Digital Commons Network^™

Energy Expenditure And Physical Activity In Recovering Malnourished Infants, Russell Rising, Gul Tiryaki Sonmez

Publications and Research

Background. Malnourished infants are small for age and weight. Objectives. Determine profiles in 24-hour energy metabolism in recovering malnourished infants and compare to similarly aged healthy controls. Methods. 10 malnourished infants (58.1 ± 5.9 cm, 7.7 ± 5.6 months) were healthy prior to spending 22 hours in the Enhanced Metabolic Testing Activity Chamber for measurement of EE (kcal/min), sleeping metabolic rate (SMR; kcal/min), respiratory quotient (RQ; VCO2/VO2), and physical activity (PA; oscillations in wt/min/kg body weight). Metabolic data were extrapolated to 24 hours (kcal/kg/d). Energy intake (kcal/kg/d) and the proportions (%) of carbohydrate, protein, and fat were calculated. Anthropometrics for …

A Multifactorial Mechanism In The Superior Antimalarial Activity Of Α-C-Galcer, John Schmieg, Guangli Yang, Richard W. Franck, Moriya Tsuji

Publications and Research

We have previously shown that the C-glycoside analog of α-galactosylceramide (α-GalCer), α-C-GalCer, displays a superior inhibitory activity against the liver stages of the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium yoelii than its parental glycolipid, α-GalCer. In this study, we demonstrate that NK cells, as well as IL-12, are a key contributor for the superior activity displayed by α-C-GalCer. Surprisingly, the diminished production of Th2 cytokines, including IL-4, by α-C-GalCer has no affect on its superior therapeutic activity relative to α-GalCer. Finally, we show that the in vivo administration of α-C-GalCer induces prolonged maturation of dendritic cells (DCs), as well as an enhanced …

Role For Sumoylation In Systemic Inflammation And Immune Homeostasis In Drosophila Larvae, Indira Paddibhatla, Mark J. Lee, Marta E. Kalamarz, Roberto Ferrarese, Shubha Govind

Publications and Research

To counter systemic risk of infection by parasitic wasps, Drosophila larvae activate humoral immunity in the fat body and mount a robust cellular response resulting in encapsulation of the wasp egg. Innate immune reactions are tightly regulated and are resolved within hours. To understand the mechanisms underlying activation and resolution of the egg encapsulation response and examine if failure of the latter develops into systemic inflammatory disease, we correlated parasitic wasp-induced changes in the Drosophila larva with systemic chronic conditions in sumoylation-deficient mutants. We have previously reported that loss of either Cactus, the Drosophila (IkB) protein or Ubc9, the SUMO-conjugating …

Earlier Buddhist Theories Of Free Will: Compatibilism, Rick Repetti

Publications and Research

This is the first part of a three-article series that examines Budd-hist accounts of free will. The present article introduces the issues and reviews earlier attempts by Frances Story, Walpola Rāhula, Luis Gómez, and David Kalupahana. These “early-period” authors advocate compatibilism between Buddhist doctrine, determinism (the doctrine of universal lawful causation), and free will. The second article reviews later attempts by Mark Siderits, Gay Watson, Joseph Goldstein, and Charles Goodman. These “middle-period” authors embrace either partial or full incompatibilism. The third article reviews recent attempts by Nicholas F. Gier and Paul Kjellberg, Asaf Federman, Peter Harvey, and B. Alan Wallace. …

Liquid-Liquid Phase Transition And Glass Transition In A Monoatomic Model System, Limei Xu, Sergey V. Buldyrev, Nicolas Giovambattista, H. Eugene Stanley

Publications and Research

We review our recent study on the polyamorphism of the liquid and glass states in a monatomic system, a two-scale spherical-symmetric Jagla model with both attractive and repulsive interactions. This potential with a parametrization for which crystallization can be avoided and both the glass transition and the liquid-liquid phase transition are clearly separated, displays water-like anomalies as well as polyamorphism in both liquid and glassy states, providing a unique opportunity to study the interplay between the liquid-liquid phase transition and the glass transition. Our study on a simple model may be useful in understanding recent studies of polyamorphism in metallic …

