Digital Commons Network^™

Eng 4761-001: Creative Writing: Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Daiva Markelis

Fall 2012

No abstract provided.

Morphological Correlates Of A Combat Performance Trait In The Forked Fungus Beetle, Bolitotherus Cornutus, K. M. Benowitz, E. D. Brodie Iii, Vincent A. Formica

Biology Faculty Works

Combat traits are thought to have arisen due to intense male-male competition for access to females. While large and elaborate weapons used in attacking other males have often been the focus of sexual selection studies, defensive traits (both morphological and performance) have received less attention. However, if defensive traits help males restrict access to females, their role in the process of sexual selection could also be important. Here we examine the morphological correlates of grip strength, a defensive combat trait involved in mate guarding, in the tenebrionid beetle Bolitotherus cornutus. We found that grip strength was repeatable and differed between …

2012 Fall Convocation Program, Office Of Communications & Marketing, Morehead State University.

Communications and Marketing Publications Archive

Fall convocation program held on August 15, 2012.

The Structure Of The Bfrb-Bfd Complex Reveals Protein-Protein Interactions Enabling Iron Release From Bacterioferritin, Huili Yao, Yan Wang, Scott Lovell, Ritesh Kumar, Anatoly M. Ruvinsky, Kevin P. Battaile, Ilya A. Vakser, Mario Rivera

Faculty Publications

Ferritin-like molecules are unique to cellular iron homeostasis because they can store iron at concentrations much higher than those dictated by the solubility of Fe3+. Very little is known about the protein interactions that deliver iron for storage or promote the mobilization of stored iron from ferritin-like molecules. Here, we report the X-ray crystal structure of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterioferritin (Pa-BfrB) in complex with bacterioferritin-associated ferredoxin (Pa-Bfd) at 2.0 Å resolution. As the first example of a ferritin-like molecule in complex with a cognate partner, the structure provides unprecedented insight into the complementary interface that enables the [2Fe-2S] cluster of Pa-Bfd …

Profiles Of Early Family Risk And The Socioemotional Functioning Of Infants And Toddlers, Lisa Emily Jobe-Shields

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Research consistently indicates that exposure to a range of early family risk factors is associated with compromised social and emotional functioning in early childhood, but less is known about configurations of multiple risk factors within families. The present study investigated a range of risk factors representing family structure (marital status, child's father in the home), sociodemographic context (maternal age, household income, maternal education, and insurance status), and maternal psychosocial functioning (maternal postnatal depression and prenatal physical and psychological relationship conflict) from a person-centered approach in a diverse, urban sample of 819 mothers. Latent variable mixture modeling was used to identify …

Polygenic Threshold Model With Sex Dimorphism In Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis: The Carter Effect, Lisa M. Kruse, Jillian G. Buchan, Christina A. Gurnett, Matthew B. Dobbs

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Antony Van Leeuwenhoek: Creation “Magnified” Through His Magnificent Microscopes, Alan L. Gillen, Douglas Oliver

Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although van Leeuwenhoek was not the inventor of the microscope, he advanced it more than anyone else for seeing living things.

Antony van Leeuwenhoek1 (Fig. 1) found great joy in God’s smallest creatures. He first discovered protozoans in his youth. The Dutch haberdasher retained a child-like joy of discovery from his youth until his death at age 90. He lived to see tiny microbes though his homemade microscopes. He loved to grind and focus a new lens in order to see the unseen world. Leeuwenhoek spent countless hours grinding tiny lenses and looking through them. This Christian lay biologist …

Dna And Peptide Functionalized Gold Nanoparticles For Biological Imaging And Transfection, Ziyan Zhang

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

This dissertation focuses on the development of DNA and peptide functionalized gold nanoparticles. Three nanoparticle systems have been developed:: 1) nucleic acid-directed self-assembly of a gold nanoparticle PET imaging agent;: 2) cationic peptide functionalized gold nanoparticles;: 3) gold nanoparticle templated peptide nanoshells.

The first functionalized gold nanoparticles were constructed by assembling ODN: oligodeoxynucleotide)-derivatized gold nanoparticles with functionalized complementary PNAs: peptide nucleic acids). The PNAs were conjugated with DOTA for chelating chelating 64Cu for PET imaging, PEG for conferring stealth properties, and Cy5 for fluorescent imaging. The resulting functionalized nanoparticles showed good stability both in vitro and in vivo and had …

Crow's Nest, August 15, 2012, Crow's Nest Staff

Crow's Nest

The August 15, 2012, issue of the Crow's Nest. This was a special summer edition of the newspaper, available electronically before the beginning of classes during the Fall 2012 semester.

