Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of Demographics On 21st Century Education, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

Do all students need STEM education or should it be focused primarily on the mathematically and scientifically inclined? Here, demographics may hold the key to such questions from which a 21st century education model should be based on.

Development And Validation Of The Weight Control Strategies Scale, Angela Marinilli Pinto, Joseph L. Fava, Hollie A. Raynor, Jessica Gokee Larose, Rena R. Wing

Publications and Research

Objective To develop and validate the Weight Control Strategies Scale (WCSS), a self-report instrument to assess use of specific behaviors thought to facilitate weight loss. Design and Methods Factor analysis was conducted on 323 overweight and obese adults (mean age=48.7±10.9 years, mean BMI=35.4±4.9 kg/m2, 74% female) enrolled in three different behavioral weight loss trials who completed the WCSS prior to starting treatment. To evaluate construct validity, additional data on dietary intake, physical activity, treatment session attendance, and weight change were obtained from a subsample of participants before and after participation in a 48-week weight loss program. Results Principal components analysis …

Global Futures And Government Towns: Phosphates And The Production Of Western Sahara As A Space Of Contention, Mark Drury

Publications and Research

The study of natural resources lends itself to theorizing the politics of nature and the politics of time. The space of Western Sahara, where both remain highly contested, provides an opportunity to consider the ramifications of resources in political conflict at different historical moments. Drawing from environmental histories of North Africa and the Sahara, as well as the anthropology of time, the author focuses on two historical moments. The first, from 1945 to 1972, concerns the discovery of phosphate deposits during the Spanish colonial period and the implications of this discovery for political authority in the Sahara more broadly. The …

Age-Period-Cohort Projections Of Ischaemic Heart Disease Mortality By Socio-Economic Position In A Rapidly Transitioning Chinese Population, Irene O.L. Won, Benjamin J. Cowling, Gabriel M. Leung, Mary Schooling

Publications and Research

Background
With economic development and population aging, ischaemic heart disease (IHD) is becoming a leading cause of mortality with widening inequalities in China. To forewarn the trends in China we projected IHD trends in the most economically developed part of China, i.e., Hong Kong.

Methods
Based on sex-specific IHD mortality rates from 1976 to 2005, we projected mortality rates by neighborhood-level socio-economic position (i.e., low- or high-income groups) to 2020 in Hong Kong using Poisson age-period-cohort models with autoregressive priors.

Results
In the low-income group, age-standardized IHD mortality rates among women declined from 33.3 deaths in 1976–1980 to 19.7 per …

Do You See The Signs? Evaluating Language, Branding, And Design In A Library Signage Audit, Amy F. Stempler, Mark Aaron Polger

Publications and Research

Signage represents more than directions or policies; it is informational, promotional, and sets the tone of the environment. To be effective, signage must be consistent, concise, and free of jargon and punitive language. An efficient assessment of signage should include a complete inventory of existing signage, including an analysis of the types of signs, its location, language, and its design. This article outlines the steps involved in a comprehensive signage audit, which along with a literature review, provides the foundation for creating a signage policy, best practices guidelines, and a branding strategy for future signage.

Friendship, Education, And Justice Teaching: The Professional Development Of Two Teacher-Friends, Debbie Sonu

Publications and Research

This paper discusses the distinct nature of friendship between teachers. Using literature on both the philosophical study of friendship and that of professional development, I present data from a qualitative study with two elementary school teachers in New York City in order to explore how the benefits of friendship might deepen an understanding of one's work with students. While literature on professional development tends to focus on effectively designed and structured activity, this article highlights the importance of teacher amity in (a) staving off negative judgments about teacher work, (b) harnessing the freedom to create and err, and (c) cultivating …

Learning By Visualizing, Nadia Benakli, Ashwin Satyanarayana, Satyanand Singh, Arnavaz Taraporevala

Publications and Research

Technology is universal and omnipresent. It has reshaped the way we function. One of the best ways to incorporate technology in the classroom is as a tool to facilitate learning by using it as a visual aid. This is a type of teaching and learning style in which ideas, concepts, data and other information are associated with images and techniques. In this paper we will discuss some of the tools and present and analyze a number of examples to demonstrate how the use of technology in the classroom and visualization can improve Math and Computer Science learning.

