Digital Commons Network^™

Using Carrots Not Sticks To Cultivate A Culture Of Safeguarding In Sport, Judith L. Komaki, Yetsa A. Tuakli-Wosornu

Publications and Research

The power-driven, win-at-all-costs milieu of many sport settings can create fertile ground for athlete victimization and abuse (Roberts et al., 2020). Victory can in fact be so sovereign that abusive coaches and staff are enabled and “even rewarded. . . in the name of winning” (Armour, 2020). Athlete abuse prevention therefore requires systemic cultural change (Letourneau et al., 2014; Rhind and Owusu-Sekyere, 2017). Thus far, however, enacting this idea has eluded organizations in sport (Mountjoy et al., 2016; Harris and Terry, 2019; Kerr et al., 2019; Rhind and Owusu-Sekyere, 2020) as well as in other settings (National Academies of Sciences, …

How New England Island Residents View The Influence Of The Natural Environment In Their Lives, Nicole Kras, Jennifer Keenan

Publications and Research

While the multiple benefits of natural environments on individual’s lives have been well noted, one population that is scarcely studied in current literature are adults who live on islands in the Northeast region of the United States. This is an important population to study because these adults live in a geographical location highly immersed in natural landscapes and they are likely to have a high exposure to natural environments. This exploratory study uses participant questionnaire responses (N=51) to gain insight into how they believe the natural environment influences their lives and offers guidance for future research. Residents identified benefits and …

Hba1c Performance In African Descent Populations In The United States With Normal Glucose Tolerance, Prediabetes, Or Diabetes: A Scoping Review, Lakshay Khosla, Sonali Bhat, Lee Ann Fullington, Margrethe F. Horlyck-Romanovsky

Publications and Research

IntroductionAfrican descent populations in the United States have high rates of type 2 diabetes and are incorrectly represented as a single group. Current glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) cutoffs (5.7% to

Methods A PubMed, Scopus, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) search (January 2020) yielded 3,238 articles published from January 2000 through January 2020. After review of titles, abstracts, and full texts, 12 met our criteria. HbA1c results were compared with other ethnic groups or validated against the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), or previous diagnosis. We classified study results by the …

Covid-19 And Knowledge Based Computation, Rohit J. Parikh

Publications and Research

The problem of dealing with Covid-19, until a vaccine is universally administered, is to decrease the rate of transmission while getting some social and economic activity going.

Infection passes from one person A to another person B when A is infected and B is susceptible. That is to say that B is not infected and not yet immune.

Social activity also takes place when one person interacts with another. Perhaps A is a taxpayer and B is a tax consultant. Then filing the tax return may take the form of the two of them meeting. Much can be done electronically …

Seeing Through The Aesthetic Worldview, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Examines the various ways in which the Chinese intellectual tradition has been characterized as an 'aesthetic tradition'. In particular, this paper explores Roger Ames’ and David Hall’s claim that the classical Confucian tradition is an aesthetic tradition, comprising an aesthetic order.

Is “Just Googling It” Good Enough For First-Year Students?, Maureen Richards

Publications and Research

This study analyzes citations by first-year students to determine what content they were citing and whether it was available through the open web or the library. Examining the role of these two places as content providers for academic work fills a gap in the literature. Most of the cited works were available through the library and the open web. As the line between content providers continues to blur, these results can help academic libraries prioritize what to teach students about information literacy, where to focus collection development efforts and how to promote the discovery of library resources.

Bibliodiversity At The Centre: Decolonizing Open Access, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

The promise of open access for the global South has not been fully met. Publishing is dominated by Northern publishers who disadvantage Southern authors through platform capitalism and open access models requiring article processing charges to publish. The South can reclaim and decolonize open access, nurturing scholarly communities, by employing bibliodiversity, a sustainable, anticolonial ethos and practice developed in Latin America. Self-determination and locality are at the core of bibliodiversity which rejects the domination of international, English-language journal publishing. As articulated by the Jussieu Call, varied scholarly community-based, non-profit, and sustainable models for open access are integral to bibliodiversity as …

Pirnas As Modulators Of Disease Pathogenesis, Kayla J. Rayford, Ayorinde Cooley, Jelonia T. Rumph, Ashutosh Arun, Girish Rachakonda, Fernando Villalta, Maria F. Lima, Siddharth Pratap, Smita Misra, Pius N. Nde

