Digital Commons Network^™

Human Mst But Not Mt Responds To Tactile Stimulation, Michael S. Beauchamp, Nafi E. Yasar, Neel Kishan, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Previous reports of tactile responses in human visual area MT/V5 have used complex stimuli, such as a brush stroking the arm. These complex moving stimuli are likely to induce imagery of visual motion, which is known to be a powerful activator of MT. The area described as “MT” in previous reports consists of at least two distinct cortical areas, MT and MST. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we separately localized human MT and MST and measured their response to vibrotactile stimuli unlikely to induce imagery of visual motion. Strong vibrotactile responses were observed in MST but not in MT. Vibrotactile …

Msbayes: Pipeline For Testing Comparative Phylogeographic Histories Using Hierarchical Approximate Bayesian Computation, Michael J. Hickerson, Eli Stahl, Naoki Takebayashi

Publications and Research

Background Although testing for simultaneous divergence (vicariance) across different population-pairs that span the same barrier to gene flow is of central importance to evolutionary biology, researchers often equate the gene tree and population/species tree thereby ignoring stochastic coalescent variance in their conclusions of temporal incongruence. In contrast to other available phylogeographic software packages, msBayes is the only one that analyses data from multiple species/population pairs under a hierarchical model. Results msBayes employs approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) under a hierarchical coalescent model to test for simultaneous divergence (TSD) in multiple co-distributed population-pairs. Simultaneous isolation is tested by estimating three hyper-parameters that …

Comparative Mitochondrial Genomics Of Snakes: Extraordinary Substitution Rate Dynamics And Functionality Of The Duplicate Control Region, Zhi J. Jiang, Todd A. Castoe, Christopher C. Austin, Frank T. Burbrink, Matthew D. Herron, Jimmy A. Mcguire, Christopher L. Parkinson, David D. Pollock

Publications and Research

Background The mitochondrial genomes of snakes are characterized by an overall evolutionary rate that appears to be one of the most accelerated among vertebrates. They also possess other unusual features, including short tRNAs and other genes, and a duplicated control region that has been stably maintained since it originated more than 70 million years ago. Here, we provide a detailed analysis of evolutionary dynamics in snake mitochondrial genomes to better understand the basis of these extreme characteristics, and to explore the relationship between mitochondrial genome molecular evolution, genome architecture, and molecular function. We sequenced complete mitochondrial genomes from Slowinski's corn …

From Lifestyle To Social Determinants: New Directions For Community Health Promotion Research And Practice, Nicholas Freudenberg

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Medical Treatment And Weight Gain, Eileen Mcginn

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Golden Dawn, Carlo Alvaro

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Maintaining Phase Of The Tri-Phasic Crab Pyloric Rhythm, Christina Mouser, Farzan Nadim, Amitabha Bose

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Website Cyndi’S List Of Genealogy Sites On The Internet, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the website Cyndi’s list of genealogy sites on the internet.

A Dynamic-Trend Exponential Smoothing Model, Don Miller, Dan Williams

Publications and Research

Forecasters often encounter situations in which the local pattern of a time series is not expected to persist over the forecasting horizon. Since exponential smoothing models emphasize recent behavior, their forecasts may not be appropriate over longer horizons. In this paper, we develop a new model in which the local trend line projected by exponential smoothing converges asymptotically to an assumed future long-run trend line, which might be an extension of a historical long-run trend line. The rapidity of convergence is governed by a parameter. A familiar example is an economic series exhibiting persistent long-run trend with cyclic variation. This …

Violence, Vision, And Voice: A Journey From Liminal To Transgressive Spaces, Stephanie Urso Spina

Publications and Research

This paper was inspired by the author’s experiences teaching a required class about feminism to affluent, predominantly female undergraduates who vociferously considered it outdated and irrelevant to their lives until they realized, in painfully personal ways, that this was the dominant discourse speaking, not their own voices. Inspired by these women, and in the hope of further displacing the hegemonically imposed code of silence, this paper breaks the author’s tacit complicity with these societal forces of repression. Written on a bus from Boston to New York, the author weaves her narrative with a description of that trip and its passengers, …

