Digital Commons Network^™

Improving The Health Of African Americans In The Usa: An Overdue Opportunity For Social Justice, Allan S. Noonan, Hector Eduardo Velasco-Mondragon, Fernando A. Wagner

Faculty Publications & Research of the TUC College of Osteopathic Medicine

Using a modified social ecological model, we conducted a review of the literature and nationwide statistics on African American health. We discuss the main social determinants of health and main health disparities, risk factors, the leading causes of morbidity and mortality, and access to health services for blacks in the USA. The mechanisms through which social determinants, including racism, exert their deleterious effects on black health are discussed at the macro and individual levels. Incarceration and mental health care issues are highlighted as priorities to be addressed. African Americans remain the least healthy ethnic group in the USA, a somber …

Bringing The Food To The City: Reconstructing The Nature Of The Animal Economy In Early Urban Centers Of The Ancient Near East Through Stable Isotope Analyses, Parryss Carter-Mcgee

McNair Scholars Journal

This study used isotopic analyses of strontium, oxygen, and carbon on molar teeth of seven domestic ovicaprines (sheep and goat) and one wild gazelle from the Southern Levant of the ancient Near East to better understand herd management patterns in early urban centers. Analysis focused on the Early Bronze Age (EBA 3600-2400 BCE) site of Tell es-Safi/Gath in Israel. The main research question is how did early urban centers in this region acquire and utilize domestic animal resources? The main hypothesis was that a direct/local provisioning system was utilized in managing the domestic animals and that the animals would be …

Vision 2016

Vision

No abstract provided.

2016-2017 Course Catalog, University Of Montana--Missoula. Office Of The Registrar

University of Montana Course Catalogs, 1895-2024

An annual catalog of courses and course descriptions offered at the University of Montana.

Landscape To Local: A Multi-Scale Evaluation Of Voluntary Efforts To Reduce Fragmentation And Enhance Management Of Rangelands For Sage-Grouse, Joseph Tyler Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

For imperiled species, the hierarchical nature of habitat selection suggests the need for a hierarchical approach to conservation: address threats to persistence operating at broad scales on populations before focusing on the quality of patches or availability of particular resources used by individuals. We apply this approach to conservation and management of habitat for greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in the eastern portion of their range where cropland conversion continues to fragment sagebrush grasslands. Using locations of active leks in portions of Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota as spatial indices of populations, we found sage-grouse distribution was highly sensitive …

Potential Benefits And Shortcomings Of Marine Protected Areas For Small Seabirds Revealed Using Miniature Tags, Sara M. Maxwell, Melinda G. Conners, Nicholas B. Sisson, Tiffany M. Dawson

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Marine protected areas are considered important tools for protecting marine biodiversity, and animal tracking is a key way to determine if boundaries are effectively placed for protection of key marine species, including seabirds. We tracked chick-rearing brown noddies (Anous stolidus) from the Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida USA in 2016 using 1.8 g Nanofix GPS tags (n = 10), making this the first time this species has ever been tracked. We determined movement parameters, such as flight speed, distance traveled and home range, and how birds used a complex of marine protected areas including the Dry Tortugas …

Evidence Of Female Sex Pheromones And Characterization Of The Cuticular Lipids Of Unfed, Adult Male Versus Female Blacklegged Ticks, Ixodes Scapularis, Ann L. Carr, Daniel E. Sonenshine, John B. Strider Jr., R. Michael Roe

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Copulation in I. scapularis involves physical contact between the male and female (on or off the host), male mounting the female, insertion/maintenance of the male chelicerae in the female genital pore (initiates spermatophore production), and the transfer of the spermatophore by the male into the female genital pore. Bioassays determined that male mounting behavior/chelicerae insertion required direct contact with the female likely requiring non-volatile chemical cues with no evidence of a female volatile sex pheromone to attract males. Unfed virgin adult females and replete mated adult females elicited the highest rates of male chelicerae insertion with part fed virgin adult …

