Digital Commons Network^™

Constructing Representative Social Networks For Disease Simulation, Tao Yang, Mario Ventresca

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Diseases spread mechanisms have been questioned and studied for many years. The ability to make predictions about an epidemic could enable scientists to evaluate inoculation/ isolation plans, control the mortality rate, and prevent the future course of an outbreak. Accurate predictions, however, are extremely hard to make and requires interdisciplinary solutions from epidemiology, sociology, statistics, graph theory, and Computer Science. For making the prediction, currently few network analysis platforms written in C++ are designed and optimized. The research is aimed to address this gap by exploring methods of constructing social contact network, simulating disease spreading, and proposing mitigation strategies for …

The Role Of Inflammation In Contrast-Induced Nephropathy, Elijah Kwasa, Sudhir Vinayak, Robert Armstrong

Imaging & Diagnostic Radiology, East Africa

Objective: Global incidence of contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) is 2-5%, but a recent Kenyan study highlighted a local incidence of 12-14% without offering an explanation for the higher incidence. This study proposes that inflammatory states confer a higher relative risk for development of CIN. Our objective was to determine the risk of developing CIN given the presence of an inflammatory state in patients in Kenya.

Methods: Prospective cohort study of patients undergoing a contrast-enhanced CT (CECT) scan in a private university teaching hospital in Kenya and having no known risk factors for CIN. 423 patients were recruited and grouped into those …

Integrating Content And Academic Language Using Balanced Literacy Structures: A Framework For Instruction Of Emergent Bilinguals, Patricia Velasco

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

Teachers working with emergent bilinguals1 face difficult dilemmas. Students who do not receive rigorous content instruction fail to acquire academic language. However, if students do not understand the content or cannot participate in content lessons, they cannot be expected to learn the academic information and the language associated with it. Confronting this challenge requires a sound knowledge of the multiple factors that play a role in developing academic language and its dependency on content area texts. Most importantly, this understanding has to be accompanied by instructional strategies that allow students to gain steady control over academic discourse. In this article, …

Propsectus, August 6, 2014, Kaleb Schwaiger

Prospectus 2014

EBOLA VIRUS UNLIKELY TO SPREAD IN U.S.; City or tropics? Obama ponders where to put presidential library; Twin sisters turn mere mortals into mermaids; Tips to get ready for the new school year; EPA's limits can be met; Understanding the difference: curriculum and standards; Winona State football player passes away during practice; 'Guardians of the Galaxy' rockets to $94 million opening; Twenty years later, NIN and Soundgarden still rock

Imaging Luciferase-Expressing Viruses, Michael A. Barry, Shannon May, Eric A. Weaver

Nebraska Center for Virology: Faculty Publications

Optical imaging of luciferage gene expression has become a powerful tool to track cells and viruses in vivo in small animal models. Luciferase imaging has been used to study the location of infection by replication-defective and replication-competent viruses and to track changes in the distribution of viruses in mouse models. This approach has also been used in oncolytic studies as a non-invasive means to monitor the growth and killing of tumor cells modified with luciferase genes. In this chapter, we describe the techniques used for luciferase imaging as have been applied to track replication-defective and replication-competent adenoviruses in mouse and …

Methods For Attenuating Dengue Virus Infection, Shyam S. Mohapatra, Weidong Zhang

USF Patents

The present invention pertains to vectors for regulating gene expression having at least one gene expressing cassette and at least one gene suppressing cassette, wherein the gene expression cassette encodes a polypeptide of interest, and wherein the gene suppressing cassette encodes a short interfering RNA (siRNA) molecule that reduces expression of a target gene by RNA interference. The present invention further includes vectors that contain suppressor cassettes in conjunction with cassettes upregulating gene expression regulated by either a constitutive promoter, such as a general CMV promoter, or a tissue specific promoter. The present invention further includes vectors that contain Dengue …

2014-August-05-Senior Scientist Hired, University Marketing And Communications, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

No abstract provided.