Publications and Research

Advances in understanding disease pathogenesis correlates to modifications in gene expression within different tissues and organ systems. In depth knowledge about the dysregulation of gene expression profiles is fundamental to fully uncover mechanisms in disease development and changes in host homeostasis. The body of knowledge surrounding mammalian regulatory elements, specifically regulators of chromatin structure, transcriptional and translational activation, has considerably surged within the past decade. A set of key regulators whose function still needs to be fully elucidated are small non-coding RNAs (sncRNAs). Due to their broad range of unfolding functions in the regulation of gene expression during transcription and …

Effects Of Structural Isomers Of Spermine On The Higher-Order Structure Of Dna And Gene Expression, Tomoki Kitagawa, Takashi Nishio, Yuko Yoshikawa, Naoki Umezawa, Tsunehiko Higuchi, Chwen-Yang Shew, Takahiro Kenmotsu, Kenichi Yoshikawa

Publications and Research

Polyamines are involved in various biological functions, including cell proliferation, differentiation, gene regulation, etc. Recently, it was found that polyamines exhibit biphasic effects on gene expression: promotion and inhibition at low and high concentrations, respectively. Here, we compared the effects of three naturally occurring tetravalent polyamines, spermine (SPM), thermospermine (TSPM), and N4-aminopropylspermidine (BSPD). Based on the single DNA observation with fluorescence microscopy together with measurements by atomic force microscopy revealed that these polyamines induce shrinkage and then compaction of DNA molecules, at low and high concentrations, respectively. We also performed the observation to evaluate the effects of these polyamine isomers …

Superfluid Swimmers, German Kolmakov, Igor S. Aranson

Publications and Research

The propulsion of living microorganisms ultimately relies on viscous drag for body-fluid interactions. The self-locomotion in superfluids such as ⁴He is deemed impossible due to the apparent lack of viscous resistance. Here, we investigate the self-propulsion of a Janus (two-face) light-absorbing particle suspended in superfluid helium ⁴He (He-II). The particle is energized by the heat flux due to the absorption of light from an external source. We show that a quantum mechanical propulsion force originates due to the transformation of the superfluid to a normal fluid on the heated particle face. The theoretical analysis is supported by the …

Earliest Palaeocene Purgatoriids And The Initial Radiation Of Stem Primates, Gregory P. Wilson Mantilla, Stephen B. Chester, William A. Clemens, Jason R. Moore, Courtney J. Sprain, Brody T. Hovatter, William S. Mitchell, Wade W. Mans, Roland Mundil, Paul R. Renne

Publications and Research

Plesiadapiform mammals, as stem primates, are key to understanding the evolutionary and ecological origins of Pan-Primates and Euarchonta. The Purgatoriidae, as the geologically oldest and most primitive known plesiadapiforms and one of the oldest known placental groups, are also central to the evolutionary radiation of placentals and the Cretaceous-Palaeogene biotic recovery on land. Here, we report new dental fossils of Purgatorius from early Palaeocene (early Puercan) age deposits in northeastern Montana that represent the earliest dated occurrences of plesiadapiforms. We constrain the age of these earliest purgatoriids to magnetochron C29R and most likely to within 105–139 thousand years post- K/Pg …

Diurnal Cycle Of Passive Microwave Brightness Temperatures Over Land At A Global Scale, Zahra Sharifnezhad, Hamid Norouzi, Satya Prakash, Reginald Blake, Reze Khanbilvard

Publications and Research

Satellite-borne passive microwave radiometers provide brightness temperature (TB) measurements in a large spectral range which includes a number of frequency channels and generally two polarizations: horizontal and vertical. These TBs are widely used to retrieve several atmospheric and surface variables and parameters such as precipitation, soil moisture, water vapor, air temperature profile, and land surface emissivity. Since TBs are measured at different microwave frequencies with various instruments and at various incidence angles, spatial resolutions, and radiometric characteristics, a mere direct integration of them from different microwave sensors would not necessarily provide consistency. However, when appropriately harmonized, they can provide a …

