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Visuospatial Attention And Autism Spectrum Trait Expression, Benjamin Andrew Stettler

Psychology

Pseudoneglect (PN: Bowers & Heilman, 1980) references neurotypical leftward attentional bias reflective of right hemisphere (RH) specialization for spatial attention. Phasic visual cues can alter PN magnitude (McCourt et al., 2005). Tonic leftward bisection error for Uncued (UC) lines and its modulation with left (LC) and right (RC) cues were confirmed. Reported Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) neurobehavioral concomitants include greater lateralized RH function (Floris et al., 2015), narrowed visuospatial attentional spotlight (Robertson et al., 2013), reduced leftward bias in the grayscales task (English et al., 2015), and facial processing deficits. Neurotypical individuals’ judgments for chimeric faces and cued line bisection …

A Unitary Framework Defining The Functional Significance Of Neural Oscillations In The Alpha Frequency, Andrew Jordan Heinz

Psychology

Neural oscillations in the alpha frequency band (8-12 Hz) are among the most salient and ubiquitous phenomena observed in human electroencephalographic recordings. There have been various proposals regarding the functional significance of these oscillations, including the inhibition of task-irrelevant cortical areas, and the active retention of information in visual working memory. In an attempt to delineate between these two alternatives, I recorded EEG while participants performed two tasks requiring the short-term retention of visual working memory items. The results suggest that alpha-band oscillations reflect the implementation of an attentionally selective executive control process, inhibiting task-irrelevant processing, aiding the stability of …

How Could This Happen: Explaining The Holocaust By Dan Mcmillan (New York: Basic Books, 2014. 288 Pp. $27.99 Isbn 978-0-465-08024-3)., Sondra Perl

Journal of Hate Studies

Eighty-two years after Hitler became Reich Chancellor of Germany, seventy-seven years after Kristallnacht, seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz: time makes no difference. The Holocaust remains an inexplicable phenomenon, the catastrophe of catastrophes, an omnipresent stain on the soul of humanity. In his thoughtful book, Dan McMillan attempts, with remarkable success, to demystify the Shoah, to explain how it happened and why. In doing so, McMillan is well aware of the pitfalls: to explain means to understand; to understand, to render the incomprehensible comprehensible, is to challenge the special status of the Holocaust as unique.

Estimating The Impact To Wetlands In Western North Dakota From Dust And Road Use Increases Due To Energy Development, Jessica Christine Creuzer

Natural Resources Management

Travel on gravel roads in western North Dakota has increased in recent years due mainly to energy development and little information exists on the impacts. This project’s objective was to compare high dust impact sites and low dust impact sites to determine the effects of road dust on wetlands. Four aspects were evaluated: 1) dust loading; 2) wetland condition and function; 3) water quality; and 4) trace element changes in the soil. Dust loading was measured utilizing dust collectors. Wetlands were assessed for condition using the Index of Plant Community Integrity and North Dakota Rapid Assessment Method and function using …

Gauging The Perceptions Of High School Students In Different Demographics On Environmental Education Topics, Kory Bonnell

Natural Resources Management

Environmental education is a topic that has been promoted by advocates and researchers for more than three decades; however, a majority of public schools still fail to cover the fundamental basics of environmental education in their curriculum. This project seeks to understand how high school aged students (10th grade) understand three environmental concepts including: 1) recycling; 2) food production; and 3) concept of the natural environment, amongst the demographics of: 1) rural; 2) urban cluster; and 3) large metropolitan/inner city. Questionnaires were designed using the Likert Scale questions in order to quantify differing perceptions between rural, urban cluster, and large …

Factors Affecting Soil Total Mercury, Carbon And Nitrogen Distributions In Seasonal Pond Basins Within A Northern Hardwood Forest In Minnesota, Usa, Mikayla Jane Boche

Natural Resources Management

Forests are sites for mercury deposition, where accumulation in aquatic environments can occur. Soil total mercury (THg), C and N to 15 cm were studied in ten seasonal pond basins in a northern hardwood forest (Minnesota, USA). Pools and concentrations of THg were lower in uplands than in ponds, indicating downslope transport or differential deposition. In uplands, THg concentrations were the same in 0-2 and 2-5 cm depths and then decreased, whereas density peaked in 2-5 cm, highlighting the importance of bulk density on mass. Carbon and N trends were similar to THg. Apart from pond centers, strong positive relationships …