Recent Shifts In The Occurrence, Cause, And Magnitude Of Animal Mass Mortality Events, Samuel B. Fey, Adam M. Siepielski, Sébastien Nusslé, Kristina Cervantes-Yoshida, Jason L. Hwan, Eric R. Huber, Maxfield J. Fey, Alessandro Catenazzi, Stephanie M. Carlson

Dartmouth Scholarship

Mass mortality events (MMEs) are rapidly occurring catastrophic demographic events that punctuate background mortality levels. Individual MMEs are staggering in their observed magnitude: re- moving more than 90% of a population, resulting in the death of more than a billion individuals, or producing 700 million tons of dead biomass in a single event. Despite extensive documentation of individual MMEs, we have no understanding of the major features characterizing the occurrence and magnitude of MMEs, their causes, or trends through time. Thus, no framework exists for contextualizing MMEs in the wake of ongoing global and regional perturbations to natural systems. Here …

Is There Progress Toward Sustainability?: Despite The Inherent Human Resistance To Change., Jens Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

The theme of this paper is to briefly survey the status of current efforts to maintain our natural environment and then discuss prospects for achieving future sustainability. The author finds that while there has been general recognition of the need for environmental sensitivity and conservation of natural resources, progress toward achieving sustainability goals has been slow. A principal reason for this lack of action is found in the reactive nature of the human species. Situated by biological design in our environment we typically respond to environmental changes only after they have occurred. Accordingly, while a number of revolutionary proposals have …

Clinical Pathoscope: Rapid Alignment And Filtration For Accurate Pathogen Identification In Clinical Samples Using Unassembled Sequencing Data, Allyson L. Byrd, Joseph F. Perez-Rogers, Solaiappan Manimaran, Eduardo Castro-Nallar, Ian Toma, Timothy A. Mccaffrey, Marc O. Siegel, Gary Benson, Keith Crandall, William Evan Johnson

Medicine Faculty Publications

Background

The use of sequencing technologies to investigate the microbiome of a sample can positively impact patient healthcare by providing therapeutic targets for personalized disease treatment. However, these samples contain genomic sequences from various sources that complicate the identification of pathogens.

Results

Here we present Clinical PathoScope, a pipeline to rapidly and accurately remove host contamination, isolate microbial reads, and identify potential disease-causing pathogens. We have accomplished three essential tasks in the development of Clinical PathoScope. First, we developed an optimized framework for pathogen identification using a computational subtraction methodology in concordance with read trimming and ambiguous read reassignment. Second, …

Diagnosis-Specific Readmission Risk Prediction Using Electronic Health Data: A Retrospective Cohort Study, Courtney Hebert, Chaitanya Shivade, Randi Foraker, Jared Wasserman, Caryn Roth, Hagop Mekhjan, Stanley Lemeshow, Peter Embi

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background: Readmissions after hospital discharge are a common occurrence and are costly for both hospitals and patients. Previous attempts to create universal risk prediction models for readmission have not met with success. In this study we leveraged a comprehensive electronic health record to create readmission-risk models that were institution- and patient- specific in an attempt to improve our ability to predict readmission. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study performed at a large midwestern tertiary care medical center. All patients with a primary discharge diagnosis of congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction or pneumonia over a two-year time period were …

Checkup, Lehigh Valley Health Network

Checkup

No abstract provided.

Progress Notes, Lehigh Valley Health Network

Progress Notes

No abstract provided.

“Work What You Got”: Political Participation And Hiv-Positive Black Women’S Work To Restore Themselves And Their Communities, Monica L. Melton

Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought

Black women’s rates of HIV/AIDS infection have skyrocketed in comparison to other racial and ethnic groups over the past thirty years. Despite these rates, HIV-positive Black women’s perspectives are rarely sought regarding best practices to eradicate and interrupt HIV/AIDS among African American women, even though historically Black women have often proved phenomenal agents of social change. HIV-positive Black women’s activism has been understudied and input from the community in crisis has rarely been deemed as valuable to public health officials in HIV/AIDS prevention and interventions. Through the narratives of thirty HIV-positive Floridian Black women, I present HIV-positive Black women’s political …

Antiviral Responses In Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells: Differential Development Of Cellular Mechanisms In Type I Interferon Production And Response, Ruoxing Wang

Dissertations

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have been recognized as a promising cell source for regenerative medicine. Intensive research over the past decade has led to the possibility that ESC-derived cells will be used for the treatment of human diseases. However, increasing evidence indicates that ESC-derived cells generated by the current differentiation methods are not fully functional. It is recently recognized that ESC-derived cells lack innate immunity to a wide range of infectious agents and inflammatory cytokines. When used in patients, ESC-derived cells would be placed in wounded sites that are exposed to various pathogens and inflammatory cytokines; therefore, their viability and …

Reforming Medicare-Financed Graduate Medical Education, Kate Maher

Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy (1985-2015)

No abstract provided.

