneous elemental substitutions. Replacing one calcium for one rare earth element and the simultaneous replacement of one VO4³⁻ or PO4³⁻ with one SiO4⁴⁻. CaEuSiO4Cl was found to luminesce, and its photoluminescence spectrum is reported.

Water Circulation Beneath A Hovering Suas For Water Quality Monitoring Applications, Erin E. Hackett, Boone Fleenor, Jensine C. Coggin, Duvall Dickerson-Evans, Nikolaos Vitzilaios, Whitney E. Schuler, Paige K. Williams, Michael L. Myrick

Faculty Publications

Water quality has traditionally been measured via in situ sensors and satellites. The latter has limited applicability for smaller inland water bodies, while the former requires significant logistics, labor, and expense for routine sampling, and reactive/spurious sampling is often not feasible as a result (e.g., sampling pre-/post-storm). Consequently, small uncrewed aircraft system-based (sUAS-based) sampling has emerged as a potential solution to bridge these sampling gaps and challenges. But sampling from an sUAS is complicated by the need to pump water from depth, rather than suspending a sensor from the sUAS, due to concern over sampling sUAS-impacted waters. Here, we measure …

Thermodynamic Assessment Of The Li, Na, K, Cs | F, I Reciprocal Salt For Msr Applications, Clara M. Dixon, Mina Aziziha, Amir Mofrad, Jorge Paz Soldan Palma, Ronald E. Booth, Aiswarya Padinhare Manissery, Jack A. Wilson, Hans Conrad Zur Loye, Hunter B. Tisdale, Juliano Schorne-Pinto, Theodore M. Besmann

Faculty Publications

Gibbs energy models necessary to describe the thermochemical behavior of cesium and iodine in molten FLiNaK (46.5LiF-11.5NaF-42KF mol%), a proposed molten salt reactor coolant and fuel solvent, have been developed as they are of concern due to their high radiotoxicity and volatility. The six constituent pseudo-binary systems LiI-CsI, LiI-KI, LiI-NaI, NaI-KI, KI-CsI and NaI-CsI were evaluated using available phase equilibria and mixing enthalpy measurements. The models for the ternary reciprocal salt systems Li,Cs|F,I, Li,K|F,I, Li,Na|F,I, Na,K|F,I, Na,Cs|F,I and K,Cs|F,I were obtained by interpolation of the optimized pseudo-binary systems and parameters fit as necessary based on observed behavior. The additive (common …

Extreme Bandgap Al0.63Ga0.37N Quasivertical Schottky Barrier Diodes With A High Baliga Figure Of Merit Of 630 Mw Cm−2, Abdullah Al Mamun Mazumder, Shahab Mollah, Kamal Hussain, Abdullah Mamun, Seongmo Hwang, Tariq Jamil, Grigory Simin, Asif Khan

Faculty Publications

"Extreme bandgap n-Al_0.63Ga_0.37N quasi-vertical Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) with doping densities of ≈8 × 10¹⁷cm⁻³ (Sample A) and ≈2 × 10¹⁷cm⁻³ (Sample B) are grown on an AlN/sapphire substrate using metalorganic-chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Sample A achieves a high forward current density of ≈59.5 kA cm⁻² at 10 V with an I_ON/I_OFF ratio of ≈10⁸ (calculated from the forward current at + 3.8 V and the reverse current at −1 V) and an ideality factor of 2.8. Sample B has a forward current …