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Host Switching Vs. Host Sharing In Overlapping Sylvatic Trypanosoma Cruzi Transmission Cycles, Christopher Kribs, Christopher Mitchell

Mathematics Faculty Publications - Archive

The principle of competitive exclusion is well established for multiple populations competing for the same resource, and simple models for multistrain infection exhibit it as well when cross-immunity precludes coinfections. However, multiple hosts provide niches for different pathogens to occupy simultaneously. This is the case for the vector-borne parasite Trypanosoma cruzi in overlapping sylvatic transmission cycles in the Americas, where it is enzootic. This study uses cycles in the USA involving two different hosts but the same vector species as a context for the study of the mechanisms behind the communication between the two cycles. Vectors dispersing in search of …

Wintering Bald Eagle Count Trends In The Conterminous United States, 1986-2010, Wade L. Eakle, Laura Bond, Mark R. Fuller, Richard A. Fischer, Karen Steenhof

Biomedical Research Institute Publications and Presentations

We analyzed counts from the annual Midwinter Bald Eagle Survey to examine state, regional, and national trends in counts of wintering Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) within the conterminous 48 United States from 1986 to 2010. Using hierarchical mixed model methods, we report trends in counts from 11 729 surveys along 844 routes in 44 states. Nationwide Bald Eagle counts increased 0.6% per yr over the 25-yr period, compared to an estimate of 1.9% per yr from 1986 to 2000. Trend estimates for Bald Eagles were significant (P ≤ 0.05) and positive in the northeastern and northwestern U.S. …

2015-September-01-Quillen College Gets $2.7 Million Nih Grant, University Marketing And Communications, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

No abstract provided.

A Biosystematic View Of Civilizations: Western Europe And Japan Before And After The Industrial Revolution, Kunio Kawamura

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Nest Success In Northwest Tennessee, T. David Pitts

The Migrant - Tennessee Ornithological Society

No abstract provided.

Alternative Food Networks And Food Provisioning As A Gendered Act, Rebecca L. Som Castellano

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Alternative food networks (AFNs) are exemplified by organic, Fair Trade and local foods, and promote forms of food provisioning that are ‘corrective’ to conventional agriculture and food (agrifood) systems. Despite enthusiasm for AFNs, scholars have increasingly interrogated whether inequalities are perpetuated by AFN’s. Reproductions of gender inequality in AFNs, particularly at the level of consumption, has often been left empirically unexamined, however. This is problematic given that women continue to be predominately responsible for food provisioning in the U.S., and that this responsibility can lead to negative physical, psychological and social outcomes. Using quantitative methods and data from the 2012 …

Managing Precision Dairy Farming Technologies, Barbara Alice Wadsworth, Amanda Stone, Lauren M. Mayo, Nicky Tsai, Jeffrey M. Bewley

Agriculture and Natural Resources Publications

Precision dairy farming is the use of technologies to measure physiological, behavioral, and production indicators of individual animals to improve management strategies and farm performance. These systems have the potential to detect disease and estrus and to evaluate cow comfort by monitoring activity, feeding time, lying time, mounting activity, real-time location, reticulorumen pH, rumination time, and body temperature.

The data provided by a precision dairy farming device is only valuable if it records the data properly for the right cow and is used by the producer. This factsheet will describe problems that researchers at the University of Kentucky have experienced …

Design, Synthesis And Evaluation Of Bivalent Inhibitors Of Trehalose-6-Phosphate Phosphatase, Chunliang Liu

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

The D-glucose disaccharide α, α-D-trehalose is synthesized by a variety of bacteria, fungi, plants and invertebrates to support cell survival by functioning as a fuel, a metabolic regulator or a protectant against environmental stress. Five different trehalose biosynthetic pathways are known to exist, one of which, the OtsA/OtsB pathway is common among pathogenic bacteria and fungi and is also found in parasitic nematodes. Previously reported otsA and otsB gene knockout (or knockdown) experiments have shown that both pathway enzymes are essential for M. tuberculosis cell growth and host colonization. RNAi gene silencing carried out in the nematode model system Caenohabditis …