The Standard Deviation: Attitude Transference And Perceptions Of Deviant Behavior, Candace Forbes Bright

Dissertations

This dissertation uses a three-article dissertation model to 1) compare how deviance is defined and what is considered deviant comparing the United States to South Korea using content analysis, 2) test socio-demographic and social network variables in the development of one’s approval of deviance using eleven ordinary least squared regression models, and 3) examine the association between social networks and approval of deviant behaviors using social network analysis. All three articles use data from a survey on perceptions of deviant behavior. The survey was conducted in English and Korean. The first article provides comparisons on how deviance is defined and …

An Evaluation Of Contaminated Complete Feed As A Vehicle For Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus Infection Of Naïve Pigs Following Consumption Via Natural Feeding Behavior: Proof Of Concept, Scott Dee, Travis Clement, Adam Schelkopf, Joel Nerem, David Knudsen, Jane Christopher-Hennings, Eric A. Nelson

Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Since its initial detection in May 2013, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) has spread rapidly throughout the US swine industry. Initially, contaminated feed was proposed as a risk factor for PEDV; however, data were not available to support this theory. Here we provide proof of concept of this risk by describing a novel means for recovering PEDV-contaminated complete feed material from commercial swine sites and conducting an in vivo experiment to prove its infectivity.

Results: For on-farm detection of PEDV RNA in feed, paint rollers were used to collect material from at-risk feed bins from 3 clinically affected breeding …

Using Smart Grid Technologies To Protect Human Health In Water Distribution Systems, Graham Symmonds

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Since the introduction of the Safe Drinking Water Act, there has been marked reduction in the number of water-borne disease outbreaks attributed to water treatment systems. Over the same period, however, the percentage of disease outbreaks attributable to defects in the distribution system has increased exponentially. Interestingly, as a result of the continuous aging infrastructure employed by our water utilities, the number of water-borne disease cases has increased in the last decade. The smart grid for water can be used to significantly improve both the utility's understanding of water quality in the distribution system, but can dramatically increase the response …

Antimicrobial Nanoparticles: A Green And Novel Approach For Enhancing Bactericidal Efficacy Of Commercial Antibiotics, Monic Shah

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

On the verge of entering the post-antibiotic era, numerous efforts are in place to regain the waning charm of antibiotics which are proving ineffective against most “Superbugs”. Engineered nanomaterials, especially gold nanoparticles (GNPs) capped with antibacterial agents, are proving to be an effective and novel strategy against multidrug resistant (MDR) bacteria. In this study, we report a one-step synthesis of antibioticcapped GNPs (25 ± 5 nm) utilizing the combined reducing and capping ability of a cephalosporin antibiotic, ceftazidime. No signs of aggregation or leaching of ceftazidime from GNP surface was observed upon its storage. Antibacterial testing showed dosedependent broad spectrum …

Com Outlook Fall 2014, College Of Osteopathic Medicine

COM Outlook

No abstract provided.

Limitations To Estimating Bacterial Cross-Species Transmission Using Genetic And Genomic Markers: Inferences From Simulation Modeling, Julio A. Benavides, Paul C. Cross, Gordon Luikart, Scott Creel

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Cross-species transmission (CST) of bacterial pathogens has major implications for human health, livestock, and wildlife management because it determines whether control actions in one species may have subsequent effects on other potential host species. The study of bacterial transmission has benefitted from methods measuring two types of genetic variation: variable number of tandem repeats (VNTRs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). However, it is unclear whether these data can distinguish between different epidemiological scenarios. We used a simulation model with two host species and known transmission rates (within and between species) to evaluate the utility of these markers for inferring CST. …

Rules And Values: A Coordinated Regulatory And Educational Approach To The Public Health Crises Of Chronic Pain And Addiction, Joanna G. Katzman, George D. Comerci, Michael Landen, Larry Loring, Steven M. Jenkusky, Sanjeev Arora, Summers Kalishman, Lisa Marr, Chris Camarata, Daniel Duhigg, Jennifer Dillow, Eugene Koshkin, Denise E. Taylor, Cynthia M A Geppert

