Digital Commons Network^™

Spatial Decay Of Rotating Waves And Restrictions On Finite Disks., Sahitya Konda

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

In this thesis, we consider the system of reaction-diffusion equations and the behavior of the solution of such a system. The focus is to concentrate on solutions which decay at infinity. Under suitable assumptions, we prove the solution and its derivatives decay exponentially in all space. We also attempt to show that the solution decays exponentially for the system of equations when posed on a finite disk. This result has been confirmed via numerical methods before, but has never been attempted through an analytic approach, like in this paper. We prove the exponential decay of the solution in a one …

Freedom Of Expression And Morality-Based Impediments To The Enforcement Of Intellectual Property Rights, Marc J. Randazza

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Swosu Fact Book Fall 2015, Monica Varner, Diane Fitzsimmons

Fact Books

Southwestern Oklahoma State University Fact Book provides a ready source of information to answer frequently asked questions about the University and its operations. The Fact Book is compiled to assist the university with strategic planning, academic program reviews, grant writing, accreditation, and institutional information to help guide decision-making. The report is designed to help faculty, staff, and administrators better understand the student body and university trends. The data analyzed for this report was collected from 2005 to 2015.

Unless otherwise noted, the information in the Fact Book is collected on the tenth class day of each fall semester from standard …

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 …

Lgbt Cultural Conceptualization And The Acquisition Of Minority Status In The Healthcare Industry, Hannah Tulinski

Washington Semester Program

No abstract provided.

Neighborhood Change And The Role Of Environmental Stewardship: A Case Study Of Green Infrastructure For Stormwater In The City Of Portland, Oregon, Usa, Vivek Shandas

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Throughout the history of cities, the ecological landscape has often been buried, removed, or taken for granted. A recent recognition that humans are part of the global ecosystem, and that human actions both cause and are affected by ecological change, brings with it an awareness of the value of nature in cities and of natural systems on which cities depend. The feedbacks between humans and their environment within an urban context can have profound implications for the growth of and change in cities, yet there is a limited understanding of the interactions between biophysical changes in cities and the implications …

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 …

Switch Between Morphospecies Of Pocillopora Corals, David A. Paz-García, Michael E. Hellberg, Francisco J. García-De-León, Eduardo F. Balart

Faculty Publications

© 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Pocillopora corals are the main reef builders in the eastern tropical Pacific. The validity of Pocillopora morphospecies remains under debate because of disagreements between morphological and genetic data. To evaluate the temporal stability of morphospecies in situ, we monitored the shapes of individual colonies in three communities in the southern Gulf of California for 44 months. Twenty-three percent of tagged colonies of Pocillopora damicornis changed to Pocillopora inflata morphology during this time. This switch in identity coincided with a shift to a higher frequency of storms and lower water turbidity …

The Human Shoulder Suspension Apparatus: A Causal Explanation For Bilateral Asymmetry And A Fresh Look At The Evolution Of Human Bipedality, Michelle L. Osborn, Dominique G. Homberger

Faculty Publications

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The combination of large mastoid processes and clavicles is unique to humans, but the biomechanical and evolutionary significance of their special configuration is poorly understood. As part of the newly conceptualized shoulder suspension apparatus, the mastoid processes and clavicles are shaped by forces exerted by the musculo-fascial components of the cleidomastoid and clavotrapezius muscles as they suspend the shoulders from the head. Because both skeletal elements develop during infancy in tandem with the attainment of an upright posture, increased manual dexterity, and the capacity for walking, we hypothesized that the same forces would have shaped …

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 …

Nonparametric Estimation Of Interspecific Spatio-Temporal Niche Separation Between Two Lady Beetles (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) In Bt Cotton Fields, Zeng Bin Lu, Pei Jian Shi, Gadi V.P. Reddy, Lin Mao Li, Xing Yuan Men, Feng Ge

Faculty Publications

Predaceous lady beetles are important natural enemies of many insect pests in agro-ecosystem. The altered agricultural practices associated with widespread adoption of Bt cotton may have potential effects on the spatio-temporal patterns of predaceous lady beetles, as the composition and abundance of nontarget sucking pests have been changed in Bt cotton fields. In the current study, the spatio-temporal patterns of two important lady beetles, Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) and Propylea japonica (Thunberg) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), were surveyed in Bt cotton fields. A nonparametric method associated with Monte Carlo tests was used to address and test whether niche segregation occurred between …