Marginalized Stakeholders And Performative Politics: Dueling Discourses In Education Policymaking, Celina Su

Publications and Research

American urban education policy debates pivot around dueling lines of discourse on what ails inner-city youth; such students are portrayed as emblems of a largely African-American and Latino ‘culture of failure’, even as their voices remain largely absent from debates about them. In response, youth-led organizations attempt to forward youth as political stakeholders. I draw upon ethnographic data from two such organizations to examine the performative aspects of their campaign work. I focus on how they engaged in (1) counter-scripting, to imagine themselves as political stakeholders and substantively prepare themselves for their new roles, and in (2) counter-staging, to gain …

Intradermal Immunization Of Mice With Radiation-Attenuated Sporozoites Of Plasmodium Yoelii Induces Effective Protective Immunity, Tatiana Voza, Chahnaz Kebaier, Jerome P. Vanderberg

Publications and Research

Background Intravenous injection of mice with attenuated Plasmodium berghei sporozoites induces sterile immunity to challenge with viable sporozoites. Non-intravenous routes have been reported to yield poor immunity. Because intravenous immunization has been considered to be unacceptable for large scale vaccination of humans, assessment was made of the results of intradermal immunization of mice with Plasmodium yoelii, a rodent malaria parasite whose infectivity resembles that of human malaria. Methods Mice were immunized with two injections of isolated, radiation-attenuated P. yoelii sporozoites, either by intravenous (IV) or intradermal (ID) inoculation. In an attempt to enhance protective immunogenicity of ID-injections, one group of …

Future Is Now: Introducing Ereaders To Cuny Libraries, Stefanie Havelka, Jennifer King, Rebecca Arzola, Alevtina Verbovetskaya

Publications and Research

Amazon.com’s announcement in July 2010 that eBooks out sold print books for the previous three months indicates that eBooks are here to stay. What effect will this have on teaching and learning? Will ease of access and portability facilitate cheating and plagiarism? How will eBooks and eReaders work in an urban academic environment? Are eReaders and eBooks the new digital divide?

Faculty from the Leonard Lief Library at Lehman College will share their experience with Sony eReaders and downloadable eBooks via OverDrive. Following this presentation there will be a guided discussion on eReader and eBook issues, such as:

• How do …

Graphs Of Bounded Degree And The P-Harmonic Boundary, Michael J. Puls

Publications and Research

Let p be a real number greater than one and let G be a connected graph of bounded degree. We introduce the p-harmonic boundary of G and use it to characterize the graphs G for which the constant functions are the only p-harmonic functions on G. We show that any continuous function on the p-harmonic boundary of G can be extended to a function that is p-harmonic on G. We also give some properties of this boundary that are preserved under rough-isometries. Now let Gamma be a finitely generated group. As an application of our results, we characterize the vanishing …

Brave New World: Redesigning Lehman College Library’S Website, Stefanie Havelka, David Stevens

Publications and Research

Since today’s students are digital natives, they naturally expect more from an academic library website. Well-designed websites, virtual games, social networking as well as search engines are an integral part of their daily digital lives. Consequently, challenges faced during redesign of a library’s website are two-fold:

• Concepts of web usability must be applied. The website needs to be well organized and present its information and content in a user-friendly manner.
• The website needs to be visually appealing since it serves both as the virtual extension of the physical library, as well as a significant outreach tool promoting the Library’s and …

Experiences Of Women Who Have Lost Young Children To Aids In Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa: A Qualitative Study, Craig Demmer

Publications and Research

Background AIDS continues to be the leading cause of death in South Africa. Little is known about the experiences of mothers who have lost a young child to AIDS. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the attitudes and experiences of women who had lost a young child to HIV/AIDS in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa.

