Digital Commons Network^™

Section Abstracts: Environmental Science

Virginia Journal of Science

Abstracts of the Environmental Sciences Section for the 87th Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 27-29, 2009, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.

Section Abstracts: Natural History And Biodiversity

Virginia Journal of Science

Abstracts of the Natural History and Biodiversity Section for the 87th Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 27-29, 2009, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.

Virginia Junior Academy Of Science, 68th Annual Meeting Awards, 2009

Virginia Journal of Science

Awards by section for the 68th Virginia Junior Academy of Science Meeting, May 28, 2009. Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.

The Role Of Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor In Blood Pressure Regulation And Vascular Homeostasis, Nan Zhang

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

High blood pressure and endothelial dysfunction are two systemic abnormalities of the cardiovascular system that extensively contribute to the etiology of cardiovascular diseases, which represent the number one killer in the United States for decades and become more severe in developing countries. Previous studies have indicated that aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), a transcription factor primarily mediating xenobiotic metabolism, plays an important role in cardiovascular development and physiology. AHR deficient mice have been demonstrated to develop hypotension at sea level and oxygen-dependent, endothelin-1 (ET-1) mediated hypertension at mild altitude. However, after generations at mild altitude, AHR deficient mice appear to acclimate …

Dynamics Of Cell-Cell Junctions In Keratinocytes, Miquella G. Chavez

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Poor wound healing is a serious medical issue of particular concern in the elderly and people with diabetes. One major obstacle for these patients to achieve complete wound healing is incomplete reepithelialization which is necessary for restoration of barrier function. One molecule that has promising therapeutic value for promoting reepithelialization is epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Using a squamous cell carcinoma cell line (SCC 12F) that expresses moderate levels of EGFR, we investigated the contributions of EGFR activation to reepithelialization, and specifically its roles in modulation of cell-cell junctions. Decreased cell-cell adhesion mediated by adherens junctions and desmosomes is necessary …

Transcriptional Networks Of Lung Airway Epithelial Ciliogenesis, Xiaobo Sun

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Motile cilia of the mammalian airway play an essential role in innate defense. The coordinated transcriptional regulation of cilial axoneme genes remains to be elucidated. Transcription factor FOXJ1 has been shown to be important in ciliogenesis; however, direct transactivation of cilia genes by FOXJ1 has not been reported. Using a combined bioinformatics and experimental approach, here, we show a transcriptional network for cilia gene expression. FOXJ1 can directly transactivate endogenous cilia genes such as ENKURIN, EFHC2, IFT57, RIBC2 and ROPN1L in human bronchial epithelial cells (HBEC). FOXJ1 transactivation is localized to the proximal end of the 5 flanking region of …

Gestational Diabetes Mellitus--A Forerunner Of Chronic Disorders In Mother And Child, Romaina Iqbal, Sobia Jawaid, Abdul Jabbar, Rahat Qureshi

Community Health Sciences

Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) can have serious immediate as well as long term consequences, both for the mother as well as the off-spring. It seems that women of south Asian origin are not only more likely to have GDM but also suffer more from the adverse consequences of the disorder. These consequences include the development of type 2 DM in women with a history of GDM and a higher risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome in the off-spring. Pakistani physicians should consider GDM seriously because the WHO states that rise in the prevalence of type 2 DM will mainly occur …

Surgical Management Of Non -Suppurative Brain Lesions (Part I), Muhammad Shahzad Shamim, Syed Ather Enam, Rushna Pervez Ali, Syed Faizan Ali, Mohammad Wasay

Pakistan Journal of Neurological Sciences (PJNS)

No abstract provided.

Defining Best Practices In Electronic Thesis And Dissertation Metadata, Rebecca L. Lubas

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

The University of New Mexico will mandate in 2009 that theses and dissertations be submitted in electronic form as the copy of record. These documents will reside in the universitys digital repository, operated on a DSpace platform. This article reviews practices for thesis and dissertation metadata creation with a focus on DSpace instances, best practice recommendations for authorsubmitted metadata, recommendations for subject analysis, and training for metadata practitioners. The article recommends processes for author submission, metadata quality control and enhancement, and crosswalking of the metadata to the library's catalog to maximize discovery.'