Case Studies Of The Hot Dog-Fold And Acyl-Adenylate-Forming Superfamilies: Characterizing The Importance Of Functional Divergence In Cellular Metabolism, Lucas R. Zimney

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

Some of the biggest contributors to cellular respiration (and cellular metabolism in general) are acyl-CoA derivatives, a subclass of biological thioesters. Known to function in a variety of pathways, the regulation of their formation and breakdown are critical, carried about by acyl-CoA synthetases and thioesterases, respectively. The work reported within this dissertation will focus on functional divergence within two enzyme superfamilies -- the hot dog-fold and acyl-adenylate-forming superfamilies — and can be broken down into two main parts. Part one will look at tracking the functional divergence within the hot dog-fold superfamily thioesterases. A highly evolved thioesterase, flK, has been …

Changing The Rules Of The Game: Beyond Disclosure Framework For Securities Regulation, Jena Martin

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Statutory Pooling And Unitization In West Virginia: The Case For Protecting Private Landowners, James E. Mcdaniel

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Inventing Patents: A Story Of Legal And Technical Transfer, L. R. Bradford

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of The Participation Rates And Perceptions Of Males And Females Regarding High School Athletic Participation, Edward Malcom Dreyer

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare the athletic participation rate of males and females within the high school of study. Freshmen and senior students were surveyed to gather data on the reasons students chose to participate or not participate in athletics. Focus groups were conducted at a local university to further explore why students participated in athletics and why some of these students discontinued their participation in athletics. Focus groups also explored challenges facing athletes and student perceptions of female participation in athletics. Athletic participation data from the high school of study were also taken into consideration. This …

Profibrotic Role For Interleukin-4 In Cardiac Remodeling And Dysfunction, Hongmei Peng, Zeyd Sarwar, Xiao-Ping Yang, Edward L. Peterson, Jiang Xu, Brana Janic, Nadia Rhaleb, Oscar A. Carretero, Nour-Eddine Rhaleb

Hypertension and Vascular Research Articles

Elevated interleukin-4 (IL-4) levels are associated with cardiac fibrosis in hypertension and heart failure in both patients and experimental animals. We hypothesized that chronically elevated IL-4 induces cardiac fibrosis, resulting in a predisposition of the heart to angiotensin II-induced damage. Wild-type Balb/c (WT, high circulating IL-4) and IL-4-deficient Balb/c mice (IL-4(-/-)) were used. WT mice exhibited cardiac fibrosis (evidenced by an increase in expression of procollagen genes/interstitial collagen fraction), enlarged left ventricle chamber, and declined cardiac function associated with a greater number of mast cells and macrophages in the heart compared with IL-4(-/-). In contrast, IL-4(-/-) mice had normal cardiac …

Canine Haiku: Yellow Ball, Julie Andreyev, Tom (Canine)

The Goose

Poetry by Julie Andreyev and Tom.

2015-2016 Bic Teaching Guide, Marta Moore Editor

Book in Common

Teaching guide for the 2015-2016 Book-in-Common: The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller.

Demographics And Transfer Of Escherichia Coli Within Bos Taurus Populations, Joshua Ryan Dillard

Master's Theses

In the United States, symptoms caused by pathogenic strains of Escherichia coli are on the rise. A major source of these pathogenic strains is the E. coli in the digestive tract of cattle. The purpose of this project was to determine if E. coli are transferred between individuals of the same species and if interspecies transmission is possible. Proximity of cattle was also studied as a contributing factor to the transfer of E. coli. To accomplish this goal, E. coli isolates from cattle and cohabitating ground squirrels were compared through a new method of bacterial strain typing called pyroprinting. …

Effects Of Testosterone On The Spatial Ecology, Coloration, And Brain Regions In Western Fence Lizards, Sceloporus Occidentalis, Rachel Catharine Wilson

Master's Theses

An organism’s spatial ecology allows for access to essential resources such as food, mates, and escape from predators. Home range size, or the total area an organism inhabits, varies in relation to numerous factors including seasonality. During the breeding season, home range size increases in males across taxa. In addition, males usually also have larger home range sizes than females. This implicates testosterone (T) as a possible mediator of this relationship. Indeed, T causes an increase in home range size of males in numerous species of lizards. In addition to T causing an increase in home range size, it also …