Methods In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 women who had lost a child to AIDS. The average age of the deceased children was six years. Interviews were also conducted with 12 key informants to obtain their perspectives on working with women who had …

Hybrid Micro-/Nanogels For Optical Sensing And Intracellular Imaging, Weitai Wu, Shuiqin Zhou

Publications and Research

Hybrid micro-/nanogels are playing an increasing important part in a diverse range of applications, due to their tunable dimensions, large surface area, stable interior network structure, and a very short response time. We review recent advances and challenges in the developments of hybrid micro-/nanogels toward applications for optical sensing of pH, temperature, glucose, ions, and other species as well as for intracellular imaging. Due to their unique advantages, hybrid micro-/nanogels as optical probes are attracting substantial interests for continuous monitoring of chemical parameters in complex samples such as blood and bioreactor fluids, in chemical research and industry, and in food …

“Did You Call Me?” 5-Month-Old Infants Own Name Guides Their Attention, Eugenio Parise, Angela D. Friederici, Tricia Striano

Publications and Research

An infant's own name is a unique social cue. Infants are sensitive to their own name by 4 months of age, but whether they use their names as a social cue is unknown. Electroencephalogram (EEG) was measured as infants heard their own name or stranger's names and while looking at novel objects. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to names revealed that infants differentiate their own name from stranger names from the first phoneme. The amplitude of the ERPs to objects indicated that infants attended more to objects after hearing their own names compared to another name. Thus, by …

A Microfluidic Device To Establish Concentration Gradients Using Reagent Density Differences, Qingjun Kong, Richard A. Able, Jr., Veronica Dudu, Maribel Vazquez

Publications and Research

Microfabrication has become widely utilized to generate controlled microenvironments that establish chemical concentration gradients for a variety of engineering and life science applications. To establish microfluidic flow, the majority of existing devices rely upon additional facilities, equipment, and excessive reagent supplies, which together limit device portability as well as constrain device usage to individuals trained in technological disciplines. The current work presents our laboratory-developed bridged microLane system, which is a stand-alone device that runs via conventional pipette loading and can operate for several days without need of external machinery or additional reagent volumes. The bridged microLane is a two-layer polydimethylsiloxane …

The Financial Crisis: What Went Wrong And What Is Needed To Make It Right, Callum Mccarthy

Publications and Research

In this paper, the WCIB is publishing remarks delivered by Sir Callum McCarthy, Former Chairman of the U.K. Financial Services Authority (FSA) from September 2003 until September 2008 at the Mitsui USA Lunch-Time Forum held at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College/CUNY on December 8, 2010 about the financial crisis: what went wrong and what is needed to make it right. He frames his remarks with the following introduction: I want to address the question that the Queen famously asked at the London School of Economics of an assembly of economist there: why did none of you see this …

Core Genome Components And Lineage Specific Expansions In Malaria Parasites Plasmodium, Hong Cai, Jianying Gu, Yufeng Wang

Publications and Research

Background The increasing resistance of Plasmodium, the malaria parasites, to multiple commonly used drugs has underscored the urgent need to develop effective antimalarial drugs and vaccines. The new direction of genomics-driven target discovery has become possible with the completion of parasite genome sequencing, which can lead us to a better understanding of how the parasites develop the genetic variability that is associated with their response to environmental challenges and other adaptive phenotypes. Results We present the results of a comprehensive analysis of the genomes of six Plasmodium species, including two species that infect humans, one that infects monkeys, and three …

In Polycistronic Qβ Rna, Single-Strandedness At One Ribosome Binding Site Directly Affects Translational Initiations At A Distal Upstream Cistron, Lalitha Jayant, Christine Priano, Donald R. Mills

Publications and Research

In Qβ RNA, sequestering the coat gene ribosome binding site in a putatively strong hairpin stem structure eliminated synthesis of coat protein and activated protein synthesis from the much weaker maturation gene initiation site, located 1300 nucleotides upstream. As the stability of a hairpin stem comprising the coat gene Shine–Dalgarno site was incrementally increased, there was a corresponding increase in translation of maturation protein. The effect of the downstream coat gene ribosome binding sequence on maturation gene expression appeared to have occurred only in cis and did not require an AUG start codon or initiation of coat protein synthesis. In …