Sequence Analysis And Characterization Of Active Human Alu Subfamilies Based On The 1000 Genomes Pilot Project, Miriam K. Konkel, Jerilyn A. Walker, Ashley B. Hotard, Megan C. Ranck, Catherine C. Fontenot, Jessica Storer, Chip Stewart, Gabor T. Marth, Mark A. Batzer

Faculty Publications

© The Author(s) 2015. The goal of the 1000 Genomes Consortium is to characterize human genome structural variation (SV), including forms of copy number variations such as deletions, duplications, and insertions. Mobile element insertions, particularly Alu elements, are major contributors to genomic SV among humans. During the pilot phase of the project we experimentally validated 645 (611 intergenic and 34 exon targeted) polymorphic "young" Alu insertion events, absent fromthe human reference genome. Here, we report high resolution sequencing of 343 (322 unique) recent Alu insertion events, along with their respective target site duplications, precise genomic breakpoint coordinates, subfamily assignment, percent …

Production Of Inbred Larvae Through Self-Fertilization Using Oocytes And Cryopreserved Sperm From The Same Individuals After Sex Reversal In Eastern Oyster Crassostrea Virginica, Huiping Yang, Yan Wang, Ximing Guo, Terrence R. Tiersch

Faculty Publications

The eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica can change sex which makes self-fertilization possible if sperm can be cryopreserved. In this study, small (~1 year old) and large (~2-3 years old) oysters were biopsied for sperm collection. Survival of the biopsied oysters after 1 year was 50% for small oysters and 17% for large oysters. Oocytes were collected from sex-reversed females, and self-fertilized with cryopreserved sperm. Of the 24 cryopreserved samples, 14 individuals had ≤1% fertility when crossed with oocytes from unrelated females, indicating that the cryopreserved sperm had reduced fertility. The other 10 individuals had a fertility of 39 ± 25% …

The Challenges Of Resolving A Rapid, Recent Radiation: Empirical And Simulated Phylogenomics Of Philippine Shrews, Thomas C. Giarla, Jacob A. Esselstyn

Faculty Publications

Phylogenetic relationships in recent, rapid radiations can be difficult to resolve due to incomplete lineage sorting and reliance on genetic markers that evolve slowly relative to the rate of speciation. By incorporating hundreds to thousands of unlinked loci, phylogenomic analyses have the potential to mitigate these difficulties. Here, we attempt to resolve phylogenetic relationships among eight shrew species (genus Crocidura) from the Philippines, a phylogenetic problem that has proven intractable with small (< 10 loci) data sets. We sequenced hundreds of ultraconserved elements and whole mitochondrial genomes in these species and estimated phylogenies using concatenation, summary coalescent, and hierarchical coalescent methods. The concatenated approach recovered a maximally supported and fully resolved tree. In contrast, the coalescent-based approaches produced similar topologies, but each had several poorly supported nodes. Using simulations, we demonstrate that the concatenated tree could be positively misleading. Our simulations also show that the tree shape we tend to infer, which involves a series of short internal branches, is difficult to resolve, even if substitution models are known and multiple individuals per species are sampled. As such, the low support we obtained for backbone relationships in our coalescent-based inferences reflects a real and appropriate lack of certainty. Our results illuminate the challenges of estimating a bifurcating tree in a rapid and recent radiation, providing a rare empirical example of a nearly simultaneous series of speciation events in a terrestrial animal lineage as it spreads across an oceanic archipelago.

Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment For Tennessee Wildlife And Habitats, Tennessee. Wildlife Resources Agency.

Strategic and Management Plans

No abstract provided.

Assessment Of Services Available For Children Exposed To Intimate Partner Violence In Anchorage, Alaska, Diwakar Vadapalli

ISER Reports

The Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) plans to expand services provided under its Flourishing Child initiative, and requested an assessment of service needs for children in the Anchorage area that are exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV). Specifically, CITC wishes to know if the proposed expansion of Flourishing Child services will satisfy an unmet need in the community. This assessment includes a brief introduction and review of related concepts, and an assessment of services available within the Municipality of Anchorage.