Project ECHO Bibliography

Chronic pain and opioid addiction are 2 pressing public health problems, and prescribing clinicians often lack the skills necessary to manage these conditions. Our study sought to address the benefits of a coalition of an academic medical center pain faculty and government agencies in addressing the high unintentional overdose death rates in New Mexico. New Mexico's 2012-2013 mandated chronic pain and addiction education programs studied more than 1000 clinicians. Positive changes were noted in precourse and postcourse surveys of knowledge, self-efficacy, and attitudes. Controlled substance dispensing data from the New Mexico Board of Pharmacy also demonstrated safer prescribing. The total …

Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis Caused By Naegleria Fowleri: An Old Enemy Presenting New Challenges, Ruqaiyyah Siddiqui, Naveed Ahmed Khan

Department of Biological & Biomedical Sciences

First discovered in 1899, Naegleria fowleri is a protist pathogen, known to infect the central nervous system and produce primary amoebic meningoencephalitis. The most distressing aspect is that the fatality rate has remained more than 95%, despite our advances in antimicrobial chemotherapy and supportive care. Although rare worldwide, most cases have been reported in the United States, Australia, and Europe (France). A large number of cases in developing countries go unnoticed. In particular, religious, recreational, and cultural practices such as ritual ablution and/or purifications, Ayurveda, and the use of neti pots for nasal irrigation can contribute to this devastating infection. …

Effects Of Animal Assisted Therapy On Human Health, Gene Swanson

HIM 1990-2015

The purpose of this thesis is to conduct an integrative review of existing literature focusing on Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT), specifically canines, on human health. The reviewed articles were published between the years of 2000 to 2014, written in the English language, scholarly in nature, in peer-reviewed journals with access to full text electronic versions of the article, along with articles that provided current anecdotal information related to the effects of AAT. Search terms included the phrase, "animal assisted therapy" in the title. Results of the literature search yielded an enormous quantity of recent and innovative research on various aspects …

Large-Scale Avian Influenza Surveillance In Wild Birds Throughout The United States, Sarah N. Bevins, Kerri Pedersen, Mark W. Lutman, John A. Baroch, Brandon S. Schmit, Dennis Kohler, Thomas Gidlewski, Dale L. Nolte, Seth R. Swafford, Thomas J. Deliberto

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Avian influenza is a viral disease that primarily infects wild and domestic birds, but it also can be transmitted to a variety of mammals. In 2006, the United States of America Departments of Agriculture and Interior designed a large-scale, interagency surveillance effort that sought to determine if highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses were present in wild bird populations within the United States of America. This program, combined with the Canadian and Mexican surveillance programs, represented the largest, coordinated wildlife disease surveillance program ever implemented. Here we analyze data from 197,885 samples that were collected from over 200 wild bird species. …

Altered Community Flammability In Florida's Apalachicola Ravines And Implications For The Persistence Of The Endangered Conifer Torreya Taxifolia., John M. Mola, J. Morgan Varner, Erik S. Jules, Tova Spector

CALS Publications

Plant species and communities often reflect historic fire regimes via ecological and evolutionary responses to recurrent fires. Plant communities of the southeastern USA experience a wide array of fire regimes, perhaps nowhere more marked than the juxtaposition of fire-prone uplands and adjacent mesic ravines along Florida's Apalachicola River. The ravines contain many endemic and disjunct species, most notably the endangered endemic conifer Torreya taxifolia. A rapid decline in T. taxifolia over the past 60 years has been associated with widespread replacement by other tree species. To understand the changes accompanying the shift in ravine composition, we compared leaf litter flammability …

Undergraduate And Graduate Course Descriptions, 2014 Fall, Wright State University

Course Descriptions

Wright State University undergraduate and graduate course descriptions from Fall 2014.

Publication Rates Of Presentations At Medical Meetings, Jonathan Housey

All Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Medical Geography, Chantel Sloan

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Research Interests: How is your health influenced by where you live; infectious disease spread; pediatric respiratory illnesses; air pollution; health disparities; gene x environments interactions