Justice In New York, An Oral History, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

Justice in New York, an Oral History was created in 2006 to record interviews with criminal justice leaders in New York, including judges, prosecutors, police officials, defense attorneys, and justice advocates.

Network Firewall Dynamics And The Subsaturation Stabilization Of Hiv, Bilal Khan, Kirk Dombrowski, Mohamed Saad, Katherine Mclean, Samuel Friedman

Publications and Research

In 2001, Friedman et al. conjectured the existence of a “firewall effect” in which individuals who are infected with HIV, but remain in a state of low infectiousness, serve to prevent the virus from spreading. To evaluate this historical conjecture, we develop a new graph-theoreticmeasure that quantifies the extent towhich Friedman’s firewall hypothesis (FH) holds in a risk network.We compute this new measure across simulated trajectories of a stochastic discrete dynamical system that models a social network of 25,000 individuals engaging in risk acts over a period of 15 years. The model’s parameters are based on analyses of data collected …

An Accounting Exercise For The Shift In Life-Cycle Employment Profiles Of Married Women Born Between 1940 And 1960, Sebastien Buttet, Alice Schoonbroodt

Publications and Research

Life-cycle employment profiles of married women born between 1940 and 1960 shifted upwards and became flatter. We calibrate a dynamic life-cycle model of employment decisions of married women to assess the quantitative importance of three competing explanations of the change in employment profiles: the decrease and delay in fertility, the increase in relative wages of women to men, and the decline in child-care costs. We find that the decrease and delay in fertility and the decline in child-care cost affect employment very early in life, while increases in relative wages affect employment increasingly with age. Changes in relative wages, in …

End-Point Variability Is Not Noise In Saccade Adaptation, James P. Herman, C. Phillip Cloud, Josh Wallman

Publications and Research

When each of many saccades is made to overshoot its target, amplitude gradually decreases in a form of motor learning called saccade adaptation. Overshoot is induced experimentally by a secondary, backwards intrasaccadic target step (ISS) triggered by the primary saccade. Surprisingly, however, no study has compared the effectiveness of different sizes of ISS in driving adaptation by systematically varying ISS amplitude across different sessions. Additionally, very few studies have examined the feasibility of adaptation with relatively small ISSs. In order to best understand saccade adaptation at a fundamental level, we addressed these two points in an experiment using a range …

A Myosin-Va Tail Fragment Sequesters Dynein Light Chains Leading To Apoptosis In Melanoma Cells, Tc Izidoro-Toledo, Ac Borges, Dd Araujo, Dps Leitao Mazzi, Fo Nascimento Junior, Jf Sousa, Cp Alves, Apb Paiva, Dm Trindade, Ev Patussi, Pablo M. Peixoto, Kw Kinnally, Em Espreafico

Publications and Research

Previous studies proposed that myosin-Va regulates apoptosis by sequestering pro-apoptotic Bmf to the actin cytoskeleton through dynein light chain-2 (DLC2). Adhesion loss or other cytoskeletal perturbations would unleash Bmf, allowing it to bind and inhibit pro-survival Bcl2 proteins. Here, we demonstrated that over expression of a myosin-Va medial tail fragment (MVaf) harboring the binding site for DLC2 dramatically decreased melanoma cell viability. Morphological and molecular changes, including surface blebbing, mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization, cytochrome-c and Smac release, as well as caspase-9/-3 activation and DNA fragmentation indicated that melanoma cells died of apoptosis. Immobilized MVaf interacted directly with DLCs, but complexed …

The Evolutionary Dynamics Of Protein-Protein Interaction Networks Inferred From The Reconstruction Of Ancient Networks, Yuliang Jin, Dmitrij Turaev, Thomas Weinmaier, Thomas Rattei, Hernán A. Makse

Publications and Research

Cellular functions are based on the complex interplay of proteins, therefore the structure and dynamics of these protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks are the key to the functional understanding of cells. In the last years, large-scale PPI networks of several model organisms were investigated. A number of theoretical models have been developed to explain both the network formation and the current structure. Favored are models based on duplication and divergence of genes, as they most closely represent the biological foundation of network evolution. However, studies are often based on simulated instead of empirical data or they cover only single organisms. Methodological …

Infective Endocarditis In The U.S., 1998–2009: A Nationwide Study, David H. Bor, Steffie Woolhandler, Rachel Nardin, David Brusch, David U. Himmelstein

Publications and Research

Background
Previous studies based on local case series estimated the annual incidence of endocarditis in the U.S. at about 4 per 100,000 population. Small-scale studies elsewhere have reported similar incidence rates. However, no nationally-representative population-based studies have verified these estimates.