The Effect Of Scoliotic Deformity On Spine Kinematics In Adolescents., Sarah Galvis, Douglas Burton, Brandon Barnds, John Anderson, Richard M. Schwend, Nigel Price, Sara Wilson, Elizabeth Friis

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Background: While adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) produces well characterized deformation in spinal form, the effect on spinal function, namely mobility, is not well known. Better understanding of scoliotic spinal mobility could yield better treatment targets and diagnoses. The purpose of this study was to characterize the spinal mobility differences due to AIS. It was hypothesized that the AIS group would exhibit reduced mobility compared to the typical adolescent (TA) group.

Methods: Eleven adolescents with right thoracic AIS, apices T6-T10, and eleven age- and gender-matched TAs moved to their maximum bent position in sagittal and coronal plane bending tasks. A Trakstar …

An Insilico Design Of Nanoclay Based Nanocomposites And Scaffolds In Bone Tissue Engineering, Anurag Sharma

Materials and Nanotechnology

A multiscale in silico approach to design polymer nanocomposites and scaffolds for bone tissue engineering applications is described in this study. This study focuses on the role of biomaterials design and selection, structural integrity and mechanical properties evolution during degradation and tissue regeneration in the successful design of polymer nanocomposite scaffolds. Polymer nanocomposite scaffolds are synthesized using aminoacid modified montmorillonite nanoclay with biomineralized hydroxyapatite and polycaprolactone (PCL/in situ HAPclay). Representative molecular models of polymer nanocomposite system are systematically developed using molecular dynamics (MD) technique and successfully validated using material characterization techniques. The constant force steered molecular dynamics (fSMD) simulation results …

Minimum Favorable Conditions For Hydrogen-Diesel Combustion, Jacob Dylan Hanson

Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics

A test apparatus was designed and fabricated that allowed very small amounts of diesel fuel to be injected into a hydrogen-air mixture. This apparatus was designed to be able to operate near the limits of diesel fuel injectors. The purpose of this apparatus is to find out if the injectors in diesel engines are capable of igniting a hydrogen-air mixture when operated at their limits and to explore past their limits for further advancement in the field of dual-fuel hydrogen-diesel combustion. The minimum flow rate of diesel fuel the apparatus could produce was 120.46 cm^3/min and the fastest response time …

Advanced Analytics For The Automation Of Medical Systematic Reviews, Prem Timsina, Jun Liu, Omar F. El-Gayar

Research & Publications

While systematic reviews (SRs) are positioned as an essential element of modern evidence-based medical practice, the creation and update of these reviews is resource intensive. In this research, we propose to leverage advanced analytics techniques for automatically classifying articles for inclusion and exclusion for systematic reviews. Specifically, we used soft-margin polynomial Support Vector Machine (SVM) as a classifier, exploited Unified Medical Language Systems (UMLS) for medical terms extraction, and examined various techniques to resolve the class imbalance issue. Through an empirical study, we demonstrated that soft-margin polynomial SVM achieves better classification performance than the existing algorithms used in current research, …

Prairie Conservation And Reconstruction Studies In Communication, Application, And Education, Paula Jean Comeau

Natural Resources Management

Natural Resources Management is a combination of disciplines all working together to improve management practices, environmental education, and cross-discipline communication. Land managers and conservationist have become a group of people thrust into the public eye and to help the world make sense of the ecological and climatic changes that are taking place. For this reason, Natural Resources Management PhD’s have become a community needed to interface with the public in order to balance environmental and societal needs. This dissertation project took a renaissance approach by examining a wide range of fields. It is said that a Renaissance man is knowledgeable …

Emerging Infectious Diseases With Vaccination As A Major Control Approach: The Case Of The African 2 (Af2) Clonal Complex Of Mycobacterium Bovis In Uganda And Pneumococcal Vaccine For Streptococcus Pneumoniae In The United States, Timothy Robert Miller