September 2015 Newsletter

Ergo

No abstract provided.

A Novel Compact Microwave Radiometric Sensor To Noninvasively Track Deep Tissue Thermal Profiles, Paolo F. Maccarini, Ankur Shah, Sharmila Y. Palani, Donald V. Pearce, Madhurima Vardhan, Paul R. Stauffer, Dario B. Rodrigues, Sara Salahi, Tiago R. Oliveira, Doug Reudink, Brent W. Snow

Department of Radiation Oncology Faculty Papers

Drawing from space technology to measure star temperature, we developed a noninvasive sensor to passively track thermal profiles in tissues well below the skin (>5cm). Ultra-low noise amplifiers combined with ultralow-loss switches in the 1- 2GHz band produce a high sensitivity multiband microwave radiometer. Due to the complex multilayer anatomy of human head, multiple sensing bands are needed to reconstruct the temperature of deep brain tissue. This is achieved by using a digitally controlled filter bank. To study its accuracy, the sensor was calibrated and tested in a multilayer phantom model of the human head with differential scalp and …

The Evolution Of Tanning Needs Its Day In The Sun, Ellen E. Quillen

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Variation in human pigmentation has long been an area of interest in biological anthropology, with the advent of genetic technologies allowing deeper plumbing of its evolutionary history. Genome-wide scans of selection show that pigmentation genes have undergone some of the strongest selection in many geographically distant populations. A variety of hypotheses for the photoprotective effects of melanin have been developed, but these hypotheses, as well as genetic studies, focus nearly exclusively on constitutive (basal) pigmentation levels. Failing to consider the contribution of the ultraviolet radiation (UVR) environment neglects the true interface between humans and our environment. Data drawn largely from …

A General Model Of The Relationship Between The Apportionment Of Human Genetic Diversity And The Apportionment Of Human Phenotypic Diversity, Michael D. Edge, Noah A. Rosenberg

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Models that examine genetic differences between populations alongside a genotype–phenotype map can provide insight about phenotypic variation among groups. We generalize a simple model of a completely heritable, additive, selectively neutral quantitative trait to examine the relationship between single-locus genetic differentiation and phenotypic differentiation on quantitative traits. In agreement with similar efforts using different models, we show that the expected degree to which two groups differ on a neutral quantitative trait is not strongly affected by the number of genetic loci that influence the trait: neutral trait differences are expected to have a magnitude comparable to the genetic differences at …

A Mechanism For Biologically Induced Iodine Emissions From Sea Ice, A. Saiz-Lopez, Christopher S. Blaszczak-Boxe, L. J. Carpenter

Publications and Research

Ground- and satellite-based measurements have reported high concentrations of iodine monoxide (IO) in coastal Antarctica. The sources of such a large iodine burden in the coastal Antarctic atmosphere remain unknown.We propose a mechanism for iodine release from sea ice based on the premise that micro-algae are the primary source of iodine emissions in this environment. The emissions are triggered by the biological production of iodide (I�) and hypoiodous acid (HOI) from micro-algae (contained within and underneath sea ice) and their diffusion through sea-ice brine channels, ultimately accumulating in a thin brine layer (BL) on the surface of sea ice. Prior …

Big Things Have Small Beginnings: Curating A Large Natural History Collection - Processes And Lessons Learned, Stacey Knight-Davis, Todd Bruns, Gordon Tucker

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

In the fall of 2013, the chair of Biological Sciences asked the IR librarian about digitizing the herbarium collection and including it in The Keep. A meeting between the IR librarian and Herbarium Curator Dr. Tucker thus began a project that would represent the maturing of The Keep into a substantial repository, involve both the IR librarian and the Head of Library Technology Services, and require steep learning curves in a number of areas including equipment procurement, metadata schema, data manipulation, and cross-platform communication. By opening up the collection for discovery, scholars around the world would see what is available …

