Digital Commons Network^™

Hiv Genotyping Cost Analysis With Follow-Up As An Indicator, Laura Biederman, Md, Amity L. Roberts, Phd, D(Abmm)

Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Cell Biology Resident's Posters

HIV-1 genotype (GHIV), HIV-1 Integrase (HIV1I) and HIV-1 Trophile (HIV1T) assays are sendout tests that incur a significant financial burden on the laboratory when ordered on inpatients who do not receive follow-up clinic visits. For these assays to be utilized in guiding antiretroviral therapy, the patient must receive follow-up. It will reduce the sendout budget by restricting these tests to the outpatient clinic setting.

Foreign Language Teaching And Learning, Aleidine Kramer Moeller, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Foreign language teaching and learning have changed from teacher-centered to learner/learning-centered environments. Relying on language theories, research findings, and experiences, educators developed teaching strategies and learning environments that engaged learners in interactive communicative language tasks. A shift in foreign language pedagogy from a specific foreign language method to the measurement of language performance/competency has resulted in a change in the role of the teacher from one of authority/expert to that of facilitator/guide and agent of change. Current developments point to public pedagogy, social media, and action research as additional ways to foster intercultural competence and language learning.

Choice At Work: Young V. United Parcel Service, Pregnancy Discrimination, And Reproductive Liberty, Mary Ziegler

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bringing Space Science Down To Earth For Preservice Elementary Teachers, Toni A. Ivey, Nicole M. Colston, Julie A. Thomas

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article reports on a collaborative enterprise between Oklahoma State University’s (OSU) NASA Education Projects and OSU’s College of Education preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) to engage approximately 400 middle school students for a 20-minute live downlink with Commander Kevin Ford from the International Space Station (ISS). NASA supports this opportunity through a competitive proposal process (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2014). The project’s theme, Pioneers in Space: STEM Careers on the Space Frontier, engaged both PSTs and middle school students in discussing the benefits of space research, while drawing on themes relevant to students’ regional history. PSTs prepared Pioneers in …

Translocation Of Acropora Cervicornis Across Geographic Regions: Investigating Species Recovery And Restoration, Bradley Cody Bliss

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is the first known study to relocate Acropora cervicornis across multiple regions of the Florida Reef Tract. Since 2006, A. cervicornis has been listed as a threatened coral species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. In response, restoration efforts utilizing coral nursery methods have been implemented throughout the Caribbean. The primary objective of this research was to determine the response of A. cervicornis colonies to being relocated between two coral nurseries separated by approximately 150km along the Florida Reef Tract. To accomplish this, a reciprocal transport was conducted between coral fragments with known genotypes from Broward County and …

Feeding Ecology And Habitat Utilization Of The Great Barracuda Sphyraena Barracuda (Edwards 1771) In Southeast Florida, Noah R. Hansen

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Great barracuda Sphyraena barracuda is a large predatory teleost found circumglobally, other than the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The species is commonly caught by both recreational and commercial fishermen as bycatch while targeting other, more economically or recreationally valuable fishes. This species also exhibits an ontogenetic shift in habitat, with juveniles inhabiting mangrove and seagrass habitats, while adults live near offshore reefs and associated structure.

This thesis consists of two separate studies of S. barracuda: 1) feeding ecology along an ontogenetic gradient and 2) habitat utilization of as derived through electronic tagging. The first chapter of this thesis describes the …

Regulating Life, Disease, And Death: The Legal, Ethical And Moral Implications Of Science, Medicine, And Technology, Jae Yeon Kim

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

On March 19, 2015, the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy hosted a symposium to address the changing landscape of medicine, science, and technology. The Journal made this selection because advancements in these fields pose unique challenges to society’s understanding of the law’s role in regulating and shaping public discourse on life, disease, and death.