Microbiological Sciences

Respiratory infectious diseases are among the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the world. This paper presents two respiratory diseases, Mycobacterium bovis and Streptococcus pneumoniae, which cause significant global health issues despite the advancement of vaccines. In Uganda, M. bovis isolates (n=27) were PCR-tested for a specific chromosomal deletion (RDAf2) and spoligotyped for specific characterization of the Af2 clonal complex. Seventeen (63%) isolates contained the Af2 clonal complex. The high prevalence indicates Af2 clonal complex is of epidemiological interest and a likely cause of bovine tuberculosis in Kampala, Uganda. Ten vervet serum (varying age groups) levels were measured (Luminex) …

A Porcine Circovirus Vaccine With Enhanced Capabilities, Oleksandr Hryhorovych Kolyvushko

Microbiological Sciences

Porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) is a pathogen of swine. Vaccines against PCV2 are available, although none are capable of differentiating infected from vaccinated animals (DIVA). Positive and negative DIVA markers were introduced in the vaccine constructs. Decoy epitopes were modified by site directed mutagenesis to avoid possible subversion of host immunity and achieve a rationalized vaccine design. Immunization of pigs with the modified vaccines, followed by challenge with a virulent field strain showed that the efficacy of the vaccine was comparable to a commercial vaccine. The average weight gain was significantly higher group vaccinated with experimental construct if compared …

Prediction Of The World Cup Soccer Winner: Using Two Statistical Methods, Mohamed Dit Mody Sylla

Statistics

Soccer is considered the most popular sport on earth and applying statistical models to analyze small soccer data has been of a keen interest to modern researchers. Statistical modeling of soccer data also provides guidance and assistance to stakeholders. The goal of this paper is to establish a consistent statistical approach to help in the prediction of future World Cup championships. Ordinary least squares regression is used to develop models which predict goal margin of games and logistic regression is used to develop models which estimate the probability of a team winning the game. Discriminant Analysis was also used to …

Modeling The Winners Of Ncaa Women's Division Ii Basketball Tournament Games, Feifei Huang

Statistics

This thesis first presents a least squares regression model to identify the in-game statistics that help explain the variation in point spread for NCAA Division II Women’s Basketball Tournament games. Then a logistic regression model is presented to estimate the probability of a team winning a tournament game based on the differences in significant in-game statistics. Differences in the following variables are significant in both models: field goal percentage, 3-point field goal percentage, free throw percentage, offensive rebounds, personal fouls and turnovers. Difference in assists is only significant in the point spread model. Both models are validated using the in-game …

Examination Of The Relationship Between Student Academic Outcomes And Usage Of The Campus Recreational Facility, Kristen Marie Tomanek

Statistics

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between student academic outcomes, such as grade point average (GPA) and retention, and usage of the campus recreational facility. The population of interest was first-time full-time degree seeking freshmen. It was found that as the mean high school GPA of students increased, the frequency of visits to the recreational facility increased. In the analysis of first-term GPA, as the term GPA increased, so did the visit frequency. For male students, the statistical significance in the mean term GPA by visit category became less distinct as the high school GPA increased. …

Spring Wheat (Triticum Aestivum L.) Response To Nitrogen (N) Loss Management And Sulfate-Based Soil Salinity, Resham Thapa

Soil Science

The first study was conducted during 2014 growing season at Glyndon, MN to evaluate the effectiveness of nitrification inhibitor or both urease and nitrification i.e. double inhibitors on reducing N losses in a rainfed spring-wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) system. Our findings suggested that amending urea with double inhibitors might be an effective strategy to reduce all possible N losses without compromising crop yields from urea-fertilized soils. The second study was conducted to understand the responses of spring-wheat to sulfate-based salinity stress under greenhouse and field conditions. Results from the greenhouse study indicated that the threshold soil ECe (EC using saturated-paste-extract …

Predicting Outcomes Of Nba Basketball Games, Eric Scot Jones

Statistics

A stratified random sample of 144 NBA basketball games was taken over a three-year period, between 2008 and 2011. Models were developed to predict point spread and to estimate the probability of a specific team winning based on various in-game statistics. Statistics significant in the model were field-goal shooting percentage, three-point shooting percentage, free-throw shooting percentage, offensive rebounds, assists, turnovers, and free-throws attempted. Models were verified using exact in-game statistics for a random sample of 50 NBA games taken during the 2011-2012 season with 88-94% accuracy. Three methods were used to estimate in-game statistics of future games so that the …