Methods and Findings
Using the 1998–2009 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, which provides diagnoses from about 8 million U.S. hospitalizations annually, we examined endocarditis hospitalizations, bacteriology, co-morbidities, outcomes and costs. Hospital admissions for endocarditis rose from 25,511 in 1998 to 38, 976 in 2009 (12.7 per 100,000 population in 2009). The age-adjusted endocarditis admission rate increased 2.4% annually. The proportion of patients …

Dissociated Grey Matter Changes With Prolonged Addiction And Extended Abstinence In Cocaine Users, Colm G. Connolly, Ryan P. Bell, John J. Foxe, Hugh Garavan

Publications and Research

Extensive evidence indicates that current and recently abstinent cocaine abusers compared to drug-naïve controls have decreased grey matter in regions such as the anterior cingulate, lateral prefrontal and insular cortex. Relatively little is known, however, about the persistence of these deficits in long-term abstinence despite the implications this has for recovery and relapse. Optimized voxel based morphometry was used to assess how local grey matter volume varies with years of drug use and length of abstinence in a cross-sectional study of cocaine users with various durations of abstinence (1–102 weeks) and years of use (0.3–24 years). Lower grey matter volume …

Gene Entropy-Fractal Dimension Informatics With Application To Mouse-Human Translational Medicine, T. Holden, E. Cheung, S. Dehipawala, J. Ye, G. Tremberger, D. Lieberman, T. Cheung

Publications and Research

DNA informatics represented by Shannon entropy and fractal dimension have been used to form 2D maps of related genes in various mammals. The distance between points on these maps for corresponding mRNA sequences in different species is used to study evolution. By quantifying the similarity of genes between species, this distance might be indicated when studies on one species (mouse) would tend to be valid in the other (human). The hypothesis that a small distance from mouse to human could facilitate mouse to human translational medicine success is supported by the studied ESR-1, LMNA, Myc, and RNF4 sequences. ID1 and …

Rage Deficiency Improves Postinjury Sciatic Nerve Regeneration In Type 1 Diabetic Mice, Judyta K. Juranek, Matthew S. Geddis, Fei Song, Jinghua Zhang, Jose Garcia, Rosa Rosario, Shi Fang Yan, Thomas H. Brannagan, Ann Marie Schmidt

Publications and Research

Peripheral neuropathy and insensate limbs and digits cause significant morbidity in diabetic individuals. Previous studies showed that deletion of the receptor for advanced end-glycation products (RAGE) in mice was protective in long-term diabetic neuropathy. Here, we tested the hypothesis that RAGE suppresses effective axonal regeneration in superimposed acute peripheral nerve injury attributable to tissue-damaging inflammatory responses. We report that deletion of RAGE, particularly in diabetic mice, resulted in significantly higher myelinated fiber densities and conduction velocities consequent to acute sciatic nerve crush compared with wild-type control animals. Consistent with key roles for RAGE-dependent inflammation, reconstitution of diabetic wild-type mice with …

Evaluating Amazon's Mechanical Turk As A Tool For Experimental Behavioral Research, Matthew J. C. Crump, John V. Mcdonnell, Todd M. Gureckis

Publications and Research

Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) is an online crowdsourcing service where anonymous online workers complete web-based tasks for small sums of money. The service has attracted attention from experimental psychologists interested in gathering human subject data more efficiently. However, relative to traditional laboratory studies, many aspects of the testing environment are not under the experimenter's control. In this paper, we attempt to empirically evaluate the fidelity of the AMT system for use in cognitive behavioral experiments. These types of experiment differ from simple surveys in that they require multiple trials, sustained attention from participants, comprehension of complex instructions, and millisecond accuracy …