A Unique 5' Translation Element Discovered In Triticum Mosaic Virus, Robyn Roberts, Jincan Zhang, Laura K. Mayberry, Satyanarayana Tatineni, Karen S. Browning, Aurelie M. Rakotondrafara

Department of Plant Pathology: Faculty Publications

Several plant viruses encode elements at the 5' end of their RNAs, which, unlike most cellular mRNAs, can initiate translation in the absence of a 5' m7GpppG cap. Here, we describe an exceptionally long (739-nucleotide [nt]) leader sequence in triticum mosaic virus (TriMV), a recently emerged wheat pathogen that belongs to the Potyviridae family of positive-strand RNA viruses. We demonstrate that the TriMV 5' leader drives strong cap-independent translation in both wheat germ extract and oat protoplasts through a novel, noncanonical translation mechanism. Translation preferentially initiates at the 13th start codon within the leader sequence independently of eIF4E but involves …

Unh Welcomes New Faculty, Unh Communications And Public Affairs

UNH Today Archive

No abstract provided.

First Choice, September 2015, Wusf Public Media

First Choice Monthly Newsletter

The September 2015 issue of WUSF's newsletter "First Choice."

Faculty Senate Newsletter, September 2015, Louisiana State University And Agricultural & Mechanical College

LSU Faculty Senate Publications

Message from President: In recent months, the top officers—or, as they like to call themselves, the “CEOs”—of Louisiana’s university systems have asked their public relations departments to proclaim their great accomplishment in staving off the economic starvation of campuses by a penurious legislature. According to this narrative, a heroic effort by the Fab Four of higher education administration convinced backwoods politicians that prosperous campuses were good for everyone. Like all narratives, this one features a beginning and an ending. Beginnings and endings have a way of eclipsing our vision of what went on before or after the story. By focusing …

Oat Consumption Reduced Intestinal Fat Deposition And Improved Health Span In Caenorhabditis Elegans Model, Chenfei Gao, Zhanguo Gao, Frank L. Greenway, Jeffrey H. Burton, William D. Johnson, Michael J. Keenan, Frederick M. Enright, Roy J. Martin, Yi Fang Chu, Jolene Zheng

Faculty Publications

© 2015 The Authors. In addition to their fermentable dietary fiber and the soluble β-glucan fiber, oats have unique avenanthramides that have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that reduce coronary heart disease in human clinical trials. We hypothesized that oat consumption will increase insulin sensitivity, reduce body fat, and improve health span in Caenorhabditis elegans through a mechanism involving the daf-2 gene, which codes for the insulin/insulin-like growth factor-1-like receptor, and that hyperglycemia will attenuate these changes. Caenorhabditis elegans wild type (N2) and the null strains sir-2.1, daf-16, and daf-16/daf-2 were fed Escherichia coli (OP50) and oat flakes (0.5%, 1.0%, or …

Herpes Simplex Vaccines: Prospects Of Live-Attenuated Hsv Vaccines To Combat Genital And Ocular Infections, Brent Stanfield, Konstantin Gus Kousoulas

Faculty Publications

© 2015, Springer International Publishing AG. Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and its closely related herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) cause important clinical manifestations in humans including acute ocular disease and genital infections. These viruses establish latency in the trigeminal ganglionic and dorsal root neurons, respectively. Both viruses are widespread among humans and can frequently reactivate from latency causing disease. Currently, there are no vaccines available against herpes simplex viral infections. However, a number of promising vaccine approaches are being explored in preclinical investigations with few progressing to early-phase clinical trials. Consensus research findings suggest that robust humoral …

The Last Denton Conference, Barbara R. Walters

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Maintenance Of Brucellosis In Yellowstone Bison: Linking Seasonal Food Resources, Host-Pathogen Interaction, And Life-History Trade-Offs, John J. Treanor, Chris Geremia, Michael A. Ballou, Duane H. Keisler, Patrick J. White, John J. Cox, Phillip H. Crowley