Skin And Smoke, Kelly Anne Baker

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

My thesis consists of the first ten chapters of a horror novel, entitled Skin and Smoke. My novel focuses on the character of Violet Masterson and her attempts to create her own identify and reconcile with her family's past actions. Violet lives in the small, recently unincorporated town of Nuovita in central Washington. Following her grandmother's death, she must face the paranormal events occurring in Nuovita, while her father leaves on an unknown journey. My thesis addresses themes of loss, identity, and revenge. In Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he proposes that the monomyth ends with the …

Local Avian Density Influences Risk Of Mortality From Window Strikes, Ann M. Sabo, Natasha D.G. Hagemeyer, Ally S. Lahey, Eric L. Walters

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Up to a billion birds die per year in North America as a result of striking windows. Both transparent and reflective glass panes are a cause for concern, misleading birds by either acting as invisible, impenetrable barriers to desired resources, or reflecting those resources over a large surface area. A high number of window strikes occur during migration, but little is known about the factors of susceptibility, or whether particular avian taxa are more vulnerable than others. We report on a study of window strikes and mist-netting data at the Virginia Zoological Park (Norfolk, Virginia, USA), conducted in the autumn …

Studying Within-Host Viral Evolution Using Pooled Next-Generation Sequencing Data, Chase W. Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

Pooled next-generation sequencing allows multiple genomes to be sequenced at once in a single sample, with the resultant single nucleotide polymorphism data giving reliable estimates of allele frequencies and population genetic parameters in a cost-effective manner. This approach has potentiated new opportunities for understanding the evolution of virus populations within individual hosts over the course of infection, where the sequencing of individual genomes is exceedingly difficult and impractical. However, evolutionary tools for analyzing the latest forms of pooled-sequencing data have been lacking. In this thesis, I first review next-generation sequencing and relevant molecular evolution topics, including the unique features of …

Learning Human Poses From Monocular Images, Xiaochuan Fan

Theses and Dissertations

In this research, we mainly focus on the problem of estimating the 2D human pose from a monocular image and reconstructing the 3D human pose based on the 2D human pose. Here a 3D pose is the locations of the human joints in the 3D space and a 2D pose is the projection of a 3D pose on an image. Unlike many previous works that explicitly use hand-crafted physiological models, both our 2D pose estimation and 3D pose reconstruction approaches implicitly learn the structure of human body from human pose data.

This 3D pose reconstruction is an ill-posed problem without …

The Current Summer 2016 Orientation, Nova Southeastern University

Student Newspapers

No abstract provided.

Privileging Professional Insider Trading, Sarah Baumgartel

Georgia Law Review

This Article explores insider trading law's increasing
focus on personal relationships, and the way in which the
law has come to privilege professional over
nonprofessional insider trading. The Article discusses
how, in an effort to expand insider trading liability, the
government has sought to impose legal duties of loyalty
and confidentiality on a host of personal relationships not

otherwise subject to law-effectively basing civil and
criminal penalties on "corruption" in purely personal
relationships. At the same time, courts have adopted a
business property rationale regardingthe use of nonpublic
information and declined to prevent companies from
disclosing valuable nonpublic information to …

Radio-Frequency Plasma Polymerized Biodegradable Carrier For In Vivo Release Of Cis-Platinum, Sudhir Bhatt, Fatemeh Valamanesh, Jerome Pulpytel, Rea Lo Dico, Aliby Baiyukha, Iman Al-Dybiat, Marc Pocard, Farzaneh Arefi-Khonsari, Massoud Mirshahi

Bioelectrics Publications

A low pressure plasma process based on plasma deposition has been used to develop a drug delivery strategy. In this study, a drug delivery system based on different layers of plasma co-polymerized Poly ε-caprolactone-Polyethylene glycol (PCL-PEG) co-polymers was deposited on biocompatible substrates. Cis-platinum (118 μgm/cm²) was used as an anti-cancer drug and incorporated for local delivery of the chemotherapeutic agent. The co-polymer layers and their interaction with cancer cells were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy. Our study showed that the plasma-PCL-PEG coated cellophane membranes, in which the drug, was included did not modify the flexibility and appearance of …