Modeling, Control And Characterization Of Aircraft Electric Power Systems, Hadi Ebrahimi

Electrical Engineering Theses

A study model of advanced aircraft electric power system (AAEPS) corresponding to B767 Aircraft is developed in the PSIM9 software environment. The performance characteristics of the system under consideration for large sharing of non-linear loads are studied. A comprehensive mathematical model describing system dynamics is derived where the GSSA technique is applied for reduced-order system approximation. The transient and steady-state performance of the hybrid PEM-FC/battery APU integrated to the aircraft electric network is analyzed while different loading scenarios are taken into account. In addition, dynamic bifurcation analysis is employed to characterize the systems stability performance under multi-parameters condition. Also, the …

Title Changes

NASIG Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Genomics Of Mature And Immature Olfactory Sensory Neurons, Melissa D. Nickell, Patrick Breheny, Arnold J. Stromberg, Timothy S. Mcclintock

Physiology Faculty Publications

The continuous replacement of neurons in the olfactory epithelium provides an advantageous model for investigating neuronal differentiation and maturation. By calculating the relative enrichment of every mRNA detected in samples of mature mouse olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), immature OSNs, and the residual population of neighboring cell types, and then comparing these ratios against the known expression patterns of >300 genes, enrichment criteria that accurately predicted the OSN expression patterns of nearly all genes were determined. We identified 847 immature OSN-specific and 691 mature OSN-specific genes. The control of gene expression by chromatin modification and transcription factors, and neurite growth, protein …

Further Assessment Of The Psychometric Properties Of The Sex Offender Attitude Scale, Brandon C. Bogle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sex offenses in the United States are a major public health concern. Attitudes toward sex offenders are generally very negative and to be officially identified as a sex offender brings on collateral consequences that reduce incentives not to reoffend. The extent to which attitudes toward sex offenders affect discriminatory behaviors and collateral consequences is not fully understood. The Sex Offender Attitude Scale was developed in an attempt to reliably and accurately measure attitudes and stigma toward sex offenders. Initial analyses indicated the SOAS was a reliable and valid instrument. This study aimed to provide additional evidence of the psychometric properties …

Role Of Therapeutic Devices In Enhancing Speech Intelligibility And Vocal Intensity In An Individual With Parkinson’S Disease, Swetha Swaminathan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The prevailing speech therapy techniques for treating hypokinetic dysarthria in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) yields improvements within the clinical setting, however, maintenance and generalization of acquired behaviors continue to be a challenge. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of portable therapeutic devices including Ambulatory Phonation Monitor with biofeedback (APM) and auditory masker in maintenance and carryover of improved speech. Our participant was an individual diagnosed with PD for the past 25 years who continued to display speech disturbances despite undergoing several behavioral speech therapy programs and neurosurgical procedures. Speech intelligibility and average intensity measures under …

Il-1Β Amplification Of Nitric Oxide Production And Its Inhibitory Effects On Glucose Induced Early Growth Response-1 Expression In Ins-1 Cells, Ada Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The pathophysiology of cytokines released by infiltrating white blood cells upon pancreatic beta cells is not fully understood. Early growth response gene-1 (Egr-1) expression is specifically and transiently up regulated in pancreatic beta cells in response to glucose. We hypothesized that interleukin-1 beta (IL-1▀) induction of nitric oxide alters glucose induced Egr-1 transcription levels. Egr-1 levels were assessed via western blot, nitric oxide was measured with a Griess Reagent kit and insulin levels via ELISA. Glucose induced both insulin and Egr-1 production in INS-1 cells. IL-1▀ dose dependently increased nitric oxide production over time and significantly attenuated glucose induced Egr-1 …

Immobilized Bis-Indenyl Ligands For Stable And Cost-Effective Metallocene Catalysts Of Hydrogenation And Polymerization Reactions, Thomas Max Simerly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reactions of catalytic hydrogenations and polymerizations are widely used in industry for manufacture of fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and plastics. Homogeneous catalysts for the processes that have low stability and their separation is difficult. Therefore, the development of new highly active and stable catalysts for hydrogenations and polymerizations is a necessity. The objective of this research was the development of a strategy for immobilization of heterogeneous metallocene catalysts. First, a methodology of immobilization of bis-indenyl ligands on the surface of mesoporous silica gel was designed. Four bis-indenyl ligands containing functionalized tethers of various lengths with terminal alkene groups were synthesized. All …