Religion And Public Reason In The Politics Of Biotechnology, J. Benjamin Hurlbut

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

Questions about the relevance of religious views to public policy have been central in debates over the governance of biotechnology since the 1960s. This article offers an empirical analysis of moments of deliberative politics surrounding human embryo research, primarily within public bioethics bodies. I examine how these bodies have used the idea of public reason as developed in deliberative democratic theory to differentiate between secular and religious reasons. I argue that scientific authority is made to play a powerful, but largely unacknowledged role in constructing these categories by contributing to definitions of the range of “reasonable” pluralism. I show that …

Examining The Impact Of A Fatigue Intervention On Job Performance: A Longitudinal Study Across United States Hospitals, Megan Gregory

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fatigue in healthcare providers has been linked to dangerous outcomes for patients, including medical errors, surgical complications, and accidents. Resident physicians, who traditionally work long hours on minimal sleep, are among the most fatigued. In attempt to mitigate the impact of fatigue on resident physician performance and improve patient safety, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) implemented a fatigue intervention program in 2011 for medical residency programs in the United States. This caused a significant decrease in the number of hours that first-year residents were permitted to work, compared with hours worked by first-year residents in prior years. …

Bo43-2-Web.Pdf, Bird Observer

Bird Observer

No abstract provided.

Bo43-3-Web.Pdf, Bird Observer

Bird Observer

No abstract provided.

Bo43-4-Web.Pdf, Bird Observer

Bird Observer

No abstract provided.

Bo43-5-Web.Pdf, Bird Observer

Bird Observer

No abstract provided.

Bo43-6-Web.Pdf, Bird Observer

Bird Observer

No abstract provided.

Paved With Good Intentions: Unintended Consequences Of Federal Proposals To Integrate Child Support And Parenting Time, Lisa V. Martin, Stacy Brustin

Faculty Publications

Promoting the relationships between noncustodial parents and their children has become a federal policy priority. Recent policy proposals aim to achieve this by integrating adjudications of custody and parenting time within proceedings to establish child support. These proposals share several laudable goals, including encouraging the involvement of fathers in their children’s lives, increasing compliance with child support orders, and facilitating unmarried parents’ access to court processes for resolving custody and visitation disputes. But the simplistic solutions employed by the proposals, some of which would mandate that custody and visitation be adjudicated in all child support proceedings, pose serious risks to …

Nutritional Assessment Of Preschool Children In An Urban Ecuadorian Community, Elizabeth A. Bronner

Theses and Dissertations--Nutrition and Food Systems

Objectives: The goal of this project was to determine the nutritional needs of preschool age children to help guide intervention development. The research aims were 1) to examine and describe young child (ages one to five) nutritional status as it relates to key nutrients associated with stunting and wasting; 2) to determine what key macro- and micro-nutrient deficiencies (primarily iron and zinc) are associated with wasting and stunting.

Methodology:

Study sample: Sixty-seven families with children ages one to five who participating in routine health care clinic visits during the UK Shoulder to Shoulder Global health brigade visits.

Study …

Adaptive Plasticity And Epigenetic Variation In Response To Warming In An Alpine Plant, Adrienne B. Nicotra, Deborah L. Segal, Gemma L. Hoyle, Aaron W. Schrey, Koen J. Verhoeven, Christina L. Richards

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Environmentally induced phenotypic plasticity may be a critical component of response to changing environments. We examined local differentiation and adaptive phenotypic plasticity in response to elevated temperature in half-sib lines collected across an elevation gradient for the alpine herb, Wahlenbergia ceracea. Using Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP), we found low but significant genetic differentiation between low- and high-elevation seedlings, and seedlings originating from low elevations grew faster and showed stronger temperature responses (more plasticity) than those from medium and high elevations. Furthermore, plasticity was more often adaptive for plants of low-elevation origin and maladaptive for plants of high elevation. With …

Ebola Cases And Health System Demand In Liberia, John M. Drake, Rajreni B. Kaul, Laura W. Alexander, Suzanne M. O’Regan, Andrew M. Kramer, J. Tomlin Pulliam, Matthew J. Ferrari, Andrew W. Park

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

In 2014, a major epidemic of human Ebola virus disease emerged in West Africa, where human-to-human transmission has now been sustained for greater than 12 months. In the summer of 2014, there was great uncertainty about the answers to several key policy questions concerning the path to containment. What is the relative importance of nosocomial transmission compared with community-acquired infection? How much must hospital capacity increase to provide care for the anticipated patient burden? To which interventions will Ebola transmission be most responsive? What must be done to achieve containment? In recent years, epidemic models have been used to guide …