Practicing Practical Wisdom, Deborah J. Cantrell, Kenneth Sharpe

Publications

Wisdom is not an innate character trait; no one automatically is wise; wisdom is learned and acquired. More importantly, one can learn and acquire wisdom intentionally and skillfully — one can practice it. And, if the practice is structured in particular ways, the practice will improve one’s capacities to act with wisdom. This article clarifies theoretical muddiness and pedagogical imprecision by bringing together two important and robust strands of legal ethics literature. The first strand focuses on what the appropriate role of a lawyer is in a just society, while the second focuses on how a lawyer learns to be, …

Re-Ordering The First Amendment, Melissa Hart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Owning Red: A Theory Of Indian (Cultural) Appropriation, Angela R. Riley, Kristen A. Carpenter

Publications

In a number of recent controversies, from sports teams’ use of Indian mascots to the federal government’s desecration of sacred sites, American Indians have lodged charges of “cultural appropriation” or the unauthorized use by members of one group of the cultural expressions and resources of another. While these and other incidents make contemporary headlines, American Indians often experience these claims within a historical and continuing experience of dispossession. For hundreds of years, the U.S. legal system has sanctioned the taking and destruction of Indian lands, artifacts, bodies, religions, identities, and beliefs, all toward the project of conquest and colonization. Indian …

Technological Opacity, Predictability, And Self-Driving Cars, Harry Surden, Mary-Anne Williams

Publications

Autonomous or “self-driving” cars are vehicles that drive themselves without human supervision or input. Because of safety benefits that they are expected to bring, autonomous vehicles are likely to become more common. Notably, for the first time, people will share a physical environment with computer-controlled machines that can both direct their own activities and that have considerable range of movement. This represents a distinct change from our current context. Today people share physical spaces either with machines that have free range of movement, but are controlled by people (e.g. automobiles) or with machines that are controlled by computers, but highly …

Study Of Visual Language In Ujang’S Cartoon: A Case Study Of Aku Budak Minang / Cao Qiang, Qiang Cao

Student Works (2010-2019)

This research focused on the ―Aku Budak Minang‖, the famous comics series published in the ―Gila-Gila‖ magazine and was known as one of the best masterpieces of Ujang. Ibrahim Anon, with the pen name of Ujang, is considered to be one of the most popular cartoonists in Malaysia; His artworks produced significant impacts on both readers and contemporary cartoons in Malaysia. Raised as a Minang boy, the hometown where Ujang was born is a well-known state for its historical background as it was once ruled by the Minangkabau people from Sumatera, Indonesia since 14th century. Therefore, the inherited cultural belief …

Taxonomy, Ecology And Control Of Thalassina Mud Lobsters On Carey Island And Kelanang Shore (Peninsular Malaysia) / Moh Heng Hing, Heng Hing Moh

Student Works (2010-2019)

Thalassinid mud lobsters are large burrowing crustaceans commonly found on mangrove shores. They are not well studied due to their cryptic nature and subterranean habit. Mangrove land reclamation puts this enigmatic creature at odds with humans where their burrowing activities wreck coastal dykes and culture ponds. This study investigated the species of mud lobsters in Malaysia, and their abundance and distribution in relation to environmental factors on Kelanang shore and particularly, Carey Island, where coastal dykes are built to protect largely oil palm estates. Thus, a goal of this study was to find environmental-friendly ways to control mud lobster infestations …

Antioxidant And Antiproliferative Activities Of Several Marine Organisms From The West Coast Of Peninsular Malaysia / Chia Yin Yin, Yin Yin Chia

Student Works (2010-2019)