Newsroom, Georgia Southern University

Newsroom (2006-2023)

• Georgia Southern University Holds Fall 2012 Convocation
• Georgia Southern University Theater Students to Creates Production and Perform Play in 24 Hours

Fragmentation And Characteristics Of Recombinant Endochitinase Expressed In Escherichia Coli, Wei-Ming Chen, Gen-Hung Chen, Shann-Tzong Jiang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

A recombinant endochitinase fused with hexahistidine (rEC-H) was expressed and characterized. After Ni affinity chromatography, the recovery, purification-fold and specific activity of rEC-H were 88.8%, 13.4 and 142.1 U/mg, respectively. The purified rEC-H had optimal pH and temperature at pH 7.5 and 60°C, respectively and was stable at pH 4.0-9.0 and

Landmark Analysis Of Musteloid Carnassials Applied To Taxonomic Identification And Examination Of Sexual Dimorphism And Regional Morphotypes, Joel Alvin Christine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Guy Wilson Cave (GWC) in Sullivan County, Tennessee holds many late Pleistocene mammal fossils. Based on visual morphology, several partial mandibles with lower carnassial from GWC appeared to be musteloids. Geometric morphometrics has been successfully used to identify fragmentary fossils, so a landmark based, 2 dimensional technique was applied to identify the GWC musteloids using the lower carnassial. Digital images of several GWC fossils and of extant reference musteloids were combined using morphometric programs tpsDIG1, tpsUtil, and tpsSuper. Statistical data analysis was performed in PASW Statistics. Results successfully separated Mephitis mephitis (striped skunk) from M. macroura (hooded skunk) and Martes …

Health-Related Quality Of Life And Future Care Planning Among Older Adults: Exploring The Role Of Hope As A Moderator, Jodi L. Southerland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Older adults have an increased risk for illness and disease, factors that can lead to functional impairment and intensify the need for reliance on supportive services. Planning for long-term care needs is a vital component of healthy aging and continued autonomy. Yet, many older adults fail to make plans in advance, perhaps due to differences in personal characteristics.

The moderating effects of trait hope on the relationship between health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and preparation for future care needs (PFCN) was studied in a sample of 65 older adult primary care patients (<65 years) in western New York. Participants completed a questionnaire on 5 dimensions of PFCN (awareness of risk, information gathering, decisions about care preferences, concrete planning, and active avoidance). In addition, data were collected on five HRQoL domains (physical function, physical role function, emotional role function, social function, and bodily pain) and trait hope. Moderated multiple regression was used to test the moderator hypothesis controlling for personal characteristics. Post-hoc probing was used to further examine significant interactions.

At the bivariate level, social functioning, physical …

The Pathophysiological Importance Of Nicotinamide Phosphoribosyltransferase As A Key Nad Biosynthesis Enzyme In Metabolic Homeostasis, Myeong Jin Yoon

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase: NAMPT) is the rate-limiting enzyme in the NAD biosynthesis pathway in mammals. Interestingly, NAMPT has intra- and extracellular forms: iNAMPT and eNAMPT, respectively), and eNAMPT is secreted from adipose tissue as one of the adipokines. However, the mechanism underlying the regulation of eNAMPT secretion has not been fully understood yet. Here, we have demonstrated that deacetylation on NAMPT by SIRT1 controls its secretion from adipocytes. iNAMPT is acetylated in both brown and white adipose tissues, and the level of acetylation of iNAMPT is decreased during fasting when Sirtuins are activated. We also found that enhancement of eNAMPT secretion …

A Ranksum Statistics Based Framework To Decipher Transcription Regulation, Iuan-Bor Chen

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The unbiased generation of specific and meaningful hypotheses from the deluge of data generated by modern genomic methods remains a challenge. These datasets require increasing level of expertise to analyze fully, and are often underutilized even in the originating lab. It would be desirable to have a computational strategy that is easy to implement, robust against outliers and missing data, and broadly applicable to diverse experimental designs. In this dissertation, I present a set of ranksum statistics-based analytical methods as a framework to extract testable hypotheses from large and complex datasets. To illustrate its utility, this framework was applied to …

Enabling Dexterous Manipulation And Servicing By Smallsats, David Akin, Nicholas Limparis, Katherine Mcbryan