Modeling And Analysis Of Biological Populations, Joan Lubben

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Asymptotic and transient dynamics are both important when considering the future population trajectory of a species. Asymptotic dynamics are often used to determine whether the long-term trend results in a stable, declining or increasing population and even provide possible directions for management actions. Transient dynamics are important for estimating invasion speed of non-indigenous species, population establishment after releasing biocontrol agents, or population management after a disturbance like fire. We briefly describe here the results in this thesis.

(1) We consider asymptotic dynamics using discrete time linear population models of the form n(t + 1) = An(t) where …

Correlated Response In A Driven Flow Of Self-Organizing Particles Around A Slit In Porous Media By Interacting Lattice Gas, Ras B. Pandey, J.F. Gettrust

Faculty Publications

The flow of immiscible particles (A, B) through a porous medium with a vertical slit is studied by an interacting lattice-gas computer simulation on a discrete lattice. The source of the particles is connected to the bottom and particles are driven upward by concentration gradient and a pressure bias against gravity. Distribution of flowing particles around the slit is examined as a function of the slit width and bias at high and low porosity at a steady state. At the low bias, a sharp change in the densities (high in slit to low in adjacent porous media) of both constituents …

University Reporter - Volume 13, Number 10 - Summer 2009

1996-2009, University Reporter

This issue of the University Reporter features, among others, articles about the appointment of Winston E. Langley as Provost, the 2009 Commencement ceremony (which included remarks from Senator John Kerry), Dominique Powell (the recipient of the 2009 John F. Kennedy Award for Academic Excellence), and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, as well as peices about academic and outreach programs at the University, including the Center of Math and Science in Context (COSMIC).

Columns Summer 2009, Southern Adventist University

Alumni Newsletter

Features the article "The Good News in a Bad Economy". Economist David Beckworth, ’94, shares his research on how a bad economy can be good for churches.

Forgetting To Re-Member: 'Post-Racial' Amnesia And Racial History, Maisha Wester

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

On a recent trip to New Orleans, LA, I visited three notable sites in the city's history: the infamous slave exchange, now the site of the Omni Hotel and its attached restaurant; Congo Square, now the site of Louis Armstrong Park; and the Lower Ninth Ward, still devastated four years after the near miss of Hurricane Katrina [1]. The former two are marked by diminutive plaques noting the historical relevance of the location even as fabulous new buildings and modernist ornamentation overwhelm the site and its sense of significance. In the case of the later, however, there are …

Dicer Is Required For Female Reproductive Tract Development And Fertility In The Mouse, Gabriel Gonzalez, Richard R Behringer

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Dicer encodes a riboendonuclease required for microRNA biosynthesis. Dicer was inactivated in Müllerian duct mesenchyme-derived tissues of the reproductive tract of the mouse, using an Amhr2-Cre allele. Although Amhr2-Cre; Dicer conditional mutant males appeared normal and were fertile, mutant females were infertile. In adult mutant females, there was a reduction in the size of the oviducts and uterine horns. The oviducts were less coiled compared to controls and cysts formed at the isthmus near the uterotubal junction. Unfertilized, degenerate oocytes were commonly found within these cysts, indicating a defect in embryo transit. Beads transferred into the mutant oviduct failed to …

Prediction Of Disorder With New Computational Tool: Bvdea, Irem Ersoz Kaya, Turgay Ibrikci, Okan K. Ersoy

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

Motivation: Recognizing that many intrinsically disordered regions in proteins play key roles in vital functions and also in some diseases, identification of the disordered regions has became a demanding process for structure prediction and functional characterization of proteins. Therefore, many studies have been motivated on accurate prediction of disorder. Mostly, machine learning techniques have been used for dealing with the prediction problem of disorder due to the capability of extracting the complex relationships and correlations hidden in large data sets. Results: In this study, a novel method, named Border Vector Detection and Extended Adaptation (BVDEA) was developed for predicting disorder …

A Study Of Meta Learning For Regression, M. Fatih Amasyali, Okan K. Ersoy

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

In regression applications, there is no single algorithm which performs well with all data since the performance of an algorithm depends on the dataset used. In practice, different algorithms / approaches are tried, and the best one is selected in each application. It is meaningful to ask whether there is a different way instead of running such tedious experiments. In meta learning studies, one investigates clues for the performance of an algorithm over a dataset using several features of the dataset. In this context, it is important to estimate which dataset features (meta features) are most significant for the performance …