Utility And Versatility Of Extracellular Recordings From The Cockroach For Neurophysiological Instruction And Demonstration, Raddy L. Ramos, Andrew Moiseff, Joshua C. Brumberg

Publications and Research

The principles of neurophysiology continue to be challenging topics to teach in the context of undergraduate neuroscience education. Laboratory classes containing neurophysiological demonstrations and exercises are, therefore, an important and necessary complement for covering those subjects taught in lecture-based courses. We developed a number of simple yet very instructive exercises, described below, which make use of extracellular recordings from different sensory systems of the cockroach (Periplanta americana). The compendium we developed provides students with hands-on demonstrations of several commonly taught topics of neurophysiology including sensory coding by neural activity.

Origin Of Defect-Related Green Emission From Zno Nanoparticles: Effect Of Surface Modification, Yinyan Gong, Tamar Andelman, Gertrude F. Neumark, Stephen O’Brien, Igor L. Kuskovsky

Publications and Research

We investigated the optical properties of colloidal-synthesized ZnO spherical nanoparticles prepared from 1-octadecene (OD), a mixture of trioctylamine (TOA) and OD (1:10), and a mixture of trioctylphosphine oxide (TOPO) and OD (1:12). It is found that the green photoluminescence (PL) of samples from the mixture of TOA/OD and TOPO/OD is largely suppressed compared with that from pure OD. Moreover, it is found that all spherical nanoparticles have positive zeta potential, and spherical nanoparticles from TOA/OD and TOPO/OD have a smaller zeta potential than those from OD. A plausible explanation is that oxygen vacancies, presumably located near the surface, contribute to …

Genetic Randomization Reveals Functional Relationships Among Morphologic And Tissue-Quality Traits That Contribute To Bone Strength And Fragility, Karl J. Jepsen, Bin Hu, Steven M. Tommasini, Hayden-William Courtland, Christopher Price, Carl J. Terranova, Joseph H. Nadeau

Publications and Research

We examined femora from adult AXB/BXA recombinant inbred (RI) mouse strains to identify skeletal traits that are functionally related and to determine how functional interactions among these traits contribute to genetic variability in whole-bone stiffness, strength, and toughness. Randomization of A/J and C57BL/6J genomic regions resulted in each adult male and female RI strain building mechanically functional femora by assembling unique sets of morphologic and tissue-quality traits. A correlation analysis was conducted using the mean trait values for each RI strain. A third of the 66 correlations examined were significant, indicating that many bone traits covaried or were functionally related. …

Bio::Nexus: A Perl Api For The Nexus Format For Comparative Biological Data, Thomas Hladish, Vivek Gopalan, Chengzhi Liang, Weigang Qiu, Peter Yang, Arlin Stoltzfus

Publications and Research

Background Evolutionary analysis provides a formal framework for comparative analysis of genomic and other data. In evolutionary analysis, observed data are treated as the terminal states of characters that have evolved (via transitions between states) along the branches of a tree. The NEXUS standard of Maddison, et al. (1997; Syst. Biol. 46: 590–621) provides a portable, expressive and flexible text format for representing character-state data and trees. However, due to its complexity, NEXUS is not well supported by software and is not easily accessible to bioinformatics users and developers. Results Bio::NEXUS is an application programming interface (API) implemented in Perl, …

Digg.Com And Socially-Driven Authority, Steven Ovadia

Publications and Research

For years, librarians have been able to distill the notion of authority, in its purest form, to two simple questions: “Who said it?” and “Under whose auspices?” The answer to either, or preferably both, of these questions could tell a researcher whether to rely on the information retrieved. Today, however, in the world of online information, the notion of authority is shifting and librarians working in an instructional capacity must understand the shift and determine ways to help students cope with the changes. Searching in today’s socially-driven information era requires a different skill set for researchers looking for authoritative information. …

Research Authority In The Age Of Google: Equilibrium Sought, Mariana Regalado

Publications and Research

The article examines the major shift in the relationship of students, instructors and librarians to information. It is argued that this shift is due to some fundamental changes to authority in the relationship in terms of Web publication, access to content and technical know-how. In addition, it also discusses the impact of the introduction of the Google search engine.