Simulation Insights Using R, Boyan Kostadinov

Publications and Research

This article attempts to introduce the reader to computational thinking and solving problems involving randomness. The main technique being employed is the Monte Carlo method, using the freely available software R for Statistical Computing. The author illustrates the computer simulation approach by focusing on several problems of increasing difficulty. The simulation techniques and the specific problems discussed in this article would be of interest to STEM students and instructors, teaching courses in Monte Carlo simulations, stochastic modeling, probability and statistics. The R code for all problems is discussed in full detail so that the reader can get a taste of …

A Novel Cell-Based Hybrid Acoustic Wave Biosensor With Impedimetric Sensing Capabilities, Fei Liu, Fang Li, Anis Nurashikin Nordin, Ioana Voiculescu

Publications and Research

A novel multiparametric biosensor system based on living cells will be presented. The biosensor system includes two biosensing techniques on a single device: resonant frequency measurements and electric cell-substrate impedance sensing (ECIS). The multiparametric sensor system is based on the innovative use of the upper electrode of a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) resonator as working electrode for the ECIS technique. The QCM acoustic wave sensor consists of a thin AT-cut quartz substrate with two gold electrodes on opposite sides. For integration of the QCM with the ECIS technique a semicircular counter electrode was fabricated near the upper electrode on the …

Is The Decline In Juvenile Incarceration Due To Reform Or Falling Crime Rates?, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

FBI crime data show a decline in juvenile incarceration while placement patterns have not changed since 1995. The per capita youth incarceration in 2010 was more than 40 percent lower than in 1995. This databit shows the rate of juvenile crime since 1995, how incarceration trends mirror arrests and referrals, and juvenile placement patterns.

Unconscious Processing Of Unattended Features In Human Visual Cortex, Tatiana Aloi Emmanouil, Philip Burton, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Unconscious processing has been convincingly demonstrated for task-relevant feature dimensions. However, it is possible that the visual system is capable of more complex unconscious operations, extracting visual features even when they are unattended and task irrelevant. In the current study, we addressed this question by measuring unconscious priming using a task in which human participants attended to a target object's shape while ignoring its color. We measured both behavioral priming effects and priming-related fMRI activations from primes that were unconsciously presented using metacontrast masking. The results showed faster RTs and decreases in fMRI activation only when the primes were identical …

The Effect Of Statins On Testosterone In Men And Women, A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis Of Randomized Controlled Trials, Mary Schooling, Shiu Lun Au Yeung, Guy Freeman, Benjamin J. Cowling

Publications and Research

Background
Statins are extensively used for cardiovascular disease prevention. Statins reduce mortality rates morethan other lipid-modulating drugs, although evidence from randomized controlled trials also suggests that statinsunexpectedly increase the risk of diabetes and improve immune function. Physiologically, statins would beexpected to lower androgens because statins inhibit production of the substrate for the local synthesis of androgens and statins’ pleiotropic effects are somewhat similar to the physiological effects of lowering testosterone, so we hypothesized that statins lower testosterone.

Methods
A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled randomized trials of statins to test the a priori hypothesis that statins lower testosterone. We searched the PubMed, …

Molecular Immunologic Correlates Of Spontaneous Latency In A Rabbit Model Of Pulmonary Tuberculosis, Selvakumar Subbian, Paul O'Brien, Nicole L. Kushner, Guibin Yang, Liana Tsenova, Blas Peixoto, Nirmalya Bandyopadhyay, Joel S. Bader, Petros C. Karakousis, Dorothy Fallows, Gilla Kaplan

Publications and Research

Background: Infection of humans with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) results in latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in 90-95% of immune competent individuals, with no symptoms of active disease. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.5 billion people have LTBI, which can reactivate in the setting of waning host immunity, posing a threat to global TB control. Various animal models have been used to study the pathogenesis of TB. However, besides nonhuman primates, rabbits are the only animal model that fully recapitulates the pathological features of human TB, including progressive disease with necrosis and cavitation or establishment of spontaneous latency.