Women In Public Administration In The United States: Leadership, Gender Stereotypes, And Bias, Sofia Calsy, Maria J. D’Agostino

Publications and Research

In the public and private sectors, women continue to address multiple hurdles despite diversity and equity initiatives. Women have made tremendous strides in the workforce but are still a minority in leadership positions worldwide in multiple sectors, including nonprofit, corporate, government, medicine, education, military, and religion. In the United States women represent 60% of bachelor’s degrees earned at universities and outpace men in master’s and doctoral programs. However, a significant body of research illustrates that women’s upward mobility has been concentrated in middle management positions. Women hold 52% of all management and professional roles in the U.S. job market, including …

Neuronal Actions Of Transspinal Stimulation On Locomotor Networks And Reflex Excitability During Walking In Humans With And Without Spinal Cord Injury, Md. Anamul Islam, Timothy S. Pulverenti, Maria Knikou

Publications and Research

This study investigated the neuromodulatory effects of transspinal stimulation on soleus H-reflex excitability and electromyographic (EMG) activity during stepping in humans with and without spinal cord injury (SCI). Thirteen able-bodied adults and 5 individuals with SCI participated in the study. EMG activity from both legs was determined for steps without, during, and after a single-pulse or pulse train transspinal stimulation delivered during stepping randomly at different phases of the step cycle. The soleus H-reflex was recorded in both subject groups under control conditions and following single-pulse transspinal stimulation at an individualized exactly similar positive and negative conditioning-test interval. The EMG …

Should Covid-19 Patients >75 Years Be Ventilated? An Outcome Study, H. Raheja, N. Chukwuka, C. Agarwal, D. Sharma, A. Munoz-Martinez, Joshua Fogel, M. Khalid, A. T. Hashmi, S. Ehrlich, M. A. Waheed, S. Siddiqui, B. A. De Brito Gomes, A. Aslam, C. J. Merino Gualan, I. Aftab, A. Tiwari, S. Singh, K. Pouching, N. Somal, J Shani, G Rojas-Marte

Publications and Research

Background: Elderly patients with COVID-19 disease are at increased risk for adverse outcomes. Current data regarding disease characteristics and outcomes in this population are limited.

Aim: To delineate the adverse factors associated with outcomes of COVID-19 patients ≥ 75 years of age. Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Methods: Patients were classified into mild/moderate, severe/very severe and critical disease (intubated) based on oxygen requirements. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality.

Results: A total of 355 patients aged ≥ 75 years hospitalized with COVID-19 between 19 March and 25 April 2020 were included.Mean age was 84.3 years. One-third of the patients developed critical …

The Neural Correlates Of Cued Reward Omission, Jessica A. Mollick, Luke J. Change, Anjali Krishnan, Thomas E. Hazy, Kai A. Krueger, Guido K. W. Frank, Tor D. Wager, Randall C. O'Reilly

Publications and Research

Compared to our understanding of positive prediction error signals occurring due to unexpected reward outcomes, less is known about the neural circuitry in humans that drives negative prediction errors during omission of expected rewards. While classical learning theories such as Rescorla–Wagner or temporal difference learning suggest that both types of prediction errors result from a simple subtraction, there has been recent evidence suggesting that different brain regions provide input to dopamine neurons which contributes to specific components of this prediction error computation. Here, we focus on the brain regions responding to negative prediction error signals, which has been well-established in …

Beauty That Moves: Dance For Parkinson’S Effects On Affect, Self-Efficacy, Gait Symmetry, And Dual Task Performance, Cecilia Fontanesi, Joseph F. X. Desouza

Publications and Research

Background: Previous studies have investigated the effects of dance interventions on Parkinson’s motor and non-motor symptoms in an effort to develop an integrated view of dance as a therapeutic intervention. This within-subject study questions whether dance can be simply considered a form of exercise by comparing a Dance for Parkinson’s class with a matched-intensity exercise session lacking dance elements like music, metaphorical language, and social reality of art-partaking.