Three species of seaweeds (Padina tetrastromatica, Caulerpa racemosa and Turbinaria ornata) and a sponge (Spheciospongia vagabunda) were evaluated for their antioxidant and antiproliferative activities in the human breast adenocarcinoma cell line, MCF-7. The crude extracts of the seaweeds and sponge were sequentially extracted with hexane, dichloromethane, ethyl acetate, acetone and methanol. The extracts showed potent 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical, nitric oxide, superoxide anion and hydroxyl radical scavenging assays. The crude extracts were also evaluated for their antiproliferative effects on MCF-7 cells using the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. None of the extracts showed any toxicity in the normal breast cell line, 184B5. …

Potential Protective Effects Of Tualang Honey And Ficus Deltoidea Dack Var.Deltoidea Against Bisphenol A Induced Toxicity In The Reproductive System Of Pre-Pubertal Female Rats / Siti Sarah Mohammad Zaid, Mohammad Zaid Siti Sarah

Student Works (2010-2019)

Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the most ubiquitous environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals that can disrupt the normal development and functions of the female reproductive system. In the last few decades, considerable amount of evidence has shown that young women are put at high risk of reproductive infertility from their routine exposure to numerous BPA-products since BPA induces increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which is responsible for reducing the levels of endogenous antioxidant enzymes and increasing the levels of lipid peroxides. Thus, natural products containing high antioxidant properties such as tualang honey (Malaysian wild local honey) and Ficus …

Seroepidemiology And Characterisation Of Neutralisation Escape Mutants Of Enterovirus A71 / Nik Nadia Nik Mohd Nasir, Nik Mohd Nasir Nik Nadia

Student Works (2010-2019)

Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) is an important emerging pathogen causing large epidemics of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) in children. In Malaysia, since its first epidemic in 1997, recurrent cyclical epidemics have occurred every 2-3 years. Currently, no study of the seroepidemiology of EV-A71 infection has been done in Malaysia. The objectives of the current study were to determine the seroepidemiology of EV-A71 infection in children up to 12 years of age, and general urban and rural populations in Malaysia; to identify risk factors for seropositivity to EV-A71 in the rural population; and to generate EV-A71 neutralisation escape mutants to …

Biological Activities Of Curcuma Purpurascens Bi. Rhizome Extract Using In Vitro And In Vivo Models / Elham Rouhollahi, Rouhollahi Elham

Student Works (2010-2019)

Curcuma purpurascens BI. is a medicinal plant from the Zingiberaceae family, which is widely used as a spice and in folk medicine for the treatment of wounds, scabies, itching, fever, cough and boil. In this study, chemopreventive properties of dichloromethane and hexane extracts of C. purpurascens BI rhizome (DECPR and HECPR) on azoxymethane-induced colonic aberrant crypt foci (ACF), gastroprotective and wound healing potential in rats were been evaluated. The acute toxicity test of DECPR and HECPR in rats, carried out in two doses, i.e. 2 and 5 g/kg, showed that these two plant extracts were safe even at a high …

Studies On Prevalence Of Blastocystis Sp. In Animals And Experimental Infection In-Vivo / Hemalatha Chandrasekaran, Chandrasekaran Hemalatha

Student Works (2010-2019)

Blastocystis sp. is an enteric protozoan organism, found in the intestinal tract of a wide range of animals and humans. The parasite is often incriminated to cause symptoms such as diarrhoea, abdominal pain, bloating and flatulence. Many publications have highlighted the high prevalence of Blastocystis sp. in various animal hosts, however, only very few studies have been conducted in Malaysia. Therefore, this study aimed to screen a range of animals in Malaysia for Blastocystis sp. infection which could be a reservoir for human infection when in close association. High prevalence of Blastocystis sp. were seen in the ostriches and pigs …

Morphometric And Molecular Characterization Of Sarcocystis Spp. In Cattle (Bos Spp.) And Goats (Capra Hircus) Collected From The Shah Alam Abattoir / Ng Yit Han, Yit Han Ng