Immigration Can Destabilize Tri-Trophic Interactions: Implications For Conservation Of Top Predators, Kevin L. S. Drury, Jesse D. Suter, Jacob B. Rendall, Andrew M. Kramer, John M. Drake

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Top predators often have large home ranges and thus are especially vulnerable to habitat loss and fragmentation. Increasing connectance among habitat patches is therefore a common conservation strategy, based in part on models showing that increased migration between subpopulations can reduce vulnerability arising from population isolation. Although three-dimensional models are appropriate for exploring consequences to top predators, the effects of immigration on tri-trophic interactions have rarely been considered. To explore the effects of immigration on the equilibrium abundances of top predators, we studied the effects of immigration in the three-dimensional Rosenzweig-MacArthur model. To investigate the stability of the top predator …

Impact Of Welfare Participation During Childhood On Adult Income, Curran A. Prettyman

Lewis Honors College Capstone Collection

This paper analyzes the impact of welfare participation during childhood on adult income. In the United States, welfare programs have a long history originating from the 1800s, and over $20 billion are currently allocated to various anti-poverty programs, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Supplemental Security Income. Many people believe that these programs effectively eradicate childhood poverty. However, ordinary least squares and instrumental variables regression models suggest welfare programs are counterproductive. On average, holding all else constant, with 95% confidence, the total dollar amount of funding received from welfare programs during childhood is statistically significant to a …

The Characteristic Imset Polytope Of Bayesian Networks With Ordered Nodes, Jing Xi, Ruriko Yoshida

Statistics Faculty Publications

In 2010, M. Studený, R. Hemmecke, and S. Lindner explored a new algebraic description of graphical models, called characteristic imsets. Compared with standard imsets, characteristic imsets have several advantages: they are still unique vector representatives of conditional independence structures, 0-1 vectors, and more intuitive in terms of graphs than standard imsets. After defining a characteristic imset polytope (cim-polytope) as the convex hull of all characteristic imsets with a given set of nodes, they also showed that a model selection in graphical models, which maximizes a quality criterion, can be converted into a linear programming problem over the cim-polytope. However, in …

The Parlous State Of Academia: When Politics, Prestige And Proxies Overtake Higher Education's Teaching Mission, Viviane Callier, Richard H. Singiser, Nathan L. Vanderford

Toxicology and Cancer Biology Faculty Publications

Original and significant research benefits the careers of those running universities and brings prestige to their institution. World class teaching, by and large, does not, and this has important consequences for higher education's tripartite mission. Most notably, emphasis on the research mission of major higher education institutions dwarfs that of the teaching mission and this is to the detriment of teachers and students. Policy interventions are needed to address this discrepancy.

Microrna-510 As A Biomarker Of Sensitivity To Platinum-Based Chemotherapy In Triple Negative Breast Cancer, Qi Jin Guo

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease that is clinically classified based on the expression of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). Associated with the poorest prognosis of all subtypes, triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is defined as ER-/PR-/HER2-; lacking these receptors, TNBCs are insensitive to effective targeted therapies and chemotherapy remains the mainstay of treatment. Recent research has shown that platinum chemotherapy agents are particularly active in TNBC, including a clinical trial that demonstrated single agent cisplatin alone can induce response in a subset of TNBC patients. However, identification of biomarkers is …

Developing Culturally Sensitive Education An Hmong Americans With Diabetes, Fay Marcia Mitchell-Brown

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Despite advances in medical care for diabetes, a diabetes health disparity exists among ethnic minorities. Diabetes is a new concept for Hmong Americans. Research has highlighted the high risk that Hmong Americans face of having this chronic disease. This dissertation is a compendium of three manuscripts related to diabetes care in the Hmong population. The first manuscript is a scoping review of the prevalence of diabetes and factors affecting diabetes care in the Hmong American population. Sustaining self-management is often difficult for people with diabetes. The second manuscript focuses on sustaining self-management behaviors using a theoretical model that describes strategies …