Methods: In this repeated-measure design, 7 adults with Parkinson’s were tested four times; (i) before and (ii) after a Dance for Parkinson’s class, as well as (iii) before and (iv) after a …

T-Moca: A Valid Phone Screen For Cognitive Impairment In Diverse Community Samples, Mindy J. Katz, Cuiling Wang, Caroline O. Nester, Carol A. Derby, Molly E. Zimmerman, Richard B. Lipton, Martin J. Sliwinski, Laura A. Rabin

Publications and Research

Introduction: There is an urgent need to validate telephone versions of widely used general cognitive measures, such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (T-MoCA), for remote assessments.

Methods: In the Einstein Aging Study, a diverse community cohort (n = 428; mean age = 78.1; 66% female; 54% non-White), equivalence testing was used to examine concordance between the T-MoCA and the corresponding in-person MoCA assess- ment. Receiver operating characteristic analyses examined the diagnostic ability to dis- criminate between mild cognitive impairment and normal cognition. Conversion meth- ods from T-MoCA to the MoCA are presented.

Results: Education, race/ethnicity, gender, age, self-reported cognitive concerns, …

Exploring The Silent Aspect Of Carbon Nanopores, Teresa J. Bandosz

Publications and Research

Recently, owing to the discovery of graphene, porous carbons experienced a revitalization in their explorations. However, nowadays, the focus is more on search for suitable energy advancing catalysts sensing, energy storage or thermal/light absorbing features than on separations. In many of these processes, adsorption, although not emphasized sufficiently, can be a significant step. It can just provide a surface accumulation of molecules used in other application-driving chemical or physical phenomena or can be even an additional mechanism adding to the efficiency of the overall performance. However, that aspect of confined molecules in pores and their involvement in the overall performance …

Using Verb Extension To Gauge Children’S Verb Meaning Construals: The Case Of Chinese, Weiyi Ma, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Lulu Song, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

Publications and Research

Verb extension is a crucial gauge of the acquisition of verb meaning. In English, studies suggest that young children show conservative extension. An important test of whether an early conservative extension is a general phenomenon or a function of the input language is made possible by Chinese, a language in which verbs are more frequent and acquired earlier. This study tested whether 3-year-old Chinese children extended a group of familiar verbs that specify various ways to carry objects. Shown videos that portrayed typical, mid-typical, or atypical carrying actions (as verified by Chinese adults), children were asked to judge whether they …

Facilitating Healthier Eating At Restaurants: A Multidisciplinary Scoping Review Comparing Strategies, Barriers, Motivators, And Outcomes By Restaurant Type And Initiator, Melissa Fuster, Margaret A. Handley, Tamara Alam, Lee Ann Fullington, Brian Elbel, Krishnendu Ray, Terry T-K Huang

Publications and Research

Restaurants are understudied yet increasingly important food environment institutions for tackling diet-related diseases. This scoping review analyzes research and gray literature (n = 171 records) to assess which healthy eating promotion strategies have been implemented in restaurants and the associated motivations, barriers, and outcomes, compared by restaurant type (corporate/chain vs. independently owned restaurants) and initiator (restaurant-initiated vs. investigator-initiated). We found that the most commonly reported strategy was the increase of generally healthy offerings and the promotion of such offerings. Changes in food availability were more common among corporate restaurants and initiated by restaurants, while environmental facilitators were more commonly initiated …

How Drawing To Distract Improves Mood In Children, Jennifer E. Drake

Publications and Research

Previous research has shown that drawing improves short-term mood in children when used to distract from rather than express negative thoughts and feelings. The current study sought to examine (a) how drawing might elevate mood in children ages 6–12 by examining the role played by absorption, enjoyment, and perceived competence as well as entering an imaginary world; and (b) whether children spontaneously use drawing to distract from a sad mood. Across three studies, children were asked to think of a disappointing event. After a sad mood induction, they drew for 5 min. Mood was measured before and after the mood …

Molecular Speciation Of Size Fractionated Particulate Water-Soluble Organic Carbon By Two-Dimensional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (Nmr) Spectroscopy, Marie-Cecile Chalbot, Salma Siddiqui, Ilias G. Kavouras

Publications and Research

Particulate matter is associated with increased morbidity and mortality; its effects depend on particle size and chemical content. It is important to understand the composition and resultant toxicological profile of particulate organic compounds, the largest and most complex fraction of particulate matter. The objective of the study was to delineate the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectral fingerprint of the biologically relevant water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) fraction of size fractionated urban aerosol. A combination of one and two-dimensional NMR spectroscopy methods was used. The size distribution of particle mass, water-soluble extract, non-exchangeable organic hydrogen functional types and specific biomarkers such as …

Psychiatrist Burnout, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Renzo Bianchi

Publications and Research

We critique a paper published by Summers et al. (2020) and papers in general that, because of flawed methods, arrive at exceedingly high estimates of burnout in psychiatrists and other professionals.