National Legal Traditions At Work In The Jurisprudence Of The Court Of Justice Of The European Union: Symposium: Foreign Law In Constitutional Courts, Fernanda Nicola

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Numerous scholars have commented on the judicial style of the Court of Justice of the European Union and its non-Herculean judges, generally disapproving of its minimalist reasoning, lack of transparency, and failure to draw openly on comparative legal sources to avoid inconsistencies and weaknesses in its legal reasoning. In a debate where both historians and sociologists have provided new avenues of research, the paucity of comparative lawyers is surprising because European law is a quintessential example of a transnational legal order. Since its inception, European judges, advocates general, and lawyers in Luxembourg have drawn inspiration from the different national legal …

Genealogies Of Cost–Benefit Analysis In Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation, Fernanda Nicola

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) has become a quintessential tool in administrative law informing a variety of modes of regulatory governance. It provides a justification for the regulation of markets based on a quasi-scientific and seemly neutral logic to assess the impact of secondary legislation by government agencies. A new frontier for CBA is the promotion of trade liberalization. It features prominently in the regulatory chapter of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). During the TTIP negotiations, scholars deployed CBA as a “neutral” tool to achieve greater convergence or reassert divergence and experimentalism in regulatory governance across the Atlantic. A genealogical …

Rendered Invisible: African American Low-Wage Workers And The Workplace Exploitation Paradigm, Llezlie Coleman

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The narrative of low-wage worker exploitation has increasingly narrowed in focus to reflect the experiences of undocumented immigrant workers whose immigration status makes them particularly vulnerable to wage theft and other denials of their substantive workplace rights. Indeed, much of the scholarship in this area rests solidly at the intersection of immigrant justice and employment law. This article disrupts this paradigm by arguing that this limited narrative has rendered African American low-wage workers invisible. It also draws from the voices of low-wage worker advocates who have borrowed from current activism to announce that #BlackWorkersMatter. Given the role of paradigms in …

Judicial Lobbying, Jonas Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Abstract: Judges who lobby Congress for legal reform tread into an ethical gray area: lobbying is legally permissible, but generally frowned upon. Currently, there are no legal or ethical constraints on judges speaking publicly regarding proposed legislative changes, only an ill-defined norm against the practice. Scholars have largely dismissed judicial lobbying efforts as the result of haphazard, one-off events, driven by the unique interests, expertise, or ideology of the individual judge involved. According to scholars, there is nothing that should be done-not to mention little that could be done-to restrict judges from lobbying. Judicial lobbying occurs, in large part, when …

Invalidating The Full Scale Iq Score In The Presence Of Significant Factor Score Variability: Clinical Acumen Or Clinical Illusion?, Ryan J. Mcgill

Archives of Assessment Psychology

Within the professional literature, it is frequently suggested that significant variability in lower-level factor and index scores on IQ tests renders the resulting FSIQ an inappropriate focus for clinical interpretation and diagnostic decision-making. To investigate the tenability of this popular interpretive heuristic, the present study examined the structural and predictive validity of the KABC-II for participants in the normative sample who were observed to have significant variability in their factor scores. Participants were children and adolescents, ages 7-18, (N = 2,025) drawn from the KABC-II/KTEA-II standardization sample. The sample was nationally stratified and proportional to U.S. census estimates for sex, …

Sociocultural And Language Differences In Performance On The Trail Making Test, Ondrej Bezdicek, Ladislav Motak, David J. Schretlen, Marek Preiss, Bradley N. Axelrod, Tomas Nikolai, Javier Pena, Natalia Ojeda, Evzen Ruzicka

Archives of Assessment Psychology

The aim of this study was to test whether a Czech version of the Trail Making Test (TMT) normative data yield scores that approximate those based on English (North American) and Spanish normative samples. In all samples, TMT Parts A and B were administered according to the guidelines. Completion times for healthy adults from the Czech Republic (n = 422, Bezdicek et al., 2012), the United States (n = 325, Schretlen et al., 2008) and Spain (n = 348, Ojeda, Pena, unpublished data), stratified for age and education, were compared. Czechs took less time to complete TMT-B than English and …