Chronic Exposure To Arsenic In The Drinking Water Alters The Expression Of Immune Response Genes In Mouse Lung, Courtney D. Kozul, Thomas H. Hampton, Jennifer C. Davey, Julie A. Gosse, Athena P. Nomikos, Phillip L. Eisenhauer, Daniel J. Weiss, Jessica E. Thorpe, Michael A. Ihnat, Joshua W. Hamilton

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background:

Chronic exposure to drinking water arsenic is a significant worldwide environmental health concern. Exposure to As is associated with an increased risk of lung disease, which may make it a unique toxicant, because lung toxicity is usually associated with inhalation rather than ingestion.

Objectives:

The goal of this study was to examine mRNA and protein expression changes in the lungs of mice exposed chronically to environmentally relevant concentrations of As in the food or drinking water, specifically examining the hypothesis that As may preferentially affect gene and protein expression related to immune function as part of its mechanism of …

A Hybrid Genetic-Greedy Approach To The Skills Management Problem., Daniel Grieshaber 1986-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Naval Surface Warfare Center wishes to create a task assignment schedule with a minimal training cost for workers to raise their skills to the required levels. As the number of workers, skills, and tasks increase, the problem quickly becomes too large to solve through brute force. Already several greedy heuristics have been produced, though their performance degrades for larger data sets. As Genetic Algorithms (GA) are effective for large combinatorial problems, their application to the task assignment problem may prove successful. The innovation in applying a GA to this problem is the utilization of existing greedy heuristics in the …

Differential Cellular Responses To Metal Oxide Based Nanoparticles And Potential Biomedical Applications, Cory L. Hanley

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The multidisciplinary field of nanotechnology has allowed for unprecedented exploration and manipulation of molecular, sub-molecular, and atomic structures and advancements in this field are revolutionizing scientific thought and applications. Within the field of nanotechnology, the branch of nanobiotechnology focuses on studying the effects of nanomaterials on biological systems and to elucidate how nanomaterials interact with cells and cellular components. Nanoparticles are a particular type of nanomaterial whose dimensions measure 100 nanometers and are shown to possess unique size-dependent physical, chemical and biological properties compared to their bulk counterparts. Metal oxide nanoparticles, such as those made from ZnO, are a type …

The Effects Of Gender On The Biomechanics Of The Hip During Athletic Maneuvers, Mikaela Boham

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Context: Females are two to eight times more likely to sustain an ACL injury than males participating in the same sport. The primary mechanism reported for noncontact ACL injury involves landing from a jump, unanticipated change of direction, and/or deceleration activities.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine if adolescent female athletes perform athletic activities with decreased hip and knee flexion angles, and decreased EMG activity of the gluteus medius relative to their male counterparts.

Design: Cohort study from local club basketball teams.

Setting: University Laboratory.

Participants: Ten healthy adolescent basketball athletes (5 females, 5 males).

Interventions: Each …

Nerve Injection Of Viral Vectors Efficiently Transfers Transgenes Into Motor Neurons And Delivers Rnai Therapy Against Als., Rui Wu, Hongyan Wang, Xugang Xia, Hongxia Zhou, Chunyan Liu, Maria Castro, Zuoshang Xu

Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Cell Biology Faculty Papers

RNA interference (RNAi) mediates sequence-specific gene silencing, which can be harnessed to silencing disease-causing genes for therapy. Particularly suitable diseases are those caused by dominant, gain-of-function type of gene mutations. In these diseases, the mutant gene generates a mutant protein or RNA product, which possesses toxic properties that harm cells. By silencing the mutant gene, the toxicity can be lessened because the amount of the toxic product is lowered in cells. In this report, we tested RNAi therapy in a mouse model for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which causes motor neuron degeneration, paralysis, and death. We used a transgenic model …

War, Peace, And The Landscape Of The Inka Heartland, Terence N. D'Altroy, Darryl A. Wilkinson

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The article argues that the conservation of cultural heritage in the Inka imperial heartland must move beyond the protection of discrete archaeological sites to encompass the broader landscape, which includes intangible elements such as social memory, power dynamics, and historical narratives. The authors advocate for a holistic approach to heritage management that integrates the physical environment with the cultural and historical contexts that give landscapes their significance.