Making Sense Of Researcher Positionality In Foundational Literacy Studies Research, Amy J. Wan

Publications and Research

This article is an examination of researcher positionality in literacy studies research through a historiographical study of Brian Street.

Education Faculty As Knowledge Brokers: Competing For Access To New York State Print Media And Policy Influence, Gary Anderson, Nakia Gray-Nicolas, Madison Payton

Publications and Research

In an environment in which new policy entrepreneurs and networks are influencing policy and public opinion, many university faculty are increasingly seeking ways to mobilize knowledge beyond academic conferences and journals. Using New York state as a case, we searched Access World News to compare the level of media access of academics with other knowledge brokering organizations (KBOs; e.g. think tanks, teachers’ unions, advocacy organizations, etc.). Our data shows relatively low levels of access for academics and provides profiles of those academics with high levels of access and what we might learn from them. We provide a discussion of the …

Consumer Likings Of Different Miracle Fruit Products On Different Sour Foods, Sung-Eun Choi, Jeff Garza

Publications and Research

Miracle fruit has a high potential as a healthy sweetening enhancer, due to its powerful antioxidant capacity and its unique ability to transform sour taste into sweet taste. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of different miracle fruit products on the likings of different sour foods.In total, 200 healthy adults (women 55%, 18–65 years old) evaluated five sour foods (apple, goat cheese, lemonade, yogurt, pickle) before and after miracle fruit application. Four commercial miracle fruit products (pills-Y; G; M, powder-P) were randomly assigned to each panelist. The pre- and post-test likings for overall, flavor, texture, and …

Recruitment Of International Students Through A Synthesis Of English As A Second Language Instruction, Social Justice, And Service Learning, Daisuke Akiba

Publications and Research

Universities across the U.S. have increasingly emphasized internationalization, leading to rising numbers of international students attending U.S. institutions of higher education. However, these students tend to gravitate toward larger research-intensive universities with many other institutions seeing no increase in international student enrollments. Little is known concerning how to attract international students to regional institutions lacking name recognition. To address the above and promote internationalization through increasing the presence of students from abroad, an academic department at a regional public U.S. college used needs analysis to develop a pilot program for Japanese university students (N = 13). The program involved a …

Flavor Fatigue: Cognitive Depletion Influences Consumer Enjoyment Of Complex Flavors, Diogo Hildebrand, Dan Rubin, Rhonda Hadi, Thomas Kramer

Publications and Research

Surprisingly, little research has examined how consumer responses to specific flavor characteristics of food are formed or how they may fluctuate situationally. We address this lacuna in the literature on the hedonic appreciation of food by demonstrating that enjoyment along one important gustatory dimension, flavor complexity, varies with the degree to which consumers are mentally depleted. Specifically, showing that gustatory sensations are more cognitively demanding than previously thought, findings from three studies evince that cognitive depletion reduces consumer enjoyment of complex-flavored (but not simple-flavored) foods via a reduction in pleasure that otherwise can be derived from complex flavors. We establish …

A Peek Inside The Machines Of Bacterial Nucleotide Excision Repair, Thanyalak Kraithong, Silas Hartley, David Jeruzalmi, Danaya Pakotiprapha

Publications and Research

Double stranded DNA (dsDNA), the repository of genetic information in bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, exhibits a surprising instability in the intracellular environment; this fragility is exacerbated by exogenous agents, such as ultraviolet radiation. To protect themselves against the severe consequences of DNA damage, cells have evolved at least six distinct DNA repair pathways. Here, we review recent key findings of studies aimed at understanding one of these pathways: bacterial nucleotide excision repair (NER). This pathway operates in two modes: a global genome repair (GGR) pathway and a pathway that closely interfaces with transcription by RNA polymerase called transcription-coupled repair (TCR). …