Modulation Of Gilt And Pax3 By Ganoderic Acid Dm Enhances Radiation And Chemoimmunotherapy Of Melanoma, Jessica D. Hathaway-Schrader

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Melanoma is an aggressive skin cancer that plagues Western populations. Current treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, and high-dose radiation have had some success, but often fail in treating late stage metastatic melanoma. Immunotherapies have been successful in treating a small percentage of late stage patients, but these treatments do not provide a long-lasting response to effectively clear the tumor. Therefore, current studies have been investigating whether combining common treatments with immunotherapies would provide the necessary boost to further improve tumor killing. An optimum presentation of HLA class II proteins is essential for the activation of CD4+ T cells, which provide …

Clinical Utility Of Pharmacogenomic Testing To Support Prescriptive Decision Making Among Anesthesia Providers: A Mixed-Method Study, Jonathan Dru Riddle

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Anesthesia care is delivered world wide on a daily basis. Provision of anesthesia cares for surgical, obstetrical, or pain management procedures mandate a thorough understanding of physiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology. Nearly 4 million anesthetics are delivered in the United States each year and the impact of genetics on anesthesia care is becoming greater. Anesthesia providers make prescriptive decisions based on an individual patient's disease processes, proposed surgical or therapeutic procedure, and a thorough clinical history. The age of personalized medicine is upon us and the ability to use genetic testing to help predict how a patient will respond to various …

Signals From The 4th Dimension: Role Of Extracellular Matrix Signaling In Synaptic Plasticity Mediating Addiction, Alexander C. W. Smith

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Chronic cocaine abuse causes maladaptive neuroadaptations that underlie vulnerability to relapse, even after protracted abstinence. A great deal of work has examined mechanisms of neuroplasticity by which these occur. However, the majority of experimentation has focused on intracellular signaling cascades, while the extracellular compartment has been largely ignored. In the past decade, work has emerged in the learning and memory literature that indicates that extracellular matrix remodeling and signaling is required for adaptive forms of neuroplasticity (e.g. learning and memory), although it has not been thoroughly examined in models of maladaptive neuroplasticity. Throughout this dissertation a drug self-administration, extinction and …

The Effect Of Inpatient Palliative Care Consultations On Hospital Readmission Rates For Those With Alzheimer's Disease, Cynthia Lynn Smoak

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Background: Evidence suggests that inpatient palliative care consultation (IPC) services improve the likelihood of fewer hospital readmissions for those with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Objective: This study examines the difference in readmission rates for Alzheimer's patients with and without inpatient palliative care consultations. Design: This is a retrospective data analysis using an inception cohort derived from HCUP archival data from the state of Florida for the year 2012: Only acute care patients with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease or dementia who were hospitalized for either the dementia condition or because of acute urinary tract infection (UTI), pneumonia, congestive heart failure …

V. 17-1, 2015 Masthead

San Diego International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Collagen-Mimetic Hydrogels Promote Human Endothelial Cell Adhesion, Migration And Phenotypic Maturation, Dany J. Munoz Pinto, V. R. Guiza-Arguello, S. M. Becerra-Bayona, J. Erndt-Marino, S. Samavedi, S. Malmut, B. Russell, M. Höök, M. S. Hahn

Engineering Faculty Research

This work evaluates the response of human aortic endothelial cells (HAECs) to thromboresistant collagen-mimetic hydrogel coatings toward improving the biocompatibility of existing "off-the-shelf" small-caliber vascular grafts. Specifically, bioactive hydrogels-previously shown to support α1/α2 integrin-mediated cell adhesion but to resist platelet activation-were fabricated by combining poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) with a 120 kDa, triple-helical collagen-mimetic protein (Scl2-2) containing the GFPGER adhesion sequence. Analysis of HAECs seeded onto the resulting PEG-Scl2-2 hydrogels demonstrated that HAEC adhesion increased with increasing Scl2-2 concentration, while HAEC migration rate decreased over this same concentration range. In addition, evaluation of HAEC phenotype at confluence indicated significant differences in …