Ectopic T Cell Receptor-Α Locus Control Region Activity In B Cells Is Suppressed By Direct Linkage To Two Flanking Genes At Once, Stefan Knirr, Janette Gomos-Klein, Blanca E. Andino, Faith Harrow, Karl F. Erhard, Damian Kovalovsky, Derek B. Sant'angelo, Benjamin D. Ortiz

Publications and Research

The molecular mechanisms regulating the activity of the TCRα gene are required for the production of the circulating T cell repertoire. Elements of the mouse TCRα locus control region (LCR) play a role in these processes. We previously reported that TCRα LCR DNA supports a gene expression pattern that mimics proper thymus-stage, TCRα gene-like developmental regulation. It also produces transcription of linked reporter genes in peripheral T cells. However, TCRα LCR-driven transgenes display ectopic transcription in B cells in multiple reporter gene systems. The reasons for this important deviation from the normal TCRα gene regulation pattern are unclear. In its …

A Richer And More Diverse Future For Cell Biology, Sandra L. Schmid, Molly Carnes, Ursula Goodenough, Nancy Hopkins, Phoebe Leboy, Sandra Masur, Virginia Valian

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Origin Of Love: Love Songs As Represented In The Cinema Of Rock Operas, Benjamin Franz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Sex Partnerships, Health, And Social Risks Of Young Men Leaving Jail: Analyzing Data From A Randomized Controlled Trial, Megha Ramaswamy, Nicholas Freudenberg

Publications and Research

Background Young men involved in the criminal justice system face disproportionately high rates of sexual risk behavior, drug, use, and violence. Little is known about how their involvement in sex partnerships might mitigate their unique health and social risks. This study explores whether sex partner experience protects against harmful sexual behaviors, drug problems, violence, and recidivism in 16-18-year-old Black and Latino men leaving a US jail. Methods Data were drawn from the Returning Educated African-American and Latino Men to Enriched Neighborhoods (REAL MEN) study conducted between 2003-2007, which tracked 552 adolescents during their time in a New York City jail …

Repair Of Mitomycin C Mono- And Interstrand Cross-Linked Dna Adducts By Uvrabc: A New Model, Mao-Wen Weng, Yi Zheng, Vijay P. Jasti, Elise Champeil, Maria Tomasz, Yinsheng Wang, Ashis K. Basu, Moon-Shong Tang

Publications and Research

Mitomycin C induces both MC-mono-dG and cross-linked dG-adducts in vivo. Interstrand cross-linked (ICL) dG-MC-dG-DNA adducts can prevent strand separation. In Escherichia coli cells, UvrABC repairs ICL lesions that cause DNA bending. The mechanisms and consequences of NER of ICL dG-MC-dG lesions that do not induce DNA bending remain unclear. Using DNA fragments containing a MC-mono-dG or an ICL dG-MC-dG adduct, we found (i) UvrABC incises only at the strand containing MC-mono-dG adducts; (ii) UvrABC makes three types of incisions on an ICL dG-MC-dG adduct: type 1, a single 5′ incision on 1 strand and a 3′ incision on the other; …

The Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Drugome And Its Polypharmacological Implications, Sarah L. Kinnings, Li Xie, Kingston H. Fung, Richard M. Jackson, Lei Xie, Phillip E. Bourne

Publications and Research

We report a computational approach that integrates structural bioinformatics, molecular modelling and systems biology to construct a drug-target network on a structural proteome-wide scale. The approach has been applied to the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), the causative agent of one of today’s most widely spread infectious diseases. The resulting drug-target interaction network for all structurally characterized approved drugs bound to putative M.tb receptors, we refer to as the ‘TB-drugome’. The TB-drugome reveals that approximately one-third of the drugs examined have the potential to be repositioned to treat tuberculosis and that many currently unexploited M.tb receptors may be chemically druggable …