Perceptions Of Visual Culture In Turkish Pre-Service Art Teacher Preparation, Nur Balkir

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

One of the key tasks of the university in the 21st century is to nurture visually literate students in the information age. Given that we live in a very highly visualized world, it is increasingly important that students are educated as critical viewers who are able to respond to visual images in an analytical and selective manner. The education of critical viewers starts with art teachers who appreciate and understand the embedded value of imagery within cultures, cultural differences, students’ knowledge and experience, critical thought, and reflection. The creation of progressive models in art teacher education that connect art and …

Preventing Risky Drinking In First-Year College Women: Further Validation Of A Female-Specific Motivational-Enhancement Group Intervention, Joseph W. Labrie, Karen K. Huchting, Andrew Lac, Summer Tawalbeh, Alysha D. Thompson, Mary E. Larimer

Heads Up!

Objective:

Female college students have increased their alcohol consumption rates. The current study sought to replicate the effectiveness of a female-specific motivational-enhancement group intervention and extended previous work by adding a 6-month follow-up. The intervention included several motivational-enhancement components delivered in a group setting and included a group discussion of female-specific reasons for drinking.

Method:

Participants were 285 first-year college women. Data collection consisted of an online pre-intervention questionnaire, 10 weeks of online follow-up assessment, and a 6-month online follow-up. Using a randomized design, participants chose a group session, blind to treatment status. Held during the first weeks of the …

Measures To Control Harmful Algal Blooms, Sofie Secher

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) occur globally and are caused by different species of microalgae. They can be harmful by producing toxins or by the rapid increase in biomass often leading to discoloration and hypoxic conditions. Toxins accumulating in shellfish and fish can cause shellfish poisoning in humans, major economical losses, especially damage to aquaculture, and affects on marine life. Bloom events are natural phenomena and have been reported for centuries but the recent increase in blooms and their global spread, which are often discussed in relation to human influences, has caused concern. In the absence of reducing such factors, controlling …

Environmental Enrichment For Mammals In Captivity Focusing Primarily On Primates, Caroline Dawson

The Plymouth Student Scientist

No abstract provided.

Injuries Inflicted As A Predictor Of Winning In Contests Between Beadlet Anemones, Actinia Equina, Laura Robinson, Ben Porter, Jennifer Grocott, Kendal Harrison

The Plymouth Student Scientist

If the number of individuals in a population oversubscribes a resource then competition can occur and may lead to injurious fighting, if the cost of fighting is lower than the value of the resource. Here we consider how weapon size (nematocyst length), body size (pedal disc diameter, wet weight) and number of injuries inflicted are related to fighting ability in the common intertidal beadlet anemone, Actinia equina. 160 anemones were utilised from two sites, within two size classes, to engage in contest behaviour. There was no significant effect on pedal disc diameter, wet weight or nematocyst length of the outcome …

Hemispheric Interaction In Simple Reaction Time As A Function Of Handedness, Emily Howe

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Efficiency of hemispheric interactions in simple reaction time as a function of hand preference was investigated. Research suggests that left-handed individuals have more efficient hemispheric interactions. This is possibly due to their need to transfer information between hemispheres more frequently than right-handed individuals, a result of differing patterns of cerebral dominance explained by Annett’s (1998) right shift theory. Forty-eight right-handers and 48 non-right-handers, assessed by the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971) completed the study. Mean reaction times for the Poffenberger paradigm (Poffenberger, 1912) were used to calculate the crossed-uncrossed-difference (CUD); a measure of inter-hemispheric transfer time. Analyses revealed a non-significant …

Deep-Sea Coral Reefs: Distribution, Ecology And Anthropogenic Impacts, Victoria Oakham

The Plymouth Student Scientist

The introduction of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) and manned submersibles has meant scientists can finally begin study deep-water scleractinian coral reefs, making valuable first-hand observations of the reefs themselves and their associated fauna. Known influences of deepwater coral reef distribution include the topography of the seabed, presence of currents, high nutrient levels and low sedimentation levels. Chemical tolerances (such as salinity, temperature range and calcium carbonate availability) are mostly known for only Lophelia pertusa corals. Debates exist within literature over the possible influence of hydrocarbon seeps from the seabed on coral reef growth and distribution. Studies show the importance of …