"Whether Beast Or Human": The Cultural Legacies Of Dread, Locks, And Dystopia., Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

Analyzing the ongoing problem of Caribbean racial exploitation, particularly fear signified through one of the most potent Caribbean symbols, dreadlocks, Kevin Frank offers a paradigm shift in arguing that Medusa's alterity is altered by Rastafarians' snake-like hair, but the transformative power of Rasta dreadlocks is contested through certain cinematic depictions of dread.

New York Placenames In Film Titles, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

From 1914 to 2006, 396 feature films with titles containing New York place names were released. This pattern emerged during the silent era, peaked from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, and then dropped off steadily before rebounding in the 1970s. This article discusses the cinematic representation of cities and urban life in the movies and the special place of New York as an “imagined city” and a cultural icon. New York’s associations in the popular imagination help explain the frequent occurrence of themes of negativity, violence, nightlife, and grandiosity (royalty or divinity) in these titles. The use of …

You And Me And Google Makes Three: Welcoming Google Into The Reference Interview, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Library patrons often approach the reference desk with indirect, incomplete, or misleading questions, known as "ill-formed" questions. Transforming ill-formed questions into well-formed ones is a crucial part of the reference interview, and Google can be an active participant in that process. This paper discusses how Google can help librarians and patrons deal with incomplete citations, incorrect citations, incorrect spellings, tip-of-the-tongue questions, and forgotten searches.

Editorial: Shape Shifters: Librarians Evolve Yet Again In The Age Of Google, Mariana Regalado, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Like all organisms and organizations, librarians and libraries evolve by adapting to changes and pressures in their environments. From scroll to codex to online text: every upgrade in technology is matched by an adaptation in librarianship. Nevertheless, despite centuries of evolution, the activities of librarians and the mission of libraries have remained essentially constant and are still recognizable. The pace of change in libraries has been especially rapid since the introduction of computers, and an important recent change is the advent of the “age of Google.” Heralded by the arrival in 1998 of the Google search engine, with its clean …

A Reduction Algorithm For Computing The Hybridization Number Of Two Trees, Magnus Bordewich, Simone Linz, Katherine St. John, Charles Semple

Publications and Research

Hybridization is an important evolutionary process for many groups of species. Thus, conflicting signals in a data set may not be the result of sampling or modeling errors, but due to the fact that hybridization has played a significant role in the evolutionary history of the species under consideration. Assuming that the initial set of gene trees is correct, a basic problem for biologists is to compute this minimum number of hybridization events to explain this set. In this paper, we describe a new reduction-based algorithm for computing the minimum number, when the initial data set consists of two trees. …

Behavioral Approaches To Weight Control: A Review Of Current Research, Angela Marinilli Pinto, Jessica Gokee-Larose, Rena R. Wing

Publications and Research

Weight management is a salient issue for women. Studies of behavioral, pharmacological and surgical interventions indicate that women comprise the majority of patients presenting for weight-loss treatment. In this review we discuss the health impact of obesity for women, review behavioral treatments for adult overweight and obesity, and address topics of particular relevance for women, including concerns that weight-loss treatment may precipitate the development of eating pathology, as well as time periods of high risk for weight gain such as pregnancy and menopause.