Small Satellite Conference

The University of Maryland Space Systems Laboratory is currently developing two flight-ready smallsats to demonstrate and validate the critical technologies for this new class of smallsat servicing system. The Dynamic FLight MAnipulation EXperiment (DYMAFLEX) , supported by the U. S. Air Force University Nanosat Program, is a smallsat incorporating a four degree-of-freedom high-performance manipulator and a fully maneuvering spacecraft bus, including a cold-gas reaction control system. Unlike past manipulator-equipped spacecraft such as ETS-VII or Orbital Express, the DYMAFLEX manipulator inertia (depending on payload) equals or exceeds that of the spacecraft bus, resulting in significant base reaction dynamics in response to …

‘Charybdis’ – The Next Generation In Ocean Colour And Biogeochemical Remote Sensing, Christopher Lowe, Malcom Macdonald, Steve Greenland, David Mckee

Small Satellite Conference

Within the field of Space-based Maritime observation, there exists an opportunity in the form of high spatial, high temporal resolution multi-spectral imaging to map coastal and inland waterway colour and biogeochemistry. Information provided would help environmental agencies and the scientific community to better understand patterns and evolution of ecological systems, sediment suspension in river estuaries and the effects of anthropogenic processes on our water systems. In addition, monitoring of these colour patterns with respect to the well understood tidal sequence would provide significant benefits to our understanding of the way in which tidal forcing affects ocean colour. This paper describes …

Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 5: On The Matter Of Damaging Neural Circuits, John J. Medina Ph.D.

Brainstorm

In the last installment, we examined the forces capable of causing brain injury, but left out the most important question: What happens to brain tissues unlucky enough to experience those forces? Now it is time to face the biological facts. In this installment, we will talk about neurological tissue and closed-­head injuries.

The Structural Stability Of The Endothelial Glycocalyx After Enzymatic Removal Of Glycosaminoglycans, Ye Zeng, Eno E. Ebong, Bingmei M. Fu, John M. Tarbell

Publications and Research

Rationale It is widely believed that glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) and bound plasma proteins form an interconnected gel-like structure on the surface of endothelial cells (the endothelial glycocalyx layer–EGL) that is stabilized by the interaction of its components. However, the structural organization of GAGs and proteins and the contribution of individual components to the stability of the EGL are largely unknown. Objective To evaluate the hypothesis that the interconnected gel-like glycocalyx would collapse when individual GAG components were almost completely removed by a specific enzyme. Methods and Results Using confocal microscopy, we observed that the coverage and thickness of heparan sulfate (HS), …

Research Studies In Higher Education: Educating Multicultural College Students-Ch 3, J L. Wood, Adriel Hilton

Faculty Working Papers from the School of Education

Book Chapter

Methods And Compounds For Inhibition Of Cell Death, Antonis Zervos

UCF Patents

This invention is directed to methods and compositions for inhibiting caspase-independent apoptosis. In particular, methods and compositions for inhibiting Omi/HtrA2 activity, as well as method for identifying other inhibitors of Omi/HtrA2. Also disclosed are Omi/HtrA2 specific substrates and methods for identifying other substrates of Omi/HtrA2.

Identification Of Oxidized Amino Acid Residues In The Vicinity Of The Mn 4Cao 5 Cluster Of Photosystem Ii: Implications For The Identification Of Oxygen Channels Within The Photosystem, Laurie K. Frankel, Larry Sallans, Patrick A. Limbach, Terry M. Bricker

Faculty Publications

As a light-driven water-plastoquinone oxidoreductase, Photosystem II produces molecular oxygen as an enzymatic product. Additionally, under a variety of stress conditions, reactive oxygen species are produced at or near the active site for oxygen evolution. In this study, Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry was used to identify oxidized amino acid residues located in several core Photosystem II proteins (D1, D2, CP43, and CP47) isolated from spinach Photosystem II membranes. While the majority of these oxidized residues (81%) are located on the oxygenated solvent-exposed surface of the complex, several residues on the CP43 protein ( 354E, 355T, 356M, and 357R) …

Runnin’ Bulldogs Prep For Season Opener Against Wofford, Office Of University Communications

Gardner-Webb NewsCenter Archive

“No excuses.” That’s the team motto this year for the Gardner-Webb football program. And Head Football Coach Ron Dickerson believes his team will be better for it.

Youtube: Fall Football Preview 2012