Student Works (2010-2019)

Sarcocystosis in meat-producing animals is a major cause of reduced productivity in many countries, especially those that rely on agriculture. Although several diagnostic methods are available to detect sarcocystosis, many are too time-consuming for routine use in abattoirs and meat inspection centres, where large numbers of samples need to be tested. Current establish method (transmission electron microscope) for Sarcocystis spp. identification is expensive and time-consuming. Alternatively, tissue compression technique can rapidly detect sarcocysts in tissue samples. Additionally, cysts measurement in corroboration with genotyping of 18S rDNA allows comprehensive species identification. Sequences of Sarcocystis spp. can also be analysed via phylogenetic …

In Vitro, In Sacco And In Vivo Digestibility Of Ruminant Feeds Supplemented With Herbs / Nik Fatihah Nik Abdullah, Nik Abdullah Nik Fatihah

Student Works (2010-2019)

Animal feeds with added herb tested in in vitro, in sacco and in vivo techniques are the potential use combined with commercial pellets or PKE pellets to enhance the nutritive value of the feeds. Two types of herb mixture were tested. The mixture of local herbs (named as DD herbs): formulated in the Animal Biotechnology Laboratory University of Malaya (UM) and imported herb. The objective of the research was to compare DD herb potential in improving ruminant digestibility against imported herb. The experimental diets were formulated into 3 combination doses: 25 gm of herbs added to 975 gm of pallets …

Investigating The Effects Of Marantodes Pumilum Leaves Aqueous Extract On Uterine Contractility In Post-Partum Rats / Wan Fatein Nabeila Wan Omar, Wan Omar Wan Fatein Nabeila

Student Works (2010-2019)

Marantodes pumilum (MP) or locally known as Kacip Fatimah is a herbal plant found mainly in South East Asia. Despite its traditional use by the Malay women for postpartum uterine involution, there is no study performed to investigate the effects of this herb on uterine contractility in the post-partum period. The aims of this study were therefore to investigate the effects of M. pumilum on post-partum uterine contractility and the underlying mechanisms involved. Methods: This study was performed in postpartum SD female rats (n=24). Aqueous extract of M. pumilum var Alata was administered orally for seven consecutive days at 100, …

Reliability And Validity Of The Bahasa Malaysia Version Of The International Physical Activity Questionnaire / Pri Hansini Chaskar, Chaskar Pri Hansini

Student Works (2010-2019)

Terdapat banyak indikasi yang menunjukkan bahawa kekurangan aktiviti fizikal membawa pelbagai jenis penyakit seperti obesiti, osteoporosis, diabetis, hipertensi, penyakit kardiovaskular, depresi, serta kanser. International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) merupakan salah satu borang kaji selidik yang luas digunakan untuk menentukan tahap aktiviti fizikal seseorang individu. Borang ini telah diuji di 14 pusat di 12 buah negara di seluruh dunia. Waiau bagaimanapun, di Malaysia, tidak terdapat satu alat kaedah yang piawai untuk menentukan tahap aktiviti fizikal seseorang individu. Kekurangan kaedah menentukan tahap aktiviti fizikal di sesebuah negara yang terdiri dari pelbagai kaum dan bangsa seperti Malaysia, akan menghambat kajian penyelidikan dan epidemiologi …

Investment Accelerators, Brad Bernthal

Publications

This Article documents and explains the legal and extralegal dimensions of Investment Accelerator (IA) systems. Accelerators are a new class of institution that supports entrepreneurs and early stage startups. Investment Accelerators take an ownership stake in companies that participate in an intensive, time-limited program. Interviews reveal the surprising extent to which parties in many Investment Accelerators exchange economic value in the absence of formal agreement. Startups share proprietary information with highly accomplished mentors who, in turn, contribute their time and connections without direct compensation. This under-contracted and informal arrangement raises concerns about opportunism. Data from an original investigation presents a …