Results: We …

Landscape Genetics Of Leaf-Toed Geckos In The Tropical Dry Forest Of Northern Mexico, Christopher Blair, Victor H. Jimenez-Arcos, Fausto R. Mendez De La Cruz, Robert W. Murphy

Publications and Research

Habitat fragmentation due to both natural and anthropogenic forces continues to threaten the evolution and maintenance of biological diversity. This is of particular concern in tropical regions that are experiencing elevated rates of habitat loss. Although less well-studied than tropical rain forests, tropical dry forests (TDF) contain an enormous diversity of species and continue to be threatened by anthropogenic activities including grazing and agriculture. However, little is known about the processes that shape genetic connectivity in species inhabiting TDF ecosystems. We adopt a landscape genetic approach to understanding functional connectivity for leaf-toed geckos (Phyllodactylus tuberculosus) at multiple sites …

Conflict And Globalization: Factors Affecting Innovative Women's Leadership In Nigeria, Remi Alapo

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Extinction Hazards In Experimental Daphnia Magna Populations: Effects Of Genotype Diversity And Environmental Variation, John D. Robinson, John P. Wares, John M. Drake

Publications and Research

Extinction is ubiquitous in natural systems and the ultimate fate of all biological populations. However, the factors that contribute to population extinction are still poorly understood, particularly genetic diversity and composition. A laboratory experiment was conducted to examine the influences of environmental variation and genotype diversity on persistence in experimental Daphnia magna populations. Populations were initiated in two blocks with one, two, three, or six randomly selected and equally represented genotypes, fed and checked for extinction daily, and censused twice weekly over a period of 170 days. Our results show no evidence for an effect of the number of genotypes …

Curatedovariandata: Clinically Annotated Data For The Ovarian Cancer Transcriptome, Benjamin Frederick Ganzfried, Markus Riester, Benjamin Haibe-Kains, Thomas Risch, Svitlana Tyekucheva, Ina Jazic, Xin Victoria Wang, Mahnaz Ahmadifar, Michael J. Birrer, Giovanni Parmigiani, Curtis Huttenhower, Levi Waldron

Publications and Research

This article introduces a manually curated data collection for gene expression meta-analysis of patients with ovarian cancer and software for reproducible preparation of similar databases. This resource provides uniformly prepared microarray data for 2970 patients from 23 studies with curated and documented clinical metadata. It allows users to efficiently identify studies and patient subgroups of interest for analysis and to perform meta-analysis immediately without the challenges posed by harmonizing heterogeneous microarray technologies, study designs, expression data processing methods and clinical data formats. We confirm that the recently proposed biomarker CXCL12 is associated with patient survival, independently of stage and optimal …

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation Accelerates Human Sleep Homeostasis, Davide Reato, Fernando Gasca, Abhishek Datta, Marom Bikson, Lisa Marshall, Lucas C. Parra

Publications and Research

The sleeping brain exhibits characteristic slow-wave activity which decays over the course of the night. This decay is thought to result from homeostatic synaptic downscaling. Transcranial electrical stimulation can entrain slow-wave oscillations (SWO) in the human electro-encephalogram (EEG). A computational model of the underlying mechanism predicts that firing rates are predominantly increased during stimulation. Assuming that synaptic homeostasis is driven by average firing rates, we expected an acceleration of synaptic downscaling during stimulation, which is compensated by a reduced drive after stimulation. We show that 25 minutes of transcranial electrical stimulation, as predicted, reduced the decay of SWO in the …

Association Of Neighborhood-Level Factors With Hospitalization For Community-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, New York City, 2006: A Multilevel Observational Study, Amanda M. Farr, Melissa A. Marx, Don Weiss, Denis Nash

Publications and Research

Background Hospitalizations with community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infection have increased in New York City, with substantial geographic variation across neighborhoods. While individual-level risk factors, such as age, sex, HIV infection, and diabetes have been described, the role of neighborhood-level factors (e.g., neighborhood HIV prevalence or income) has not been examined. Methods To explore plausible neighborhood-level factors associated with CA-MRSA-related hospitalizations, a retrospective analysis was conducted using New York City hospital discharges from 2006 and New York City-specific survey and health department surveillance data. CA-MRSA-related hospitalizations were identified using diagnosis codes and admission information. Associations were determined by using sex-specific …