The Mmp-2-Rf And College Students: Do We Remain Stuck In A Normative No-Man’S Land?, P. Kevin Bolinskey, Janice P. Guidi, Kevin R. Myers, Dianna Cooper-Bolinskey, Kelly M. Schuder, Allison V. James, Daniel V. Hudak, Yelena Gonzalez, Eric Mctiernan, Elizabeth A. Smith

Archives of Assessment Psychology

Sixty-plus years of research have demonstrated that college students tend to score significantly higher than older adults on the earlier forms of the MMPI (i.e., MMPI and MMPI-2). Relatively little research has examined whether this pattern of results holds with the newer MMPI-2-RF. The present study compared MMPI-2-RF scores of college students, both by gender and combined, to a reference group composed of equal numbers of men and women from the MMPI-2 normative sample. Results demonstrated that this pattern of higher scores among college students remains a concern when using the MMPI-2-RF. Of particular concern is the finding that women’s …

Differential Effects Of Mineralocorticoid And Angiotensin Ii On Incentive And Mesolimbic Activity, Laura A. Grafe, Loretta M. Flanagan-Cato

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

The controls of thirst and sodium appetite are mediated in part by the hormones aldosterone and angiotensin II (AngII). The present study examined the behavioral and neural mechanisms of altered effort-value in animals treated with systemic mineralocorticoids, intracerebroventricular AngII, or both. First,rats treated with mineralocorticoid and AngII were tested in the progressive ratio operant task. The willingness to work for sodium versus waterdepended on hormonal treatment. In particular, rats treated with both mineralocorticoid and AngII preferentially worked for access to sodium versus water compared with rats given only one of these hormones. Second, components of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway were …

Aids Activists, Fda Regulation, And The Amendment Of America's Drug Constitution, Lewis Grossman

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article explores how AIDS activists, desperate for access to potentially life-saving pharmaceuticals, permanently transformed America’s “drug constitution.” Their advocacy altered the FDA’s interpretation and application of the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) so as to expedite the availability of new, unproven drugs for critical illnesses, thus enhancing individual patients’ autonomy to make therapeutic choices without government interference. The FDCA is more than simple set of instructions to a federal agency — it is a source of vitally important and deeply entrenched institutional and normative frameworks. Like major civil rights, antitrust, and environmental statutes, the FDCA should be …

A Hedgehog's Unity Of Value, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The paper examines various interpretations of Dworkin’s thesis of the Unity of Value, as expressed and defended in his book Justice for Hedgehogs. Dworkin’s arguments for various aspects of his unity of value thesis are relied on in interpreting the which is then compared with versions of value pluralism.

How Welfare Biology And Commonsense May Help To Reduce Animal Suffering, Yew-Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

Welfare biology is the study of the welfare of living things. Welfare is net happiness (enjoyment minus suffering). Since this necessarily involves feelings, Dawkins (2014) has suggested that animal welfare science may face a paradox, because feelings are very difficult to study. The following paper provides an explanation for how welfare biology could help to reduce this paradox by answering some difficult questions regarding animal welfare. Simple means based on commonsense could reduce animal suffering enormously at low or even negative costs to humans. Ways to increase the influence of animal welfare advocates are also discussed, focusing initially on farmed …

Mitochondrial Function Assessed By 31p Mrs And Bold Mri In Non-Obese Type 2 Diabetic Rats, Yuchi Liu, Xunbai Mei, Jielei Li, Nicola Lai, Xin Yu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The study aims to characterize age-associated changes in skeletal muscle bioenergetics by evaluating the response to ischemia-reperfusion in the skeletal muscle of the Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rats, a rat model of non-obese type 2 diabetes (T2D). ³¹P magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) MRI was performed on the hindlimb of young (12 weeks) and adult (20 weeks) GK and Wistar (control) rats. ³¹P-MRS and BOLD-MRI data were acquired continuously during an ischemia and reperfusion protocol to quantify changes in phosphate metabolites and muscle oxygenation. The time constant of phosphocreatine recovery, an index of mitochondrial oxidative capacity, …