Biology Faculty Publications

The seasonal availability of food resources is an important factor shaping the life-history strategies of organisms. During times of nutritional restriction, physiological trade-offs can induce periods of immune suppression, thereby increasing susceptibility to infectious disease. Our goal was to provide a conceptual framework describing how the endemic level bovine brucellosis (Brucella abortus) may be maintained in Yellowstone bison based on the seasonality of food resources and the life-history strategies of the host and pathogen. Our analysis was based on active B. abortus infection (measured via bacterial culture), nutritional indicators (measured as metabolites and hormones in plasma), and carcass …

Can We Identify Genes With Increased Phylogenetic Reliability?, V P. Doyle, R E. Young, G J. Naylor, J M. Brown, V P. Doyle

Faculty Publications

Topological heterogeneity among gene trees is widely observed in phylogenomic analyses and some of this variation is likely caused by systematic error in gene tree estimation. Systematic error can be mitigated by improving models of sequence evolution to account for all evolutionary processes relevant to each gene or identifying those genes whose evolution best conforms to existing models. However, the best method for identifying such genes is not well established. Here, we ask if filtering genes according to their clock-likeness or posterior predictive effect size (PPES, an inference-based measure of model violation) improves phylogenetic reliability and congruence. We compared these …

Can We Identify Genes With Increased Phylogenetic Reliability?, V P. Doyle, R E. Young, G J. Naylor, J M. Brown, V P. Doyle

Faculty Publications

Topological heterogeneity among gene trees is widely observed in phylogenomic analyses and some of this variation is likely caused by systematic error in gene tree estimation. Systematic error can be mitigated by improving models of sequence evolution to account for all evolutionary processes relevant to each gene or identifying those genes whose evolution best conforms to existing models. However, the best method for identifying such genes is not well established. Here, we ask if filtering genes according to their clock-likeness or posterior predictive effect size (PPES, an inference-based measure of model violation) improves phylogenetic reliability and congruence. We compared these …

Environmental Gradients And The Evolution Of Successional Habitat Specialization: A Test Case With 14 Neotropical Forest Sites, Susan G. Letcher, Jesse R. Lasky, Robin L. Chazdon, Natalia Norden, S. Joseph Wright, Jorge A. Meave, Eduardo A. Pérez-García, Rodrigo Muñoz, Eunice Romero-Pérez, Ana Andrade, José Luis Andrade, Patricia Balvanera, Justin M. Becknell, Tony V. Bentos, Radika Bhaskar, Frans Bongers, Vanessa Boukili, Pedro H.S. Brancalion, Ricardo G. César, Deborah A. Clark, David B. Clark, Dylan Craven, Alexander Defrancesco, Juan M. Dupuy, Bryan Finegan, Eugenio González-Jiménez, Jefferson S. Hall, Kyle E. Harms, José Luis Hernández-Stefanoni, Peter Hietz, Deborah Kennard, Timothy J. Killeen, Susan G. Laurance

Faculty Publications

© 2015 British Ecological Society. Successional gradients are ubiquitous in nature, yet few studies have systematically examined the evolutionary origins of taxa that specialize at different successional stages. Here we quantify successional habitat specialization in Neotropical forest trees and evaluate its evolutionary lability along a precipitation gradient. Theoretically, successional habitat specialization should be more evolutionarily conserved in wet forests than in dry forests due to more extreme microenvironmental differentiation between early and late-successional stages in wet forest. We applied a robust multinomial classification model to samples of primary and secondary forest trees from 14 Neotropical lowland forest sites spanning a …

Developmental Changes In Hypoxic Exposure And Responses To Anoxia In Drosophila Melanogaster, Viviane Callier, Steven C. Hand, Jacob B. Campbell, Taylor Biddulph, Jon F. Harrison

Faculty Publications

© 2015. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd. Holometabolous insects undergo dramatic morphological and physiological changes during ontogeny. In particular, the larvae of many holometabolous insects are specialized to feed in soil, water or dung, inside plant structures, or inside other organisms as parasites where they may commonly experience hypoxia or anoxia. In contrast, holometabolous adults usually are winged and live with access to air. Here, we show that larval Drosophila melanogaster experience severe hypoxia in their normal laboratory environments; third instar larvae feed by tunneling into a medium without usable oxygen. Larvae move strongly in anoxia for many …