Overcoming The Model Minority Myth: Experiences Of Filipino American Graduate Students, Kevin L. Nadal, Stephanie T. Pituc, Marc P. Johnston, Theresa Esparrago

Publications and Research

Filipino Americans are one of the largest immigrant groups in the United States and the second largest Asian American/Pacific Islander ethnic group. However, there is little research focusing on the unique experiences of this group, particularly in higher education. This paper presents a qualitative exploration of the experiences of Filipino American graduate students utilizing consensual qualitative research methodology. Results were categorized into domains and themes, with an example of a domain being "deficiencies and lack of resources" and an example of a theme being "Filipino Americans as different from Asian Americans." Implications for higher education administrators and researchers are discussed.

Building Capacity For Public And Population Health Research In Africa: The Consortium For Advanced Research Training In Africa (Carta) Model, Alex C. Ezeh, Chimaraoke O. Izugbara, Caroline W. Kabiru, Sharon Fonn, Kathleen Kahn, Lenore Manderson, Akinyinka Omigbodun, Margaret Thorogood, Ashiwel S. Undieh

Publications and Research

Background: Globally, sub-Saharan Africa bears the greatest burden of disease. Strengthened research capacity to understand the social determinants of health among different African populations is key to addressing the drivers of poor health and developing interventions to improve health outcomes and health systems in the region. Yet, the continent clearly lacks centers of research excellence that can generate a strong evidence base to address the region’s socio-economic and health problems. Objective and program overview: We describe the recently launched Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), which brings together a network of nine academic and four research institutions from …

Review Of The Website Founders Early Access, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the website Founders early access.

Accumulation, Excess, Childhood: Toward A Countertopography Of Risk And Waste, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

This piece grows out of my on-going project, ‘Childhood as Spectacle’, and my enduring concern with social reproduction and what it does for and to Marxist and other critical political-economic analyses. After more than 30 years of Marxist-feminist interventions around these issues, symptomatic silences around social reproduction remain all too common in analyses of capitalism. Working through these issues and their occlusion, I offer what I hope is a useful and vibrant theoretical framework for examining geographies of children, youth, and families. Building this framework calls into play three overlapping issues; neoliberal capitalism in crisis and David Harvey’s notion of …

Review Of The Book Jewish Responses To Persecution, Vol. I: 1933-1938, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Jewish responses to persecution, Vol. I: 1933-1938.

Upper Cretaceous Peay Bentonites (North-Central Wyoming): Provenance And Tectonics Interpretation From Ash Composition, Nazrul I. Khandaker, Carl F. Vondra, Karl E. Seifert, Malek Shami, Rochelle Cardinale, Thakur Chaturgan

Publications and Research

The Peay bentonites belong to the basal Frontier Formation (Bighorn Basin, north-central Wyoming), primarily outcrop in the Bighorn Basin, rest on an extensively bioturbated sandstone unit, the Peay Sandstone, and are generally the thinner bentonitic unit. Beds of very light gray to greenish gray bentonite are also abundant in the lower Frontier units between Kaycee and Mayoworth (Powder River Basin) and are very rarely as much as 3 m thick. Bentonite occurs within the interstratified shale, sandstone, and siltstone sequences of the lower Frontier unit throughout much of the southwestern Powder River Basin. The purpose of this study is to …

Tensorial Reconstruction At The Integrand Level, G. Heinrich, Giovanni Ossola, T. Reiter, F. Tramontano

Publications and Research

We present a new approach to the reduction of one-loop amplitudes obtained by reconstructing the tensorial expression of the scattering amplitudes. The reconstruction is performed at the integrand level by means of a sampling in the integration momentum. There are several interesting applications of this novel method within existing techniques for the reduction of one-loop multi-leg amplitudes: to deal with numerically unstable points, such as in the vicinity of a vanishing Gram determinant; to allow for a sampling of the numerator function based on real values of the integration momentum; to optimize the numerical reduction in the case of long …