Eaf1p Is Required For Recruitment Of Nua4 In Targeting Tfiid To The Promoters Of The Ribosomal Protein Genes For Transcriptional Initiation In Vivo., Bhawana Uprety, Rwik Sen, Sukesh R. Bhaumik

Articles

NuA4 (nucleosome acetyltransferase of H4) promotes transcriptional initiation of TFIID (a complex of TBP and TBP-associated factors [TAFs])-dependent ribosomal protein genes involved in ribosome biogenesis. However, it is not clearly understood how NuA4 regulates the transcription of ribosomal protein genes. Here, we show that NuA4 is recruited to the promoters of ribosomal protein genes, such as RPS5, RPL2B, and RPS11B, for TFIID recruitment to initiate transcription, and the recruitment of NuA4 to these promoters is impaired in the absence of its Eaf1p component. Intriguingly, impaired NuA4 recruitment in a Δeaf1 strain depletes recruitment of TFIID (a TAF-dependent form of TBP) …

Database Spotlight: Nursing Fall 2015, The University Of Alabama In Huntsville

Database Spotlight

No abstract provided.

Growth Of Selected Plant Species In Biosolids-Amended Mine Tailings, Hannah Alcantara, Augustine Doronila, Marc Nicolas, Stephen Ebbs, Spas Kolev

Publications

Biosolids stockpiles from sewage treatment plants are a valuable source of organic matter which could be utilized to improve the nutritional status and physical properties of Au mine tailings and support the growth of vegetation planted in the tailings. However, biosolids often contain elevated concentrations of heavy metals including Hg while Au mine tailings would usually contain residual Au. Therefore, it would be beneficial to select plants capable of both tolerating and phytoextracting Hg and/or Au.

This paper reports on a glasshouse-based screening study which examined the growth of plant species known for their ability to phytoextract Hg and/or Au …

The Spinnaker September 2015, University Of North Florida

Spinnaker

Student newspaper for the UNF community. Date: September 2015

Climate Extremes Dominating Seasonal And Interannual Variations In Carbon Export From The Mississippi River Basinariations In Carbon Export From The Mississippi River Basin, Hanqin Tian, Wei Ren, Jia Yang, Bo Tao, Wei-Jun Cai, Steven E. Lohrenz, Charles S. Hopkinson, Mingliang Liu, Qichun Yang, Chaoqun Lu, Bowen Zhang, Kamaljit Banger, Shufen Pan, Ruoying He, Zuo Xue

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Knowledge about the annual and seasonal patterns of organic and inorganic carbon (C) exports from the major rivers of the world to the coastal ocean is essential for our understanding and potential management of the global C budget so as to limit anthropogenic modification of global climate. Unfortunately our predictive understanding of what controls the timing, magnitude, and quality of C export is still rudimentary. Here we use a process-based coupled hydrologic/ecosystem biogeochemistry model (the Dynamic Land Ecosystem Model) to examine how climate variability and extreme events, changing land use, and atmospheric chemistry have affected the annual and seasonal patterns …

Bypassing Iron Storage In Endodermal Vacuoles Rescues The Iron Mobilization Defect In The Natural Resistance Associated-Macrophage Protein3natural Resistance Associated-Macrophage Protein4 Double Mutant, Viviane Mary, Magali Schnell Ramos, Cynthia Gillet, Amanda L. Socha, Jerome Giraudat, Astrid Agorio, Sylvain Merlot, Colin Clairet, Sun A. Kim, Tracy Punshon, Mary Lou Guerinot, Sebastien Thomine

Dartmouth Scholarship

To improve seed iron (Fe) content and bioavailability, it is crucial to decipher the mechanisms that control Fe storage during seed development. In Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) seeds, most Fe is concentrated in insoluble precipitates, with phytate in the vacuoles of cells surrounding the vasculature of the embryo. NATURAL RESISTANCE ASSOCIATED-MACROPHAGE PROTEIN3 (AtNRAMP3) and AtNRAMP4 function redundantly in Fe retrieval from vacuoles during germination. When germinated under Fe-deficient conditions, development of the nramp3nramp4 double mutant is arrested as a consequence of impaired Fe mobilization. To identify novel genes involved in seed Fe homeostasis, we screened an …