Low-Income Minority Mothers’ Reports Of Infant Health Care Utilisation Compared With Medical Records, Kennan D. Murray, Ayman El-Mohandes, M. Nabil El-Khorazaty, Michele Kiely

Publications and Research

This study aimed to investigate mothers’ reporting of the nature, location, frequency and content of health care visits for their infants, as compared with data abstracted from the infants’ medical records. It was part of a community-based parenting intervention designed to improve preventive health care utilisation among minority mothers in Washington, DC. Mothers 18 years old with newborn infants and with poor or no prenatal care were enrolled in the study. A total of 160 mother–infant dyads completed the 12-month study. Mothers were interviewed when the infants were 4, 8 and 12 months old, and were asked to recall infant …

A Role For Sperm In Regulation Of Egg-Laying In The Nematode C. Elegans, Marie Mcgovern, Ling Yu, Mary Kosinski, David Greenstein, Cathy Savage-Dunn

Publications and Research

Background In insects and in mammals, male sperm and seminal fluid provide signaling factors that influence various aspects of female physiology and behavior to promote reproductive success and to compete with other males. It is less apparent how important such signaling is in the context of a self-fertile hermaphrodite species. We have addressed this question in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, which can reproduce either by hermaphrodite self-fertilization or by male-hermaphrodite mating.

Results We have studied the egg-laying defective mutant, egl-32, and found that the cellular basis of the egl-32 egg-laying phenotype is likely a defect in sperm. First, the time …

Sensory Deprivation Alters Aggrecan And Perineuronal Net Expression In The Mouse Barrel Cortex, Paulette A. Mccrae, Mary M. Rocco, Gail Kelly, Joshua C. Brumberg, Russell T. Matthews

Publications and Research

An important role for the neural extracellular matrix in modulating cortical activity-dependent synaptic plasticity has been established by a number of recent studies. However, identification of the critical molecular components of the neural matrix that mediate these processes is far from complete. Of particular interest is the perineuronal net (PN), an extracellular matrix component found surrounding the cell body and proximal neurites of a subset of neurons. Because of the apposition of thePNto synapses and expression of this structure coincident with the close of the critical period, it has been hypothesized that nets could play uniquely important roles in synapse …

Testimony Of Jeremy Travis, President Of John Jay College Of Criminal Justice, City University Of New York, Before The New York State Senate Committee On Higher Education, May 1, 2007, Albany, Ny., Jeremy Travis

Publications and Research

The President speaks in response to the Virginia Tech shootings.

The Penetration Of The Criminal Justice System Into Communities Of Color: A Leadership Challenge For The Legal Profession. Address At The Convocation On The Face Of The Profession Iii: Leadership Of The Bar; Sponsored By The New York State Judicial Institute On Professionalism In The Law On April 27, 2007 In Albany, Ny., Jeremy Travis

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The Fatherhood Agenda In The Context Of The Era Of Mass Incarceration. Keynote Address At The Seventh Annual Fatherhood Conference “Fatherhood 2007: Fathers As The Missing Link"; Sponsored By The Industrial Home For Children On April 18, 2007 In East Windsor, Nj., Jeremy Travis

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Health Effects Of Exposure To Natural Arsenic In Groundwater And Coal In China: An Overview Of Occurrence, Guangqian Yu, Dianjun Sun, Yan Zheng

Publications and Research

Between 2001 and 2005, 21,155 of 445,638 wells in 20,517 villages in 292 counties in 16 provinces from China, or 5% of wells, were found to contain > 50 μg/L arsenic (As) by field testing with the Merck As kit. We achieved quality assurance of analysis of at least 10% of the wells containing > 50 μg/L As using hydride generation atomic fluorescence spectrometry and silver dithiodicarbomate spectrometry. Our best estimate of the population exposed to > 50 μg/L As in drinking water was 582,769. This is probably an underestimate for China because of the limited area surveyed. In a survey of 135,492 …

Rock Music Scholarship, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

My challenge is to take my master’s thesis, a lengthy annotated bibliography of academic monographs on rock in American culture, and make it come alive and, in the process, provide a sense of how the academic rock discourse has evolved.